Independence is a place where you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for not working

What are you retirement plans? Social Security, a 401(k), maybe a pension if you’re really lucky?

You’re a sucker. If you really want to enjoy your golden years, you should be angling for an executive role with the city of Independence, Missouri.

Let us look at the example of Leon Daggett.

As director of Independence Power & Light, Daggett earned a salary in excess of $200,000 a year. Now a septuagenarian, Daggett served as director for just over a decade, from 2006 until he retired earlier this summer.

For reasons I will get into later, I was curious about Daggett’s retirement package. I recently asked the city for Daggett’s “transition agreement.” And it is indeed a rather astonishing document.

June 27, 2017, marked Daggett’s last day as director at IPL. He continued to receive his salary for three more months, until October 1. In other words, more than $50,000 for doing absolutely nothing.

In addition, Daggett received $109,000 in “transition compensation” as part of his agreement with the city.

What’s the difference between “transition compensation” and the aforementioned three months of free salary Daggett received after he retired? I put that question to Meg Lewis, public information officer for the city.

“It is not our policy to discuss personnel matters,” Lewis told me.

Lame answer, but, hey: There’s nothing to keep the rest of us from discussing personnel matters in Independence. So, let’s keep going. We’re at $160,000 in compensation so far. That’s what a 70-year-old man gets just for retiring from a place where he worked for 10 years. And that doesn’t count his pension or a handful of financial variables — accumulated sick leave, accumulated vacation leave, accumulated personal business, all of which could easily climb over $100,000 — that I was unable to pin down for Daggett.

Then there’s this: As part of Daggett’s agreement, he has been named an “economic development consultant” for Independence. In this independent-contractor role, Daggett is expected to “perform outreach to developers,” “make recommendations on capital projects, long-term planning, and related issues” for IPL, and “coordinate activities with the Independence Economic Development Council and the City’s Economic Development Manager.” Daggett is also required to attend six energy-related conferences a year.

For these vague services, Independence taxpayers will hand Daggett a staggering $219,000 this year.

The purpose of the agreement with Daggett, according to the language it contains, is to, among other things, “avoid economic hardship for Mr. Daggett.”

That one of the highest-paid public employees in the Kansas City area would require nearly half a million dollars from Independence taxpayers to avoid economic hardship is laughable on its face. But it is especially preposterous if you know Daggett’s history.

Before he came to Independence Power & Light, he served for 10 years as general manager of the Board of Public Utilities in Kansas City, Kansas. When he arrived, in 1995, the BPU was financially troubled. Daggett cut the workforce and unburdened the utility of its debt. Then, in 2005, for reasons that have never been explained, Daggett was fired by the board.

At the time, Daggett was making $187,000 a year. The separation agreement he negotiated with the BPU amounted to $700,000. A few years later, Daggett sued the BPU, claiming that he was receiving $1,000 a month less than he should have been from his BPU pension. Meaning Daggett was presumably collecting much more than $1,000 a month from his BPU pension. Some of us ordinary people might argue that $1,000 alone is plenty in BPU pension for a man who served there for only 10 years. 

Within months of his BPU settlement, Daggett was named director of Independence Power & Light. 

To recap: Daggett’s “firing” from the BPU resulted in a $700,000 check, a generous pension, and a new, high-paying job 10 miles away: This is how life goes if you are a savvy enough operator in towns that are crooked or dumb enough.

Daggett is not the only one cashing in at the expense of taxpayers in eastern Jackson County. As I wrote some months ago, Jackson County pays certain lucky individuals wild sums of money to oversee various boards and commissions, even though those same positions are unpaid in virtually every other jurisdiction in the metro.

Then there’s the matter of Robert Heacock, former city manager of Independence. Like Daggett at the BPU, Heacock was fired without any public explanation when the Independence City Council voted him out in 2015. (Notably, Heacock was not fired in 2009, when he was caught moving inside his car “in a furtive manner” with an unidentified female companion, and subsequently cited for drunken driving.)

Looking over Heacock’s separation agreement, though, his firing seems more like a reward than a punishment. Consider that, in the year following his firing (September 2015 to October 2016), Heacock received:

*His former base salary of roughly $197,000

*His former annual car allowance of $6,000

*Health insurance totaling roughly $25,000

*Non-taxable deferred compensation totaling roughly $11,000

*Accumulated leave totaling $154,265

*LAGERS (retirement) payments of $8,100 ($339.23 per pay period)

The city also paid for Heacock’s attorneys’ fees (another $10,000), and he is eligible for retirement benefits from the city.

Add it up, and, again, you are close to half a million dollars, courtesy of Independence taxpayers. 

“I don’t have any remorse about anything that happened,” Heacock said after the agreement was inked. “I don’t have any ill feeling toward anybody.”

That I believe.

I do not live in Independence. But if I did, I would be very angry to learn that taxpayer dollars are being spent this way. If you do live in Independence, maybe you should call your elected representatives?

Good luck with that, though: I reached out to the mayor and every city council member — twice — and heard back only from Councilman Scott Roberson, who emailed me to say he “can’t comment on personnel issues.”