Below is an explanation of Comer’s pension increase.
To read the full report — and see who else voted for the bill and examples of gold-plated pensions — click here http://ow.ly/Mf3y4
Editor’s Note
Kentucky’s public employee pension plans are complex and complicated. So much so that reporters, editorial writers and columnists, with rare exceptions, give readers mere generalities, which is sometimes misleading. For example, an esteemed columnist wrote recently in The Courier-Journal that HB 299, the bill now biting Comer, “would have been very small, essentially reflecting cost-of-living increases in legislative pay, had Comer not been elected to statewide office in 2011.” Not even technically correct in fullness, the inference it planted in the minds of readers (unintended or not) was that the political fuss about it in the governor’s race is over a trivial matter. Armed with the information provided below and at http://ow.ly/Mf3y4, you can be the judge of that!
Thanks to HB 299, former Rep. Harry Moberly is drawing a legislative pension of at least $169,000 a years; former Rep. J.R. Gray is drawing a legislative pension of at least $136,000 a year; and Rep. Greg Stumbo’s legislative pension will be at least $94,000 a year.
Kentucky’s six state-administered pension systems have an unfunded liability of $34.6 billion as of June 30, 2014.
Former Rep. James Comer’s windfall
Among current policymakers to significantly benefit from HB
299 is Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture James Comer. Even before winning
last year’s election Comer, then a representative from Tompkinsville, joined 17
of his fellow Republicans in the House by voting in favor of HB 299, a bill
that could double or even triple his legislative pension – if he were to win a
statewide office or get appointed to an upper-echelon job in state or local
government, or even accept a position with one of several private organizations
that have been granted state pension privileges.
On Jan. 1, 2012, the moment Comer raised his hand for the oath of office as the commonwealth’s new agriculture commissioner, which pays $113,616 a year, he hit the jackpot as a result of his vote on House Bill 299 in the 2005 legislative session. Suddenly, Comer’s pension for having served 11 years in the legislature nearly tripled. Simply upon taking the oath, his annual legislative pension spiked from $13,100 a year to $34,369.
Comer can begin drawing the pension in full when he reaches
age 63. Just for winning the election and helping enact what became known as
“the greed bill” in 2005, Comer’s windfall over a lifetime comes to at
least $467,906.
As impressive as it is, Comer’s “gold find” is small compared to the pension spikes of some legislators. Bigger yet, in importance, are the generous benefits the politicians have bestowed upon their constituents who work in government.
Comer’s legislative pension is determined using the state’s
three-factor formula: (1) Eleven years of service; (2) a service credit rate of
2.75 percent; and (3) the average of his highest three years of salary as a
legislator, which was $43,037 a year.
Comer’s windfall involves two pension systems – the
legislators’ plan he’s coming from and the state employees’ plan he now has
joined. The pension padding bill contained a reciprocity provision, which means
any legislator who was serving in the 2005 session – and all legislators
elected afterward – can calculate their legislative pensions based not on their
pay as legislators, which are part-time jobs, but on their pay in full-time
positions held before or after leaving the legislature as long as those other
jobs are with employers participating in one of the six state administered retirement
systems.
Commissioner Comer as a new state employee now begins a
second pension in the Kentucky Employees Retirement System (KERS). Over the
next four years – or eight if he is re-elected – his salary and
compound cost-of-living increases (once he retires), likely will boost his
legislative pension gain to a figure much greater than a half-million dollars.
His excessive gain from public service happens to be only
the most recent example of how legislators are padding their pensions. As you
will read, the pensions of some legislators are super rich – riches they voted
for themselves because they could, once Gov. John Y. Brown Jr. allowed them to
begin exerting independence from the executive branch in 1980.
Before that, previous governors greatly expanded and
protected from repeal the pensions of public employees, a practice subsequent
governors obviously accepted, and through their own initiatives continued the
benefit creep, gradually, often in silent catlike steps.
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