Jailers Lose Battle Over Pensions

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  A five-year legal fight by city jailers for better retirement benefits ended Thursday when the state Supreme Court ruled that the city has the right to stand in their way.

The unanimous decision by the state’s highest court means that the city’s 17 jailers will continue to become eligible for their pension benefits when they reach age 60, instead of age 50 as they had hoped. The ruling saves the city hundreds of thousands of dollars it would have had to contribute to the state retirement system if the jailers had won.

Edward L. Faunce, the lawyer who represented the jailers, said he was surprised by the ruling because they had won at almost every other stage of the legal battle.

City officials said an average jailer at Huntington Beach city jail earns about $42,000 per year. A jailer who retires after 30 years’ service at a salary of $40,000 would draw a pension of about $24,000, Deputy City Administrator Robert Franz said. If they had won their case, jailers would have qualified for the same pension but would have been able to begin collecting it 10 years earlier, Franz said.

Currently, the city contributes about $494 a month into the retirement system for each jailer, said Dan Lewis, the city’s personnel manager. If the jailers had won, the city would have had to increase that contribution to about $825 a month and pay retroactive increases for any jailer who had been employed by the city in recent years, he said.

The case began in 1987, when the jailers requested that they be classified with police officers and firefighters in the state Public Employees Retirement System, instead of with non-law-enforcement city employees.

PERS denied the request, but an administrative law judge permitted the change. Judges in the Los Angeles Superior Court and state appeals court backed the decision.

The jailers contended that their duties were akin to those of law enforcement officers, so they deserved similar benefits. But in a series of appeals, the city contended that the state Government Code gives it the authority to decide whether to classify its jailers as law enforcement officers. On Thursday, the state Supreme Court agreed with the city.

The jailers’ “entire case boils down to the theory that employees whose primary duty and responsibility is the supervision and custody of persons committed to jail ought to qualify for (superior benefits) regardless of the employing city’s wishes,” said Justice Marvin Baxter, writing for the court. “The Legislature, however, has quite plainly decided otherwise.”

Since the city has not opted to treat the jailers as policemen under the Government Code and since their custodial functions do not constitute active law enforcement as defined in another section, they fail to qualify for the superior benefits of law enforcement officers, Baxter wrote.

“We’re gratified that the state Supreme Court has ended the debate and taken the position we have long felt was right, that the city shall prevail in making these decisions,” Huntington Beach City Atty. Gail C. Hutton said.