Scott to create anger and discontent towards FRS employees

Read this article and try to get this out to a many as we can. Scott's website is enormously misleading. Which happens to be what he wants so it will create anger and discontent towards FRS employees and retirees.


Gov. Rick Scott last week launched a website, FloridaHasARightToKnow.com, that reveals the salaries and wages of 130,697 state employees by name and the retirement benefits of 542 former public employees with annual pensions exceeding $100,000.

The biggest recipient of pension benefits from the Florida Retirement System got more in 2010 for being retired than all but two of the 130,697 listed in the salary database got for working. This retiree got $213,262.44 in annualized pension benefits in 2010. Read on to find out who it is (names aren't listed on the pension benefits website the governor put up).

There's no such thing as too much information. More information is always better in the public arena, no exceptions.

So, it's a no-brainer to favor Scott's release.

Still, data may be value-free, but their presentation and context are not.

The salary and, particularly, the pension information support the governor's policy aims of slashing state payroll and significantly changing the rules of public-employee retirement plans.

Our news reports often include salary information for new state hires. It's part of being a public servant. But all of the high-minded open-government bromides in the world can't mitigate the fact that the website is a panoply of prurient interest.

In the first week the site was up, the governor's office said, the salary page had 2 million queries.

The release of retirement benefits is baldly aimed at inciting outrage. Only those getting more than $100,000 in benefits are listed.

That's a mere thimbleful of information. It lists only 0.18 percent of the 301,129 Floridians who got Florida Retirement System pensions last year. The money paid out to these high-pension 542 individuals — it was $64 million — represents only 1.22 percent of the total benefits paid.

It just so happens they're the most egregious examples if you want to stir up resentment against the 556,296 active members in the Florida Retirement System and its 301,129 beneficiaries.

T.K. Wetherell got a pension of $213,262.44 after his retirement as president of Florida State University last year. That was Wetherell's final gig after many years as a public employee. He was in the Legislature for a dozen years, including two as speaker of the House. He was a community college teacher, an administrator and president of Tallahassee Community College, too.

Every single cent of the contributions to Wetherell's pension was paid by taxpayers. His career represents a near-perfect series of jobs to maximize his retirement benefit. Wetherell had 39 years of earned service credit in FRS. Each year in the Legislature, Wetherell chunked up another 3 percent of his final average salary that he'd get. That's nearly twice the accrual rate enjoyed by rank-and-file participants. Then Wetherell, a Democrat, ended up in a highly compensated job as president of FSU.

Wetherell said he didn't have any idea that's what his pension was paying him. That seems both plausible and utterly ridiculous — plausible because Wetherell has plenty going on, doesn't seem particularly motivated by dollar signs and is still undoubtedly being compensated well as a consultant for the state's most powerful lobbying firm. It seems ridiculous because he can readily quote line items from two-decade-old state spending plans.

But the important thing is that Wetherell is an anomaly. So is the entire list of $100,000-plus beneficiaries Scott put out on the web. Left out of that list are 99.82 percent of FRS beneficiaries and unrepresented is 98.78 percent of the benefits paid out last year.

Current proposals to change public pensions would significantly change what some future Wetherell would end up with as retirement. Accrual rates for everybody but cops and firefighters would be 1.6 percent. High-risk employees would also get an accrual-rate shave of a third, down to 2 percent a year. All public employees in FRS would pay in some percentage of their salary (Scott and the House want 5 percent) to their own retirement.

Those are all legitimate points of debate, as is the question of whether it's fair to tax public employees to save the state's budgetary bacon to the tune of nearly $1 billion.

But don't use T.K. Wetherell as the poster boy for outrage and change. The terms of his benefits were the deal of his employment as much as his salary. Those were the rules. And whatever envy and anger you might be inclined to work up are utterly misplaced for the average pension recipient who also worked with the understanding of those same rules. That average pensioner got $17,496 last year.


Paul Flemming is the state editor for Gannett's Florida newspapers and floridacapitalnews.com. Contact him at pflemming@gannett.com or 850-671-6550.Article Posted