Records obtained through a Bee lawsuit cast light on a Stanislaus County pension system that richly rewards top government and law enforcement employees and creates incentives for employees to retire early.
More than two-thirds of the county's top 50 pensioners are paid more in retirement than when they worked. They include former department heads and managers in the chief executive office, environmental resources, behavioral health, the sheriff's office, engineering and other county departments.
For years, the Stanislaus County Employees' Retirement Association kept a tight hold on pension records for retired employees of the county, Ceres, the courts and five special districts. That changed last month when a Superior Court lawsuit seeking disclosure of the records was decided in favor of The Bee, the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the California First Amendment Coalition.
The records reveal that spiking — the practice of using vacation cashouts and other compensation to boost retirement pay — was common among the 50 StanCERA retirees whose pensions exceed $100,000 a year.
Detailed records for 10 retirees show that spiking boosted retirement pay by 13 percent to 33 percent, causing up to a $515,000-per-person increase in the anticipated cost of funding their pensions for life. The average pension increase from spiking was 22.5 percent, driving up lifetime pension costs for the top 50 retirees by an estimated $20 million.
The records also show:
80 percent of the top pensioners retired from government service before turning 60. The average retirement age was 56.8 years.
Eight of the 16 top- earning law enforcement employees who retired since 2000, including three assistant sheriffs, left before the age of 55. Public safety employees can retire at 50 with up to 90 percent of their pay. Those who work more than 30 years can get more than 110 percent of salary.
The top 2 percent of StanCERA pensioners receive 9 percent of the $71.5 million in annual payments to StanCERA's nearly 2,800 retirees.
Stanislaus County is in the same boat as other jurisdictions in California that have granted generous benefits to employees in better times and now are faced with meeting obligations with pension funds depleted by stock market losses. Besides liberal rules letting retirees apply many forms of pay to retirement, they get cost-of-living adjustments compounded annually that steadily increase their pensions.
Much is at stake for taxpayers, because the county and other employers have to pump money into Stan-CERA's $1 billion pension system if it becomes underfunded.
Some county leaders believe generous benefits work against the goal of retaining experienced people in departments such as the sheriff's office.
"We lose so much knowledge out of the Sheriff's Department when they retire at 50," county Supervisor Vito Chiesa said. "They may not be as physically fit, but they have the investigative skills and general knowledge that is invaluable to the department."
Public service extras
The pensions for public service employees are more lucrative than the defined benefit retirement plans in the private sector, where the standard pension might be 60 percent to 70 percent of a person's average salary.
Most StanCERA members can claim the compensation from their final year, or the year in which they earned the most pay, as an all-important factor in determining their pensions. (In the private sector, the employee's compensation is averaged over three years, five years or their entire career.)
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