Early Retirement

Baltimore County officials have received more than 650 applications for an early-retirement package - more than three times the number they had sought. County Executive Kevin Kamenetz proposed the buyouts in September, hoping to cut about 200 positions from the county payroll of 8,000. The County Council approved the package the next month. Under the program, workers can receive credit for up to three additional years of service, making them eligible to retire early. Applications for the program were due last week.

"Only employees whose positions can be eliminated without cutting county services will be approved," according to the Sun's recent coverage of Baltimore County employee buyouts ("More than 650 apply for Balto. Co. early retirement," Jan. 4). Seems to me if you think this over, why are these people in these positions now if they can be eliminated without noticing a lack of service? Tim Hugus

NEW YORK -- When the Thomas J. Lipton Co. in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., opened an early-retirement window last month, more than 60 percent of those eligible jumped, many more than the company expected. Several departments lost key employees; some replacements will have to be hired.That's not unusual, says Henry Saveth of the consulting firm A. Foster Higgins in New York City. The best employees often feel the most confident about leaving because they're sure they can find other work.With pensions in their pockets, they may also feel free to take lower-paying jobs in another field.

WEATHER Today's forecast calls for mostly cloudy skies and a high temperature around 33 degrees. It is expected to be mostly cloudy with scattered flurries and a low temperature around 31 degrees tonight. TRAFFIC Here are today's morning traffic issues . FROM LAST NIGHT... City gives Balto. Co. property in Catonsville for open space : Baltimore County Council members unanimously signed off Tuesday on accepting the $110,000 property, which consists of 11 acres on Maple Avenue near Frederick and Rolling roads.

ANOTHER brass ring is shifting. Not even two decades ago, a key marker of financial success was early retirement. And the earlier the better. Merger waves of the 1980s pumped thousands of managers into early-retirement packages, perceived as coveted rewards. The scene is different for today's financial titans, said Ken Dychtwald, a gerontologist and founder of Age Wave, a San Francisco firm that counsels large employers on work force issues. He points to Alan Greenspan, leading the Federal Reserve Bank at age 79; Rupert Murdoch still battling for domination of the media industry at 74, and Warren E. Buffett, also 74, still leading the faithful at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. "There is clearly a movement that continuing to work is not only necessary but enjoyable," says Dychtwald, who completed a global survey of attitudes about retirement for financial supermarket HSBC last month.

Those micro-managers in the General Assembly sure know how to muck up a situation. In attempting to reduce the size of the state's work force, legislators may end up costing taxpayers $39 million and leave state government in disarray.There's a better way: Let Gov. William Donald Schaefer decide how the government should be downsized. That's what the chief executive is paid to do; legislators are just supposed to legislate.Instead, lawmakers passed a bill offering early retirement to nearly 3,000 state workers.

The local division of Westinghouse Electric Corp. is making an early retirement buyout offer to many of its 10,000 workers in Maryland, the company confirmed yesterday.Although it is part of a companywide effort to eliminate 6,000 jobs over the next two years, the new "separation incentive program" is being offered only to the Maryland employees of the Westinghouse Electronic Systems Group.Westinghouse workers at plants in Linthicum, Hunt Valley, Sykesville and Annapolis will be offered one week's base pay for each year of service with the company if they elect to participate in the voluntary plan, said Jack Martin, a spokesman for the local Westinghouse unit.

Afraid swindlers might ruin your plans for early retirement? The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is recommending that employers and older workers check out two online resources developed to protect you from scam artists who try to lure you into cashing retirement investments early, with misleading promises of big financial returns and comfy retirement lifestyles that can't be sustained. The financial education effort was launched after two recent enforcement actions taken against early-retirement scams.

The possibility of massive layoffs in the Baltimore Fire Department has fanned support for legislation pending before the City Council that would provide monetary incentives for firefighters eligible for retirement to leave the force."

