Mark Peterson, the Contra Costa district attorney forced to resign as part of a felony perjury conviction, cut a sweet plea deal with state prosecutors allowing him to keep most of his pension.
The deal will probably let him walk away with starting annual retirement payments of about $128,000 in addition to Social Security benefits. That’s because he pleaded no contest to only the most recent of 13 felony counts stemming from his illegal tapping of campaign funds for personal use.
It’s less than the approximately $150,000 annual payments he would have received if he had broken no laws. But it’s far more than the $76,000 starting pension that would have likely resulted from a conviction for his pilfering from the actual start of his five-year crime spree.
The plea deal allows him to avoid most consequences of the “felony forfeiture” provisions in Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2012 pension law. Those provisions require public employees with job-related felonies to lose pension accruals since the dates of the crimes for which they were convicted.
Last month, Peterson pleaded no contest to a July 2015 perjury count. Under the plea deal, he also gave up his office and agreed to perform 250 hours’ community service. In exchange, 12 counts, dating as far back as when he took office in January 2011, were dropped.
But Peterson had admitted in a separate December civil settlement agreement with the state Fair Political Practices Commission that he had indeed started siphoning campaign funds for personal use in 2011.
Peterson, who has officially retired since his conviction, will turn 59 in August. The difference between the starting pension based on the 2015 conviction and one retroactive to 2011 is about $52,000 a year, an amount that increases over time with the cost of living.
The current value of that difference over his expected lifespan works out conservatively to more than $800,000. (That accounts for pension contribution adjustments required by the forfeiture law.)
It’s unclear whether prosecutors or the judge hearing the criminal case considered the effect of the plea deal on Peterson’s pension. He was charged, pleaded no contest and sentenced the same day, June 14.
The court hearing was conducted mostly out of public view in Contra Costa Judge Theresa Canepa’s chambers. The public portion merely ratified a deal already hammered out privately.
The state Attorney General’s Office declined to comment. Judge Canepa, who approved the plea deal, did not respond to an inquiry. Nor did Peterson.
It’s still possible the disgraced former district attorney might keep his full pension. A challenge to the forfeiture law is currently pending in the state Court of Appeal.
In separate cases, two felons — a Los Angeles firefighter who ran an illegal bookmaking operation while on duty and a Contra Costa firefighter who stole hundreds of items from firehouses — claim the law violates their state constitutional rights to pensions promised when they started working.
The Attorney General’s Office is also defending the forfeiture law in court. For now, it remains on the books and the Contra Costa retirement system will likely apply it to Peterson.
To understand how the law works, remember public employee pension calculations rely on three key factors: an employee’s highest salary, years on the job and age at retirement.
The felony forfeiture law affects the first two factors: It disallows credits for years worked after the date of the felony. And it similarly rolls back the salary used for pension calculations.
Data obtained through records requests to the Contra Costa County Employees’ Retirement Association and the county Auditor’s Office make it possible to calculate the effect on Peterson.
The felony forfeiture law reduces his 32 1/2 years of work credit by two years for the July 2015 perjury conviction. Conviction on the earliest count would have eliminated another 4 1/2 years of credit.
As for the salary used in his pension calculation, his average income for the 12 months prior to his retirement was about $256,000, the amount that would have been applied if he had committed no crime.
His income for the 12 months prior to July 2015 was about $239,000. And his best 12 months before his first crime, a period when he was a deputy district attorney, was about $174,000.
But any chance for a bigger pension cut was eliminated when state prosecutors and the judge agreed to the plea deal and let Peterson skate on the earlier crimes. We may never know what they were thinking.
