Robert Gehrke: Why is Swallow Waiting to Leave? Money May Be the Reason

New Utah State Motto: "Idiocy Elevated?"  

Swallow and company

Here's the latest from the John Swallow Three-ring Circus, folks.  Will the  mind-boggling John Swallow news developments ever come to an end, we ask? 

On Saturday, KUTV News asked the question:

"Yesterday I met with the governor and the chief of staff and I informed then that I would be stepping down," a somber Swallow said.
A day later, however, John Swallow is still the A.G. His letter of resignation is post-dated.
"I delivered and tendered to the governor's office a letter of resignation indicating that would be resigning from this office effective Tuesday, December 3rd at 12:01 AM," he said.
In other words, his last day on the job will be Monday, December 2, 2013. That's 11 days from John Swallow's announcement that he is leaving until he will actually leave. Why the delay? It's a good question.

"The answer comes down to burning a little vacation time. He's leaving for a week for a previously scheduled vacation over the week of Thanksgiving," explains John Swallow's spokesperson, Paul Murphy:

• Good Question: Why is the AG Waiting to Resign?

Yesterday evening however, it seems that Salt Lake Tribune journeyman journalist Robert Gehrke, after a little bit of digging, has come up with a more complete and plausible answer to this interesting question:

Attorney General John Swallow’s Dec. 3 departure date — announced when he submitted his resignation last week — may be more than just a convenient time to wrap up his time in office.
It could mean tens of thousands of dollars for his retirement, money he never would see were he to bow out just a few days earlier.
By making it past Dec. 1, Swallow will have accumulated four years in state government, a magic threshold that qualifies employees for the pension system.
That means the soon-to-be-former attorney general will be able to collect a state pension of about $12,000 a year once he reaches retirement age.
That amount comes on top of a separate state pension, pegged at about $2,000 a year, he was already eligible for after his six years in the Utah House.

Read Mr. Gehrke's atonishing writeup here:

• Why is Swallow waiting to leave? Money may be the reason

So can we see by a show of hands how many of our gentle readers are surprised by Mr. Swallow's purely self-serving behavior, as he wallows up to the public trough, even as he exits the public scene in abject disgrace?

Additional sodden question:  How is it possible that in our (purportedly) fiscally tight-wad state, where most public pensions have been placed on the chopping block, an "elite public servant" such as Swallow can qualify for thousands of dollars in pension benefits after serving on the public payroll for a mere four years, especially on the heels of a Utah House investigation which has already clipped the Utah taxpayers for a million and a half bucks? How idiotic is that?

So many questions... so few answers.

Utah: "Idiocy Elevated?"

Perhaps our Gentle Readers can help us out on this?