Can San Francisco Tap Into Deborah Madden's Pension?

By Joe Eskenazi Tue., Jan. 4 2011 at 3:10 PM

Deborah Madden is still smiling...

Disgraced former crime lab technician Deborah Madden will not face any criminal charges, despite triggering a scandal that led to millions of dollars in city costs and a literal Get Out of Jail Free card for thousands of accused drug criminals.

Madden is now free to begin drawing her city pension; with 29 years on the job, she's entitled to somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 percent of her $63,000 yearly salary.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd would like to find out if the city can, in essence, skim some of that money.

Certainly the city can't yank Madden's pension. Doing that would require the former lab tech to have been convicted of a crime of "moral turpitude" on the job. This occurs only a handful of times every decade.

Elsbernd knows this. But he still finds it objectionable San Francisco is now subsidizing someone who "cost the city millions." At today's Board of Supervisors meeting, he announced he has sent a letter of inquiry to the City Attorney's office querying "whether or not we could pursue a civil claim against [Madden]."

The supe is hoping to extract "a financial claim from her." We know she has some money, he notes, because we're sending her tens of thousands of dollars in pension costs.

Elsbernd's suggestion would likely sound reasonable to many disgruntled San Franciscans. Whether it'll pass muster with the city attorney is another story.

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Tags:

crime lab scandal, Deborah Madden, Drug lab, Pension, Sean Elsbernd

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PAUL WRIGHT JR.

she ought to be prosecuted for federal civil rights violations....she did it for profit.....to put shit up her nose at our expense!...WTF?..not to mention at some defendants expense.....

coalbysmom

This city worker cost this city some money and a lot of bad people were set free. Where is her punishment, what, no fine and no prison time. What about her bosses? Why are they not also paying up? It doesn't matter that it's Elsbernd looking into tapping Madden's pension fund, but someone should do be doing something.

Abroad

Sean Elsbernd never passes up an opportunity to grandstand in a completely meaningless way....

guest

And how much money has Elsbernd cost us with his trickle down corporate give aways over the past six years? Can we ever recoup that money?

Dakant

This happens all the time with California State workers, who get fired for breaking the law or poor work performance and end up being allowed to retire, collecting their pension.

Sfis@nuts.com

SF is the best!!!

Ppp

Get your hands off grans money u dirty scoundrels.

Chris

I think at best they could do is tap into the city paid portion of her pension, which would amount to about half the pension. At the same time, this sets a dangerous precedent that any time someone screws up and costs a company, person, municipality, etc. money that their pensions and other retirement funds could be tapped. I think this represents a slippery slope that I would not want to see happen. just my two cents.