TACOMA — A candidate for state schools superintendent has lobbied the Legislature for the past two years to allow him and one other person to increase their pensions by thousands of dollars a year.
Former Eatonville High School Principal Randy Dorn, who is now director of the Public School Employees Union, and Tom Lopp, the union’s lobbyist, got House approval of their request to be allowed to join a different state retirement system, The News Tribune of Tacoma reported.
In 2007, the House voted 95-0 to approve House Bill 1067, which would have allowed Dorn to collect a pension based on the $137,705 he earns as the union’s executive director, rather than the $57,720 he earned 10 years ago as Eatonville High School principal.
Dorn recently announced his plans to campaign against 12-year incumbent Terry Bergeson for the job of superintendent of public instruction. If he wins, he would get about the same increase in his pension as the move to the other pension would have created.
Richland Superintendent Richard Semler, who has been endorsed by the Washington Education Association, also is running.
State officials estimated that Dorn and Lopp would have collected nearly $600,000 in additional retirement benefits if the bill had become law. That assumed both would retire in about 10 years and collect their pensions for at least 15 years thereafter.
However, the pension bill died in the Senate budget committee and didn’t go anywhere in this year’s legislative session.
“It was one of those bills that looked so specific that we just didn’t feel it was the wise way to go,” Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Renton, chairwoman of the Ways and Means Committee, told the newspaper. “We talked about it and we just thought it wouldn’t look good. It would look like a favor for a friend.”
Dorn served in the Legislature from late 1987 to 1994.
Senators knew the bill would benefit only the two union members, although it might have helped others in the future, Prentice said.
Dorn, 54, has been executive director of the 26,000-member Public School Employees Union for eight years. The union represents nonteaching staff — cooks, janitors, bus drivers and computer technicians.
He said Wednesday that his goal was fairness.
“Everybody else can transfer, but we can’t,” Dorn said. “That doesn’t seem right to me.”
He said the benefits for himself and Lopp have been exaggerated.
“I still think they are totally wrong,” Dorn said. “The year before (2007), it was going to cost zero. Then, this year, it had this high cost.”
State Rep. Kathy Haigh, D-Shelton, said she agreed to sponsor the pension bill because Dorn and Lopp asked her to. As it was presented to her, there was no cost.
“Last year, nobody said there was any cost. Not staff. Not anybody. It didn’t seem that big a deal at the time. And I would admit, I don’t know all the ins and outs of the retirement systems,” she said Wednesday. “When it came back this year, staff got more involved,” she said. “And when they said it was going to cost a lot of money, I dropped it.”
Haigh said she doesn’t feel hoodwinked by Dorn and Lopp.
“My eyes were wide open,” she said. “I just didn’t have that information. They didn’t seem to think it was a true (cost estimate). They felt that someone was out to get them.”
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