Beyond The Great Divide

Lies PERS. The PERB packet for this Friday's meeting contains an interesting (if pleasant) surprise. If you go to the PERS website and look at the 11/21/08 Board packet, you'll see Legislative Concept 332 near the end of the (relatively short) packet. It involves reemployment of retired PERS members. Although the concept is nuanced and would be technically more complex to implement than appears in the document, it contains some relatively good news for those interested in returning to work for a PERS employer. I won't reiterate the document here. It is clear enough to read at the web site. In short, if you've been retired for more than 6 months, this LC wouldn't require you to repay money PERS has already paid you since you first retired. Instead, it would cut off your benefits while you work, and restore them after you retire again. The only catch is that the money already paid would be deducted from your corpus for subsequent retirement. That only seems fair to me.

Do keep in mind that this is *only* a Legislative Concept (an idea). It will require this to be converted into an actual bill that makes it through the Legislature and gets signed into law. But it is nice to see something positive come from PERS for a change, instead of the typical punitive stuff that it (and the employers) have been responsible for in the past. Perhaps we're beyond the point of bashing employees and retirees, and employers have discovered that talented and experienced workers are hard to find these days. Maybe they'd like some of us back for awhile. Maybe some of us might like to come back for awhile. Who knows. If we dream a bit, maybe we can see across the great divide.

Changing of the Guards

America has awoken and it has spoken loud and clear. We have elected a new President at this critical crossroads in our history. I have hope again. I'm excited again. And I'm enthusiastic that if anyone can bring some sanity back to the United States, Barack Obama can do so. He crossed the partisan divide, the racial divide, and the gender divide to rack up an historic win in one of the ugliest political campaigns in my memory. Obama largely remained above the fray and let his opponents sully their own reputation by dragging up useless facts from Obama's past. But that is behind us now.

Regardless of how you voted yesterday, I hope that we all take the next two months to consider how this election will change the world's opinion of us, and our opinion of ourselves. We have made history. Let us all hope and pray to the deity of your choice, that President-Elect Obama can parlay this mandate he's been given into the massive transformation needed to restore our country to its greatness.

Life Short, Call Now

The saga of Kay Bell continues. As most are aware, Kay Bell received some pretty crummy advice from PERS, retired based on that advice, and subsequently sued PERS when she learned that the advice was wrong and that PERS wanted money back (This has nothing to do with the problems of window retirees. Bell's case is somewhat unique). The PERS Coalition represented Ms. Bell in a jury trial in Marion County this past year. The ruled ruled unanimously in her favor and awarded her damages in excess of $100,000. Subsequently, PERS filed a motion to reduce Ms. Bell's award to $100,000 to comply with the Oregon Tort Claims Act. The judge ruled in PERS' favor, agreeing to reduce the jury's award and also to deny Ms. Bell interest on the outstanding amount.

PERS has now announced its intention -- big surprise -- to appeal the verdict to the Oregon Court of Appeals. In the meantime, a Legislative task force is exploring ways to remedy the problem that the Bell case has exposed -- PERS' responsibility to provide reasonably accurate pre-retirement estimates, and to find some way to remedy the circumstances when such estimates turn out to be completely inaccurate through no fault of the retiree. It is likely that some of this will be solved legislatively during the 2009 session.

The saga of the White case also continues. Judge Kantor cancelled the hearings on White and advised the advocates that he will either rule in favor of the defendants for summary judgement, or allow the PERS Coalition to file cross-motions for summary judgement. This case has been going on since April 2004 and has yet to be heard formally before any jurisdiction. Depositions were taken last summer with the hope that the case could be resolved during 2007. It is unlikely now that the case will be resolved before 2009, assuming there are no appeals of Judge Kantor's ruling.

If you haven't voted, be sure to get your vote in no later than 8 pm tomorrow night. It is too late to mail your ballot. Find a local ballot drop-off site and carry your ballot there. This election has too many important decisions to shrug off. Regardless of who wins, the country is in for some major changes.

