LITTLE ROCK — THEY’RE . . . BACK! We’re talking about highly paid state employees who retire, and so draw their pensions, but find their way back on the state payroll, and so draw state salaries, too. The best of both worlds! At least for said state employees. Not so much for the taxpayers, who have to pay them twice.
Among the latest class of double dippers are three high-ranking execs who join some 500 others on the state payroll who may have retired but don’t stay retired.
Michael Wickline’s front-page story the other day mentioned three of the unretired: “Department of Workforce Services Director Artee Williams, Office of Excise Tax Administration Administrator Tom Atchley, and acting Livestock and Poultry Commission Director Earl Kimbrell.” (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 10, 2011.)
For these execs, working for the Stateof Arkansas is never having to say “I quit”-at least not for long.
Their going off and then back on the public payroll is scarcely a rarity in state government. Out of 6,645 state employees who have retired since July 1, 2001, at least 980 have been rehired. And of those, 521 are still working for the state. That’s according to the state’s Office of Personnel Management, which keeps track of these double dippers.
The revolving door between retiring from the state’s employ and then returning to the payroll keeps spinning-despite the best efforts of legislators to end this expensive farce.
To quote Allen Kerr, the state representative from Little Rock who’s tried and failed to put an end to the double-dipping: “Arkansas’ Public Employee Retirement System continues to be abused . . .” Over the last couple of years, Representative Kerr has got some (very) modest reforms made, but clearly the system hasn’t been reformed enough. Clarifying a term or two, like making it clearer just when state employment has been terminated, isn’t going to get it.
Mr. Kerr says he’ll try to toughen the law at the next regular session of the Legislature in 2013, but the double dippers may find a way around the new law, too.
No law can be a wholly adequate substitute for public employees’ own self-restraint. Reforms are needed. But they’re not likely to be made so long as the boss-in this case, Governor Mike Beebe-doesn’t mind these end runs around the retirement system. And even aids and abets them.
The Hon. Mike Beebe says this kind of double-dipping, at least for officials he gets to pick, is perfectly justified. Asked why Artee Williams was rehired as director of the state’s Workforce Services after a retirement that lasted all of 30 days, the Guv explained:
“You can always hire somebody cheaper. The question is: Are you hiring somebody cheaper who can do as good a job? That was a critical position that, especially in light of the unemployment issues going forward, Artee’s expertise was really, really needed.”
Doubtless the way Shane Broadway’s services are really, really needed as permanent director of the state’s Department of Higher Education-no matter what qualifications state law may lay down for the job.
The moral of this dispiriting story: Whom the Guv wants is whom the Guv hires. Reasons can be trotted out afterward. Like the old Indispensable Man theory, the mainstay of every exec who doesn’t dare take a vacation lest it be discovered how dispensable he really is.
GOVERNOR Beebe’s talk of what a critical position this or that executive holds down, and how much the state needs its retired/ unretired employees, overlooks what ought to be a critical job of any key executive in a big organization: training his successor.
A really good executive-someone who’s really, really needed in that position-would bring a subordinate up to speed and have him ready to take his place should something happen to him, like retirement. That an executive has managed to make himself indispensable is less a recommendation for bringing him out of retirement than a reflection on the job he’s done, especially when it comes to the category called Planning Ahead.
One of these days, when a politician is asked to explain some inexplicable action, he’s going to have the simple candor to say: “I did it mainly just ’cause I wanted to.”
Whatever the problems with that kind of arrogance, at least he’d deserve credit for honesty.
Editorial, Pages 14 on 08/18/2011