An official from a small town, accused of misusing $60,000 for golf and massages, has said that he is going to fight a move made by California’s public employee pension fund to reduce his annual pension by $425,000 by claiming that it is ‘elder abuse.’
“This is clearly a case of elder abuse,” Bruce Malkenhorst, 77. “I’m from an era where you made as much as you could for as long as you could.”
Last week, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System said that Malkenhorst will only be receiving $9,654 per month after the pension fund found that his $45,073 per month pension was “illegally based on unpublished pay rates, overtime and an inflated longevity allowance.” Malkenhorst was the city manager for the city of Vernon. Instead of earning close to $540,000 per year from the pension, Malkenhorst will now make $115,848 per year from the pension fund.
The pension fund is known as Calpers, which said that the new amount would take effect unless Malkenhorst can prove with documents that his previous payments on retirement from the city were justified. Those payments to Malkenhorst were the largest in the history of the state of California.
“Vernon’s reporting and documentation has failed to comply with the legal requirements necessary to justify these payments,” Calpers Chief Executive Officer Anne Stausboll said. “We fully intend to pursue recovery of all overpayments where we can.”
On similar accusations, Calpers announced that it would deny six other officials from Vernon all or a chunk of their pensions. Vernon has a population of roughly 100 people and has been the subject of misappropriation of public funds and voter fraud for years now. Malkenhorst earned $600,000 per year before he was convicted. In 2011, he pled guilty to misappropriating public funds and was forced to pay $60,000 to go along with a $10,000 fine. He did not receive a prison sentence.