Coroner’s Office Reneged on Retirement, Workers Say : Jobs: Three employees say department offered them benefits to leave early, but backed down after they agreed. Agency spokesman calls it a misunderstanding.

Three employees of the Los Angeles County coroner’s office have alleged that they were misled about early retirement benefits so they would voluntarily agree to give up their jobs to help balance the county budget.

The three, including oft-quoted coroner spokesman Bob Dambacher, filed appeals this month with the county Civil Service Commission claiming that the department offered them ample early retirement packages and then reneged on the deal. When they sought to keep their jobs, they said, they were told the positions had been eliminated to help offset the county’s $2.2-billion budget gap.

Their attorney, Godfrey Isaac, said Friday that he has asked the commission to place the appeals on hold because within days of filing them the coroner’s office reopened retirement negotiations with the three. In addition, all county layoffs have been postponed until after Sept. 15.

“Hopefully it blows over and that’s the end of it,” Dambacher said. “I’d like to go out with a smile and that would be the end of it and it looks like it will be that way.”

But Isaac, who represented former Coroner Thomas T. Noguchi in his two legal battles with the county, said the situation faced by the three is further indication of chronic problems in the department, which operated without a chief coroner for more than a year.

The coroner’s office, while not disputing the information contained in the appeals, said it was partly a misunderstanding. Personnel officer Anthony T. Hernandez said the three--Dambacher, nursing consultant Barbara Davidson and contract administrator Edwin DuConge--were going to be laid off regardless of whether they agreed to early retirement offers.

“It had nothing to do with whether they would accept it or not. It was an economic measure,” Hernandez said.

The appeal, written Aug. 6, said the three were offered the choice between keeping their jobs or retiring early at enhanced levels, 90% of salary in Dambacher’s case, beginning July 1. But in mid-July, after choosing to retire, they claim they were told that no extra compensation would be available for early retirement.

The office had “aggressively pursued” early retirement packages for the three to ease the financial strain of the layoff, Hernandez said. But he said that initial discussions with them regarding increasing their retirement benefits were only tentative because they occurred before the Board of Supervisor’s July 29 approval of an early retirement program.

Subsequent to the board vote, Hernandez said a similar early retirement deal was made available. Dambacher said the details of the new proposal are “close, very close” to the original one, but he said he and the other two employees are waiting to see the final numbers before withdrawing their appeals.

In Isaac’s appeal letters to the Civil Service Commission, he claimed that Dambacher, 59, Davidson, 52, and DuConge, 57, have been victims of age discrimination and fraud. All three worked for the county for at least 28 years.

The yearlong quest to fill the chief medical examiner’s job ended with the selection of a man who turned the county down because of Los Angeles’ high housing costs. The second choice, a deputy examiner from New York, had to be turned away after he failed the California medical licensing test three times.

In February, the department’s No. 2 man, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, was appointed.

The job had previously been held by Noguchi, who stepped down in 1982 after he was accused of poor management. Noguchi was followed by Ronald Kornblum, who resigned in July, 1990, after a critical audit also cited poor management.