CalPERS told her she’d earn $60,000 a year in retirement. Her pension isn’t even close to that

Marla Moura thought she was being careful when she asked financial advisers on three different occasions to estimate how much she’d earn from a CalPERS pension after a career in California government agencies.

Moura knew the pension math might be complicated. She left her job as an El Dorado County mental health worker in 2012, the same year former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that made pension formulas less generous. She spent two years in the private sector and then returned to public service at a higher salary in 2014.

She specifically asked CalPERS financial advisers whether the mixed pension formulas would make her pension smaller than their estimates. On each of her visits, advisers affirmed she’d receive about $5,000 a month.

Based on the estimates, she quit her job, sold her house and made an offer on a new home in another state, according to an appeal her attorney filed with the retirement system’s board. Then she got the retirement notice from CalPERS: Her monthly check would be $2,842.

The board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System will decide at a meeting Wednesday whether to grant her request to increase her monthly check to $5,000.

It’s a long shot. The $440 billion pension system is governed by strict rules, and its attorneys have already concluded she’s receiving the correct pension.

“We’re still very hopeful that the board will do what we believe is the right thing,” Moura’s attorney, Michael McCallum, said.

Moura’s case is one of 10 appeals on the CalPERS board’s agenda Wednesday morning.

The facts of the case are laid out in an administrative law judge’s summary, as well as McCallum’s appeal letter.

Moura held the job at El Dorado County from 1987 until 2012, where her highest monthly salary was about $4,000. When she returned to the public sector in 2014, she took a job as school psychologist with the Galt Joint Union Elementary School District earning about $7,000 per month.

For both jobs, Moura contributed to a CalPERS retirement plan.

She first met with a CalPERS representative In 2015. She said she had been out of public service for two years. The representative told her that higher salary from the Galt job would be used in calculations covering her years of service at both public jobs, according to her appeal.

Contemplating retirement in 2019, Moura met with another CalPERS adviser.

“This representative gave her the exact same information as the previous representative when Ms. Moura again described her situation,” Moura’s attorney wrote.

Specifically, Moura was told that her retirement allowance would be just over $5,000 a month.

Later that year, Moura met with a third CalPERS adviser, who again told her she could expect more than $5,000 a month, according to her appeal.

“On the basis of the same three representations from different CalPERS advisors at different times, supported by the online ‘myCalPERS’ calculator, Ms. Moura retired, believing she would be getting around $5000 plus/mo. as her retirement allowance,” her attorney said in the appeal.

She sold her home and moved to South Carolina, her attorney said.

Then she got the new, smaller number. Unable to get her old job back, Moura was forced to find a job in South Carolina to supplement her retirement income, her attorney said.

In the final review — conducted by CalPERS after Moura submitted her retirement paperwork — the fund determined that since she had separated from the public sector for more than six months, the system had to calculate her earnings under two formulas, so it couldn’t apply the higher salary from Galt to the service credit she accrued with El Dorado County.

Moura’s attorney says that at no time in any of the meetings was she warned the law could affect her earnings.

“In fact, this was directly the opposite of what Ms. Moura had previously been repeatedly told,” the attorney wrote.

Administrative law judge Coren Wong first heard Moura’s appeal in January. Wong ruled against Moura, declaring that CalPERS cannot ignore the Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act when it calculates retirement benefit amounts.

McCallum, Moura’s attorney, wrote in his letter that “if the board here were to rely on Judge Wong’s proposed decision it means that CalPERS has carte blanche to represent falsely to its members about their retirement as much as it wants, with absolutely no repercussions. The old phrase , ‘so sue me’ would not even apply, as under Judge Wong’s analysis there is nothing a member can do.”

CalPERS spokeswoman Megan White said government employees who want to estimate their pensions can use two tools provided by the system, an online retirement calculator or a formal estimate from an analyst.

This story was originally published March 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "CalPERS told her she’d earn $60,000 a year in retirement. Her pension isn’t even close to that."