Public Safety

Overtime Not Eligible For Pension Payments

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published November 2, 2009 at 1:49 PM PST

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

San Diego’s city attorney, Jan Goldsmith, said the city has defeated one of several lawsuits seeking higher pension payments for employees.

Superior Court Judge Judith Hayes ruled members of the fire department could not count regular overtime as part of their salaries for pension purposes.

Goldsmith said the ruling spares the city from potentially heavy pension cost increases in future years.

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"If it had come out the other way it would have opened up claims from past, present and future employees that overtime was included within pension compensation," Goldsmith said." So conservatively, it would have been an exposure of tens of millions of dollars."

Goldsmith said even though paramedics and some other city employees have to work overtime on a regular basis to get the job done, the city’s municipal code is clear that overtime is not part of the regular salary on which pensions are based.

He said several suits remain to be resolved which could cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars in increased pensions.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.