Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Super. Ct. No. 06CS01544
SIMS, J.Plaintiffs Nancy Barnes and Palermo Union School District appeal from the trial court’s denial of Barnes’s petition for writ of mandate and from the court’s order granting in part and denying in part Barnes’s motion to augment the administrative record. We shall affirm the judgment because plaintiffs have not met their obligation to furnish this court an adequate record on appeal.
Palermo Union School District has not filed a separate opening brief, but has joined in Barnes’s opening brief.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
In light of our disposition, we set out the underlying facts only in summary form, taking them from the trial court’s statement of decision.
Barnes, the former superintendent of Palermo Union School District in Butte County (the District), was awarded an 18.27 percent base salary increase approximately 12 days before her retirement on June 30, 2002, retroactive to July 1, 2001. The District reported this increase to the California Teachers Retirement System (STRS) as “creditable compensation” under the Teachers’ Retirement Law. After a compliance review, however, STRS issued a draft audit report which concluded that all but 1.84 percent of the 18.27 percent salary increase was given for the principal purpose of enhancing Barnes’s retirement benefits and therefore should not have been reported as creditable compensation. STRS’s final audit report confirmed the draft audit report’s findings.
Barnes and the District appealed STRS’s decision through the administrative hearing process. Following a hearing at the Office of Administrative Hearings, an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) issued a proposed decision granting the appeals, but STRS rejected the proposed decision. Based on the administrative record, STRS’s Appeals Committee issued a written decision affirming the final audit report’s determination.
Barnes and the District filed a petition for writ of mandamus in the superior court to overturn STRS’s decision. After reviewing the administrative record and the parties’ written and oral arguments, the superior court denied the petition. The court found that the weight of the evidence supported STRS’s conclusion that most of the retroactive salary increase paid to Barnes was for the primary purpose of enhancing her retirement benefits (and therefore not creditable compensation under the Teachers’ Retirement Law). The court also rejected Barnes’s and the District’s contentions that STRS’s general counsel had improperly acted as an advocate for STRS’s position during a closed session meeting of STRS’s Appeals Committee, and that the Teachers’ Retirement Law unconstitutionally authorizes a taking of property without due process of law.
Before issuing its statement of decision, the superior court ruled on a motion by Barnes and the District for an order augmenting the record with documents or written communications about the case between STRS’s general counsel or other staff counsel and STRS board members or the Office of the Attorney General (which has represented STRS in the superior court and this court). After finding that the motion was not a true motion to augment the record with documents known to exist but rather a motion to take discovery as to documents which might or might not exist, the superior court granted the motion as to requests unopposed by STRS but denied it as to those which STRS opposed.
Barnes and the District appeal from both the judgment and the order on their motion to augment so far as the order denied the motion.
DISCUSSION
Barnes contends: (1) Her statutory and constitutional rights were violated when STRS’s general counsel served as both advocate for and advisor to STRS in this matter. (2) Her motion to augment the record concerning the ex parte communications engaged in by STRS’s general counsel should have been granted. (3) The Teachers’ Retirement System Act is unconstitutional to the extent it allows for deprivation of property without a prior hearing. (4) The trial court’s determination is not supported by substantial evidence. For want of a record sufficient to review these contentions, we must affirm the judgment and order appealed from.
In every appeal, the appellant has the burden of producing a record adequate to review the appellant’s claims of error.
(Bennett v. McCall (1993) 19 Cal.App.4th 122, 127.) Here, the appeal is taken from a judgment upholding the factual findings and legal conclusions drawn by an administrative body after a proceeding which included a duly transcribed hearing before an ALJ. According to Barnes, the judgment implicates her fundamental and vested pension rights. As Barnes notes in her opening brief, when a trial court has exercised independent judgment to review an administrative decision implicating fundamental vested rights, the appellate court must review the record to determine whether substantial evidence supports the trial court’s judgment. (JKH Enterprises, Inc. v. Department of Industrial Relations (2006) 142 Cal.App.4th 1046, 1058.) In this case, evidently, the record we must review is the record reviewed by the trial court: the record of the administrative proceedings.
If fundamental vested rights are not involved, we review the agency’s determination under the same substantial-evidence standard. (Ibid.)
Even if the appeal raises questions of law, such as the interpretation of a statute, the administrative agency’s construction is entitled to great weight and will not be rejected by a court if it appears to have a reasonable basis. Furthermore, administrative rulings come before the courts with a presumption of correctness, and the appellant has the burden of showing their invalidity. (O’Connor v. State Teachers’ Retirement System (1996) 43 Cal.App.4th 1610, 1620.) As few if any administrative rulings and statutory interpretations are irrational on their face, an appellant who has not provided a record of the administrative proceedings to the reviewing court will seldom be able to meet its burden.
Although Barnes cites to the administrative record (AR) throughout her opening brief, she has inexplicably failed to provide us with that record. We notified Barnes’s counsel on November 29, 2007, that if an AR was lodged in this case it was appellant’s responsibility to arrange for its transmission to us. On December 13, 2007, the parties stipulated to use the original superior court file (OSF) in lieu of a clerk’s transcript. On December 21, 2007, Barnes’s counsel, in designating the record on appeal, cited the parties’ stipulation and indicated that no reporter’s transcript would be filed; counsel did not mention the existence of an AR. Only the OSF was thereafter transmitted to this court as the appellate record. The AR has never been transmitted to this court. The OSF is not an adequate record because it contains almost none of the evidence developed in the AR and cited in the parties’ briefs. Thus it does not support any of appellants’ contentions.
Lacking an adequate record, which it was appellants’ burden to provide, we must affirm.
DISPOSITION
The judgment (including the order on appellants’ motion to augment the record) is affirmed. Respondent shall recover its costs on appeal. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.278 (a)(1), (a)(5).)
We concur: SCOTLAND, P. J. BUTZ, J.