Photo by Phoney Nickle.

Photo by Phoney Nickle.

This week Gov. Bill Richardson announced plans to end a policy that allows state workers to retire and then return to work, collecting both a salary and a pension. By the governor’s own count, more than 500 state workers are so-called “double dippers.”

With the state facing a potential $1 billion shortfall next year, double dippers are increasingly becoming a subject of scrutiny. And after Richardson announced five-day furloughs of state workers, that scrutiny is even more focused on those retirees who have returned to work in political jobs appointed by the governor. Those appointees are called “unclassified” or “exempt” because their salaries are not determined by the state’s official pay scale.

Take, for example, the deputy cabinet secretary for the state General Services Department. Between the $99,424 Marilyn Hill earns at GSD, and the $68,000 yearly pension she takes home from the state’s Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA), Hill makes more than $167,000 a year, state records show.

Another Richardson appointee, Jeffrey Riggs, makes $158,000, thanks to his $96,928 salary as Deputy Director of the state Educational Retirement Board (ERB) and his $61,656 yearly PERA pension, according to state records.

PERA administers pensions for thousands of public-sector employees, including those who have retired from state, county and municipal governments. The ERB pays out public-sector pensions to retirees of local and state educational systems.

Another Richardson appointee, Frances Ray, an administrative assistant at the state Department of Workforce Solutions, takes home $89,000. Her  job pays $82,000 while she gets nearly $7,900 in PERA pension each year, records show.

Unlike most state workers, retirees who return to work do not contribute to the pension system–but the state continues to pay into the system on their behalf, according to Mary Frederick, deputy executive director at PERA.

Richardson’s plan, which he wants state lawmakers to pass during the January regular session, would change current law to prohibit state agencies from hiring retirees only 90 days after they’ve quit. Instead, retirees could only be hired a year after they’ve left work with the state.

Other proposed changes would include stopping PERA retirement payouts while an individual is collecting a state paycheck. Altogether, Richardson’s office has estimated that his proposals could save $7 million every year.

But some critics point out that Richardson’s proposal targets future double dipping, not current practices. As New Mexico attempts to tame a huge budgetary shortfall this year and an even larger one projected for next year, every dollar saved now by curbing current double dipping would help, they say.

“We need to prevent state government retirees from receiving any retirement benefits, if they return to state government jobs,” state Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, who is running for lieutenant governor in 2010, said in a statement released this week. “The hundreds who are now double dipping into state funds need to choose: are they state workers or are they retirees. They can then be paid accordingly”

“At a time of growing, massive unemployment, it is immoral to have one person drawing two checks when two people could each be drawing one,” he added.

Carter Bundy, political director of American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees, Council 18, said his organization favors limiting double dipping to county and local governments as well.

“We are in favor of extending restrictions to double dipping, whether it’s at the local, county or state level,” Bundy said. AFSCME represents thousands of state, county and municipal employees.

What Hill, Riggs and Ray make stands in sharp contrast to what most New Mexicans earn. New Mexico’s median household income in 2007 was $41,509, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Household income can include income from several earners living in the same house. Median means that half the households earned more, while half earned less.

Defenders of double dipping say that not all of those who retire and then return to work are gaming the system. Many perform essential services for the state; some have essential experience not found in other potential employees.

“This whole thing is just a political scapegoating manipulation,” the state’s Natural Resources Trustee Jim Baca — himself a double-dipper — recently wrote on his blog. “It cuts a large swath without looking at the real consequences of throwing experience overboard.”

Baca is a former state land commissioner and Albuquerque mayor.

“I don’t think that employees should be able to walk out of the office one day and back in the next day as a double dipper,” Baca wrote. “That is a manipulation of the system. Fix that manipulation and keep options open for calling on expertise when necessary.”