City manager takes stand in pension lawsuit

Lawyers for the City of Saint Johns pension board pushed their case Friday that a former city councillor routinely fabricated accusations of wrongdoing by the board to further his own political career.

Current city manager and pension board member Patrick Woods testified that a presentation John Ferguson made to common council in July 2006 to substantiate various accusations he had been levelling about pension problems was laced with inaccurate data and untrue assertions.

"We had a slideshow with numbers he made up," Woods told the Court of Queens Bench. "It put a black mark on the entire board."

The pension board is suing Ferguson for allegedly defamatory comments he made starting in 2005 about the board's handling of the pension fund, which had a $47-million deficit at the time and has since ballooned to about $193 million.

At the July 2006 meeting, Ferguson said 226 city employees were pulling down a disability pension courtesy of the board's lax management and hesaid it was costing the pension fund an "extra" $5.9 million a year.

Woods contends the real number of employees on disability was 99 and the cost was minimal.

'People say things in debate and sometimes get carried away. That's fine. The tipping point for me was the slideshow.' City manager Patrick Woods

But the July presentation was most notable for an accusation Ferguson made about a "senior person who sits on the pension board" confessing to him the body routinely granted disability pensions to workers who didn't qualify.Some, Ferguson said, were pensioned off merely for not getting along with supervisors.

"Isn't that illegal?" Fergusonclaims he asked the unnamed official. "Yes it is," said that person. "But so is drinking and driving and people do that every day."

Woods said he was willing to overlook Ferguson's earliercomplaints about the board, but the allegation of criminal wrongdoing was too much.

"People say things in debate and sometimes get carried away. That's fine," he said. "The tipping point for me was the slideshow."

On Thursday, the pension board member Ferguson eventually named as the source of the confession,David Gould, denied saying any such thing.

Ferguson claimed Gould made the confession in December 2005.Woods questioned if that was true, why Ferguson didn't mention it until the July meeting, seven months later.

Woods noted there was a city council meeting three days after Ferguson said Gould admitted wrongdoing, but Ferguson didn't raise the issue, even though disability pensions were on the agenda and Ferguson spoke on the topic.

The trial enters its fifth week on Monday. It is scheduled to last six weeks.