HUNTINGTON BEACH : Pension Spiking Debate Heats Up

Public criticism of pension spiking by Huntington Beach city employees intensified this week during the public comments portion of a City Council meeting.

Spiking allows a person to collect a higher pension by including such things as unused vacation days in computing a final year’s salary.

Representatives of a new organization, the Citizens Bureau of Investigation, repeatedly assailed the practice Monday night, saying employees who do it are “robbing” the taxpayers.

Councilman David Sullivan, a frequent critic of pension spiking, praised the group and invited its founder, Bill Mello, to attend meetings of a council subcommittee that is investigating ways to halt spiking.

But Councilman Earle Robitaille, a retired police chief, blasted the CBI speakers. “I think I’ve never heard so much b.s. coming out of one group in my life,” he said.

Some people in the audience booed at Robitaille as he made the comments.

“You got the money, Earle!” yelled one man in the council audience. The taunt apparently referred to Robitaille’s having benefited from a spiked pension when he retired from the Police Department. State auditors in 1992 said 16 Huntington Beach retired officials, including Robitaille, received artificially inflated pensions caused by spiking.

Robitaille has previously defended his pension. He has noted that previous City Councils voted for spiking provisions as part of city contracts with employee organizations.

One such city-employee contract that allows pension spiking came before the City Council in 1991, when Robitaille was a councilman. During Monday night’s public comments, one speaker suggested that council members at the time did not realize what they were voting for when they unanimously approved contracts allowing pension spiking.

But Robitaille, in rebuttal, said he knew exactly what he had voted for.

“I, for one, was not deluded, hornswoggled or misinformed,” Robitaille said.

Councilwoman Grace Winchell told the audience that the council majority is working to eliminate spiking, but that the problem is complex. “It is this council’s desire to get this straightened out in the best fashion possible,” she said.

Mello and others in CBI have charged that 153 current city employees potentially can obtain spiked pensions when they retire. Mello has said such continued spiking could cost the city up to $10 million.