Double your pension, double your fun

With reform in the air in Trenton, one of the many unsavory New Jersey arrangements getting a closer look is the practice of "double dipping." Many state, county, and local officials, both elected and appointed, have the good fortune to hold a number of paid positions, each of which carries a full complement of pension benefits (alongside a generous helping of potential conflicts of interest and appearances of impropriety). While many states ban the practice, Bloomberg reports that New Jersey ranks first in the number of public servants drawing incomes or pension benefits from multiple positions. Past attempts to do away with this in New Jersey have failed, perhaps because 19 out of 120 members of the current Legislature hold multiple public offices themselves, including our own State Assemblywoman and County Freeholder Valerie Vainieri Huttle (Job 1/Job 2).

While there may be nothing inherently wrong with one person filling more than one job and receiving remuneration for it, the system easily lends itself to abuses. Perhaps equally important to the politicians now seeking to make an issue of the practice is that it angers taxpayers, who are already faltering under the burden of the state's existing pension problems. Each time voters are reminded of the fact that Monmouth County lawyer Mark T. Apostolou played the system well enough to pull in over $274,000 in salary for 10 judgeships in 2004 (and ensure himself of more than $80,000 per annum in retirement income), the outcry gets a little bit louder.

However, as certain Trenton lawmakers prepare for the latest attempt to outlaw this practice, a simpler solution seems to be staring them in the face. Just yesterday, the Record reported on an initiative to pool school district bank accounts in order to win better terms from banking institutions (Teaneck's Board of Education is among the participants in this new program). Is there any reason that municipalities do not collaborate on hiring too? Everyone but Mark Apostolou would be better off if the 10 employers who each furnished salary and pension benefits to him got together and advertised a single job at a lower rate. The much ballyhooed shared services model might be worthy of consideration here too.