"Take this job and shove it."That's apparently what many Americans would like to tell their employers. Only 18 percent of workers consider their careers personally and financially rewarding, according to a Roper poll.You can join the growing trend toward early retirement even if you're not basketball great Michael Jordan or a lottery winner. However, it requires years of planning, careful saving and consideration of all financial aspects, especially lifestyle requirements.In some cases, the result may not be complete retirement, but rather abandoning your current job to do what you really want to do, perhaps on a part-time basis, with proper financial underpinnings in place.

Baltimore County officials have received 670 applications for an early-retirement incentive package - more than three times the number they had sought. County Executive Kevin Kamenetz proposed the buyouts in September, hoping to cut about 200 positions from the county payroll of 8,000. Applications for the program were due last week. Some people who applied have already rescinded, county spokeswoman Ellen Kobler said Tuesday. “That number does include some people who indicated that they really were just curious” about their retirement calculations, Kobler said.

On May 27, 2010, the Baltimore County Council voted on legislation that would reduce pension benefits for thousands of government workers. The bill, part of a plan by then-County Executive James T. Smith Jr. to shore up the finances of the pension system, limited cost-of-living increases for county retirees and raised the amount of their paychecks county workers were required to contribute. But a last-minute amendment added to the bill would turn out to be worth tens of thousands of dollars to three of the councilmen who voted it into law. County Executive Kevin Kamenetz and former councilmen Stephen G. Samuel Moxley and Vincent J. Gardina, both of whom have been hired into top positions in the Kamenetz administration, are taking advantage of a new provision of the law that allows them to earn their county salaries, accrue new retirement benefits and bank their council pensions for a lump-sum payout when they retire for good.

About one in four top leaders in the Baltimore County Police Department are expected to leave under an early-retirement incentive, county officials said Friday. Some of the officers plan to retire Nov.1, said Don Mohler, chief of staff to County Executive Kevin Kamenetz. Kamenetz proposed the incentive last month, and members of the County Council approved the package. They hope to eliminate about 200 positions from the county workforce of 8,000. Only those with the rank of captain or above are eligible for the buyouts.

Even as the Baltimore County Council weighs an employee buyout plan that could chop millions from next year's budget, officials are leaving open the possibility of layoffs and furloughs. Council members discussed the early retirement proposal at a meeting Tuesday at which administration officials told them it would save about $14 million each year. County Executive Kevin Kamenetz proposed the buyouts last month. The plan is intended to cut about 200 jobs from the county's workforce of 8,000.

On the heels of 330 teachers' accepting early retirement packages from the city school system, officials will propose a similar deal for 500 of its most experienced instructional support staff. According to an early retirement incentive plan scheduled to be presented at the city school board meeting Tuesday night, the school system will look to trim its pool of paraprofessionals who have more than 10 years' experience by offering them 50 percent of their base salary for a year and a sick-leave payout to be put into a school investment plan.

The Baltimore City school system is likely to move forward with a plan to offer early retirement packages to its most experienced teachers as more than 330 have accepted the deal, which seeks to save the district millions of dollars. When the school system announced the early retirement incentive plan in February, it said at least 350 teachers had to take the plan for it to be successful, and that no more than 750 could. But city school officials said Monday that the 332 teachers who signed up were enough for the plan to go through.

This month, at age 41, Stuart Miller achieved the career goal of many -- he retired. Stock options from his employer of 15 years, MCI WorldCom, helped. But a modest lifestyle, regular investing and squirreling money away in his employer's 401(k) also built his nest egg to the point that he could wave goodbye to the corporate world at an age when many Americans just begin retirement planning. Miller plans to go back to school to become an English or history teacher at a Montgomery County public high school.

I must agree with Merle Cuttitta, president of SEIU Local 500, when he writes in his "Readers Respond" letter ("General Assembly attack on pensions is unconscionable, " April 4) urging our lawmakers in Annapolis not to punish the hardworking men and women of our state. But, beyond that, Mr. Cuttitta's letter is wrong in so many ways. First he touts the No. 1 rating of Maryland public schools and the part played by union workers in achieving that rating. As a number of recent letters appearing in "Readers Respond" from retired teachers and college educators attest, the reality is that undeserving students are promoted and even graduated in order to show improvements in Baltimore City graduation rates and that large percentages of Maryland students enter college without basic writing skills.