Number of Nevada public pension recipients who get $100K nearly doubles

The number of retirees who took home six-figure annual payments from Nevada’s government pension system nearly doubled in recent years.

But because of a 2019 state law, officials release less information about the recipients.

A total of 4,856 people received at least $100,000 in pension payments from the Public Employees Retirement System in fiscal 2023. That’s up almost 90 percent from 2,562 such recipients in fiscal 2019, according to agency data.

The overall tally of retirees who collect a pension from PERS also climbed during that period, though not as quickly. The system had 81,861 benefit recipients at the end of fiscal 2023, up about 17 percent from 70,056 in fiscal 2019, according to annual financial reports.

Ian Carr, general counsel for the pension system, attributed the rising volume of lucrative payouts to multiple factors, including the expanded pool of retirees, higher wages that translate to bigger pensions and the boost in benefits that take effect in the fourth year of retirement.

“It’s kind of a compounding effect,” he said.

PERS sends pension payments to former state and local government employees in Nevada. It has not yet released its annual financial report for the fiscal year that ended June 30, but data it provided to the Las Vegas Review-Journal showed that 5,003 people grossed at least $100,000 in pension payments during that period.

The agency disclosed pensioners’ names and benefit amounts but no other information.

Additional details such as last employer, years of government service and retirement date used to be a matter of public record. But in 2019, the Nevada Legislature approved a bill that made pensioners’ information confidential, other than their names and annual benefit totals.

The biggest recipient in fiscal 2024, Anthony Delvecchio, received a pension of about $362,370 that year, according to PERS.

Transparent Nevada — an online database run by the Nevada Policy Research Institute that tracks government workers’ compensation — shows that a person with that name worked for the Carson City School District, retired in 2010 and garnered a pension of about $67,730 in 2018.

Delvecchio could not be reached for comment.

Carr said he cannot comment on members’ accounts. But in general, he said, a larger-than-usual payment can result from benefits being suspended for a period of time and then reinstated, as the pensioner would retroactively receive the unpaid benefits.

In general, payment suspensions are often administrative-related, Carr noted, including failure to provide proper direct-deposit information.

Here were the top five pension recipients from PERS in fiscal 2024, according to data from the agency and Transparent Nevada:

— Anthony Delvecchio: $362,371.59.

— Chris Ault, former UNR football coach: $343,123.12.

— Donald O’Shaughnessy, former Clark County fire battalion chief: $319,935.03.

— Rossi Ralenkotter, former president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority: $305,587.47.

— Roderick Jett, former Metropolitan Police Department undersheriff: $300,900.60.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.