Here it Goes

PERS should get my appeal today. I dropped it off at the post office yesterday. I waited 54 days before filing it, hoping that it would be smack in the middle of the pile about the time Judge Kantor issues his final rulings in the Arken and Robinson cases. I based my appeal on the Supreme Court's ruling in the Strunk case, concluding that PERS had no legal authority to do what it did and that, instead, PERS owed me a considerable amount of money. I used my own calculator (see left) to estimate the amounts of error and adjustments in my favor. I doubt that this will sway PERS. I'm just perplexed about the system for appeals. PERS gets to rule on the wisdom of its own wisdom. It follows that if they didn't think they were right, they wouldn't have sent out the letters in the first place. I'm not sure how one is supposed to get a fair, impartial, and unbiased review of the facts of the cases. Indeed, PERS has never been known to be fair and impartial in contested cases. I've been attending Board meetings on and off for more than 15 years. Not once during an open meeting did the PERS Board ever overrule the staff recommendations, and not once has the staff ever recommended in favor of the appellant. This does not mean that there aren't cases where PERS has ruled against itself, but I'm not aware of them. Thus, I doubt that we'll see even the smallest victory in any of these pro forma appeals. The only reasons for filing them - and I encourage everyone to do so - is to protest the way PERS has treated retirees, and to clog up their system. (Of course, if they don't bother to read the appeals and just rubber stamp reject them, then it won't do much in the clogging department either.)

There is nary a peep from Judge Kantor about when his ruling in these cases might be forthcoming. If he doesn't issue them within the next 10 - 14 days, it won't be until after January 1 before the rulings come out. And, frankly, if that happens, I wouldn't even hazard a guess when he might actually rule. I had heard that he was slow, but he's rapidly redefining that word for me. Look to the left at my counter and you'll see how many days, hours, minutes, and seconds it has been (real time) since Judge Kantor had the status conference to clarify his ruling.