Almost Gothic

In the way PERS moves. Friday's (June 24) PERB meeting will take up the issue of the IAP under an agenda item entitled "IAP Remediation Policy" (agenda item D.3). The difficulties PERS is having are outlined in a 6 page memo to be distributed to the Board on Friday. You can read a copy here. It would be an understatement to say that the program has been nothing short of a complete disaster. You have the Legislature, specifically Representative Greg MacPherson, and the Governor to thank for pushing this "compromise" bill through and expecting it to be implemented seamlessly in 4 months. Moreover, if you go back to the original legislation, it would appear to the layman that PERS overstepped its statutory authority in setting this up and by making it infinitely more complex than was required, and set up impossible-to-meet milestones virtually guaranteed to antagonize employers and to deprive members of earnings that rightfully belong to them. It would be positively laughable if it didn't affect so many people. But now that it is so royally screwed up, it looks like there *might* be some movement to fix it. But first we have to "study" it. Read the memo carefully and explore the various options out on the table. While some options would help most IAP members, other less invasive options would leave the status quo pretty much in place and fix the problems in the future (but not retroactively). If I were affected by this (and I'm not), I'd be unrelenting in exerting pressure to fix it retroactively. In the meantime, this whole pile of stinking dung smells like some almost (but not quite) gothic outhouse next to Mary Shelley's abode.