Government Employment - The Gift That Keeps On Taking

Life imitates are, or so OffHisMeds is informed about once a day. I was watching a Cop Drama on TV the other night (doesn't really matter which one), when one cop says of another: "he walked away from the job at 44, one year shy of a full pension". The tragedy in the eyes of the speaker was that his compatriot - albeit through his own actions - had been denied full access to the Goodies Bag that is the sine qua non of government employment.

Which brings us to a couple of interesting stories in the Houston Chronicle this past week. The first had to do with a principal accused of Racketeering and twice caught helping her teachers cheat on TAKs exams that measure student progress and - not coincidentally - determine the size of the bonuses that Teachers and Principals earn.

More about that later.

The second story dealt with the smallest of Band-Aids that newly-minted Houston Mayor Annise Parker applied to the spurting arterial wound that is Public employee compensation. Curiously, the front page article "Mayor Hikes Health Care Costs For Retirees" makes it sound like Mayor Parker's proposal is an onerous burden for retired employees, quoting sundry critics including one who declared that "the city is trying to balance their budget....off the backs of the employees".

What the article does - quite unintentionally though - is to yet again point out the absurdity of the compensation and benefits packages available to public sector employees. They offer the following example: "For retirees under 65 with two or more dependents in the most highly utilized ben­efits plan, costs will increase from $790 a month to $1,179". Parker proposed lowering the City's contribution towards that plan from 64% to 52%, which would cost each retiree $141.48 per month. That sounds burdensome, but it is misleading. The Chronicle article only cited the worst-case scenario of how much a retiree would have to pay, so it's safe to assume that the average increase is approximately half that amount.

This affair also points out one of the most asinine aspects of having a gummint job: On what other planet would retirees have "two or more dependents", much less offer a plan that cuts off the Retirees contribution at two? OffHisMeds and most sensible people think of retirees as folks who are entering their sunset years, the kids raised, moved out of the house and starting families of their own. In Houston - and indeed throughout the country - a government job means having the ability to retire and still have dependents. The math is pretty straightforward: most government jobs allow retirement with full benefits in 25 years. Get a job at 21, retire at 46.

And not to belabor the point, but if as the article states this is the "most highly utilized ben­efits plan", it is logical to assume that more city of Houston retirees have two or more dependents than, say, One - or None.

That's why it's worth revisiting a Chronicle article from February of 2004, detailing a gross betrayal of taxpayer trust when then-Mayor Lee Brown snuck a huge increase in retirement income for all retirees and employees into the city budget, described in the article titled "$1 Billion Pension Shortfall". In addition to their heavily subsidized health care, retirees all saw their pensions increase from "52.5 percent of income for a retiree with 25 years of service" to.....88.75 percent". Along with Social Security payments and a mandatory 4% cost-of-living adjustment every year, the article documented that municipal employees routinely retire with income well in excess of what they were paid while working, a policy that means that the average city employee is incented to retire at the earliest possible point, in the case of Houston: 25 years and 4 months.

The article stated that the average municipal salary of retirees in 2004 was $32,068. That means that with COLA increases of 4% since then, retirees have seen their annual incomes increase to over $36,000 per year, not including Social Security benefits. By the time a 45 year old retiree reaches age 75, their annual benefit would be almost $90,000, plus subsidized Health Care benefits.

Another revelation of these two articles is that municipal employees even qualify for Social Security. How the hell is that justified? When you are paid with tax dollars it is hard to argue that you yourself even pay taxes. A government employee's "contribution" to Social Security is the hard-earned dollars of actual tax payers from the Private Sector.

Private Sector employees who work their entire lives to generate the tax dollars that fund municipal salaries and retiree benefits couldn't dream of a plush compensation package that included a pay rate at least 25% above Private Sector equivalents, an unending variety of extra days off, under-the-table spiffs such as performance bonuses, overtime, per diem, travel allowances, stipends and retirement package that includes 100% or more of their working wage, much less 4% COLA and "Cadillac" style health care plans. I've never understood how politicians - much less the government employees who benefit from such boondoggles - can in good conscience call themselves "Public Servants", when as able-bodied adults they avail themselves of such an unconscionable payout and retire to a life of luxury a good 20 years before the average citizen even qualifies for their puny Social Security benefit.

To my Public Sector brothers and sisters: how does it make you feel to know that your berserk pay forces your fellow citizens to work until they die so as to generate the taxes to pay for it? Have you ever given it even a moments thought?

And before we go patting Mayor Parker or her predecessor Bill White on the back for their criticism of Mayor Brown's criminal giveaway, it's worth remembering that White punted on reforming the program for his entire six year term, and as the article states: "Annise Parker, who was on City Council at the time, said she didn't believe the pension (change) was too generous to employees". Now she has changed her mind, but a measly $7 million dollar annual increase in retirement co-payments sounds like another punt on a billion dollar shortfall.

Meanwhile, our Entitlement Society continues to breed whole generations of public sector employees oblivious of a compensation scheme that is not only immoral, but unsustainable, much less that there is generally no discernable relationship between the work that they do and the wages they are paid. "Munis" are also terrible at math, particularly the aforementioned retiree complaining about Parker "trying to balance their budget off the backs of the employees". She clearly didn't pull out a calculator to determine that former Mayor Brown gave the average retiree a monthly raise in retirement income of over $1,000.00 back in 2004. If I was her, I'd shut my piehole about having to pay an extra $70/month in health care copay, and hope to god nobody noticed the $12,000 per year spiff - plus COLA - that was slipped to me in the dark of the legislative night back in 2004.

Which brings us to the story about the Cheating Principal. The short version of the story is that she and her teachers were accused of cheating on TAKs tests at two different schools since 2005, but didn't draw any serious attention until she was also accused of selling commissary items to students and pocketing the cash, failing to account for a couple hundred grand in missing computers, expense fraud, nepotism and racketeering. As of this writing, not only is she not going to be subject to criminal charges, she will likely be allowed to retire with full pension benefits, at a cost to taxpayers of $125,000 per year.

She's 59 years old, and that payout does not including COLA and Social Security, of course. Those things bump the whole package to $135,000 per month, and she would likely live another 25 years.

You do the math.