By Martha Bellisle, Reno Gazette-Journal

As Nevada lawmakers struggle to fund state agencies while ensuring the long-term health of the employee retirement account, some public employees continue to legally collect salaries and retirement checks at the same time, an investigation by the Reno Gazette-Journal found.

To date, almost 700 state workers have taken advantage of the double-dipping law, which allows some workers who are retired and collect a pension to come back to work at state jobs where a “critical labor shortage” exists and earn paychecks. These are positions that state employers have found difficult to fill for a variety of reasons, including that they are in rural locations, don’t pay well or require special skills.

As of May, 14 retired workers who were rehired before July 2003 — when the law changed to require recertification every two years — remain in their critical-labor-shortage jobs, documents show. The positions include senior judges, bus drivers and special education teachers.

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