City Audit Finds $900,000 Paid to Deceased Pensioners

LOS ANGELES — The city has paid nearly $1 million to deceased city pensioners during a two-year period ending last year, according to a city controller’s audit released Friday.

While the city usually recovers the money from the families of former city employees after their deaths, overpayments have become more of a problem since pensioners started using the city’s direct deposit system, said Controller Rick Tuttle.

Tuttle’s audit concluded that better record keeping is needed to track and recover such overpayments--which totaled about $900,000 during 1998 and 1999.

The Los Angeles City Employees Retirement System relies primarily on a pensioner’s survivors to provide notification of death. But payments to their accounts may continue if the death isn’t reported in a timely manner, Tuttle found.

Before direct deposit, according to the report, survivors “may have been less likely to negotiate a check made payable to a decedent, because of the paper trail left by the transaction.”