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Martinez takes position on double dipping
Susana Martinez
A 2003 law that allowed all retired public employees to return to work and collect a paycheck and pension at the same time went too far because it allowed for abuse, Republican gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez says.
But a new law that puts an end to what many call “double dipping” also goes too far because it eliminates incentives for public safety workers to return to work after retiring, she says. The new law forces those who retire after June 30 of this year to temporarily give up their pension if they return to work.
Martinez has not been on the record about double dipping in the past, which is why NMPolitics.net decided to ask for her view on it as the new law takes effect. As it turns out, Martinez’s position isn’t too far from that of her Democratic opponent, Diane Denish.
But Martinez’s position is especially noteworthy given that her husband, Chuck Franco, is currently earning an annual salary of $76,523.20 as Doña Ana County’s undersheriff and a gross monthly pension of $2,123.86 from his 2001 retirement. Undersheriffs are among the few public employees who were allowed to collect a paycheck and pension at the same time before the 2003 law took effect – but there is no exemption for undersheriffs in the new law.
Martinez’s statement
Martinez said the 2003 return-to-work law, which allowed all public employees to draw a salary and pension at the same time if they waited 90 days after retiring to return to work, “swung the door open too broadly and led to double-dipping abuse in state and local government.”
“There were cases of individuals who would ‘retire’ at 5 p.m. one day only to return to their desk at 9 a.m. the very next day in the same position, and the only thing that changed was that they were now receiving a pension, as well as their full salary,” Martinez said. “This was not fair to the taxpayer, nor was it fair to other government employees who were denied opportunities to advance.”
However, Martinez said, the new law, which took effect Thursday, also creates “new challenges.” She said the “experience and continued service” of police officers and firefighters, who can retire after 20 years, is “often critical to maintain the highest level of public safety.” Many “return to leadership roles in our police and fire departments, such as chiefs,” Martinez said, though she did not mention her husband by name.
The new law will make it more difficult to find experienced public safety employees from New Mexico willing to take such jobs, especially in smaller communities, Martinez said, which leaves it to out-of-state retirees who move to New Mexico to fill such jobs because they don’t face similar restrictions.
Martinez said the state “must provide incentives to encourage public safety personnel to return to work after retirement, or not leave the force in the first place, and I am committed to considering all options that will accomplish this goal without once again opening the door to double-dipping abuse.”
You can read Martinez’s full statement here.
Franco leaving undersheriff job
Martinez’s husband, Franco, has been undersheriff for about 5.5 years. He started his career in 1978 as a patrolman with the Las Cruces Police Department and stayed there 17 years. After a three-year stint as a magistrate judge – which didn’t count toward his law enforcement retirement – Franco joined the county sheriff’s department in 1998. He retired with 20 years of service in 2001.
Soon thereafter, Franco returned to work, taking a teen coordinator job with a City of Las Cruces afterschool program funded by the Department of Justice. Franco worked in that job for two years and as a patrolman and investigator with the New Mexico State University Police Department for another two years before becoming undersheriff.
Franco has already announced that he will leave his job at the end of the year regardless of whether his boss, Sheriff Todd Garrison wins re-election. He told the Las Cruces Sun-News last month that he was doing that to support his wife’s career.
Denish’s statement on double dipping
Lt. Gov. Diane Denish (Photo by Heath Haussamen
Denish has opposed double dipping during the Legislature’s debate on whether to end the practice. But Denish has said that there may be some agencies, such as rural law enforcement departments, that need double dipping to hire qualified workers. She reiterated that in a statement provided this weekend.
While the new law grandfathers in existing retirees who draw a paycheck and a pension at the same time, Denish said she wanted to force them to choose one or the other. Martinez didn’t take a position on that issue.
Here’s the full statement Denish provided on double dipping this weekend:
“I oppose double dipping and was one of the leading voices in pushing the state to do away with the practice. Double dippers take advantage of a loophole at the expense of taxpayers at a time when government should be looking at every possible avenue for savings. During these tough times, the state simply cannot afford to be paying people twice.
“However, I recognize that this practice might be necessary in narrow circumstances where it has proven difficult to recruit qualified candidates to fill critical positions, such as in a rural law-enforcement setting. These exceptions should be narrowly defined and should only be allowed if there are no other qualified candidates. I believe current double dippers should be required to make a choice between their pension or their salary, but I understand there are some legal issues that still need to be resolved to require them to make that choice.”
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It’s hard to believe that all those old codgers would be particularly computer literate. Our NM Tech graduates need jobs.
I can possibly see Denish’s position wrt rural law enforcement, but Las Cruces sure isn’t rural. Plus having the old guard come right back to work just strengthens the ‘good ole boy’ network and keeps new blood from coming in.
Most are missing the point of Martinez’s position on this very important issue of state employees simultaneously collecting two paychecks..
This is perhaps the most disingenuous statement a gubernatorial candidate could make, in view of the situation within her own household, where her own husband has benefited from the generosity of the law for years.
