jaminjim
Veteran Expediter
I will attempt to see if Ohio has the same practice for throwing my money away. I always wondered how someone could afford to do that job.
How state lawmakers pump up pensions in ways you can't
At age 55, South Carolina state Sen. David Thomas began collecting a pension for his legislative service without leaving office.
File photo by Harry Cabluck,, AP
In session: Texas House members listen to Gov. Rick Perry's State of the State message on Jan. 27, 2009, in Austin. Since 1975, legislators' annual salary has stalled at $7,200, but a 1981 law allows them to draw a judge's pension of $125,000.
Enlarge
File photo by Harry Cabluck,, AP
In session: Texas House members listen to Gov. Rick Perry's State of the State message on Jan. 27, 2009, in Austin. Since 1975, legislators' annual salary has stalled at $7,200, but a 1981 law allows them to draw a judge's pension of $125,000.
Most workers must retire from their jobs before getting retirement benefits. But Thomas used a one-sentence law that he and his colleagues passed in 2002 to let legislators receive a
taxpayer-funded pension instead of a salary after serving for 30 years.
INTERACTIVE: How state legislators inflate pensions
MORE: State-by-state pension rules and methodology
Thomas' $32,390 annual retirement benefit — paid for the rest of his life — is more than triple the $10,400 salary he gave up. His pension exceeds the salary because of another perk: Lawmakers voted to count their expenses in the salary used to calculate their pensions.
No other South Carolina state workers get those perks.
Since January 2005, Thomas, a Republican, has made $148,435 more than a legislative salary would have paid, his financial-disclosure records show. At least four other South Carolina lawmakers are getting pensions instead of salaries, netting an extra $292,000 since 2005, records show.
Pension perks aren't unique to legislators in South Carolina.
More than 4,100 legislators in 33 states are positioned to benefit from special retirement laws that they and their predecessors have enacted to boost their pensions by up to $100,000 a year, a USA TODAY investigation found. Even as legislators cut basic state services and slash benefits for police, teachers and other workers, they have preserved pension laws that grant themselves perks unavailable to voters they serve or workers they direct.
Oregon: Double dipping
This year, the state of Oregon will pay state Rep. Andy Olson $108,701. That's $15,100 more than the governor's salary.
Olson gets so much because Oregon legislators allow themselves to collect a public pension while in office. The perk has let Olson, a retired state trooper who is 58, collect $705,000 from the state since he took office in January 2005. That includes $560,000 in pension payments.
Most of the 180,000 retirees getting a pension from the Oregon state retirement system are not as fortunate. A retiree who starts working for a local or state agency or for a school district usually is restricted to getting paid for 10 or 20 hours a week.
Olson, a Republican, supports allowing legislators to collect state pensions while in office, saying the policy encourages retirees such as himself with extensive public-sector experience to hold office by not penalizing them financially. Olson is among 10 of Oregon's 90 legislators who have collected $3.1 million in state pensions while in office.
Photo by David Patton, Albany Democrat-Herald
In some states, lawmakers add expenses, per diem allowances and stipends to their base salaries. That inflates the compensation that's used to calculate retirement benefits, which are typically a percentage of final pay. In other states, legislators have written a special definition of salary that applies only to their pensions. Additional tactics include:
•Basing pensions on salaries legislators are not paid or were paid in non-legislative jobs.
•Collecting state pensions while also collecting legislative paychecks.
•Retiring earlier — at a younger age or after fewer years — than other state workers, or with richer benefits.
"It's mind-blowing hypocrisy," says state Rep. Stephen Webber, a Democrat from Missouri. State lawmakers there meet for roughly five months a year and are paid slightly more on average than a state worker, but records show a typical lawmaker's pension averages 30% more than a state worker's. The reason: rules legislators wrote for themselves.
"The whole two-tiered system really encapsulates how we've operated here in Missouri and in the rest of the country," he says. "Lawmakers treat themselves differently."
The generous systems mean that at least 570 lawmakers in 19 states have qualified for pensions that will pay them as much as — or in one case 17 times more than — their base legislative salaries, USA TODAY found.
That represents nearly 10% of the 5,900 lawmakers in the 40 states with legislative pensions. About 450 are lawmakers in Mississippi, Kansas, South Carolina, Texas and New Mexico, a state where lawmakers receive no salary but can get a pension with five years of service.
More than 100 other lawmakers have collected about $15million total in state pensions while holding office, USA TODAY found. They serve in states that allow "double dipping" for legislators but bar or restrict other workers from getting state pensions while holding state or municipal jobs. Most of those lawmakers have retired from jobs such as state police officer or public school teacher, but others are drawing pensions solely for their legislative service.
