Last week, a jury found former Fresno Deputy Police Chief Keith Foster guilty on two charges of conspiring to distribute heroin and marijuana. The disgraced ex-cop could end up spending the next 20 years behind bars, depending on how his sentencing pans out. But he’ll still keep his $93,000+ annual pension, and that has some people furious.
Foster’s been collecting the money since his arrest in 2015.
“The No. 2 police officer in the city of Fresno is dealing heroin and he gets to keep his pension? That’s atrocious,” said City Councilman Garry Bredefeld.
It certainly is. That’s why barring such felons from public pension collection became part of the California Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act of 2013 (PEPRA). Unfortunately, it won’t do much good in this case.
“Since the city of Fresno is a charter city, we are not governed under the provisions of the PEPRA Act. Therefore, the PEPRA provisions do not apply to our retirement systems,” City Hall spokesman Mark Standriff explained. As for Fresno, “there are no provisions in the retirement sections of the Fresno Municipal Code that would eliminate an individual’s pension due to a felony.”
With the uproar over Foster’s pension, city officials will undoubtedly begin to look at changing the law to ensure those who commit felonies on the job aren’t eligible for such generous benefits in the future. But even if Fresno had been in sync with PEPRA, there’s some legal disagreement over whether this violates employees’ constitutionally-protected “vested rights.”
That question is still making its way through the courts, with two crooked fire captains at its center.
[Captains] Wilmot and Hipsher, who worked, respectively, for 27 and more than 30 years, each pleaded guilty to felonies. The question now is whether they can keep their full pensions.
Their cases provide the first legal tests of a controversial provision in Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2012 statewide pension changes. Under the law, workers convicted of job-related felonies lose pension benefits from the time they start committing their crimes…
Last week, a Contra Costa judge upheld the reduction of Wilmot’s pension, but did so in a surprising ruling that didn’t address the vested rights issue. Wilmot’s attorney says he will likely appeal.
Meanwhile, Hipsher’s attorneys have already asked the state Court of Appeal to overturn the ruling against him. Last year, the Los Angeles County judge in his case upheld the new law.