“Just take one dip and end it.” – Timmy, from Seinfeld.
Ever wonder why States are running in the red?
During a year when State governments across the country are tightening their belts in the wake of record budget deficits, it appears that many State employees in Florida are collecting retirement benefits and exorbitant paychecks simultaneously:
“At a time when universities are capping enrollment, cutting staffs and losing faculty members to other states, more than 475 employees at state universities have ‘retired’ and returned to the payroll.
“On top of state retirement benefits, they are collecting salaries of about $23-million.
“Double-dipping among university employees is similar to what has been happening in the rest of state and local government, where 8,000 public employees and elected officials are double- and even triple-dipping.”
One egregious example comes from a University professor who taught – brace yourself – business ethics:
“Anderson was making $187,432 when he left the payroll on Sept. 1, 2006. He collected a $343,353 lump sum payout from his state-financed retirement account.
“In December 2007 he returned to the payroll, making $130,000 a year as a professor and associate dean at USF’s Sarasota campus. He also collects annual retirement checks totaling $65,736.”
To make matters worse, as the St. Petersburg Times notes, university officials may not have any idea that their employees are double-dipping:
“[S]ome universities have no idea how many of their faculty members have retired and returned to work.”
The bottom line: Florida’s education establishment is a bureaucratic black hole that doesn’t have the slightest idea of what it is paying whom; how, when, where or why. And it’s not alone. Too many governments – at all levels – run in the red by wasting the green. And the American people have every right to be purple with rage.
ALG Perspective: This is not an isolated incident. All over America, waste, fraud, and abuse have become Big Government’s stock-in-trade. Which is yet another reason why “The government that governs best, governs least.”