Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 26, 1993                   TAG: 9306260072
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COVINGTON OFFICIAL LOSES LAWSUIT AGAINST ROANOKE

Dew was working for Roanoke as a budget analyst in 1989, when the city approved a pension plan awarding employees credit for prior work with other governments.

Realizing the plan would be too costly, City Council repealed it the following month, before Dew had a chance to apply.

But it wasn't until last year - when City Council became embroiled in controversy over its own "2-for-1" pension plan - that Dew filed a lawsuit.

The suit claimed the city should not have taken away Dew's prior-service benefits, especially since City Council did not rescind benefits from a pension plan that gave council members two years' credit for every one year served.

But Judge Barnard Jennings didn't see it that way. He dismissed Dew's lawsuit at a hearing Friday in Roanoke Circuit Court, ruling that Dew did not have a vested interest in the plan.

Fain Rutherford, a Roanoke lawyer who represented the city, cautioned against comparing the two pension plans.

Rutherford said the prior-service plan was repealed before Dew could satisfy three conditions: He did not submit an application; the city did not consider the application; and the Internal Revenue Service did not approve the plan.

Dew's attorney, Charles Barnett, said Dew had asked for an application and was told he would have to wait. Then City Council "pulled the rug out from under him" by repealing the plan the next month, he said.

Dew, who worked in Clarksburg, W.Va., and Clifton Forge before coming to Roanoke, would have been given credit for an extra seven years' service for those jobs under the plan.

Dew, who left Roanoke in 1990 to take his current job in Covington, could not be reached for comment Friday.