Opinion ID: 1156349
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: expanding dostert

Text: Now we turn our attention to the present case of Gloria DePond v. Hon. Glen B. Gainer, Jr., Auditor of West Virginia. This opinion immediately starts out with the litany concerning what is credited judicial service. What is actually credited is not necessarily set out in the text, but in footnote 1. The footnote reiterates the legal doctrine of transferability and points out that because of In re Dostert judges are entitled to judicial credit for full or part-time governmental service without the liabilities for that service as imposed on those members of the government who participate in the Public Employees Retirement System. In order to give some logic to this grab of credited service, the majority relies again, as it did in Dostert, on the fact that W.Va.Code § 5-10-2 (1985) holds that certain elected officials, i.e., legislators, county commissioners, city councilmen, and others are entitled to count a full year for the time that they serve as an elected official. This is statutory and carries with it certain requirements and limitations, and it has been approved by this Court in Campbell v. Kelly, supra . Only certain elected and appointed officials are included in the statutory language, and other public employees do not receive that credit. The breakdown in the majority opinion granting this credit to judges is the fact that those elected officials who get full-time credit for their elective office do not get full-time credit for part-time service in other public service prior to or after their elective tenure, but must work ten months in any one year to get a full year's credit. Yet we have seen by the majority opinions in Dostert and DePond a sweeping grant of credited service for judges unlike that granted other public employees, including those elected. There is no authority for this rationale. Note 4 of DePond goes on at great length about the benefit of the Public Employees Retirement System compared to the Judicial Retirement System, as did a number of footnotes in Dostert. I assume that this recitation is intended to show how unjust the legislature has been to judges. That is about as far removed from the facts as anything could be, because provisions in the Public Employees Retirement System allowed judges to join the system to give them some retirement protection until such time as they were able to qualify under the Judicial Retirement System. It is not as if they were left with no retirement, but once joining the Public Employees Retirement System they were bound by the rules and regulations thereof. Certainly, once they qualified for the judicial system they immediately switched to that system, because it did not have the restrictions of the Public Employees Retirement System of being computed on the basis of salary and number of years service to the government. Instead, judges would join the judicial system and have their pension based on 75% of their salary at the date of retirement with a continuing increase in that pension as the salary increased except as provided in W.Va.Code § 51-9-6(c) (1981). So who are we crying for? The judges? I would hope not. They have the best of both worlds. Public employees? Certainly, because they were not fortunate enough to be able to choose between two retirement systems. The majority opinion states as follows: In this regard, the West Virginia Judicial Association, as amicus curiae on behalf of the petitioner, correctly notes the importance of stare decisis to judges who have become members of the judges retirement system in reliance upon this settled law. Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines stare decisis as follows: To abide by or adhere to decided cases. It is quite obvious that stare decisis does not apply in the DePond case. Apparently the law was not settled, as DePond expands upon Dostert. If the law was settled there would be no reason to expand upon what was said in Dostert. Further, the only cases concerning the Judicial Retirement System as now envisioned are Dostert, Oakley [30] and DePond, and only two of the present members of this Court participated in the majority opinion in Dostert and none participated in Oakley. If the stare decisis law is from these cases, it is quite apparent that there is no settled law in this field as of this date.
The remainder of DePond deals with removing the executive branch of government from their statutorily authorized auditing role. In this Court's opinion, where departments of the executive branch are not doing what we want them to do, we can take away their duties and give them to someone we appoint. In the present case, the auditor and governor were questioning the judicial pension system. The auditor was attempting to perform an auditory function with respect to the judicial pensions. Such oversight was not permitted by this Court. The majority removed the auditor from all meaningful oversight roles and converted him into a rubber stamp. In his place they put the court appointed administrative director of the Supreme Court. If the auditor should attempt to stray from his perfunctory role, he will be subject to writs of mandamus and personally liable for attorneys' fees. See majority opin. at 382, n. 33, supra. The governor is also subject to writs of mandamus. Article VII, Section 3 of the Constitution of West Virginia, when it refers to a court administrator, states as follows: The Court shall appoint an administrative director to serve at its pleasure at a salary to be fixed by the Court. The administrative director shall, at the direction of the chief justice, prepare and submit a budget for the Court. Nowhere in the Constitution or the statutes of the State of West Virginia is the administrative director of the Supreme Court given power to administer, through maintenance and certification, the Judicial Retirement System. That authority had been granted by statute to the auditor and the governor. The DePond decision transfers that authority to the administrative director of the Supreme Court and states that he shall certify to the auditor the records of each justice or judge in the system as they pertain to his tenure for retirement and the auditor must accept that as absolute and certify it back to the administrative director of the Supreme Court. Why bother? The administrative director of the Supreme Court is lord and master. To have a constitutional officer, i.e., the auditor certify something without any input into what he is certifying is unbelievable and unconscionable. The majority in DePond devotes at least one page of the opinion to citations stating that an administrative body must abide by the remedies and procedures it properly establishes to conduct its affairs. As far as I know there are no written administrative procedures or rules as to the requirements necessary to establish credited judicial service. This is merely left to the whim and desires of the judge or justice submitting them and they are certified by the Court administrator and submitted to the auditor. Note 25 of DePond says: Of course, for a judge to obtain certification of proof of creditable service by the administrative director of the Supreme Court of Appeals, proof of actual military and governmental service must be submitted under his rules. There being no rules, I must believe that not a single judge or justice can be certified under either Dostert or DePond to the auditor of the State of West Virginia. I assume if you make a statement enough times, and there is no challenge of that statement, it will eventually be taken as a true statement. Throughout both Dostert and DePond the majority continues to set out in various phrases, forms and innuendos that the terms of the Judicial Retirement System are embodied in that system's statute. The DePond decision is prophetic when it says on page 380: Terms of the retirement contract between members of the judiciary who participate in the Judicial Retirement System and the State of West Virginia are embodied in the provisions of the judges retirement system statute. That is as wrong as right is right. There are no statutes that provide a judicial retirement system as embodied in Dostert and DePond. Justice is depicted as a lady in flowing robes, blindfolded, arms outstretched, holding the scales of justice equally. After reading Dostert and DePond, she has lowered the scales to the ground to use her hands to wipe the tears from her blindfolded eyes.