By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — A state legislator who called for an investigation of county officials who draw a paycheck and a pension for the same job said Friday there is plenty of blame to go around for the practice known as double-dipping.
Rep. Allen Kerr, R-Little Rock, commented after a Legislative Joint Auditing Committee meeting in which the executive director of the Association of Arkansas Counties blamed the problem on the Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System.
For several months, Gail Stone, executive director of the APERS, and state auditors have been gathering information on how many elected county officials are drawing a paycheck and receiving retirement benefits for the same job.
Under the practice, elected officials up for re-election would retire by temporarily taking themselves off the payroll when they learned they would not be opposed for re-election. They would return to their jobs when re-elected, allowing them to continue receiving retirement benefits along with their salary.
Last month, Stone told lawmakers that seven of 250 county elected officials questioned are double-dipping. One of them is Larry Fratesi, the Jefferson County assessor, who is also on the APERS board.
Those seven have retained legal counsel, she said.
On Friday, Eddie Jones, executive director of the Association of Arkansas Counties, blamed APERS employees for the problem.
Jones said he heard an APERS employee tell county officials during an August conference that they did not have to resign, they simply had to be “off payroll.”
“The bottom line is that APERS gave some bad advise and they should shoulder the responsibility, rather than someone else,” he said.
Stone later told the committee “off payroll” means not only not being paid, but also termination of employment.
She presented the committee with a form county officials must complete to apply for retirement benefits. The form states that to be “considered retired, you must end your employment and you may not return to work for an APERS-participating employee” for 90 days if you are an elected official.
She said the form must be completed by the official and must be signed by another county official.
“In my opinion, this is probably going to court,” said Sen. Terry Smith, D-Hot Springs.
After the meeting, Kerr, who first brought the double-dipping issue to light earlier this year when he requested an attorney general’s opinion, said APERS and county officials are both responsible.
“What the association of counties is trying to do is throw APERS under the bus and say that all the fault belongs to APERS and the bad advice they gave,” he said. “When … from everything that APERS told me, they don’t have a habit of giving advice, they just process paperwork. So my whole problem with this process is, who is giving advice?
“Now, granted (county officials) probably got some bad advise, but if it seems too good to be true, then 99 percent of the time it is and getting two pay checks is something that not everybody has the privilege to do, so there’s probably something to that. I think both sides were responsible, I truly do.”
During the meeting, Fratesi told the committee that he recuses himself from all APERS votes on “double dipping” issues and that when he retired, he left office for the 90 days, was not paid and paid for his own health insurance during that time period.
