Friday, June 30, 2006

Don't Give Up on Me

Every once in awhile some small piece of good news comes along. It's the "don't give up on me" news. Today's good news comes in the form of a Supreme Court ruling that vacates the judgement of January 16, 2003 in the City of Eugene case ("Lipscomb"). While this doesn't undo the effect of the case, it removes the case as legal precedent and may not be cited in future PERS litigation. This is a result of the Supreme Court's ruling last August that mooted the City of Eugene appeal itself by the PERS Coalition. For those interested in reading the Court's ruling, a copy will be posted on my web site later today and an addendum made to this post providing the link.

To be a bit more precise on the effect, normally when the Supreme Court "moots" a legal case, it vacates the underlying case rendering it of no further legal significance. When the Oregon Supreme Court mooted the PERS Coalition's appeal of the City of Eugene judgement, the SC failed to vacate the underlying judgement. This was seen as a glaring omission and legally problematic as it left in force a judgement that itself had been superceded by Legislative action and a settlement agreement. However, as long as the judgement itself wasn't vacated, the case remained as a legal precedent that precluded any further litigation. As I understand it, the City of Eugene ruling simply no longer exists.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

I'm Back

It was touch and go there for awhile. I didn't think we'd ever get everything moved. After nearly 17 years of living in the same house, we picked up everything we could and transported humans, cats, frogs, and multitudes of stuff and landed safely in our new digs - in a new county, a new school district, a new zip code, new phone numbers, and one hell of a lot of junk mail that seems to follow us no matter where we go. How do they find us even *before* we filed a change of address? In any case, after of week of being offline I have some of the computers running and connected to the net. My hope is that regular reporting of PERS-related happenings will resume by next week when the dust settles - literally. There isn't a whole lot going on right now. Current members and inactives have started to receive their 2005 account statements. There are many reports that the statements contain "no surprises", and the occasional "WTF is going on with my account". In short, it looks like PERS may have finally ironed out many of its IT problems. The legal front continues to baffle and confuse. By next week I hope to have a summary of the status of the major cases - Arken et al, Robinson et al, and Robertson. If you hear any good gossip or rumors, my email address remains the same.