Re “How Sweet Is Mark Scott’s Going-Away Package?”
[Editor’s Note: As he was beginning his ninth month of the job, Mark Scott resigned last week as City Manager of Culver City to become City Manager of Fresno, his hometown.]
I read Greg Smith’s column last Friday that suggests I am leaving Culver City in a few months “with a going-away package” of $200,000 per year.
He also says I will be able to take advantage of the “golden handshake” program that provides certain employees with two years of additional incentive to retire.
Although I have never met Greg, he has made it his passion to interpret my motives for the public, even before I even left South Carolina. I won’t interpret his, but I do think the public deserves to know what we public employees are doing. The truth. So let me offer the following:
• I am not eligible for the “golden handshake” retirement incentive. I did not (and would not) put my position on the list that the City Council must approve for a position to be eligible. I cannot just call CalPERS and take advantage of it, as Greg asserts. Would not have been hard to determine that truth if he had wanted.
• I am 60 years old, and I have worked 26 years in the PERS system (.525 factor). I am eligible to retire. Greg says I will earn $200,000/year. In truth, I will earn less than $100,000/year, which the public can easily determine in the near future, as those over $100,000 are identified on a published list. I am not complaining about what I will make on retirement, but he’s repeatedly exaggerated that number. Literary license? Perhaps? Certainly not the work of a retired detective.
• The retirement formula for PERS is based on age, years of service, and “single highest year” salary. My single highest year ($185,000) comes from my Beverly Hills employment. Due to a voluntary salary cut, my Culver City salary will not surpass that number. If I had stayed two months longer, it would have, but my purpose in leaving is more important to me than the retirement formula.
• Under my employment contract, a public document, I could have been making a pension-eligible salary in excess of $260,000 by end of this year. In fact, I chose to forego much of that because times are bad. That could have constituted more than a 40 percent increase to my pension. I am leaving now, without a financial windfall, because it is what I need to do.
• And for the record, as our staff reports have stated publicly, the CalPERS retirement incentive program does not in any way cost the city “millions of dollars” as Greg keeps saying. That is absurd on the face of it. The annual incremental cost to the city is very modest. We expect maybe 16 employees to take this incentive. Using a PERS required savings formula, we estimate an incremental cost of about $78,000 per year for 20 years. The annual salary savings on the same 16 positions is approximately $1.7 million. We pay for the 20-year cost in one year. It is true that we could just lay off these same 16 employees and, after severance and unemployment, we would avoid the $78,000 per year. However, there are all sorts of long-term organizational costs and impacts from layoffs. It would not happen as fast and it would impact more employees. More than likely, we would not be laying off these long-time, generally higher paid employees. There is an article in the latest Newsweek that highlights the fallacy that employee layoffs are a panacea. Sometimes, the modest cost of incentives is far less costly. A great number of PERS agencies are using this program — not to give money away, but because it makes financial and organizational sense.
My purpose in responding is not to defend myself. It is embarrassing. In fact, I am embarrassed that I have to leave Culver City so soon. The community had a right to expect me to stay longer. Life happened, and I will not be staying.
However, it is unfair to suggest that the City Council and senior staff are not more savvy than to allow me to take advantage of a situation like this, as Greg asserts. I could suggest other evidence that my motives, and their oversight, are proper, but I do not care to be that defensive. I am sad over this turn of events.
Greg seems to think that every city management employee is intent to work the system for their own personal gain. Certainly he has accused several of us of that. And yet, for example, the Executive staff of the city quietly gave back a 4 percent raise in October that they had a contractual right to. A couple of them will retire this year, and it reduces their final retirement formula. Judge us on our compensation, if you like, but be fair. But please judge us also on our dedication and work. The same applies to the City Council. This group of hard-working men is essentially a volunteer body that is driven by desire to make this a better community. They do a great job, in a hard role, at a difficult time. They deserve public praise, not this kind of uninformed commentary. It is fair for Greg or anyone else to debate and question the issues. It is not fair to make up the arguments without regard for the facts.
I thank Culver City for my experience here. I have valued and will enjoy it until the day I leave.
Mr. Scott may be contacted at mark.scott@culvercity.org
