Cleveland Plain Dealer on double-dipping

Taxpayers get ripped off again
Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 4, 2007
Regina Brett, Plain Dealer Columnist

Double-dipping is too kind a word for it.

Double-dipping is when you dip a corn chip in the salsa, take a bite off, then dunk it back in. Or when you shove a carrot stick in the ranch dip, chomp on it, then slide it back in the bowl for more.

It's disgusting. It ruins the communal dish we're all invited to share.

When double-dippers reach into your wallet, let's call it what it is: plain, simple, garden-variety greed.

Double-dippers are those greedy folks who retire from a government job with full pension and benefits only to turn around years, months or weeks later to get another government job, with full pension and benefits.

They are ripping the taxpayers off.

And they're keeping other people unemployed.

A Monday story by Plain Dealer reporters John Caniglia and Joan Mazzolini pointed out that U.S. Sen. George Voinovich and U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones get $50,000 from a pension on top of the $168,500 federal salary they each rake in.

Then there's Solon school Superintendent Joseph Regano who gets paid $176,000 a year and at least $75,000 in an annual pension. He retired, then returned to work three years ago.

Those are just a few of the high-profile cases.

Double-dippers who retire and return to work often say they're helping us when they're actually helping themselves to our wallets.

Double-dippers defend their greed by saying they put the money into their pensions, it's just their money they're getting. What they don't tell you is that they put in about 10 percent of their salaries. Their employers -- using your tax dollars -- put in around 14 to 25 percent.

They say no one else can do the job as well as they can for the price. That's a tad arrogant, don't you think?

They say we're getting their experience at bargain-basement prices. Tell that to all the people fresh out of college who aren't getting hired.

Last week a young woman called to complain that she can't find a job anywhere.

"Everyone wants experience," she told me, "But no one will give me any experience."

Chances are good she will end up leaving Cleveland to get it.

Contrast that to the complaints from some Cleveland teachers who called and wrote me. They cried that they took a retirement buyout under the old administration and now the district won't rehire them. Good for the district. New, young, fresh teachers need those jobs.

We keep lamenting brain drain. Why don't we stop some of it by forbidding people who retire from the public sector to return to the same or similar jobs?

The public retirement system was set up to help folks retire to live on their savings or pension. It wasn't meant to be a revolving door to a bank full of taxpayer's money.

Don't retire if you are not finished working for the city, county or federal government.

If you're going to retire, retire. Get the watch, cut the cake, collect the pension and let someone else get a job.

There's a crowd waiting. Some 295,000 workers in Ohio are unemployed.

Those people would love the chance for a single dip in the employment pool.

To reach Regina Brett: rbrett@plaind.com, 216-999-6328

Previous columns online: cleveland.com/columns