Editorial: Pensions Paying Foolishness - WSFA.com: News Weather and Sports for Montgomery, AL.

Editorial: Pensions Paying Foolishness

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By John Shryock - bio | email

  • Editorials

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MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) - Sending checks to a prisoner doesn't make sense.   Especially when our tax money is being sent.  

Evidently that doesn't matter.  Taxpayers are funding hundreds of thousands of dollars in pensions every year for public employees who cheated the public while in office and are in prison now for it.  They are being rewarded for their misdeeds with lucrative pensions.   

There is some well overdue ethics legislation being discussed this week but one item is not included: ending the practice of paying out pensions for convicted public officials. It is past time to stop it.  

Legislators had a chance to do just that more than 20 years ago and didn't.   We hope with a new legislative body now, they will change the law that allows this to happen.  

Return to these convicts what they contributed, but don't give them a dime of retirement paid for with public dollars. 

With the threat of losing a pension as a penalty for wrongdoing, perhaps public officials would think extra long about doing wrong in the first place.