Woodings calls on Denney to give up state pension

BOISE – Idaho Secretary of State candidate Holli Woodings is calling on her GOP opponent, former House Speaker Lawerence Denney, to give up his state pension, in light of his comments at a live debate last week that he doesn’t believe elected officials should be on the state pension system. “If we want a fair and honest person as our next secretary of state, that person should be willing to live under the same rules he or she wants everybody else to live under,” Woodings declared. Denney didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Woodings’ challenge, which she made in a news release distributed to news media statewide. As a longtime state lawmaker, Denney is entitled to a state pension from the Public Retirement System of Idaho of roughly $500 a month. But if he serves one four-year term as secretary of state at the end of his career, his pension would jump to roughly $3,600 a month. That’s because of a special provision for how longtime lawmakers’ years of service are counted if they take a high-paying state job late in their careers; then-House Tax Chairman Dennis Lake, R-Blackfoot, proposed legislation to do away with the perk in 2012, but Denney, then speaker of the House, killed the bill. Denney’s comments about the retirement issue came during the “Idaho Debates” broadcast live statewide on Idaho Public Television last week. During his debate against Woodings, Denney said, “I think that it is a good idea to take all elected officials off the PERSI system.” Woodings opposed such a move. “Elected officials include not only legislators, but also county clerks, sheriffs, coroners, mayors and many others who serve the citizens of Idaho every day,” she said in her news release. “The assertion that these devoted public servants should not be eligible for the same employment benefits as non-elected employees is nonsense.” But she said if that’s what Denney believes, he should back his beliefs up with action. “Elected officials owe it to the people of Idaho to live up to their rhetoric,” she said. “It’s a matter of respecting the voter.” Denney’s comments during the debate, however, included a suggestion that elected officials should be given some other type of retirement compensation to offset the loss of PERSI retirement. “I think that if you remove the retirement portion totally from all legislators, if you remove that retirement portion from all elected officials and give them the compensation so that they could put it in their own 401K or whatever, I think we could do that and do it very painlessly,” he said. Asked during the debate what role the retirement issue played in his decision to run for Idaho secretary of state, Denney said, “Absolutely none. I mean, I certainly was not looking at the retirement as something that was perking my interest to run for secretary of state.” “I don’t think that any elected official is elected because they want to be on the retirement system,” Denney said. “I think that if tomorrrow we said there is no retirement for legislators, new legislators, so that you didn’t have to worry about property rights, I think that you would still have the exact same candidates that you have now. I don’t think there would be a bit of difference.”