Proposed changes to the rules governing post-retirement employment of public employees will stay on hold until an audit due next month is finished, state lawmakers decided Monday.

At issue are situations in which a public worker retires, usually early, but also continues working full-time in a similar position -- plus a "loophole" that some lawmakers said limits the ability to enforce existing retirement rules.

The practice has many defenders who say it's needed to retain experienced workers, especially in hard-to-fill vacancies in education and corrections. There's concern, though, that if re-employment became too widespread it would hurt the funding of the retirement system, since contribution amounts are based on employees not retiring early.

State Rep. Glenn Donnelson, R-North Ogden, is again offering legislation that would tighten the definition of "same" and "different" agency. The proposal passed the state House of Representatives earlier this year but stalled in the Senate.

Current state law says that a retiree must wait six months before being employed full-time by the agency he or she worked for previously. For instance, a teacher couldn't be employed immediately by the same school district, or a city worker couldn't stay on board with the same municipality.

There's ambiguity at the state level, however: "Some departments within state government have interpreted the statute to allow someone to retire and then immediately go to work in a different division within the same department," stated a legislative analysis handed out Monday.

"We're just defining agencies and trying to close a little loophole that's in there," Donnelson said of his legislation.

The Legislative Auditor General is studying that issue, and an audit is due next month.

Jeff Herring, executive director of the Utah Department of Human Resource Management, agreed that post-retirement employment shouldn't be a "sham transaction" -- but he also stressed the state's need for experienced workers.

"There is a cost to losing that talent," he said. "I would at least like to have some exception power to keep that as flexible as we can."

State Rep. Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, shared that concern.

"Math teachers, science teachers, special ed teachers are in critical supply," Clark said. "We want every tool that we have to keep those people in the education system."

Monday's discussion took place during a meeting of the Retirement and Independent Entities Interim Committee.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.