teacherone
10-05-2010, 06:30 AM
1. Phoenix – double-dipping top cop
Two frequent causes of outsized government worker pay are so-called “double-dipping” and lump sum retirement payouts due to banked sick time, vacation and other benefits. In the case of Phoenix top cop Jack Harris, we have both. Harris retired from his post as police chief in 2007, receiving a one-time payment of $562,000 and beginning to draw his annual pension of $90,000. Two weeks later, the city rehired him as its “public safety manager” – critics say he’s doing exactly the same job -- at a base salary of $193,000 per year. While it’s common around the country for police officers and other government workers to retire, collect their pension and keep working, the state of Arizona passed a law specifically banning the practice earlier this decade. Conservative think tank Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County on behalf of a local resident, alleging the Harris is breaking this law.
“It appears that the senior law enforcement official in the city is gaming the system,” said Judicial Watch’s Christopher Farrell. “That is deeply corrosive to the whole sense of the rule of law.” Farrell said he doesn’t spite Harris his pension, but both the end-run of state law and the high salary – particularly at a time when Phoenix police were threatened with hundreds of layoffs – are egregious, Farrell said. “It’s a gag reflex kind of thing.”
David Leibowitz, spokesman for Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, said that Judicial Watch’s lawsuit is politically motivated and maintained that Harris’ compensation is in line with police chief pay in other major U.S. cities.
“The chief has served the city of Phoenix for many years. He’s incredibly well qualified and his salary and total compensation is well within line with the largest cities in America,” Leibowitz said.
Phoenix is America’s fifth-largest city. The seventh-largest, San Antonio, pays Police Chief William McManus $183,000. Philadelphia, which is nearly the same size as Phoenix, pays Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey $195,000, though his pay will be cut to $187,500 this year.
Leibowitz said the method for arriving at Harris’ salary shouldn’t be a consideration.
“You (should) look at the overall money you are spending … and put it in context of the results you are getting,” he said. “It’s really cost effective. … We want people in Phoenix to believe they live in the safest large city in America.”
Meanwhile, Phoenix pays a pretty penny to many other uniformed officers. There are 180 police officers and firefighters earning more than $100,000 annually. And fully 90 percent of the agency’s budget goes to salaries, according to AZCentral.com.
2. In California: A pension check and an unemployment check ?
As we’ve seen, it’s common for government workers to quit, collect a pension, and then go back to work. What happens when these double dippers get laid off due to budget constraints? In California, they collect unemployment checks, discovered recently thanks to some great reporting by the Sacramento Bee. There’s no hard data on these special kinds of double dippers, but to give you a flavor, reporter Robert Lewis found that 53 former sheriff’s deputies in Sacramento County collected a total of $300,000 in unemployment benefits last year, along with their regular pensions.
3. In Illinois suburb, a $435K parks director with a $166K pension
There is little debate about the ticking time bomb of state government pension obligations, which total an estimated $2 trillion nationwide. How did that number get so high so fast? In many cases, pension loopholes are exploited, exploited and exploited again. In Highland Park, Ill., a northern Chicago suburb, park district Executive Director Ralph Volpe and the local parks commission provide an instructive example. Volpe’s salary in 2008 was $164,000, but the commission added $270,000 in bonuses. That raise was nice, but even nicer was the step up in his pension, which is based on an his last-year salary. The bonuses helped bump Volpe’s pension up by more than $50,000 per year. The $166,000 he’ll make annually now that he’s retired exceeds his top base salary for the job. Residents forced three parks commissioners to resign after the deal was exposed by the Chicago Tribune, but they still have to pay Volpe for life.
3. In Bellwood, Ill., $250,000 for life
Meanwhile, west of Chicago, Roy McCampbell, a retired city administrator in Bellwood, earned $472,000 in 2009 – tops for any municipal worker in the state. His base salary was a modest $129,000, but that was beefed up by a series of enhancements, including $126,000 for unused sick and vacation days. Salary sleuths should take a close look at government workers’ vacation and sick day provisions. They are often a contract sweetener used to disguise the real cost of a contract. McCampbell’s last-year windfall raised his pension by $70,000 per year. He now holds the top pension payout in Illinois, $250,000 annually. That’s more than the price of most single-family homes in Bellwood, a primarily African-American, working-class town of 20,000 with a per capita income of $24,000 and an average home value under $200,000. Of the 138 homes recently sold in the town, according to Zilliow.com, the top price was $182,000.
The Tribune also brought McCampbell’s story to light.