After The Thrill Is Gone

I'm going to violate my rule about injecting politics (except about PERS) in this site. I am writing only to say that this has been the longest political silly season in my entire 61 years of existence. It is no longer fun, no longer inspiring, and just seems mean, nasty, and ugly. There has not been a single campaign whose approach I liked (after the first 15 minutes). I've been badgered for money, hectored for money, abused for money, and no matter how much you give, it isn't enough. All for the privilege of watching, hearing, or reading another savage attack on another politician. I no longer care at this point what happens on Tuesday (OK, hyperbole, I do care), but I am so sick of politics that I wish to be disconnected completely from it for about 2 years. Unfortunately, the way our system is structured, we'll be freed from politicking (not politics) only from about January 1, until after the first 100 days of Congress and the Presidency. After that, everyone starts thinking about and organizing the next election cycle. Yuck.

I'm spending this afternoon with some old friends and some new friends at the home of the children of one of Oregon's most beloved politicians, long-retired from the game. It will be a pleasure to have something else to talk about for a change.

For me the thrill ended about two months ago. What about you?

The Ghost of Tom Joad

It's looking a bit bleak these days. With the stock market gyrating pretty much out of control, with the Bush administration and Congress passing handouts to nearly any business who asks, and the US deficit climbing to record levels, there is little doubt that things will take awhile for us to recover. It should, therefore, come as little surprise that PERS has taken a pretty substantial hit. Recent estimates show that through the end of September, the PERS Fund lost about $13 billion. While it did better than my personal portfolio, that is still a substantial hit that will pretty much wipe out any surplus it has and leave the fund with an unfunded actuarial liability again. Ron Schmitz of the Oregon Treasury estimates that the fund may only have between 90 and 95% of funds required to meet all demands of all members. While this is a paper number that has no real meaning with two thirds of the membership still working, it also means that there won't be any treats available when PERS trick or treaters come around tonight or during next year's legislative session.

The good news is that PERS is better prepared to weather the crisis than most public employee retirement funds across the country. The OIC has done a remarkable job in keeping the fund in the black and I have confidence that once the current crisis settles down, they will be able to place funds where they can once again return in excess of the assumed rate.

In keeping with the Tom Joad theme, I do think that there will be pressure on PERS to *reduce* the actuarially assumed interest rate (currently at 8%). Right now, this is tough to do because the rate is linked to the construction of the mortality tables, linked to the payouts at retirement, and intimately bound to the rates charged to employers. Any reduction in the assumed rate would not only negatively impact members, it would also raise the employer contribution levels. At a time of shrinking budgets, the employers would protest vigorously any proposal to change the "guarantee". Nevertheless, I think a change is inevitable in the current climate and it would not surprise me to see either next year's legislature or the current actuary (Mercer) propose that PERS do just that.

The second Tom Joad theme is that I rather doubt any proposal constructed by OPRI to give current PERS retirees an ad hoc rate increase will get through the Legislature. While the purchasing power of all PERS retirees has declined, especially that of long-time retirees, the fund simply doesn't have the resources to pay such increases. Moreover, since COLA increases and ad hoc increases come directly from employer contributions or from earnings on the Benefits-in-Force reserve (currently negative), the enthusiasm for digging deeper into budgets isn't there.

Finally, the $13 billion loss in the PERS Fund does *not* include the month of October, which has been the worst in recorded history. If there were any residual belief that any of the above would or wouldn't happen, October should just about erase that.

Trick, no Treat, Mr. Joad.

Gotta Be Somebody

For PERS members and retirees, one of the toughest decisions in the upcoming election will be that for Oregon Treasurer. The two principal candidates are Ben Westlund (D) and Allen Alley (R). For different reasons, each would make a good Treasurer. On the PERS Oregon Discussion Group, I explained why I couldn't make a choice between these two and suggested that my wife and I would be splitting our votes. In the interim, several more informed members of POD persuaded me to look closely at Allen Alley's performance as CEO of PixelWorks, the high tech graphics company that Alley founded. I confess that I hadn't done so before Frank (in particular) made the suggestion. It was eye-opening to look at PixelWorks from the perspective of judging the CEO as a possible Oregon State Treasurer. In effect, the Oregon State Treasurer's job is to insure that all of the various funds under his/her management remain solvent, vibrant, and able to pay out promised benefits to all the various beneficiaries. From that perspective, Alley's tenure at Pixelworks has been dismal. Several years ago, the stock traded at about $10 per share. Since then, the stock has dropped to an eye-popping $0.94 per share (you read that right). It might be up or down depending on today's stock market crisis, but I think you get my drift here. While no one expected stellar performance in the volatile market of today (though look at Apple for a stark contrast), I think that a healthy company would have done better than to drop to one tenth its value in the span of only a few years, if that long.

