COLUMBUS — A lawmaker wants to bar elected officials from receiving both their pensions and salaries or at least make sure the practice is more widely publicized.

        At least 11 elected officials across the state, almost all judges, have announced their plans to get the double payment by running for office Nov. 5, then temporarily retiring before starting a new term, according to a survey of county election boards by the Associated Press.

        Several of the officials are unopposed in the fall campaign.

        Rep. Lynn Olman, a Maumee Republican, said the current law that tries to limit the so-called double dipping by elected officials doesn't go far enough. It prohibits elected officials from receiving both a salary and a pension.

        But a loophole allows the practice if the officials file their intentions with a county election board 90 days before an election.

        The practice creates a “breakdown in trust” the public has in elected officials who get a benefit many Ohioans can't receive, Mr. Olman said Wednesday.

        He plans to introduce one of two versions of a law to limit the practice. The first version would ban double dipping altogether.

        The second would require officials to file their intentions 90 days before the election filing deadline.

        That would allow opposing political parties to find a candidate.

        Many officials taking the double-payment option point out that the pension consists of their own money contributed into a retirement plan over several years.

        “This will not cost the taxpayers any money,” Judge Samuel Kerr of Jefferson County Common Pleas Court said in his Aug. 2 letter to the county election board.

        “It will, however, enable me to begin collecting my pension, which I have paid into for over 32 years and which is my personal investment.”

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