Bill Treacy retired as executive director of the Texas Public Accountancy Board in 2003. Rehired to the same job a month later, he’s been pulling down both a government paycheck and a pension ever since.
“The job has to go to somebody and if you get someone with experience, you don’t have to train a newcomer,” Treacy, 68, a 40-year state employee who makes an annual salary of $120,000, said in a telephone interview. “It’s an injustice to say that this is taking advantage of the system.”
With U.S. unemployment averaging 8.9 percent, so-called double-dipping by tens of thousands of government workers nationwide is drawing increasing scrutiny. Lawmakers from coast to coast are taking steps to curb the practice as states face combined deficits projected at $112 billion and unfunded pension liabilities of as much as $3 trillion….
More than 5,600 California state retirees were double- dipping in 2009, up 57 percent from a decade earlier, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Golden State’s rules permit the practice as long as the retiree works 960 hours or less a year, said Adam Summers of the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation.
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