Alley has been running on his business acumen and experience; Westlund has been running on his own business experience as well as his experience in the Legislature. He has reached across the aisle (when he was a Republican to Democrats, and as a Democrat to Republicans). All things considered now, I am convinced that Ben Westlund would be the best choice for State Treasurer. I endorse him wholeheartedly. I think he will be the best person to safeguard the PERS Fund. While Alley *might* do a good job, his experience at Pixelworks and their stock performance in the recent past do not give me a warm fuzzy feeling about how well he would do with a fund valued at $60 billion. To be sure, the fund is actually managed by the Oregon Investment Council, but the OIC is nominally headed by the Treasurer. I think I'd prefer someone who hasn't had the kind of experience Alley has. And, as for Alley's advisory role with Governor Kulongoski, I believe that was in Ted's first term - a term in which the PERS contract was broken repeatedly by Ted and his henchmen in the Legislature.

So, to reiterate, if you are still undecided in the Treasurer's race, I wholeheartedly endorse Ben Westlund.

White Chalk

Things just keep getting stranger by the day with the White case. According to a post on the OPRI web site, the White trial has been cancelled. The White case is still on, but Judge Kantor has decided to use the submissions to make a ruling on the defendants' (PERS, State, etc) petition to for summary judgement and dismiss the case. Judge Kantor has reportedly told the PERS Coalition that they can wait until he issues his ruling in the summary judgement petition. At that point, if Judge Kantor rules against summary judgement, then the PERS Coalition can files its own petition for summary judgement (something I already thought they did). On the other hand, if the Judge rules in favor of the defendants, then the PERS Coalition can simply appeal the ruling to the Oregon Court of Appeals.

This is about the strangest turn of events I've seen yet. I'm trying to get confirmation from Greg Hartman and the PERS Coalition that this preposterous (to me anyway) sequence of events has been accurately reported. Stay tuned for more information. In the meantime, you might want to hang tough a bit longer before jettisoning those plans to attend the hearings.

P.S. 1:40 pm. Greg Hartman just got back to me. He explains that Judge Kantor did cancel the hearing. He (Judge Kantor) noted that he believes that he has a sufficient record upon which to base a decision. This means that Judge Kantor doesn't believe that there are factual issues requiring resolution. According to Greg Hartman, Judge Kantor also stated that he had not determined how he would rule and therefore might invite the PERS Coalition to file a cross motion for summary judgment. Hartman noted "while this is unusual I think it reflects the fact that most of the dispute in this case is how to apply the legal principles to facts which are largely not in dispute."

Thanks to Greg Hartman for his quick reply to my query. Let's all hope that Judge Kantor shows some wisdom this time, unlike his ruling in Arken.

I guess those of you who had plans to come to the hearings can safely cancel them now. We'll wait for the chalk outline to appear on the court docket. Hopefully the outline will be of PERS, the State, and the employers, and NOT the Coalition.

