Judge rules statue of limitations had expired
Blog note: this article mentions a 2012 grand jury report. Some grand jury reports in any one year can affect outcomes many years in the future.
A citizen’s lawsuit filed late last year against a series of pension benefit increases enacted by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors in 2002 and 2003 was set aside last week by Superior Court Judge Rene Chouteau as “time barred” for missing the statute of limitations.
The suit filed by retired attorney George Luke of Larkfield accuses an earlier board of county supervisors with a conflict of interest for enriching their own pensions, violating certain public law requirements and not completing an independent audit.
Judge Chouteau’s actions last week did not address any of Luke’s original complaints, some of which county lawyers had admitted were partially in error in the past.
The past county officials admission of errors were made in response to a 2012 county civil Grand Jury report.
Although Luke waited 15 years to file his complaint, he argues there was no “adequate or speedy remedy” available to him because the county’s original actions were never made public or disclosed until a later internal investigation by a Board of Supervisors subcommittee in 2011.
Those subcommittee members, supervisors Shirley Zane and David Rabbitt, called Luke’s case “without merit and a waste of taxpayer’s money” at the time he filed the action in September 2017.
The county’s pension plan covers almost 9,000 current and retired employees. The fund has a current value of $2.3 billion, but is estimated to be underfunded by $831 million in current and future payout obligations.
Luke and others have pointed to the previous board’s actions in 2002 as causing a large increase to the county’s unfunded pension debt. In 2000 that amount was $10.8 million, but the debt grew to $449 million by 2014, based on the county’s own analysis.
Recent boards of supervisors have exacted a series of reforms to reduce future bond debts, but those don’t curtail pensions already granted to retirees.
An Independent Citizen Advisory Committee in 2015 found that $269 million could have been saved over the previous 10 years if the 2002 increases had not been awarded.
Ken Churchill, founder of the group New Sonoma County and a member of the Sonoma County Taxpayers Association, attended last week’s court sessions.
“As a result of this ruling (by Chouteau), taxpayers over the next few decades will have a couple of billion dollars diverted from services to these illegally enhanced pensions and the embezzlement of our tax dollars will continue,” he said.
Luke’s case can be appealed to a state appellate court but attorneys on the case said a decision to appeal has not been made as yet.
June 26, 2018
Sonoma West Times & News
By Rollie Atkinson
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