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Retiring and reappointing elected officials
Started on Feb 06, 2013 by Bryan Wroten
An Avon Lake Municipal Utilities board member plans to retire to take advantage of his retirement benefits but wants the board to reappoint him. The board briefly discussed the matter but tabled it until he could answer some more questions. Retire-rehire, double-dipping or whatever you want to call it is pretty common in both the public and private sectors, but you don't see it too often for elected officials. I found the timing of this case funny just after reading a few weeks ago about a Cleveland City Council member doing the exact same thing and the roasting the council received from Mark Naymik at the Plain Dealer. I'm stuck on the fence when it comes to retire-rehire. On one hand, there can be a public benefit if the retiring person comes back at a base salary, so the cost to taxpayers is less and they keep someone with years of experience. On the other, that person is already receiving retirement benefits and by being rehired, that closes an employment opportunity for someone else. Elected officials, I think, are something else entirely. I'm not as sure of the advantages by reappointing someone after retirement. In this case, the board chairman said he was in favor of reappointing the board member because he was voted to serve for four years, and to not reappoint him in the middle of this term would disenfranchise voters. Interesting point, but that board member ran unopposed. Also, when the previous board chairman retired, five people applied for the spot. What are your thoughts about an elected official seeking reappointment after retiring for the benefits?
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It always makes financial sense from the perspective of the public or privatize organization that's funding the double dipper. You don't have to pay the person benefits. You know the person and are comfortable with them. And, best of all, you get to avoid or delay the costly and painful work of hiring someone new. But double dipping should be outlawed particularly in the public sector for a couple of reasons.
1. Public employees receive very generous retirement packages which is part of a social contract. You work for a number of years at modest pay with decent job security and in exchange you get a good pension that you can count on. The social contract is set up that way to give workers some security but also to insure that new workers are added to the labor force. In some countries (like Germany) public sector workers have to retire at 65 and can not go back to any public sector job.
2. Each government entity has particular mission but there's also a broader public purpose aggregated across government of supporting employment. That means hiring new people, establishing strong training regimes, and institutionalizing career tracks within job to allow people to move up. Double-dipping undermines that broader purpose.
3. Any double-dipping occurs under the shadow of corruption- or conflict-of-interest concerns. The person rehired always has relations with those doing the rehiring. Even if everything is above board, it's impossible to know for sure. And, at the very least, double-dipping creates a huge potential for unethical behavior.
4. Finally, double-dipping enables governments to be lazy. Hiring is hard work. You never really know how someone is going to perform. But I say, "Get over it." The more one hires the more likely an agency will have systems in place to judge a new hire. And perhaps a new hire is less productive than the person who retired but that's life in changing labor and capitalist economy. We shouldn't make the process easier but allowing organizations to avoid the hard work of doing the hiring.
For all these reasons, Republicans and Democrats should come together to ban double dipping in the public sector. It's not a partisan issue. It's a good government issue.
TogglePosted Feb 12, 2013