Her statement is dripping with hypocrisy. Simply put, according to Martinez, it is NOT acceptable for any other retired state employee to return to work while collecting a state pension, but it is commendable, and even necessary for law enforcement to double dip on the premise that the government just can’t get along without their experience. This very same reason could apply to many professionals in numerous other state agencies, but Martinez characterizes those individuals as abusive of the system. “This was not fair to the taxpayer, nor was it fair to other government employees who were denied opportunities to advance,” she states. Oh, I see, according to her philosophy, it must be fair to other law enforcement personnel to be “denied opportunities to advance,” when the law applies to the police and fire departments. Is she saying that there are no qualified or experienced members of a police or fire department who could take over a leadership position? Her position defies logic and is a slap in the face to the hundreds of men and women of major departments who have years of experience and are not yet ready to retire.
When I read the headline of Heath’s column, I knew exactly what to expect from her, and the article did not disappoint. She is just another politician telling the voters that if you elect me to be your Governor, I will make sure that I take care of my own, and what’s good for me and mine is not necessarily what is good or “far” for everyone else. She doesn’t even have the decency or intelligence to disclose in this “position statement” that her husband has enhanced his own income from the 2003 law, while at the same time criticizing others who have also benefited. On this particular issue, she takes hypocrisy to a new level to put it mildly. Under her particular circumstances, a really experienced and smart politician would not have touched this with a twelve foot pole, or at least would not have been quite so blatant about singling out one special group who the law should not apply to, especially when that group includes a member of her own family. Tell me again how she’s different from any other self-aggrandizing politician?
No doubt double dipping is a problem and retirees have long taken advantage of it. But how can the law treat one group of retirees (PERA) differently than another? There are federal retirees, private sector retirees, military retirees, etc., that get public service jobs – ergo, are “double-dipping”. Seems ripe for some type of class action lawsuit.
Law enforcement officers received the ability to get 20-year retirements because of the stress of their positions. The idea was that after 20 years of law enforcement, they needed to be able to retire because of stress and exhaustion. But then, many of them who needed a 20-year retirement because of stress were able to come back to work in law enforcement and double-dip because why? The stress was gone? I’ve never understood that.
There used to be a law (or policy) that a retiree could go back to work and earn up to $25,000 per year…but over that, the retirement had to be suspended. It was a good policy because retirees could go work as a part-time greeter at Walmart to stay busy and have something to do without giving up their retirement….but it would prevent the abusive double-dipping going on recently.
Double dipping is justified for LANL but not state employees?
The “double dippers” took advantage of what DOE/NNSA offered them. Would you not have done that? Or is it for the have’s and not for the have not’s? In any time of change, some will be better postioned to take advantage of it than others.
They are also given a very generous “LANS match” to their TCP2 401k, and since they are recieving a generous UC monthly pension, they can afford to stash the maximum amount of salary into the 401k. The 401k “LANS match” comes directly out of the LANL operating budget. Thus, the “double-dippers” are hitting the LANL budget in a significant fashion. And since they don’t need to terminate or retire to now recieve their UC pensions, they’ll likely stay on at LANL until they are much older.
I tend to agree w/the concept of double dipping re: state jobs. In the private sector, someone can retire from a company and then go work elsewhere while collecting retirement. However, private businesses (it appears to me) have less generous retirement packages than the State, and also hire/pay based on qualification, and not geriatricness…err, seniority.
Can the unqualified state employees (there must be hundreds, if not thousands), extend years to qualify for retirement, and that should help some. It’d be cool to see a legit study done on this.
California has bad financial problems, but some cities have the right idea. If someone retires, they can be rehired as “contract” employees ie: no insurance, no retirement, etc, The salary is also lower to come back.. This makes use of their years of knowledge, but saves the city money in the long run.
This is a great article as it is forcing the candidates to actually take some solid stands on a specific issues (even though they both seem to like waffling a bit, Denish less so than Martinez).
However, it also brings up a much bigger discussion we Americans have to have over the next 10-20 years. How is this retirement thing going to work? Think about it. When retirement benefits were first started in the late 1800′s. The average lifespan of a Caucasian was around 40 (http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/haines.demography). Therefore, is someone were to start work at 16, and retire 20 years later they would only have, on average, 4 years of picking up a pension.
20 years of work. 4 years of pension.
in 2010? Life expectancies are around 80 (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2102.html). So let’s say you go to college and start work a little later than 1880 at 23. Then you work 20 years, which is still what we consider an acceptable rate, and retire at 43. Then you die at 80. In essence (if my math is right) you have worked 20 years, and have lived off a pension for 37. This doesn’t work, even when your pension is only a percentage of what you were making full-time.
We are going to have to figure out a better way of doing retirement, either by calling for longer work-expectancies (these double-dippers all seem to have no problems working in to their 50′s) or by moving away from this type of work supplied pension system.
In Illinois newly hired workers in this present economic crisis will not be able to retire as early as 55: Now it’s 67. In New Mexico a state worker can retire after 27 years at 80 percent of his or her highest salary – that is irresponsible! If a private corporation had such a generous pension plan it would go bankrupt! New Mexico needs reform ASAP – not more double-dipping!
When a person retires from the state they should not be able to take another state job. Give someone else a chance to earn a living.
Double-dipping is obnoxious and being able to retire after 20 years with a generous retirement pay is poor business. No wonder the state budget is suffering. In the private sector this would not be allowed! New Mexico’s pension plan needs to be revised to encourage workers to work for a longer time. Ms. Martinez’s position would simply hurt the state.