Double-dipping? Or over-reaction?

Recently there’s been some “talk” about school district administrators “double-dipping” by “retiring” for 30 days from one position, then accepting another position, while simultaneously collecting a salary for the new position AND retirement/pension benefits from their old position. While there don’t seem to be droves of people up in arms over this practice, some have expressed anger and/or concern about it. The question is why? What is the difference between this situation and anyone else who retires, begins drawing a pension from their employer or collecting Social Security, yet takes on a job doing something else? As long as they don’t earn more than the legally allowed limit set by either the Social Security Administration or some other entity, what difference does it really make if people have income from two sources? This just doesn’t seem to be quite the evil that some might want you to believe it is. Moreover, the one blogger who tried initiating the discussion locally left out part of the story regarding pension benefits that, if people knew, might make it seem even less of a problem to them.

The following has been provided to me by the Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds. “Regarding retirement with a Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS) employer, initially to be eligible for a retirement benefit one must be terminated from all WRS covered employment and be over age 55 (age 50 for protective occupation employees) when one applies. After the ‘30-day rule of not working’ one may become re-employed by a WRS employer. Then one must decide between two choices regarding their pension payments. If one chooses to participate in the WRS again, their annuity payments would be SUSPENDED; contributions and creditable service would be added from their new job to their unused "old" total, until one again terminates covered employment. If one chooses NOT to participate in the WRS as a once-again "active" employee, their annuity payments would continue and their new employment with a WRS employer would NOT add dollars to their retirement account.”

Given this, their pension benefits are no greater than if they'd remained on their original job in the first place.

Again, all things considered, this just doesn’t strike me as being something to get all worked up about. There’s far more pressing matters in this district and beyond for people to be concerned about. We’ve been hearing about them for a while now and I suspect we may be in the future. New concerns may even pop up that are more troublesome than this so-called “double-dipping.”