This former commissioner’s pension is now the largest for a Miami elected official
Miami taxpayers have just started paying for the largest pension of any elected official in the city’s retirement system — $127,210.66 a year for former City Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones.
Spence-Jones, who was suspended and reinstated a decade ago after she was acquitted of bribery and grand theft charges, recently received her first $10,600 monthly pension payment after turning 55 in August, according to city financial records provided to the Miami Herald. She will get the same amount every month for the rest of her life. Spence-Jones is the last former elected official to reach retirement age in the city’s pension program, which closed in 2009 during the financial crisis. Commissioners and mayors elected after October 2009 are not eligible for a pension.
Once a modest benefit tied to relatively low salaries for elected officials, significant salary increases for the mayor and commissioners in the 2000s boosted the pension payouts from the retirement program.
Unlike other city employees such as firefighters and police officers, elected officials did not have to contribute to their pensions. Police and fire pensions are capped at $120,000 a year, while the elected officers’ pensions were based on the highest wage amounts listed on their W-2 tax forms during the last three years of their term in office.
Spence-Jones is receiving the largest payout of the six former commissioners and mayors in the system, according to the latest actuarial report on the pension program. Former Commissioner Wifredo “Willy” Gort, who left office in 2019, is receiving $8,488.07 a month, or $101,856.84 annually. Former Mayor Tomás Regalado’s monthly benefit is $7,045.99, or $84,551.88 a year. Former Mayor and current Commissioner Joe Carollo, 67, is eligible to receive a projected $8,391.69 monthly pension once he leaves office.
The size of Spence-Jones’ monthly check is tied to back pay she received after returning from suspension, which inflated the value of her W-2 tax form to $231,292 in 2011. The large payment factored into the formula used to calculate her pension benefit.
Spence-Jones did not respond to multiple phone calls and a text message seeking comment.
In the past six years, commissioners have twice considered reopening the program. Both times, the concept drew criticism from city activists and failed to gain any traction.
The city administration is planning to pay $850,000 into the pension plan in the upcoming budget year, which begins Oct. 1.
This story was originally published September 6, 2022 at 2:23 PM.
