SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Transit Authority and its retired in-house attorney are suing each other over a retirement deal that derailed amid scrutiny from federal investigators.
Bruce Jones has filed a $300,000 suit for breach of his contract, which granted two years of retirement for every year worked. His onetime employer says the deal contained “exorbitant” perks and should be void because it was never properly approved.
Jones alleges he agreed to a lower salary than his predecessor — a rate of nearly $190,000 in his first full year with UTA — in exchange for heftier benefits upon retirement, but UTA abandoned the deal just before he was set to leave.
The agency is suing Jones in response. UTA says Jones engaged in fraud and legal malpractice, representing himself and the transit authority in negotiating contracts that violated agency policy and were never approved by its governing board.
“When UTA discovered Jones’ self-dealing and improprieties, it immediately informed Jones that the 2007 and 2010 agreements were void,” UTA’s lawsuit says.
Jones, however, contends the board approved his salary when it tweaked its pension plan to allow him to obtain the special benefits. UTA was represented in the talks by its board chairman at the time, Orrin Colby, and sometimes by outside counsel, his legal complaint says.
Both suits were filed Saturday in Salt Lake City’s 3rd District Court.
They come after UTA announced in 2017 it had canceled contracts for Jones and another former officer, Mike Allegra, who agreed to forfeit his contract in favor of a typical retirement package. The agency said the estimated annual values of the contracts, at more than $1.1 million each, were “shocking.”
Jones ultimately wasn’t awarded perks like an incentive bonus valued at more than $474,600 — an amount UTA calls “exorbitant” and unprecedented in its suit — or the two years of retirement for every year worked.
UTA referenced the voided contracts as steps it took to rein in executive compensation, part of its 2017 nonprosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The deal spared the agency criminal action in exchange for its cooperation with the federal investigation and three years of monitoring.
It also followed a 2014 state legislative audit that criticized “large bonuses and special benefits” paid to UTA executives.
Jones held the general counsel job from 2006 to 2015, is the onetime president of the Salt Lake County Bar Association, former chairman of the Salt Lake County Republican Party and a previous council member in Cottonwood Heights.
At UTA, he contends, he was elevated to president of government resources in 2010, a promotion that allowed for another incentive bonus for securing new development projects along transit lines, but not a raise.
He also maintains UTA has not participated in arbitration required by the contracts.
Jones cites a 2011 letter from UTA stating he had met the requirements to receive the bonus approaching $475,000 upon his retirement or in January 2016, whichever came first. The letter is signed by Greg Hughes, the former board chairman who also served as Utah’s House speaker.
Then in July 2015, UTA sent Jones a letter announcing that after meeting in closed session, the board had determined his 2007 and 2010 employment contracts were void because they weren’t set by the board and didn’t have the necessary signatures of approval.
UTA has since implemented a cap for employee bonuses across the board.