STATE EMPLOYEES have habitually viewed criticism of the TERI retirement program as an attack on their own individual worth, or even on their competence. As a result, the criticism has never produced anything more than sound and fury in the Legislature, where state employees speak with a loud voice.

So before talking about the latest criticism of the program, let’s look at what else the governor’s Commission on Management, Accountability and Performance had to say about state employees, and the way the state manages human resources.

The introduction to the report singles out state employees for praise, noting: “Naturally, we found bright spots as well as areas of concern. On the positive side, the state has a corps of state employees who are capable and dedicated public servants. Yet, the bad news is that despite the heroic efforts of hard-working state employees, the citizens are poorly served by a system we found to be in unbelievable condition.”

The human resources section makes the case more directly: “Human capital is the major resource in state government. To demand and expect excellence requires an appropriate investment in state government’s most valuable resource, its employees. The entire human resources effort and process must be built on the premise that people and relationships matter and that employees are valued and respected. This poses a significant change of emphasis and a challenge for state government leaders.”

Thirty-eight of the MAP Commission’s 213 recommendations for improving the way state government operates deal with human resources. Among them:

• ; Conduct a study to figure out how much high turnover rates hurt the state in certain areas, such as the prison system, and whether it would save money in the long run to pay folks more.

• ; Reduce the number of government positions that aren’t covered by the grievance system.

• ; Implement clearly defined public service career paths, and create a career-path training program. (The report specifically recommends that these items be funded in the annual budget.)

• ; Create a system to identify high performers for leadership positions.

• ; Train managers on how to gain employee awareness, understanding and commitment through openness and information sharing.

• ; Establish a senior executive service, which would allow senior managers to take on political posts as, say, Cabinet directors, and then return to their protected positions after the governor who appoints them leaves office.

Other sections of the report are full of proposals to replace the outdated, incompatible computer systems that are often the bane of office workers’ lives and purchase new systems that would help state employees do their jobs better.

But while nearly all the proposals that directly affect the workplace are either pro-employee or neutral, there is one notable exception: The commission calls for eliminating the TERI program, which allows state employees to officially retire but defer their retirement benefits while continuing to work for up to five more years.

The report notes that TERI does have some advantages to the state: “While many valuable staff would have retired and taken a wealth of institutional knowledge with them into retirement, the TERI program provides the entities with a definite time period for succession planning and workforce development.”

But its fiscal and policy disadvantages far outweigh any advantages.

First, TERI doesn’t do what it was supposed to do: give managers a tool to entice the best and most needed employees to stay on the job a little longer than they otherwise might. Instead, since the Legislature allows all state employees to enroll, it is merely an employee benefit program.

Second, it’s an employee benefit program that costs more than lawmakers acknowledge — and that is causing underfunded state agencies an even more difficult time. As the MAP report points out, state agencies already have to pay employees for up to 45 days of unused vacation and sick leave when they retire. Normally, that’s manageable because they can hold the positions open during those 45 days. But with TERI participants, it’s different: They stay on the job, drawing regular pay, in addition to getting those 45 days’ pay. On top of that, they collect pay for any new unused time when they retire the second time.

In addition, TERI is placing a huge drain on the state retirement system, and therefore endangering the state’s ability to keep offering annual cost-of-living increases to retirees. The retirement system reports that its unfunded liability would drop from 24 years to 17 years if the state were to stop enrolling new TERI participants. That’s a measure of financial stability; the higher the number, the less stable the system is.

Eliminating TERI won’t be popular, particularly since state employees already feel besieged by layoffs, increases in their health insurance premiums and a drought of pay raises. But it’s a program that does not make sense, and cannot be justified. If legislators want to give additional benefits to state employees, they should do so directly, not with a program that they promised would serve an entirely different purpose — and doesn’t.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.