DROP should have been drop-kicked long ago
The retirement perk known as DROP has cost Philadelphians hundreds of millions of dollars while providing them with only one discernible and modest benefit: Those who take advantage of it supposedly agree to rid the city of their often overpriced services.
The retirement perk known as DROP has cost Philadelphians hundreds of millions of dollars while providing them with only one discernible and modest benefit: Those who take advantage of it supposedly agree to rid the city of their often overpriced services.
Unfortunately, some continue to take the benefit but refuse even that small concession to taxpayers, returning to the payroll to extract more. Over the past few months, as the Inquirer's Claudia Vargas reported, the city has rehired three six-figure DROP beneficiaries, suggesting that the perk can still be abused with impunity.
Instituted in 1999, DROP, which stands for Deferred Retirement Option Plan, allows city employees who promise to retire in four years to begin collecting early pension benefits at a generous interest rate, to be paid out in a lump sum upon retirement. The city has spent more than $1.2 billion on the perk, at an estimated net cost of more than $250 million.
The Inquirer reported last week that Police Department retirees Charles Brennan and Mitchell Yanak, who respectively took DROP payouts of about $338,000 in 2006 and $100,000 in 2003, were rehired by the Kenney administration in January to higher-paying jobs as technology executives.
The most egregious recent case took place the month before, in Mayor Michael Nutter's waning administration. Two days after his Dec. 23 retirement from the Department of Parks and Recreation and his acceptance of a $328,000 Christmas gift courtesy of DROP, Francis Fabey was rehired as an assistant managing director at roughly the same salary. His maneuver recalls abuses of DROP by City Council members and other elected officials who "retired" for a day between terms for the sole purpose of taking enormous checks. That ultimately forced six Council members to leave office in disgrace and led to an incremental 2010 reform preventing future elected officials from signing up for the benefit.
As for the latest cases of DROP reflux, a spokeswoman told the Inquirer that Mayor Kenney "can't fault highly qualified city employees for appropriately utilizing a benefit that's available to them." That sets a disturbingly low ethical standard for the city's workforce - essentially, take what you can grab.
But the administration does have a point insofar as the greatest fault here lies with Kenney and Nutter, avowed opponents of DROP who enabled its abuse by rehiring beneficiaries. Kenney should back up his past criticism of the program by refusing to reemploy anyone who was enriched by it.
Even that wouldn't make much of a dent in the program's unconscionable and continuing cost to the city, though. If Kenney doesn't take steps to end the whole publicly funded bonanza, he should drop the pretense that he opposes it.