Nearly 40 percent of Montgomery County public safety retirees earn extra money for work-related disabilities, compared with 3 percent of similar retirees in Fairfax County, according to a report released Monday by Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett.

Over the past eight years, 226 of the 587 Montgomery County fire and rescue, police, corrections, and sheriff’s employees who retired were given job-related disability benefits. More than half of those workers, or 121 retirees, were police officers.

Inspector General Tom Dagley also said Monday that he is in the midst of investigating allegations of “fraud, waste and abuse” in the county’s disability retirement program. He shared preliminary findings about “serious concerns” recently with Leggett’s senior staff, and will release a full audit in September.

“Our field work included testing that examined management processes used to approve certain service-connected disability retirements,” Dagley said, but did not specify that he was investigating any particular department.

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Leggett asked representatives of Montgomery’s police, fire and rescue, and human resources departments plus the county attorney to examine the system last fall. After nine months of study, they recommended seven changes including allowing a denial of benefits if an employee is terminated for wrongdoing. Lacefield said multiple police officers who were busted for working private security jobs while on the county’s clock last year are receiving disability payments.

Other proposed changes include separate payments for people who are partially versus fully disabled, requiring regular physical exams be performed by the county’s human resources office of medical services, restricting retirees from filing for disability after they retire and considering whether job-related injuries are reported in a timely fashion.

Police, fire and rescue, corrections, and sheriff’s office representatives all told The Examiner on Monday they were not aware of any problems.

Spokesman Patrick Lacefield said Leggett commissioned the review because he “had gotten the sense ... that the numbers were surprisingly high and perhaps not consistent with what we may find in other jurisdictions.”

Jane Milne, secretary for the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 35, added that union leaders did not even know the study was taking place.

“The county executive and the FOP concluded retirement negotiations on November 29, 2007,” Milne said via e-mail. “These new issues, which are subject to collective bargaining, were not raised by the county executive at the time.”

kmiller@dcexaminer.com