When Bill Broderick retired from his job teaching math last school year, he wasn't necessarily looking for another one.

But the Granite Technical Institute was looking for someone like him: an experienced educator with the skills to teach computer programming. He decided to apply and started his new job shortly after retiring.

"We are being sought after," Broderick said of teachers like himself who return to teaching after they retire, earning pension payments, reduced salaries and 401(k) contributions. "The people who have been hired back are bringing experience you can't get anywhere else."

For years, Utah school workers and other public employees have taken advantage of the state's post-retirement system, but it's a system that could soon change dramatically. A recent legislative audit found that such rehired retirees -- sometimes called double dippers because they earn state salaries and pensions simultaneously -- will cost the state retirement system $900 million over the coming decade. And at the end of last year, the state retirement system found itself $6.5 billion short of where it expected to be because of losses in financial markets.

Sen. Dan Liljenquist, who chairs the committee that oversees the state's retirement system, says the system is unsustainable, and if left unchanged, it could mean lower wages for younger workers who would have to make up the difference between what the state owes retirees and what it has.

That's why he and other lawmakers are considering broad reforms to the Utah Retirement Systems, including a number of changes for public employees who return to work after retirement that would essentially mean an end to so-called double dipping.

One proposal, starting with retirees rehired after July 1, 2010, would be to suspend pensions for those who return to work for the state but allow them to earn additional service credit to boost their eventual pension payments.

Another proposal, which would impact current and future rehired retirees, would remove the requirement that employers contribute to their 401(k)s and require them to contribute instead toward the pension system.

Many school employees, who comprise the largest chunk of those rehired into the system, don't want those changes. They say the current system is necessary to keep quality teachers in classrooms; that they deserve the existing benefits; and that it doesn't make sense to change the entire system because of a few bad economic years.

Last year, 2,166 Utah public employees, including 1,211 public education workers, were working full-time after retirement for state and local government agencies.

"If I were in their shoes I'd be taking advantage of it as well, but we've got to look at the soundness of the entire system," said Liljenquist, R-Bountiful. "We're doing this not to hurt anybody but to make sure we can meet the commitments we've already made."

System still necessary?

Most rehired retirees don't like being referred to as double dippers. It's a sensitive topic.

But Kathie Jorgensen, a first-grade teacher at Riverside Elementary in West Jordan, said she and others who have returned to work after retiring are doing nothing wrong.

She started working in the Jordan District a few weeks after retiring from the Granite District in 2006. It was a year when Jordan lost many teachers to retirement because of changes in federal accounting rules.

"I'm doing what was set up for us to do," Jorgensen said. "It was a way to save the Jordan District from losing all their teachers."

Plus, many say it's money districts would have to pay new teachers anyway. Typically, teachers who are rehired after retirement make much lower salaries than they made before retiring.

But some say, in this economy, the teacher shortage has essentially ended making benefits such as 401(k) contributions and pensions that continue while retirees work unnecessary to retain teachers.

Many newly trained teachers are having a hard time finding jobs.

Meggie Winn, a part-time social studies teacher at Sunset Ridge Middle School in West Jordan, said she applied to five districts before she found her job after this school year began. Winn, 24, said she has mixed feelings about changing the current post-retirement system.

On one hand, she said rich benefits might no longer be necessary to entice older teachers to stay, but she'd also hate to see talented, experienced teachers leave schools.

"If they're a good teacher and it's what's best for students, I'm OK with keeping it the way it is," Winn said of the system.

Others say the teacher shortage is bound to return once the economy recovers.

"They're going to make a change but then three years down the road, they're going to have the same problems," Broderick said. "This is a sound system, and it's meant to ride over the humps and bumps of the economy, and it's always done it."

Kory Holdaway, a lobbyist for the Utah Education Association, said he'd like to see lawmakers watch the economy a little longer before drastically changing the system, which he acknowledges is facing some struggles.

"We're open for discussion, but right now I think it's a bit premature," Holdaway said.

In fact, the Utah Retirement Systems is already up by about 13 percent this year, said Robert Newman, its executive director.

Promises

Melinda Colton, a Jordan spokeswoman, said the post-retirement benefits have been a "good recruitment tool."

"It's been a wonderful selling point that they can retire at an earlier age and then go teach somewhere else," Colton said.

But Liljenquist said that is a big part of the problem. The system's generous benefits have actually caused people who never intended to stop teaching early to retire and return to work, he said.

He said the retirement system should be just that: a retirement system.

"It was never designed to help [people] give themselves raises at the end of their careers," he said.

The audit even cited an example of a district classified employee who retired, went to work part-time for different districts for a year and then returned to the same job in the same district he left.

Glen Varga, a fourth-year teacher at Oquirrh Hills Middle School, said it's clearly an abuse of the system for a school to hold an employee's job for six months so that the employee can temporarily retire and then return to work with better benefits.

But, in general, Varga doesn't think retirees who return to work should have their pensions suspended or their 401K contributions taken away. He said the system is still valuable in that it rewards deserving teachers and benefits the students who get them.

"I think it's kind of a blessing for having suffered with low wages for the first 30 years of your career at the end to maybe reap some of the rewards," Varga said. "Don't take the few who are abusing it as the norm for the rest of the group."

Plus, some teachers say they rely on the post-retirement benefits.

Tom Molen, a weightlifting and keyboarding teacher at Granite Park Junior High, is now in his 10th year of post-retirement teaching. He said he's held on partly to help support his son, who just finished medical school.

Molen was a football coach at several area high schools and holds a master's degree in educational administration and an education specialist degree.

Without the state's generous post-retirement benefits, Molen said he probably still would have retired nine and a half years ago, but he likely would have moved out of state to teach or gone into a different field. He said he suspects if the state changes its system, many teachers will do just that.

"The good teachers will get out and go to work some other place outside of education," Molen said.

Still, many say changes are needed for the good of all public employees -- past, present and future.

"Our audit shows very clearly what the challenges are if we continue down this path," said House Speaker David Clark, R-Santa Clara. "If I were an educator, to tell you the truth, it would be very critical for me to hope that legislators would take action to make sure the promises they have been given ... that money's going to be there."