Prentice

The Legislature and the Board of Administration of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) have adopted limitations on the salary which may be considered in calculating a public employee’s retirement allowance. Among other matters, these limitations exclude from consideration payments which were not available to similarly situated public employees. In this case a local municipality decided to provide the manager of its water and power department with a 10.49 percent salary increase during what turned out to be the last two years of his career. Although the municipality had a salary range for the manager’s position which would have applied to anyone else who filled the position, the municipality did not alter the salary range to reflect the increase and it was not otherwise available to other employees in the same class as the manager. In light of these circumstances, PERS did not include the salary increase in calculating the manager’s retirement allowance. The manager then challenged PERS’s decision by way of a petition for a writ of mandate, which the trial court denied.

On appeal, we affirm. The salary increase was outside the limits of compensation…