SLED retirees score victory

COLUMBIA -- A lawsuit over retirement benefits by two State Law Enforcement Division agents who retired and then came back to work for the agency can continue, the S.C. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The justices unanimously decided that a lower court was wrong to dismiss the suit by the agents that said SLED was wrong to make them pay their share toward their pensions along with SLED’s portion, which was 13.6 percent of their salaries.

The state unsuccessfully argued the employees should have pursued their claim not in the courts but with South Carolina Retirement Systems, where they could have received an administrative decision.

The ruling throws the case back into Circuit Court, where retirees Phillip Grimsley and Roger Jowers originally sued the state police agency in 2008. Their lawyers argue that state law explicitly requires agencies to pay their own pension costs and can’t pass them on to the employees.

SLED made retirees who returned to work for the agency sign a form that included the extra salary deduction.

SLED said about 50 of its 425 current employees are retired, and 19 of them work full time, mainly in technical fields, like ballistics. SLED Chief Mark Keel has said retirees are critical to the agency because it can take up to five years to train an agent to take over some investigative jobs.

The Supreme Court has weighed in on state retirement programs several times in the past.

Last May, the justices decided that retirees who went back to work for local and state governments and were not part of the TERI, or the Teachers and Employee Retention Incentive program, would not get refunds on their new payments into the retirement system.

In 2006, the Supreme Court decided that 14,000 employees in the TERI program would get new payments into the retirement system refunded.

Reforms to South Carolina’s state employee pension plan are expected to be a major topic when lawmakers return to Columbia next week for the 2012 session.

The funding gap in the state pension plan would be $17 billion if all eligible workers decided to retire right now.

While accepted guidelines say pension gaps should be covered within 30 years, a draft report given to lawmakers last year showed South Carolina would never be able to cover the gap but that a combination of lower cost-of-living payments and other legislative changes would put the system back on track.

Republican Gov. Nikki Haley has said the pension system’s programs are like a mortgage headed toward foreclosure, arguing that taxpayers shouldn’t pick up the tab.