Tanner

In this “pension spiking” case, plaintiff Joseph Tanner sought to overturn a decision of defendant Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) significantly reducing his expected retirement benefit.

Specifically, Tanner argues his retirement benefit should be set based on a base salary of $305,844, which was provided for in his final written contract with the City of Vallejo. The board of administration of CalPERS (also a defendant in this action) decided Tanner was not entitled to have his retirement benefit based on that figure. On Tanner’s petition for a writ of administrative mandate, the trial court agreed with the board, holding (among other things) that the $305,844 figure could not be used as Tanner’s final compensation for purposes of setting his retirement benefit because it did not qualify as his pay rate due to the fact that the figure did not appear on a publicly available pay schedule.

On Tanner’s appeal, we agree with the trial court that neither Tanner’s final contract with the city nor a chart prepared by city staff to show how Tanner’s final base salary was determined qualified as a publicly available pay schedule for purposes of determining the…