Imagine you worked a summer job painting fences, but continued to get paid year-round even though you’d hung up the paint brush months earlier.
Unfortunately for Kansas taxpayers, our state legislators are enjoying such an arrangement.
An expansive article in Sunday’s Kansas City Star explained how the retirement packages for state legislators are figured on incomes up to four times as much as they are actually paid.
The fuzzy math comes by way of taking what they would typically be paid for their 90-day legislative session from January to April and then multiplying that to spread across an entire year. Their pensions are then figured on that much higher figure.
So instead of basing a legislator’s pension on about $25,000, it is based on $90,000.
The difference is hundreds of thousands of dollars for Kansas taxpayers from now into perpetuity.
DEVISED in 1982, the perk is available only to state legislators and among all the nation’s states is unique to Kansas.
Only Texas, naturally, compensates their legislators more by tying their pensions to those of their district judges, who typically earn six-figure salaries.
According to KC Star reporter Scott Canon, the typical pension for a part-time state employee for 10 years of service would be $2,600 a year. But if he’s a Kansas legislator, that jumps to $16,500 a year.
The average pension for legislators is $13,109 a year, but some make as much as $55,999 a year. The arrangement is especially sweet for those who have previously served as city or county commissioners because they can add those years of service to their retirement packages. Payout is based on total years of service.
Legislators have justified their lucrative pensions on the fact that their salaries are somewhat meager, which is true enough. Legislators are paid $88.60 for each day the Legislature is in session, plus a $7,000 allowance. On top of that is a $140 per diem stipend to cover travel and lodging expenses.
Legislators have hesitated to increase their salaries — especially during times of financial hardship — because they fear it would tarnish their images as budget-cutters. Instead, they have relied on the increasingly generous retirement program which, until now, has remained safely off the public’s radar.
BECAUSE a legislator’s job is not a full-time responsibility he should not be compensated as if it were.
