Court Opinion

ID: 9770070
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 15:37:28.451321+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:12.654246
License: Public Domain

Justice EAKIN,
concurring.
I concur with the majority — § 4303 is ambiguous. I also agree with the majority’s finding “[t]here is simply too much *8opportunity for arbitrariness, disparity, and/or manipulation— arising from a system that contemplates a single month’s total gross compensation as the litmus for lifetime pension benefits — for us to infer that the Legislature contemplated such a scheme.” Majority Op. at 6, 9 A.8d at 1177. Thus, a calculation based on a 12-month average is not an inappropriate method under § 4303.
In calculating the pensions, the City added the officer’s compensation over the year prior to retirement and divided that number by 12 to find an average monthly pay. A more precise approach, assuming the officer was paid by the hour, would be to average the hours worked, rather than the salary received. That is, add the total number of hours worked over the year prior to retirement, and divide that number by 12; this results in the average hours worked per month. Multiply this by the hourly rate the officer was being paid on the date of retirement and one finds a figure that more accurately reflects the “rate of monthly pay ... at the date of ... retirement....” 53 P.S. § 39303(a). This still uses the reasonable 12-month time-frame necessary to lessen the possibility of manipulation, but allows application of the actual rate of pay at retirement to be applied to the average hours worked each month, ie., the “rate of monthly pay.”