I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Happy Retirement, Joe!

Joe D. had a retirement party!


Funny stuff, but I want to be clear about this: Joe's problem is not that he's collecting a salary as Executive and a pension from working at other previous public jobs. It is perfectly appropriate and acceptable that he collect his pension from working as an athletics director and parks supervisor if he is no longer doing those jobs (he isn't). He earned that pension and he saved the taxpayers money by deferring that compensation so the market could contribute and take some of the burden off of the taxpayer. Remember, pensions are a good deal for governments - we should be encouraging them.

If this were his current position, it would be no different than drawing deferred compensation from a 401(k) that included matching contributions from your employer and drawing a salary as an elected official. No one should have a problem with that.

No, the problem with Joe is twofold:

1) He's collecting part of his pension based on his current job. That just shouldn't happen.

2) He's been running around with Christie calling for the reform slashing of pensions while collecting from one. That's completely obnoxious.

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