The Associated Press

FRANKFORT - The Justice and Public Safety Cabinet has started denying jobs to candidates who retired from the state payroll.

The new policy is aimed at stopping a practice known as "double dipping," in which retired state employees return to collect a salary in a new job, or even back to their old one, while drawing state pensions.

For now, Lt. Gov. Steve Pence, who serves as Justice Cabinet secretary, has banned hiring retirees unless it's for a skilled position not easily filled, said Joe Whittle, the cabinet's director of legal services.

As a result of the cabinet's policy, two women were fired abruptly after only days on the job. One retiree said she had been asked by the cabinet to apply and had quit another job to return.

So far, Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration hasn't adopted a blanket policy, leaving such rehiring decisions up to individual cabinet secretaries. As a result, former state employees might be turned away by one cabinet but welcomed back by another.

"We're trying to move cautiously on this," said Daniel Groves, Fletcher's chief of staff. "The secretaries need to be able to determine what their needs are."

Other cabinets said they don't have a hard and fast policy.

"If they've got the right skills for what we want, I don't see a problem," said Robbie Rudolph, Finance and Administration Cabinet secretary. He added that re-employing retirees might even save money, because they already receive state-paid health benefits. For a new employee, that would be an added cost.

Some employment attorneys say state government is like any private employer - it has the right not to hire someone for any reason that doesn't violate anti-discrimination laws that cover characteristics such as age, race, gender or disability.

"The marketplace provides for you to be as unfair as you want to be - even if it means firing someone for the color of his socks," said Lexington attorney David Rollins Marshall.

Not everyone in the Justice Cabinet knew about Pence's policy.

Instead of telling retirees they need not apply, Kentucky State Police recently talked Sharon Robinson, a 48-year-old single mother of three, into interviewing for the job from which she had retired last summer after 28 years.

Robinson said former supervisors at the state police driver test station in Lexington asked her in May whether she'd be interested in returning as a secretary.

She applied; scored high on a test, according to personnel records; and was rehired May 25.

Robinson said she then resigned from the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government health department, where she had been since January, and reported for work at the state police office June 1.

"It was like going home again," she said.

Her stay lasted less than a week.

On June 4, a supervisor told Robinson that she was no longer needed. She said no one gave a reason.

Another retiree, Pam Burris, 51, of Lawrenceburg started as a driver test administrator on the same day as Robinson. Burris had worked for the state division of waste management and the state police between 1988 and 2001.

The state fired Burris on the same day as Robinson. Burris did not return several phone calls.

The state police said in a statement that during the hiring process, officials failed to send paperwork on Robinson and Burris to the Justice Cabinet secretary's office, as required by a personnel rule.

Because of the cabinet's "general policy ... not to rehire retired employees back into similar positions," Robinson and Burris would not have been approved by Pence, the statement said.