August 15, 2013
Victory! Phoenix removes pension spiking provisions from public safety contracts effective July 1, 2014.
The City of Phoenix’s public retirement systems are sinking further into the red, but that hasn’t stopped the city and Mayor Stanton from encouraging senior police officers to spike their pensions in violation of state law.
Phoenix’s contract with public safety workers permits employees to “cash in” unused sick leave, vacation leave, compensatory time, and other fringe benefits as salary in the years preceding retirement, thus inflating or “spiking” final salary for pension calculation purposes.
In May 2013, the Goldwater Institute sent a letter to the City of Phoenix asking it to end its illegal policy of allowing senior police personnel to increase the amount of their pensions by cashing in unused sick leave, vacation, and other benefits. This practice of “pension spiking” violates state law. The city’s refusal to end this policy is an affront to the rule of law and the Goldwater Institute is representing Phoenix taxpayers to stop this abusive practice.
The clients are Phoenix taxpayers Jennifer Wright, Eric Wnuck, and Jim Jochim.
The judge is the Honorable John Rea.
Jon Riches is the Vice President for Litigation for the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation and General Counsel for the Institute. He litigates in federal and state trial and appellate courts in the areas of economic liberty, regulatory reform, free speech, taxpayer protections, public labor issues, government transparency, and school choice, among others.… Read more...
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