DALLAS (AP) — At a state agency in Texas, the executive director is receiving a $123,000-a-year salary even as he is drawing a government pension, as he has for the past eight years. In a struggling Michigan school district, 10 administrators retired, started drawing pension checks and returned immediately as contract employees. A school administrator in Illinois makes a combined $409,000 a year in pension payments and salary for overseeing a public boarding school.

Double-dipping — the well-established practice of public workers collecting government pensions and salaries at the same time — has become a hot topic for lawmakers around the country during these times of severely strained budgets and increased focus on the benefits provided to government employees.

Yet even as some states have begun curbing the practice, a review by The Associated Press found tens of thousands of state and public school employees across the country drawing government salaries along with their pensions. In five states alone — California, New York, Texas, Florida and Michigan — at least 66,000 government retirees also receive taxpayer-funded paychecks.