A three-part series by The Associated Press
o Today: Late pay raises mean jumps in pension benefits under some state-funded plans.
o Monday: Medical benefits tied to retirement system threaten local government finances.
o Tuesday: A look at government workers who retire on disability and then return to physically-demanding activities.
LAKEWOOD — By the end of 2009, three veteran managers at Lakewood Fire District 2 earned salaries that topped $175,000 annually — more than Seattle’s fire chief, who was overseeing a department roughly 10 times as large.
Their pay would soon grow even bigger, if only briefly.
Just four days before Michael McGovern and Greg Hull were set to retire, their annual salaries jumped by more than $17,000 each, in part due to a late contract addendum. Bob Bronoske got a similar increase just 13 weeks before he departed, putting each of their compensation rates around $200,000.
A three-part series by The Associated Press
o Today: Late pay raises mean jumps in pension benefits under some state-funded plans.
o Monday: Medical benefits tied to retirement system threaten local government finances.
o Tuesday: A look at government workers who retire on disability and then return to physically-demanding activities.
While Hull said in an interview that his final salary bump wasn’t designed to inflate his pension, emails show part of the Lakewood raises were developed over the span of several weeks, with retirement in mind. The men were already slated to get a salary bump at the beginning of 2010 but that was pushed even higher by an addendum approved in November 2009.
Then-Fire Chief Ken Sharp and finance director Koree Wick said in interviews that the late raises were designed to build incentives to retire by augmenting pension values. They said the local fire officials were having budget troubles and were interested in some staff retirements to help with a potential merger with a nearby fire district.
The pensioners who received the late raises were all part of LEOFF-1, short for the Law Enforcement Officers’ and Fire Fighters’ Retirement System Plan 1. About 1,000 veteran public servants have retired into the LEOFF-1 system over the past decade, leaving only about 200 active workers remaining.
Pension values for most Washington government employees — who work under more than a dozen different retirement plans — are based on a snapshot of their salaries over a long period of time, such as a five-year window for many teachers. But workers hired into the LEOFF-1 system before October 1977 have benefited from unique provisions in their plan, which typically calculates pension values based largely on the final paycheck they earned.
States around the country have dealt with pension-spiking problems even when retirement values are based on earnings over the span of 12 months, said Jun Peng, an associate professor at the University of Arizona who has studied pension systems in several U.S. states. He said the idea that a Washington pension program would allow pension values to be determined by a final paycheck was “scary.”
“That seems outrageous,” he said.
The pay raises in Lakewood were approved legally by a board of fire commissioners, which meets for hearings with minimal public attendance, though it’s not clear whether the raises should have qualified as pensionable earnings under state rules.
All of the late salary increases reviewed by AP came during times of budget and economic struggles over the past five years. At the meeting during which the Lakewood salary addendums were approved, in the middle of national economic turmoil, commissioners talked about their own financial problems and the need to find cost-saving measures.
That same night, the board asked some workers in the district to contribute more to cover their medical costs.
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Raises also helped encourage retirements in places like Kelso and Quincy. Meanwhile, some long-time chiefs in places like Walla Walla and Mason County got big raises before their retirements, with local officials arguing that the leaders weren’t being properly compensated.
In other cases, officials used carefully crafted contracts and let workers decide whether they wanted to retire when temporary raises were in effect.
A contract clause implemented in 2008 gave veteran fire officials a 22 percent “longevity” supplement for serving more than 27 years in the department. Fire workers in Renton typically received only a 12 percent supplement after serving 25 years. The extra benefit, which prompted eight people to retire, was negotiated only for the 2008 calendar year and has not been renewed.
Lee Wheeler, who was fire chief at the time, said the city was looking to shed older staffers and replace them with younger workers who would be lower on the salary scale.
“It worked out dollars and cents-wise — from the city’s standpoint, that is,” Wheeler said.
For the state pension system, that maneuver is costing taxpayers about $90,000 a year.
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Auditors previously have come across late raises and challenged whether they were allowed.
In one case, officials examining the records at Central Pierce Fire and Rescue found that the district’s board of commissioners had approved a $3,123 monthly salary increase in the final months of Chief Jack Andren’s time in office. That 2010 increase, which auditors said was improperly negotiated behind closed doors, included a cost-of-living adjustment and compensation for unused sick leave.
Sick-leave payments were supposed to be provided as a cash-out at the point of retirement and not included in pension calculations. The extra pension payments caused by the salary spike were ultimately corrected and reimbursed to the state.
Auditors didn’t have as much success in a 2006 case in which the North Highline Fire Chief Russ Pritchard saw his salary jump 57.5 percent to nearly $200,000 per year — three months before retirement. His monthly pension benefit is now more than Pritchard was paid in salary in the months before his late raise.
After state retirement officials questioned whether the money was designed as a retirement incentive package, the district denied that intention and then adopted a resolution making the new salary permanent, even for the incoming chief. That placated the concerns of retirement officials, who saw the raise as simply a readjustment of how the chief’s position was compensated in general.
Meeting minutes obtained by AP, however, say the board of fire commissioners had offered him a “severance package” that he was accepting.
In 2010, the district eliminated the fire chief position — and the salary — altogether.
Sonntag, who was state auditor at the time the assessments took place, said he believes officials involved in both cases were participating in a concerted effort to egregiously abuse the system.
“How does that pass anyone’s common-sense test?” Sonntag asked.
