COMMENTARY
Donn Esmonde: Lax system lets Kee be double dipper
By Donn Esmonde
Updated: 05/07/08 9:07 AM
The one-time conscience of the county’s control board is now the queen of the double dippers. A former fiscal watchdog, she now has both hands scooping from the public trough.
Sheila Kee was supposed to be on our side. As part of the county’s financial control board, she was the taxpayers’ cop on the beat. Now she looks like the ex-cop who robs the corner store.
Kee was among those slammed in a recent New York Post article on double dippers — government retirees who cash a pension check and get a paycheck from a new public-payroll job. Taxpayers take a double hit.
Kee was budget director when Dennis Gorski was county executive. She collects a $99,389 annual pension for 30- plus years in county government. She also takes home $151,722 as an associate commissioner with the state Health Department. Between pension and current salary, Kee annually costs taxpayers a quarter of a million dollars.
State law says folks who collect a public-sector pension cannot make more than $30,000 at a new government job. If they do, they cannot collect their pension for as long as they work. The issue is simple: If you are not retired from the public payroll, you should not cash a retirement check.
But Kee, 57, is among the highest-paid of about 700 exceptions to the rule — at a cost of $49 million in salaries alone.
“The problem is a system that invites this sort of gaming,” said E. J. McMahon of the Manhattan Institute. “These people can retire with a big pension at an early age, then go back and work for sometimes twice their old salary.”
It would be enough to shatter our faith in public service, if we had any left. Our innocence was butchered by every higher tax bill, by every stretch of the ethical envelope by public officials who are supposed to serve us. Albany’s lax rules and taxpayer-hostile policies encourage abuses and make temptation hard to resist. Kee’s double stop at the public till is merely the latest in an endless series of blows to the public trust.
Kee, in fairness, has a varied skill set. She headed ECMC and Sheehan Hospital before taking the state job. She is no flunky. She noted that she was making more money in the private sector, she earned her pension, and taxpayers would pay $150,000 to fill her position regardless of whether it was held by her or someone else. “State law allows me to do this,” Kee said. “I earn my pay.”
But if anybody should have a heightened sensitivity to taxpayers, she should. As county budget director, Kee blasted state mandates that inflated local taxes. On the control board, she took an ax to excess. She knows the solution. Yet she now chooses — in my mind — to be part of the problem.
Whether it is a cop who piles on the overtime in his final years to pad his pension, or — like Kee — a government retiree who takes a pension while cashing a new public paycheck, it all comes out of taxpayers’ hides.
The larger problem, of course, is not with the folks who bend the rules. It is with a state government that lets them do it. From toll takers to tax collectors to teachers, public workers pack it in at 55 with hefty pensions. Other states long ago went to 401(k) plans and ended mid- 50s retirements.
“People’s outrage should be directed at the system, which invites this sort of abuse,” McMahon said. “The more stories like this people hear, the more pressure there is [on Albany] to change the system.”
True. The solution lies with the governor and state lawmakers. Which is a problem. The system works for them. That is why Albany has a deep aversion to change.
And it is worth remembering: From double dippers to pension padders, they get away with it only because they can.
