Curb pension perks

The pensions that state lawmakers receive are a small part of the annual expenses of the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System. Still, if lawmakers are going to require schoolteachers and other public employees to pay more to help shore up KPERS, it’s only fair that they also eliminate some of the special rules that greatly inflate their own pensions.

Yet there was no move to reform these perks this past legislative session, nor is it part of the focus of a special commission looking at possibly converting KPERS to a 401(k)-style plan.

USA Today reported recently how state lawmakers across the country benefit from special retirement laws that they and their predecessors have enacted. Kansas was one of the main examples.

In 1973, Kansas legislators voted to calculate their KPERS pensions as if they were paid every day of the year, not just for the typical 90-day session. In addition, they voted to calculate that fictitious salary as if they were paid 31 days a month for 12 months, or 372 days a year.

Thus, even though their typical salary is $7,979 for the session, the amount used to calculate the pension benefit is $32,982, or more than four times as much.

But that was just the beginning. In 1982, lawmakers started including their per diem expense allotment (currently $116 per day) to the KPERS calculation. And they pretended that this allowance was paid 372 days a year instead of only when the Legislature is in session. They also added any expenses payments they get the rest of the year.

Then in 2007, they changed the rules so that, beginning in July 2009, lawmakers could become eligible for the pension after serving five years, rather than 10 years as had been previously required.

As a result of these special rules, typical state lawmakers “now have an $85,821 salary for pension purposes and can get a pension that exceeds their base pay by serving just six years,” USA Today reported.

This inflated pension is justified as helping offset low legislative pay. “Until we find a way to increase compensation for the rank-and-file legislators, I think it’s OK,” Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, told USA Today.

Lawmakers are underpaid. And the increases in the amount public employees must contribute to KPERS that the Legislature approved last session apply to lawmakers, too.

But if lawmakers are going to complain about teachers having overly generous pensions, they should be honest and admit that they are the ones with the Cadillac plan.

This story was originally published October 13, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Curb pension perks."