UNC Chapel Hill (Wikimedia Commons )

Public employees have a number of ways to squeeze more money out of the taxpayers and among them is “pension spking,” whereby the employee cashes in accrued benefits at the end of his or her career. That compensation boost puts them into a higher pension orbit, thus costing the taxpayers more.


North Carolina passed a law to stop that, but left a big loophole for employees of the UNC system and community colleges. In today’s Martin Center article, Anthony Hennen writes about the persistence of pension spiking. In trying to get facts from the schools, he ran into a wall of silence.

Hennen writes, “That lack of comment and reluctance to share information with the public is part of the problem. When employees pension spike, other employees—and taxpayers—must pay for the liability that is created. The public then pays without knowing it. At a time when North Carolina’s public colleges keep expanding, along with its budget requests to the state government, the public deserves to know for what, exactly, it is paying.”