For South Carolina's Thomas, the choice to trade a legislative salary for a legislative pension was easy.
"You get paid more," he says.
Perks are not always obvious
Most 55-year-olds don't have pensions. Just 26% of people older than 55 get a retirement benefit from a former employer, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. The average pension in 2009 was $13,007 for private-sector retirees and $25,286 for public retirees.
In Congress, retiring lawmakers get pensions worth up to 80% of their $174,000 salary — or $139,200 — if they serve 32 years. The average pension for 455 retired federal lawmakers is $57,590, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Discerning the state lawmakers' pensions isn't so easy.
Legislators must reach a certain age — generally from 55 to 65 — or serve a certain number of years to get a pension. Many states deem an individual's retirement records confidential, however, and will not release details about payouts.
Lacking that information, USA TODAY reviewed thousands of pages of laws from 40 states to understand how legislative salaries and pensions are computed. The newspaper calculated how much every legislator in the 40 states would get for a pension if he or she retired this year. Ten states do not pay lawmaker pensions.
Several states let lawmakers start collecting their retirement benefits while still in office.
Six years before he left the New York state Senate in December, Republican George Winner began collecting a pension for his legislative service. He was 55 when the pension began adding $80,000 to the roughly $90,000 salary he was getting to represent New York's 53rd Senate District, state records show. In his final six years in office, Winner received $1 million in pension and salary.
New York state has barred legislators elected after 1994 from getting legislative pensions while in office. Nonetheless, 15 lawmakers who took office before 1995 are collecting a legislative pension and salary, state records show. Their earnings average $154,000 a year.
Other perks are shrouded in the minutiae of state law: Kentucky legislators add their annual allowance for stationery — up to $1,500 for senators and $750 for House members — plus another $15,000 to $17,000 a year in expense payments to the salary on which pensions are based. Mississippi legislators get two pensions that on average add up to 165% of their salary. Connecticut lawmakers can increase their pensions up to 50% by including mileage reimbursements that add as much as $15,500 a year to the salaries used to calculate their pensions.
Connecticut: Adding expenses
Rep. Lawrence Cafero Jr. racks up more than mileage commuting 75 miles each way from Norwalk to the Capitol in Hartford. With each mile he drives, his pension improves.
Connecticut legislators add their mileage reimbursement to the salary used to calculate their pensions. They also add their annual expense payment -- $5,500 for senators and $4,500 for House members. That means legislators are collectively boosting their salaries by about $1.6 million a year.
Cafero, the House Republican leader, received an average of $13,006 a year for mileage from 2007 through 2009, state records show. That amount alone would increase his pension by $3,460 a year if Cafero were to finish his current term and retire with 20 years of service.
Cafero says using mileage to increase a pension is "disturbing," and that his measures to end the practice have been defeated. "The pension should be based on your salary, not on some mechanism that allows you to feather it," he says.
Photo by Jessica Hill, AP
"That's just a small example of what's wrong with the (pension) system and why it's become unsustainable," says Connecticut Rep. Lawrence Cafero, House Republican leader. The expense payments, mileage and leadership stipend he received in 2008-10 will add $26,341 to the $28,000 legislator's salary used to calculate his pension, state records show.
In Illinois, lawmakers who move to lucrative state jobs can apply the higher salary to their legislative pension, which pays richer benefits than pensions for state workers. In July, Democratic former House member Gary Hannig began collecting a $123,057 legislative pension, even though his legislative salary was $86,902 when he left office in 2009. His pension, however, is based on his $150,228 salary as state Transportation director after leaving the Legislature.
"It's legal corruption," says Bill Zettler of Chicago-based Taxpayers United of America. At least 42 of 139 Illinois legislators retiring since 2000 have boosted their legislative pensions by taking higher-paying government jobs, USA TODAY found.
Some states play make-believe. Kansas calculates lawmakers' pensions as if they were paid 372 days a year.
Texas pension calculations stray even further from reality. Lawmakers there haven't raised their pay since 1975. They convene every other year and get a $7,200 annual salary. But because of a law they passed in 1981, their pension is based on whatever the lawmakers decide to pay Texas trial judges.
Since 1981, Texas lawmakers have nearly tripled a judge's salary — and, by extension, their own pensions — raising the pay from $42,500 to $125,000.
Legislators also removed a sentence that limited their pensions to 60% of a judge's salary. Now, the pensions can equal 100% of a judge's salary.
The changes mean that state Rep. Tom Craddick, a Republican who took office in 1969, is guaranteed a $125,000 pension — more than 17 times his $7,200 salary. Another 58 state lawmakers are guaranteed pensions of more than $40,000, USA TODAY found.
