Flowers has been a popular and effective highway director with unprecedented tenure. He’ll retire with a benefit that exceeds his pay, but likely nowhere near the multiple some former legislators used to cadge by leveraging multipliers of legislative service with a few years of high pay in appointed state jobs. But the issue of an extended Tier 2 retirement program might be worth reconsidering. If not a double-dip, payment of the equivalent of retirement tax-free into a deferred account for 13 years while an employee still draws regular pay has a certain resemblance to pure double-dipping, which this legislature is working to end.

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