Trustee’s squeeze will hurt students

Coast Community College District trustee Armando Ruiz retired from

his position on the board Oct. 31. On Tuesday, he was reelected to

another term.

Make sense? No.

In a move as petty as it is pitiless, Ruiz, 61, retired Sunday

from his elected trusteeship and set himself up to receive a doubled

pension only to run for reelection Tuesday -- an election he then

won.

By retiring on Sunday from both his trusteeship and his counseling

job at Irvine Valley College in the South Orange County Community

College District, the veteran trustee is eligible to receive a

$120,000 pension while getting his old -- well, week-old -- job back.

Ruiz pulled off this double-dip coup by taking advantage of a

loophole in state law. The law allows a retiring public official,

employed with another governmental agency, to receive a boosted

annual pension based on his highest salaried job if he retires from

both on the same day. Instead of about $60,000, which he would have

received had he retired on different days, his combined annual

pension from both jobs now stands to be double that.

It’s not as much the loophole that is disturbing but the idea that

the retirement and reelection sucks up money at the public’s expense

-- the district’s, and by extension, the students’ and the taxpayers’

money. In this time of tight budgets, it is a blow the district,

which has to pay into these pension funds, can scarce afford.

Granted, the man found a gap in the law. Even board president George

Brown said Ruiz’s move was legal. Legal, yes. Ethical? Dignified? A

good example for students? No. We share the concerns of Dean Mancina,

president of Coast Federation of Educators.

“Obviously, Mr. Ruiz knew what he was doing was wrong, since he

felt the need to deceive voters by keeping his plan to retire four

days before the election a secret,” he said recently.

It wasn’t the retirement, per se, that Mancina questioned. It’s

that Ruiz shouldn’t have listed his name on the ballot as an

incumbent and should have informed the district and voters of his

retirement more than three days before the election.

Back in 2000, Ruiz told reporters, “Unequivocally, Coast

district’s primary commitment is to quality education and to its

students.”

Is it really showing a commitment to students when such a leader

exploits the districts’ pocketbook for a buck? By taking advantage of

that loophole, Ruiz hurts the very students he was elected to serve.