Supervisors reject ICERS plan
EL CENTRO — The Imperial County Employees Retirement System will have to go back to the drawing board as its proposed reorganization plan didn’t gain the approval of the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
During the regular weekly meeting, the board instructed ICERS to go back and work with the Department of Human Resources to find the best possible alternative solution to cope with the workload the entity currently has.
ICERS had brought two proposals to the supervisors on Tuesday, with the main one being a staffing reorganization plan that would add one more position to ICERS. The other proposal was to evaluate the salary of the assistant retirement administrator position.
ICERS board approved the reorganization plan during its Feb. 21 meeting.
“The Board of Retirement has had concerns for several years about its ability to carry out its fiduciary duties given the ICERS current staffing levels,” said a letter given to the board by Retirement Administrator Scott Jarvis.
Jarvis who presented the proposal to the Board of Supervisors said ICERS sought for ways to minimize the impact of the new position and managed to get the additional cost to just under $50,000, which would all be funded through ICERS investment funds and contributions and would not have an impact on the county’s general fund.
Teamsters representatives Ruth Duarte and Annette Hughes were not pleased with the proposal. They argued correct protocol required ICERS to run any plan through the county’s Human Resources Department before moving on to the Supervisors.
The board expressed some level of support for the plan but recognized the financial state of the county made it difficult to support.
“It’s terrible timing, facing the fact that we are dealing with county employees throughout the county of Imperial who work very hard and are asked to do more with less,” said District 3 Supervisor Michael Kelley.
District 1 Supervisor John Renison said that although the amount was not too bad, especially since it would come out of ICERS, but he was apprehensive of supporting the plan since he didn’t think it sent a positive signal to the rest of the county departments, which are currently being asked to reduce expenses by as much as 15 percent for the current fiscal year.
“If not now, then when?” Jarvis asked the board. “This has been going on for far too long to get direction on how we should proceed with this,”
In addition to the reorganization, ICERS also asked the board to study the compensation for the assistant retirement administrator as the retirement system believed the current compensation was well below the average in comparable counties.
Hughes said that most of the employees who are members of her bargaining unit earn about 30 percent below the mean compared to the same counties.
Regina Rodrigues, who current is the assistant retirement administrator, said she was willing to forego consideration of her compensation in favor of support for the reorganization.
She said membership in the system has risen by 18.5 percent, the number of retirees by 36 percent and deferred membership by 78 percent.
“In order to maintain services we need that extra staff person,” Rodrigues said.
In the end, District 4 Supervisor Ryan Kelley motioned to direct Jarvis to work with human resources to explore other possibilities to address the staffing needs without relying on additional funds and to bring back a plan at a later date.
The board voted 5-0 in favor of the proposal to have ICERS reassess its options to remediate their staffing needs without incurring additional costs.