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After 30 years, half of 1992 early retirees are still drawing pensions

September 19, 2023

In 1992, Steve Duarte, Lansing's finance director, proposed an "early retirement" to ease a budget shortfall that may or may not have existed. Teamsters union employees who agreed before December 1, 1992 to retire by January 4, 1993 would get their pension multiplier increased from 2.5% to 2.75% and they'd get an extra 5 years of service credit.

That extra 5 years of service credit was not just for the pension calculation, the formula for which was years of service times FAC times the multiplier. It could also be used determine when an employee could retire. In 1990, the Teamsters had negotiated a "65 and out" provision in their contract, meaning they could retire when years of service and age added up to 65. Take, for example, Steve Duarte. He was 45 years old and had worked for the city for 18 years. The sum for Duarte (who, of course, was not a Teamster) was 63, but the extra 5 years would have put it over 65.

Actually, when that "65 and out" provision for Teamsters was negotiated, executive and exempt employees - that is, department heads and other non-union employees - were included. (Lansing State Journal, January 11, 1993). So Duarte did qualify.

By the end of December 1992, 144 employees - 12% of the City's workforce - had enthusiastically accepted the offer and retired. It caused a public uproar with three lawsuits, an effort to recall the council members who voted for it, and an ethics investigation. But it might have gone unnoticed had the mayor and city clerk not been among the retirees.

You can read my whole story here on this website. I bring it up again because information provided by the City shows that as of the end of 2022, 74 of those employees were still alive and drawing a pension. Here they are:

To compile the above list, I compared this list of the original 1992 early retirees with this list of retirees who were on the payroll in 2022. There were 1,698 of the latter. That list of retirees is from this story I posted in May of this year on the City's 2022 payroll.

In 1997, Steve Duarte became Fiscal Services Director at Kent County at a salary of $171,061.

Send comments, questions, and tips to stevenrharry@gmail.com or call or text me at 517-730-2638. If you'd like to be notified by email when I post a new story, let me know.

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