Court Sticks Taxpayers With Jerry Sandusky’s Pension Tab

By Eric Boehm | PA Independent

Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach convicted of abusing and molesting numerous boys over more than a decade, will get to keep his taxpayer-funded state pension.

A state judge ruled Friday that Sandusky is entitled to receive his nearly $5,000 per-month pension, concluding the State Employee Retirement System erred when it forfeited his pension following his 2012 conviction. It’s unclear whether SERS will appeal the ruling.

In the unanimous opinion, Judge Dan Pelligrini wrote Sandusky could not be stripped of his pension because his crimes weren’t committed while he was a state employee. After retiring from Penn State in 1999, Sandusky continued to work on the campus and ran the Second Mile, a youth charity he used to identify and target vulnerable boys.

“Mr. Sandusky’s performance of services that benefited PSU does not render him a PSU employee,” Pelligrini concluded.

The court order reinstates Sandusky’s pension retroactively, meaning he’s able to collect all payments since his pension was forfeited in 2012, plus interest.

Jay Pagni, spokesman for SERS, told the Associated Press the SERS Board will review the court’s decision and determine what further action, including a possible appeal, will be taken.

Sandusky was convicted on 45 charges of sexual assault against at least 10 different victims and was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison. It’s essentially a life sentence, as Sandusky is 71.

The day after he was sentenced, SERS cut off his pension payments.

Some of Sandusky’s crimes occurred as far back as 1994, when he was still an employee at Penn State. The court said those crimes occurred while he was fulfilling his duties at the Second Mile and therefore weren’t subject to pension forfeiture statutes.

Pennsylvania has included sexual crimes in the list of offenses that would result in the forfeiture of a pension only since 2004.

Records published after he was convicted show officials at Penn State pushed Sandusky to accept an early retirement in 1999 and helped to boost his pension payout.

The “30-and-out” incentive was a 12-month program passed by the Legislature in 1998 that encouraged early retirement for state employees. State law regarding the State Employees’ Retirement System, or SERS, rewarded people employed by the state for at least 30 years with pension benefits typically reserved for 35-year veterans, but only if they retired between July 1, 1998 and June 30, 1999.

A chart in a SERS newsletter from the spring of 1999 shows the pension of a 30-year state-employee who retired on June 30, 1999 would be worth about $100,000 more than it would be if the same employee retired two days later, on July 2.

Sandusky officially retired June 30. He received a $168,000 lump-sum payment from the school and an annual pension of $58,000.

Part of the Freeh Report, the NCAA-sanctioned investigation into Penn State’s involvement in Sandusky’s crimes, revealed that university officials wanted to finalize Sandusky’s retirement before “30-and-out” ended.

The emails in fact suggest Penn State would have been happy to keep Sandusky as a coach “for three more seasons,” but Sandusky instead opted for retirement and the perks offered by the university and the state.

Now, he’ll get to enjoy those perks even as he sits in a taxpayer-funded prison.