Have public employee bosses been living by a different set of rules?

For years public employees’ compensation has been capped in the last four years before retirement.

As a teacher, my yearly increase can’t exceed six percent even if I do extra duty jobs. No after school clubs, bus supervision or lunch room duty. I can’t mentor a new teacher because that will put me over the cap. I can’t do curriculum writing because that will exceed my compensation limit.

But what I did not know until this article appeared in the Trib is that public employee executives lived by a different set of rules.

The fund currently has one rule to limit padding: not letting the calculations be swayed by any pay boosts in the last three months of more than 25 percent. It was put in years ago as a way to limit the effect of common end-of-career payouts to government employees for unused sick and vacation time, payouts that sometimes can equal a year’s worth of pay.

But, the Tribune found, governments routinely have found a way around that, at times approving union contracts or writing policies that specifically structure big payouts in a way that counts every dime toward a pension. Costs for the boosted pension then are hidden with other, routine pension payments made by local governments over time.

Not that I trust the Trib. But if this story is true (and with the Trib that’s a big if), it is another example of the Golden Rule.

If you have the gold, you make the rules.

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