Early retirement package meeting Tuesday
Monday, February 25, 2008 12:45 PM EST article source
Let’s try it again.
The Lawrence County Commission Tuesday will try again to meet with a representative of the Public Employees Retirement System to discuss the possibility of offering an early retirement incentive package to some county workers who are nearing retirement.
The meeting will be 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. The meeting will be in executive session and will include the PERS representative, commissioners and county officeholders. It will not be open to the public.
The meeting was supposed to have been last week but was cancelled because of bad weather. The idea of allowing some employees to retire early to save county general fund dollars has piqued interest among some former and current employee as well as other interested citizens, some of whom are concerned that those who are able to retire might not stay retired.
“Who is on the list?” former deputy elections director Ella Lawless asked commissioners Thursday.
“We don’t know yet,” Commissioner Jason Stephens said.
“I know of cases where people were bought out and retired and then were rehired the next day,” Lawless said. “How are you going to guarantee this doesn’t happen again?”
Stephens said commissioners want to make any buyout is fair and make certain it is not abused by “double dippers,” people who retire and then ask to be rehired to their old jobs at the same rate of pay.
In other news, Lawrence County Treasurer Stephen Dale Burcham told the commission tax collections for the first-half year collection period amounts to $3.356 million thus far.
“We still see a good number of people paying for the whole year to help us out,” Burcham said.
The tax collection period ends March 7. Burcham said the vast majority of tax bills are paid near the end of the tax collection period.