By Erica C. Barnett
A longtime SPD officer who co-founded a women’s prison re-entry program, Kim Bogucki, has been receiving a full pension after her retirement as a police officer while simultaneously earning $145,000 a year in a civilian position at the department, according to the city’s online salary database.
Bogucki’s new role also appears to include overseeing two federal contracts, totaling $68,000, with the women’s prison re-entry program she co-founded, the IF Project.
Neither arrangement is illegal or in violation of the city’s ethics rules. It is unusual, however, for a Seattle employee to retire, return to the same department, and earn a full-time salary and a pension at the same time.
Bogucki worked as an SPD officer for about 35 years, according to her social media profiles and press reports, and made a base salary of just over $132,000 when she retired. A representative for the the state Law Enforcement Officers’ and Fire Fighters’ Retirement System (LEOFF) confirmed that Bogucki retired as an officer last February.
The exact size of Bogucki’s pension is unclear. However, it’s possible to hazard a rough guess, because the formula for calculating police pensions, which are based on the average of an officer’s highest-paid 60 months, is public.
A retiring officer of Bogucki’s tenure who received no overtime or bonus of any kind and earned $132,000, on average, for five years would receive an annual pension of just over $101,000, according to LEOFF’s online benefits calculator.
With overtime, which counts as compensation for pension calculations, that amount would go up substantially.
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A 35-year police veteran who made an average of $200,000 a year during their top five years, for example, would receive an annual pension of around $140,000. According to Divest SPD‘s online database, Bogucki made a total of almost $220,000, including overtime, in 2021, although their data does not include other years for comparison.
Bogucki’s new civilian job, classified as a Strategic Advisor 2, pays $69.68 an hour, or just under $145,000 a year. Her role appears to include overseeing contracts with the organization she founded, the IF Project, which describes itself as “a unique national model of collaboration between law enforcement and incarcerated individuals to help people in prison and at-risk youth take a more positive path.”
Bogucki is listed in the city’s contract database as the manager for the IF Project’s two federally funded contracts, and she is the listed SPD contact on both contracts. SPD confirmed that Bogucki is “a grants manager for federal grants,” as well as “part of the relational policing program supporting Before the Badge,” a program that aims to prepare future officers for working in diverse communities.” One of the IF Project’s contracts is to develop curriculum for Before the Badge.
SPD had not responded to additional questions about the contracts, sent last Friday, by late Monday afternoon. We’ll update this post if we hear back.
Ethics and Elections director Wayne Barnett said that as long as a city employee doesn’t have a formal “role” at a company or organization that contracts with the city, there’s “nothing in the Ethics Code that prohibits” them from overseeing that contract, even if they founded the company and serve as its public face, as Bogucki has for the IF Project.
According to IRS records, Bogucki receives no money from the IF Project and does not have a formal position there. Bogucki’s name and image are all over the group’s website, however, and her social media and LinkedIn profiles prominently feature her role as co-founder of the project.
Bogucki did not respond to questions sent to her IF Project email address.
Bogucki is reportedly close to former police chief Adrian Diaz, and was his partner in the early 2000s, according to a 2022 KIRO report. Before retiring as an officer, she worked in youth violence prevention and community outreach and served as a liaison to the police department’s LGBTQ Advisory Council.
I’m not seeing the issue. Unusual? Sure. So is confounding a nonprofit like the If Project as a police officer. How about highlighting the work they’ve done for over q decade.
Can you do (another) article on SPOG?
This reminds me of how police always claim to be underfunded so they can’t go out and stop all that crime and defend people. Predictably, politicians hand them a bunch of money and nothing changes. That money is going to those police officers claiming overtime atop of their rather good pay (compared to social workers, public employees and other auxiliary law enforcement staff) and make more money than most public servants and even average joes. It’s ironic how much police are politically right-wing and complain about hand outs and social services just to have taxpayers paying for their comfy lifestyles.
There is always a doorway for corruption in public office. Just a given. As old as the ages. Unfortunately.