Sunday, Apr. 06, 2008

House set to sweeten legislative perk, with no debate

IT’S BAD enough that our part-time legislators want to sweeten up their uber-generous legislative pension system — the one they shouldn’t even have to begin with, the one taxpayers subsidize at three times the rate we subsidize the pensions for career state employees, the one that lets legislators draw a larger state paycheck after they retire than they do while in office, and even lets them keep growing that pension at taxpayer expense even after voters kick them out of office.

But the House is poised not only to approve the plan this week, but to do so without a bit of debate. That would have happened on Thursday, but for a procedural delay. And the Senate might not be far behind.

Representatives are poised to act without so much as acknowledging what they’re doing. That means some legislators won’t realize what they’re doing — and with a few exceptions, those who do realize what they’re doing can get away with claiming ignorance.

Or rather they could have. The purpose of this column is to make sure everybody — not just voters, but legislators as well — knows what’s happening, so there can be no claims of innocence.

Like the one I got Wednesday when I asked Rep. Kenny Bingham whether the Ways and Means Committee on which he sits had even discussed the legislative perk before approving it.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

You know, the plan to automatically increase, by 2 percent every year, the obscenely generous pensions that legislators already get. The plan that Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper had so cleverly inserted into a good, necessary and — here’s the key — complex bill to stabilize the pension system for full-time state employees and guarantee them a 2 percent annual cost-of-living adjustment.

“The legislative COLA was in that bill?” Mr. Bingham asked. “That never even crossed my mind. I did not put that together.”

He shouldn’t have had to put it together. The fact that the bill included such a generous perk for legislators should have been pointed out when the bill came up in committee Tuesday. It wasn’t.

And it wasn’t pointed out on Thursday, when Mr. Cooper “explained” the bill to the full House. “This bill is the result of the COLA task force,” he said. “It would simply allow for a two percent adjustment across the board.”

That was it. That was his entire explanation. No mention of the legislative perk.

The task force that designed the underlying plan had not recommended that legislators get 2 percent annual pension increases. And why should it? It was supposed to find a way to shore up the regular state pension system so the state could keep its implied promise to increase pension benefits every year to keep pace with inflation — an implied promise that thousands of state employees relied on when they made irrevocable decisions about whether they could afford to retire, or needed to keep working.

The COLA task force wasn’t asked to shore up the Legislature’s own special pension system, because there was no need to shore that up. That system gets an infusion of however much tax money it needs every year to make sure it can keep paying out.

But none of that was discussed on the floor of the House, just as it wasn’t discussed in committee.

Frankly, I hadn’t expected the legislative COLA to survive even to the committee level. I had expected Rep. Herb Kirsh to object, as he always has in the past when someone has tried to sweeten up the Legislature’s special pension system, and get it removed in subcommittee. He didn’t.

Well, he did raise a stink the previous week, when his subcommittee took the bill up. He drew up an amendment to remove legislators from the bill.

“I told them, if I were running against Mr. X and he voted for this, I believe I could jump on him and just tear him up,” Mr. Kirsh said.

The subcommittee delayed a vote until just before Tuesday’s full committee meeting. By then, Mr. Kirsh had given up.

“That whole crowd that I’m with, they wanted it in there,” he told me later. “I didn’t have a shot. I just withdrew the amendment. I didn’t like what I did, but I didn’t see any way I could possibly win. It’s like swatting a fly. If you don’t have a good fly swatter, you’re not gonna get it done.”

As he left the capital for the weekend, Mr. Kirsh had no intention of trying to amend the bill when the House takes it up Tuesday. The possibility that this could pass without so much as a debate should infuriate voters. And it should really worry the retirees who are relying on the underlying bill, because if the legislative perk remains in it, that will give Gov. Mark Sanford a perfect excuse to veto a bill he doesn’t seem to like very much to begin with.

If it were my pension on the line, I’d be urging Mr. Kirsh — or someone — to reconsider.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.

HOW GENEROUS IS IT?

• For every dollar state employees contribute to their pensions, the taxpayers kick in $1.27; for every dollar legislators pay into their system, taxpayers pay $3.91.

• The average pension for career state employees is $17,536 — 53 percent of their final salary. The average pension for our part-time legislators is $18,218 — or 102 percent of their pay.

• Former legislators can buy “service credit” at the same super-subsidized rate after they leave office. A legislator who leaves office after eight years can buy credit for $2,280 a year for the next 22 years, and then collect an annual pension of $32,980. He will recoup his “investment” in three years, and clear $33,000 a year in profit for the rest of his life.

State employees get no subsidy if they buy additional credit after they quit working.

• Former legislators can start drawing a full pension at age 60. That means an extra $91,000, on average.