If you can stomach it there's 17 more case studies here. (http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/10/20-government-workers-with-super-sized-pay.html)
Two frequent causes of outsized government worker pay are so-called “double-dipping” and lump sum retirement payouts due to banked sick time, vacation and other benefits. In the case of Phoenix top cop Jack Harris, we have both. Harris retired from his post as police chief in 2007, receiving a one-time payment of $562,000 and beginning to draw his annual pension of $90,000. Two weeks later, the city rehired him as its “public safety manager” – critics say he’s doing exactly the same job -- at a base salary of $193,000 per year. While it’s common around the country for police officers and other government workers to retire, collect their pension and keep working, the state of Arizona passed a law specifically banning the practice earlier this decade. Conservative think tank Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County on behalf of a local resident, alleging the Harris is breaking this law.
“It appears that the senior law enforcement official in the city is gaming the system,” said Judicial Watch’s Christopher Farrell. “That is deeply corrosive to the whole sense of the rule of law.” Farrell said he doesn’t spite Harris his pension, but both the end-run of state law and the high salary – particularly at a time when Phoenix police were threatened with hundreds of layoffs – are egregious, Farrell said. “It’s a gag reflex kind of thing.”
David Leibowitz, spokesman for Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, said that Judicial Watch’s lawsuit is politically motivated and maintained that Harris’ compensation is in line with police chief pay in other major U.S. cities.
“The chief has served the city of Phoenix for many years. He’s incredibly well qualified and his salary and total compensation is well within line with the largest cities in America,” Leibowitz said.
Phoenix is America’s fifth-largest city. The seventh-largest, San Antonio, pays Police Chief William McManus $183,000. Philadelphia, which is nearly the same size as Phoenix, pays Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey $195,000, though his pay will be cut to $187,500 this year.
Leibowitz said the method for arriving at Harris’ salary shouldn’t be a consideration.
“You (should) look at the overall money you are spending … and put it in context of the results you are getting,” he said. “It’s really cost effective. … We want people in Phoenix to believe they live in the safest large city in America.”
Meanwhile, Phoenix pays a pretty penny to many other uniformed officers. There are 180 police officers and firefighters earning more than $100,000 annually. And fully 90 percent of the agency’s budget goes to salaries, according to AZCentral.com.
2. In California: A pension check and an unemployment check ?
As we’ve seen, it’s common for government workers to quit, collect a pension, and then go back to work. What happens when these double dippers get laid off due to budget constraints? In California, they collect unemployment checks, discovered recently thanks to some great reporting by the Sacramento Bee. There’s no hard data on these special kinds of double dippers, but to give you a flavor, reporter Robert Lewis found that 53 former sheriff’s deputies in Sacramento County collected a total of $300,000 in unemployment benefits last year, along with their regular pensions.
3. In Illinois suburb, a $435K parks director with a $166K pension
There is little debate about the ticking time bomb of state government pension obligations, which total an estimated $2 trillion nationwide. How did that number get so high so fast? In many cases, pension loopholes are exploited, exploited and exploited again. In Highland Park, Ill., a northern Chicago suburb, park district Executive Director Ralph Volpe and the local parks commission provide an instructive example. Volpe’s salary in 2008 was $164,000, but the commission added $270,000 in bonuses. That raise was nice, but even nicer was the step up in his pension, which is based on an his last-year salary. The bonuses helped bump Volpe’s pension up by more than $50,000 per year. The $166,000 he’ll make annually now that he’s retired exceeds his top base salary for the job. Residents forced three parks commissioners to resign after the deal was exposed by the Chicago Tribune, but they still have to pay Volpe for life.
3. In Bellwood, Ill., $250,000 for life
Meanwhile, west of Chicago, Roy McCampbell, a retired city administrator in Bellwood, earned $472,000 in 2009 – tops for any municipal worker in the state. His base salary was a modest $129,000, but that was beefed up by a series of enhancements, including $126,000 for unused sick and vacation days. Salary sleuths should take a close look at government workers’ vacation and sick day provisions. They are often a contract sweetener used to disguise the real cost of a contract. McCampbell’s last-year windfall raised his pension by $70,000 per year. He now holds the top pension payout in Illinois, $250,000 annually. That’s more than the price of most single-family homes in Bellwood, a primarily African-American, working-class town of 20,000 with a per capita income of $24,000 and an average home value under $200,000. Of the 138 homes recently sold in the town, according to Zilliow.com, the top price was $182,000.
The Tribune also brought McCampbell’s story to light.
If you can stomach it there's 17 more case studies here. (http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/10/20-government-workers-with-super-sized-pay.html)