CLARION, Pa. (EYT) — Convicted killers, child rapists, it doesn’t seem to matter how heinous the offense, some of them are still collecting state pensions.
A former Clarion Area teacher is one of them.
According to court records, Gary L. Weckerly, 65, a former Clarion Area shop teacher, is serving a 10- to 20-year sentence in state prison for child rape and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
While it would be easy to believe that Weckerly’s benefits should be terminated, he is still receiving about $45,000.00 annually.
An article on yorkdispatch.com, a study of online court documents, and the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System reveal a number of convicts are still collecting their state pensions, even as the state’s pension plans face $60 billion in unfunded liability.
According to court records, the system was aware of Weckerly’s conviction. In 2012, the pension system asked for a copy of the certified criminal complaint from Clarion County. PSERS requested information on Weckerly in other court dockets in 2013.
Nevertheless, a PSERS investigation found Weckerly’s crime was not related to his public employment, the agency said. So, he was not required to forfeit his pension.
The problem is that there are considerable weaknesses in the Pension Forfeiture Act of 1978. It requires state employees to give up their retirement benefits upon conviction of certain crimes, but there are a number of instances of convicted state employees that still get to collect their pensions because some crimes are not included in it.
Fortunately, a 2004 amendment adding sex crimes to forfeiture offenses has eliminated the pensions of other school officials who abused children. At least 68 of the 112 PSERS forfeitures since 2005 were sex-related, an agency spokeswoman said.
Weckerly’s case is far from unique.
Kevin J. Foley, a Pennsylvania State Police criminal investigator, stabbed a dentist to death.
Coudersport school music teacher Gregory L. Eldred shot his ex-wife in a Coudersport church while she played the organ during services.
Douglas N. Sversko, a state police trooper, danced naked in front of a webcam and transmitted the images to an agent of the attorney general’s child-predator unit posing as a 13-year-old girl.
Foley, Eldred, and Sversko each were convicted and sentenced for their crimes.
Still, they are collecting tens of thousands of dollars every year from the state’s troubled pension plans.
Republican state Rep. Scott Petri has renewed an effort in the new session to expand the forfeiture law to all felonies related to the duties of one’s public office.
The problem with the Forfeiture Act is that both the State Employees’ Retirement System and Public School Employees’ Retirement System say the agencies can revoke pensions only for officials whose crimes are specified in the law.
The law, passed in the 1970’s during a period remarkable for its high volume of corruption, focuses primarily on crimes such as theft, bribery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and official oppression.
According to the yorkdispatch.com study, the retirement systems issued pension forfeiture letters to 222 state and school district officials and nine members of the judiciary since 2005.
The monetary totals for those forfeitures are not a record the agencies track. Both systems denied Right-to-Know Law requests for the total monetary amount of forfeitures.
Pelter’s legislation includes a mandatory reporting law.
The crimes enumerated in the Pension Forfeiture Act include 20 corruption-related offenses and 12 sex crimes against children added by the Legislature in 2004 for school officials.
The crime must be related to the person’s position. Such cases would include a state official who takes payoffs or a teacher who molests one of his students.
State employees and teachers convicted of crimes outside the scope of the law get to keep their pensions.
Petri’s legislation is aimed at fixing what he calls “a procedural loophole” in law that does not require the employee, the courts, or state agencies to send copies of court records upon conviction to state pension boards.
Petri’s proposal would require the courts to report felonies related to an official’s job.
Under the current act, even committing the most heinous of crimes won’t put a state pension in jeopardy.
Eldred, 56, the music teacher who shot his wife to death in 2012, gets about $30,000.00 per year, according to data obtained under the Right-to-Know Law. Foley, the ex-trooper who killed the dentist in 2006, receives about $11,000.00 annually.
Both are serving time in state prison.
