From the “Gaming the System” files, an investigation by CBS Atlanta has exposed some double-dipping in the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department:
Last month CBS Atlanta’s Wendy Saltzman exposed employee’s double dipping – getting both a pension and a paycheck.
It might sound pretty good to get paid both a pension and a paycheck from the same boss, except that Fulton County Sheriff Ted Jackson has been warned that it’s against the county’s policy.
13 double dippers in his agency were told to resign or lose their county funded pensions. All 13 resigned after the pension board ordered them to choose between their current jobs or their pensions, but a CBS Atlanta investigation found 10 of them back on the payroll. They were rehired as “independent contractors.” […]
Pension board chairman Jim Stephens said that still violates pension rules and the sheriff may have been breaking other county policies as well.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, it gets worse. One spillover effect of the Department’s foray into questionable personnel practices is that it’s now left with inadequate security for the County courthouse. According to Fox Atlanta, the courthouse is now only able to man one security screening checkpoint at the building, creating a bottleneck that had citizens lined up around the block to get inside for court hearings and other routine business.
Just goes to show that whenever the public sector tries to game the system, taxpayers end up losing every time.