Moorlach moves to cancel retroactive pension

Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach on Friday escalated his battle with the county sheriff’s department by announcing he’ll try to rescind a retroactive pension benefit granted to deputy sheriffs in 2001.

The benefit may violate the state constitution in three ways, one being an unlawful gift of public finds, according to information from Moorlach’s office.

The retroactive increase to deputies’ pension benefits caused the county unfunded liability between $100 million and $300 million, and affects 2,800 current employees and up to 500 who are already retired, Moorlach said.

It’s the latest shot he’s taken at deputies, and they haven’t been reluctant to fire back. A spokesman for the deputies association said they’ll oppose the issue when Moorlach brings it to the board of supervisors July 31.

“Obviously we’re extremely disappointed,” said Mike Carre, the association’s interim general manager. The pension formula was agreed on during lawful collective bargaining sessions, he said, “and I’m sure every single one of them [the employees] planned their future based on that benefit.”

A previous board of supervisors agreed in 2001 to reopen negotiations with the deputies association, and they ultimately voted to boost pensions from 2% at 50 to 3% at 50.

That means an employee can retire and collect 3% of their final salary for each year worked, so a 25-year employee would get 75% of their salary upon retirement.

Moorlach said he saw opinion columns about the issue and realized Orange County might have a problem, and legal research backed that up.

It could be unconstitutional as a gift of public funds, as extra compensation for work already performed and because it exceeds the amount of debt supervisors can take on without voter approval, Moorlach said.

“I am sworn to uphold the state constitution,” said Moorlach, who was county treasurer for more than 10 years before he was elected supervisor in 2006. “It has given me the biggest target on my back ever, but for me as an accountant, the focus has been finances. I have nothing against the deputy sheriffs.”

But he has already angered deputies by asking to create an oversight board for the sheriff’s department.

Carre said he doesn’t know whether Moorlach is relying on sound legal reasoning and the issue was never brought up to the association before it was aired publicly.

“To us it just further reinforces that Supervisor Moorlach does not value the service that the men and women of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and the Orange County District Attorney’s office have provided to this county,” Carre said.