State Pensions: Nothing Better Than Being a Good Ol' Boy
Once you're a part of the system, the good-ol-boy network rewards you well with the taxpayer's money. Charlie Borders is the latest example of the corrupt system rewarding a participant. This isn't saying Mr. Borders is corrupt, or that he shouldn't have joined the PSC, but the system that made his career path possible and the rewards it will bestow can be described no other way.
Recently, Kentucky Roll Call wrote of the spoils of being a Frankfort insider, (courtesy of your taxdollars):
Members of the General Assembly created a retirement system for themselves in 1980. At their very next chance, in the 1982 session, they made their pensions richer by giving every legislator who had served more than four years a 5 percent "service credit rating," instead of the 3.5 percent in the original plan. The SCR is one of three factors used to calculate the size of a pension check.
That action became widely known as the "greed bill."
Then, starting in 1998, legislators who had "maxed out" on their General Assembly retirement plan, and who continued to serve in the legislature, began drawing a second pension, this time in the state employees' retirement system, KERS.
Eight lawmakers have reached the "max" on their legislative pension, and seven of them have a second pension: Sens. Walter Blevins and David Boswell; and Reps. Tom Burch, Danny Ford, Jody Richards, Tom Riner and Greg Stumbo.
The eighth legislator, Rep. Harry Moberly, had a second pension at KERS, but he dropped that plan so he could enroll in the Kentucky Teachers' Retirement System -- not as a legislator -- but as an Eastern Kentucky University employee.
This means Moberly's legislative pension will be based on his university salary, not his legislative pay. As a result, his legislative pension from serving part-time as a member of the General Assembly for 25 years will be at least $168,000 a year, a lifetime increase of around $2.4 million.
His case is an example of how legislators enriched their pensions through a little-known law they passed in 2005 without any public hearings, in seemingly a planned maneuver to take advantage of the confusion during the mad rush of bills in the closing days of the session.
You should really read the whole thing.