How state lawmakers pump up pensions in ways you can't
At age 55, South Carolina state Sen. David Thomas began collecting a pension for his legislative service without leaving office.
File photo by Harry Cabluck,, AP
In session: Texas House members listen to Gov. Rick Perry's State of the State message on Jan. 27, 2009, in Austin. Since 1975, legislators' annual salary has stalled at $7,200, but a 1981 law allows them to draw a judge's pension of $125,000.
Enlarge
File photo by Harry Cabluck,, AP
In session: Texas House members listen to Gov. Rick Perry's State of the State message on Jan. 27, 2009, in Austin. Since 1975, legislators' annual salary has stalled at $7,200, but a 1981 law allows them to draw a judge's pension of $125,000.
Most workers must retire from their jobs before getting retirement benefits. But Thomas used a one-sentence law that he and his colleagues passed in 2002 to let legislators receive a
taxpayer-funded pension instead of a salary after serving for 30 years.
INTERACTIVE: How state legislators inflate pensions
MORE: State-by-state pension rules and methodology
Thomas' $32,390 annual retirement benefit — paid for the rest of his life — is more than triple the $10,400 salary he gave up. His pension exceeds the salary because of another perk: Lawmakers voted to count their expenses in the salary used to calculate their pensions.
No other South Carolina state workers get those perks.
Since January 2005, Thomas, a Republican, has made $148,435 more than a legislative salary would have paid, his financial-disclosure records show. At least four other South Carolina lawmakers are getting pensions instead of salaries, netting an extra $292,000 since 2005, records show.
Pension perks aren't unique to legislators in South Carolina.
More than 4,100 legislators in 33 states are positioned to benefit from special retirement laws that they and their predecessors have enacted to boost their pensions by up to $100,000 a year, a USA TODAY investigation found. Even as legislators cut basic state services and slash benefits for police, teachers and other workers, they have preserved pension laws that grant themselves perks unavailable to voters they serve or workers they direct.
Oregon: Double dipping
This year, the state of Oregon will pay state Rep. Andy Olson $108,701. That's $15,100 more than the governor's salary.
Olson gets so much because Oregon legislators allow themselves to collect a public pension while in office. The perk has let Olson, a retired state trooper who is 58, collect $705,000 from the state since he took office in January 2005. That includes $560,000 in pension payments.
Most of the 180,000 retirees getting a pension from the Oregon state retirement system are not as fortunate. A retiree who starts working for a local or state agency or for a school district usually is restricted to getting paid for 10 or 20 hours a week.
Olson, a Republican, supports allowing legislators to collect state pensions while in office, saying the policy encourages retirees such as himself with extensive public-sector experience to hold office by not penalizing them financially. Olson is among 10 of Oregon's 90 legislators who have collected $3.1 million in state pensions while in office.
Photo by David Patton, Albany Democrat-Herald
In some states, lawmakers add expenses, per diem allowances and stipends to their base salaries. That inflates the compensation that's used to calculate retirement benefits, which are typically a percentage of final pay. In other states, legislators have written a special definition of salary that applies only to their pensions. Additional tactics include:
•Basing pensions on salaries legislators are not paid or were paid in non-legislative jobs.
•Collecting state pensions while also collecting legislative paychecks.
•Retiring earlier — at a younger age or after fewer years — than other state workers, or with richer benefits.
"It's mind-blowing hypocrisy," says state Rep. Stephen Webber, a Democrat from Missouri. State lawmakers there meet for roughly five months a year and are paid slightly more on average than a state worker, but records show a typical lawmaker's pension averages 30% more than a state worker's. The reason: rules legislators wrote for themselves.
"The whole two-tiered system really encapsulates how we've operated here in Missouri and in the rest of the country," he says. "Lawmakers treat themselves differently."
The generous systems mean that at least 570 lawmakers in 19 states have qualified for pensions that will pay them as much as — or in one case 17 times more than — their base legislative salaries, USA TODAY found.
That represents nearly 10% of the 5,900 lawmakers in the 40 states with legislative pensions. About 450 are lawmakers in Mississippi, Kansas, South Carolina, Texas and New Mexico, a state where lawmakers receive no salary but can get a pension with five years of service.
More than 100 other lawmakers have collected about $15million total in state pensions while holding office, USA TODAY found. They serve in states that allow "double dipping" for legislators but bar or restrict other workers from getting state pensions while holding state or municipal jobs. Most of those lawmakers have retired from jobs such as state police officer or public school teacher, but others are drawing pensions solely for their legislative service.
