Ex-Santa Ana police union boss loses fight to include $300K salary in pension ...Middle East

By Adam Ashton | CalMatters

Gerry Serrano wanted to keep it all.

The former Santa Ana cop pulled in almost $300,000 annually while leading the city’s police officer union, a sum based on what he earned in the preceding years as a longtime police detective.

For the past five years, he has fought in court and at the state’s pension board to have all of that compensation count toward his retirement income, including pay that originated from perks for specific law enforcement assignments that he didn’t actually perform while he was a union leader. Last week, he lost.

Also see: Office of Attorney General declines to consider criminal charges against Santa Ana police chief

The 4th District Court of Appeal held that Serrano can’t count toward his pension perks for work he didn’t do while on leave as a labor representative. That meant striking from his pension formula incentives that were originally connected to his overtime, bilingual pay, holidays and a uniform allowance.

Beyond its effect on Serrano, the ruling could influence other California public employees’ decisions about whether to take union leave.

Serrano had argued that California law requires government agencies to allow union leave “without loss of compensation or other benefits” for designated labor representatives and that trimming his pensionable income contradicted that statute.

“All these rules and laws and regulations have been enacted to foster positive labor relations and make the process work. Well, it’s not going to work if you don’t have anybody to run the union if they’re going to take a massive pay cut,” said Lina Balciunas Cockrell, who represented Serrano at the appeals court.

Leaders at the state pension fund commended the ruling. It affirmed previous decisions by an administrative law judge, the board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and a Sacramento Superior Court judge.

“This ruling reaffirms CalPERS stance that special extra pay bonuses to spike pensions won’t be tolerated. This ruling will have implications for similar cases involving public employees who decide to take leave for leadership roles in associations,” CalPERS General Counsel Matthew Jacobs said in a written statement.

Serrano will still make a good living in retirement. He retired in 2023, and he earned $14,810 a month —  almost $178,000 a year — through his CalPERS pension last year, according to the retirement system.

He was a big presence in Santa Ana politics for years. The union under his leadership tried to recall council members who opposed pay and benefit increases for cops, according to coverage in the Voice of OC. When he retired, the Orange County Register published an editorial that said “good riddance” to him.

Serrano told an administrative law judge in 2021 that he believed a former council member with whom he had “political differences” flagged his pay package to CalPERS, which triggered a detailed review of what kind of income could count toward his pension.

A CalPERS official focused on a memorandum of understanding detailing how Serrano would be paid when he became the union leader in 2016. The formula included his base salary, several pay differentials that he had earned as a veteran detective and a special payment that was calculated to make up for the overtime he likely would have earned had he continued working as a detective.

The package actually increased his pay, according to records that are posted at Transparent California, a website that collects and publishes payroll and pension data from California government agencies.

Serrano earned about $167,000 in 2015, before he became the union leader. His wages increased to $233,000 in 2017, his first full year as the labor representative. Serrano’s pay climbed to $290,000 in 2019 and 2020.

But the union work ultimately did not pay off for Serrano’s retirement.

CalPERS, which provides retirement and health benefits for workers at nearly 3,000 California government agencies, determined that Serrano’s income based on pay differentials for police work he did not perform as a union leader could not be applied to his pension.

Most significantly, it concluded the special compensation connected to his past overtime earnings also would not apply to his pension. That’s because overtime pay is not pensionable under state law.

The case at the appeals court centered on the pay that his memorandum of understanding linked to lost overtime, which his attorneys argued was actually intended to compensate him for increased responsibilities on sensitive issues. The appeals court rejected that reasoning.

Labor attorney Balciunas Cockrell said that memorandum of understanding might serve as a “cautionary tale” to other California public employee unions. In the future, unions that want to pay a labor representative for extra job duties might avoid connecting that compensation in any way to overtime.

“The position is obviously a sensitive position that requires trust and discretion,” she said, describing responsibilities that include discipline, health care and compensation. “That should be the easy part. The question is how you calculate it in a way that does not isolate the union president to give a benefit that is out of proportion with other leadership positions.”

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