https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension_spiking
piling up overtime and sick and vacation days saved over previous years, people are frequently able to 2x and more their salary for pension calculations.
Yes—with a long career over which to save (especially since public employers tend to have vacation allocation which increases with years of service)—and an hourly wage rather than salaried job so that they are eligible for overtime, and participation in one of the systems that hasn't adopted controls to prevent pension spiking, sure.
But not with a 6 year stint in political staff position.
And the "political staff positions" are the in the same state bureaucracy as the other agency employees. They're not treated differently for retirement based solely on the fact that they work for the legislature.
And it's certainly possible to build up a lot of vacation and flex time (not strictly OT but it's still paid out at a reduced rate) in 6 years.
It's worse on average, it's better at minimum (ignoring, for this analysis, municipal bankruptcy)
> My state starts doling out pensions at 5 years. A friend of mine worked for a state senator in the 90s for 6 years. He's got something like $1200/mo guaranteed during his retirement for 6 years of borderline political work ~25 years ago.
Assuming a 2% of highest full years salary per year of service formula at typical retirement age (a fairly generous public, non-safety pension), with 6 years of service that would require a base salary of $120,000 over the highest paid year of those six, that’s—today, not in the 1990s—a fairly senior staff salary for the California State Senate, which has the highest legislator and staff salaries in the nation.
Your description is not necessarily impossible, but it's extremely far from typical.