For South Carolina's Thomas, the choice to trade a legislative salary for a legislative pension was easy.
"You get paid more," he says.
Perks are not always obvious
Most 55-year-olds don't have pensions. Just 26% of people older than 55 get a retirement benefit from a former employer, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. The average pension in 2009 was $13,007 for private-sector retirees and $25,286 for public retirees.
In Congress, retiring lawmakers get pensions worth up to 80% of their $174,000 salary — or $139,200 — if they serve 32 years. The average pension for 455 retired federal lawmakers is $57,590, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Discerning the state lawmakers' pensions isn't so easy.
Legislators must reach a certain age — generally from 55 to 65 — or serve a certain number of years to get a pension. Many states deem an individual's retirement records confidential, however, and will not release details about payouts.
Lacking that information, USA TODAY reviewed thousands of pages of laws from 40 states to understand how legislative salaries and pensions are computed. The newspaper calculated how much every legislator in the 40 states would get for a pension if he or she retired this year. Ten states do not pay lawmaker pensions.
Several states let lawmakers start collecting their retirement benefits while still in office.
Six years before he left the New York state Senate in December, Republican George Winner began collecting a pension for his legislative service. He was 55 when the pension began adding $80,000 to the roughly $90,000 salary he was getting to represent New York's 53rd Senate District, state records show. In his final six years in office, Winner received $1 million in pension and salary.
New York state has barred legislators elected after 1994 from getting legislative pensions while in office. Nonetheless, 15 lawmakers who took office before 1995 are collecting a legislative pension and salary, state records show. Their earnings average $154,000 a year.
Other perks are shrouded in the minutiae of state law: Kentucky legislators add their annual allowance for stationery — up to $1,500 for senators and $750 for House members — plus another $15,000 to $17,000 a year in expense payments to the salary on which pensions are based. Mississippi legislators get two pensions that on average add up to 165% of their salary. Connecticut lawmakers can increase their pensions up to 50% by including mileage reimbursements that add as much as $15,500 a year to the salaries used to calculate their pensions.
Connecticut: Adding expenses
Rep. Lawrence Cafero Jr. racks up more than mileage commuting 75 miles each way from Norwalk to the Capitol in Hartford. With each mile he drives, his pension improves.
Connecticut legislators add their mileage reimbursement to the salary used to calculate their pensions. They also add their annual expense payment -- $5,500 for senators and $4,500 for House members. That means legislators are collectively boosting their salaries by about $1.6 million a year.
Cafero, the House Republican leader, received an average of $13,006 a year for mileage from 2007 through 2009, state records show. That amount alone would increase his pension by $3,460 a year if Cafero were to finish his current term and retire with 20 years of service.
Cafero says using mileage to increase a pension is "disturbing," and that his measures to end the practice have been defeated. "The pension should be based on your salary, not on some mechanism that allows you to feather it," he says.
Photo by Jessica Hill, AP
"That's just a small example of what's wrong with the (pension) system and why it's become unsustainable," says Connecticut Rep. Lawrence Cafero, House Republican leader. The expense payments, mileage and leadership stipend he received in 2008-10 will add $26,341 to the $28,000 legislator's salary used to calculate his pension, state records show.
In Illinois, lawmakers who move to lucrative state jobs can apply the higher salary to their legislative pension, which pays richer benefits than pensions for state workers. In July, Democratic former House member Gary Hannig began collecting a $123,057 legislative pension, even though his legislative salary was $86,902 when he left office in 2009. His pension, however, is based on his $150,228 salary as state Transportation director after leaving the Legislature.
"It's legal corruption," says Bill Zettler of Chicago-based Taxpayers United of America. At least 42 of 139 Illinois legislators retiring since 2000 have boosted their legislative pensions by taking higher-paying government jobs, USA TODAY found.
Some states play make-believe. Kansas calculates lawmakers' pensions as if they were paid 372 days a year.
Texas pension calculations stray even further from reality. Lawmakers there haven't raised their pay since 1975. They convene every other year and get a $7,200 annual salary. But because of a law they passed in 1981, their pension is based on whatever the lawmakers decide to pay Texas trial judges.
Since 1981, Texas lawmakers have nearly tripled a judge's salary — and, by extension, their own pensions — raising the pay from $42,500 to $125,000.
Legislators also removed a sentence that limited their pensions to 60% of a judge's salary. Now, the pensions can equal 100% of a judge's salary.
The changes mean that state Rep. Tom Craddick, a Republican who took office in 1969, is guaranteed a $125,000 pension — more than 17 times his $7,200 salary. Another 58 state lawmakers are guaranteed pensions of more than $40,000, USA TODAY found.