Yes, as CalMatters began last week, “Gerry Serrano wanted to keep it all.” I bet you thought we’d heard the last of the Santa Ana Police Union’s grasping flame-throwing President, and so did I. But 16 months after his recall of Councilwoman Jessie Lopez failed, 19 months after he was forced out of his job “for medical reasons” and told “Good Riddance” by the Register, he was STILL fighting tooth and nail in Court to get the biggest pension possible, and just last week he finally lost that war in the 4th District Court of Appeals.
Here is the 16-page decision in case you’re curious.
It all comes down to an awkward little neo-adjective called “pensionable,” as in what is pensionable and what’s not? And the appellate court agreed with previous courts, that a whole buncha extra pay Gerry managed to wangle himself during his years as union boss does NOT count toward his pension, is not “pensionable.”
Let’s back up a little: when SA detective Serrano took the union boss job in 2016, he made damn sure that he kept all these extra pay packages he had enjoyed as a cop, which was not a given:
- extra “confidentiality” pay (for frequently being “assigned to sensitive positions requiring trust and discretion” which happened before 2016 but not after),
- extra holiday pay (even though he never had to work holidays as a union boss), and
- LOTS & LOTS OF OVERTIME PAY, even though he never had to freaking work overtime as a union boss.
Yes, after becoming a union boss, Greedy Gerry managed to keep all these extra pay packages, some from the union some from the city, with the argument that he shouldn’t be penalized for taking the union job by making less money than he did before taking it. Nice non-work if you can get it!
When a “public servant” like Serrano gets toward the end of his career, he’ll likely try to jack up his income as high as possible, knowing that his pension is calculated based on the pay he made during the highest-paying year of his last three years. And Greedy Gerry jacked his income up to NEARLY $300K by his final year, hoping that would all go toward his pension. IT’S CALLED PENSION SPIKING.
Here, this is better, let me help get that Queen song out of your head:
(RAMONES > QUEEN. In most cases.)
At some point during his Union presidency it became clear to Gerry that all these extra streams of income MIGHT NOT count toward his pension, and from then on, making sure that they did became his obsession. He tried to get laws changed, he lobbied politicians, he sued everybody, he seemed to put more time and effort into spiking his pension than working for his union membership, he threatened to “burn the town down” and drove up his own blood pressure.
But it’s easy to make fun of Insatiable Gerry Serrano, he’s unlikeable, he’s out of power, and he’s just lost his last battle. But how about those politicians who enabled him, all of them Democrats, all of them recipients of his and his union’s campaign largesse? And I’m not just talking about his three loyal Santa Ana puppets Amezcua, Bacerra & Penaloza, who, no matter how much Gerry meddled, remained a minority on that Council.
I’m talking, sadly, about six Democrat state legislators who Duane Roberts of the Anaheim Investigator caught writing letters to CALPERS to try to help Gerry include all that extra income in his pension. Hare-brained letters that CALPERS ignored but these Democrats did do their best for Gerry! And at least five of those six later got campaign money from an appreciative Serrano. Shame! And I hate to see two of my friends in this list: Assemblymembers Tom Daly & Sharon Quirk-Silva, and Senators Umberg, Archuleta, Freddie Rodriguez & Josh Newman!
But nobody went to bat so hard for Gerry’s pension-spiking as State Treasurer Fiona Ma (above left, in a story also broken by Duane) – now running for Lt. Governor! After meeting privately with Gerry, Fiona managed to produce some amendments to pension law to address precisely what he craved so badly – never mind that these amendments later went nowhere, they still made Gerry so ecstatic that he had his union donate $15,900 to Fiona – $53 from each dues-paying Santa Ana cop, in gratitude for the treasurer’s trying to help spike Gerry’s pension!
Oh, but…
Well but, all those years of feverish work came to naught last week, in a victory for fiscal prudence and good government, at the Court of Appeals. Or, as CALPERS General Counsel Matthew Jacobs put it:
“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.”
Don’t cry for Gerry Serrano – wait, you weren’t, were you? He’s still getting a pension of almost $178,000 a year, which I’d humbly consider very comfortable. Even if that is nowhere near what he wanted. Gerry Serrano WANTED IT ALL.
Leave a Reply