Craig Gustafson broke the story in the Union-Tribune today about how Mayor Jerry Sanders quietly began collecting his full salary in December, despite his promises during his 2005 mayoral campaign that he wouldn’t “double-dip” by collecting his pension and his full salary.
One of the many questions it raised for me is why Sanders wasn’t included on a recent list of elected officials’ pension payments that retirement officials provided in response to a request from Councilman Carl DeMaio.
DeMaio requested the “benefit payouts for each individual legislative official for 2008,” according to the response from the San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System.
SDCERS Chief of Staff Rebecca Wilson said Sanders’ wasn’t included because he doesn’t take part in the separate pension plan for elected officials. Sanders’ pension payments are based solely on his time with the Police Department, not his time as mayor.
“We weren’t specifically trying to exclude him,” Wilson said. “We were just reading the request as we thought they intended it.”
Sanders received $91,764 in benefit payouts last year. That would have put him second on the list of elected officials’ pension payments, below only former City Attorney Casey Gwinn.