Isabel C. Safie

As public agencies continue to wrestle with high-cost pension and retiree health plans, Safie’s expertise and connections have put her at the forefront of benefit battles across California.

Her work has saved cities, water agencies, fire districts and other public entities millions of dollars, thanks in part to a deep knowledge of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.

“The relationships I’ve built over time and my understanding of not just core issues but policies have really allowed me to help clients bridge that gap and achieve really positive results,” Safie said.

That includes persuading CalPERS in 2017 to leave unchanged the retirement allowances of employees in the Town of Truckee who earned merit pay that state officials determined shouldn’t have been included in benefit calculations. CalPERS originally planned to cut their compensation and requirement reimbursement for overpayment, but, faced with the potential of an expensive lawsuit by the affected retirees, Truckee turned to Safie, who negotiated a settlement that left the allowances intact with no overpayment obligation.

Safie achieved a similar result for the Oxnard Harbor District after CalPERS initially said a change in benefits for management employees wrongly converted non-PERS compensation into PERS compensation, but it changed its stance after a two-year negotiation with Safie. Some of her clients are confidential, including a large municipal agency in northern California that she assisted in terminating its closed defined benefit system while preserving the rights of vested employees. The move saved the client more than $2 million.

She also worked with a health care and transit district to implement a shared retirement program, and she spent six years working with three agencies to consolidation pension and benefits for a sect of employees into a single program. The work exemplifies what she strives to achieve for all clients: fiscal responsibility, compliance with CalPERS and preserved promises to employees.

“There isn’t always an answer in black and white,” Safie said. “We have to really think outside the box to find solutions for our clients, and I find that really invigorating.”

A graduate of UCLA School of Law, Safie said she “never even knew the field existed when I was in law school,” but she built Best Best & Krieger’s public sector employee benefits practice from scratch. She knew understanding tax law was essential to properly advising an agency, so she developed expertise in that while building her public sector connections.

“The practice has grown significantly, and I want to grow it more. There’s a lot of opportunity out there to help agencies build that gap between really trying to do what’s right and trying to navigate the system appropriately.”

— Meghann M. Cuniff