White Rabbit

The case known as the "White" case goes before Judge Kantor on October 23. The hearings are scheduled for three days - October 23, 24, and October 27. It is hard to gauge exactly how much time a complex case like this will take. At issue is the "legality" of the settlement agreement the PERS Board entered into to settle the City of Eugene case. For those unaware of the exactly how that agreement affected us, consider that it was finalized in early 2004, before the Supreme Court had heard and ruled on the Strunk case. While the Strunk case concluded that the Legislature could not withhold COLA increases for retirees, and concluded that the Legislature had, in effect, created a new benefit for retirees - the fixed benefit - which could not be said to contain errors, the settlement agreement effectively undermined the principal Strunk ruling. It enshrined what I've called the "nuclear option". It basically said that if the Supreme Court ruled that the COLA freeze option was unconstitutional, PERS would use an alternative and more costly mechanism (to retirees) method for getting back the alleged "overpayments". The settlement agreement also asked PERS to switch sides in the City of Eugene case. It required them to admit to wrongdoing -- something they argued vociferously against in the City of Eugene case - so that the 1999 earnings crediting decision could be classed as an "error" and be subject to ORS 238.715 (the collections statute). There are many other unsubtle elements to the settlement agreement, but any rational analysis leads to the conclusion that the PERS Board, which is charged with primary fiduciary responsibility to its members, retirees, and their money, violated that responsibility and took action directly in conflict with its responsibilities. The White case charges the PERB with exactly that, and more, and seeks to undo the settlement agreement. This is a very important case that will ultimately go all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court.

So that people can plan in advance, I urge every member and retiree to try to find time and means to attend all or part of the hearings. I firmly believe that attaching human faces to the dry proceedings playing out in a courtroom gives all sides a look at who is affected by the litigation before them. The hearings are held in the Multnomah County Courthouse in downtown Portland. I will be posting directions and other information as time goes on. For those who live in the Eugene or Salem areas, carpools typically get formed and this makes it easier and less costly for people from the valley to attend. I will help facilitate organizing these carpools through the PERS_OREGON_DISCUSSION group (POD). You can access the newsgroup by clicking on the link to the left of this post. I hope to see many people there.

Sad Cafe

The plaintiffs in the Arken and Robinson cases have been informed by the PERS Coalition that Judge Kantor has signed the final judgement and it has been entered into the Multnomah County Circuit Court. On Monday, the Coalition prepared for filing the Notice of Appeal to the Oregon Court of Appeals asking that Court to direct and certify the appeals directly to the Oregon Supreme Court. In the Robinson case, Judge Kantor has asked the attorney, Jim Coon, whether it is necessary to certify a class. Coon is reviewing that option. We should know relatively soon whether the Court of Appeals will direct the Arken case to the Supreme Court without the intervening stop. In the meantime, we can hurry up and wait a bit longer. The White case should be coming up for hearing soon.

Slow Down Fast

PERS has released its latest "PERS By The Numbers (September 2008)". You can download a copy here. If you study it closely, you can see some evidence of the recent downturns in the stock market. PERS assures members and retirees in a note today that it has a handle on the current situation even though it is a difficult time.

As I've noted before, PERS has been salting away reserves since 2003 and was about 112% funded at the end of last year. Of course, the current downturn (uptick?) on the stock market, the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, the scandals involving credit swap derivatives, etc, will almost assuredly have a negative effect on the PERS Fund. This has led to some testy debate between the two candidates running for the State Treasurer's office. I haven't decided who to support, although the more I hear from each candidate, the less impressed I am with them. They both know that the PERS Fund is the largest chunk of cash the state manages. And the State Treasurer is responsible for managing those funds. You get your choice between Ben Westlund, a Republican in 2003, an independent in 2005, and a Democrat now, and Allen Alley, a Republican to the core, who worked as an economic adviser to Ted Kulongoski during his first term. Kulongoski has endorsed Westlund. This *should* be a difficult choice for PERS members/retirees. I encourage you all to study their positions carefully and take the opportunity to ask them questions if you meet them. It may help you decide.

Time The Conqueror

For those of you wondering what the Oregon Investment Council is doing to shore up the PERS Fund against the current Wall Street meltdown, the answer is pretty much the same as before. Ron Schmitz, from the Treasury, told the Oregonian that the investment mix they have is solid and that their losses this year are manageable without going into "risk managment." When the OIC met yesterday, it didn't discuss the meltdown at all in its morning meeting. But in the afternoon, they brought in a economic expert who talked about the causes of the current crisis. He attributed the crisis to "excess leverage" and equated it to "pouring lead into the stream that everyone drinks from". He supports the bailout plan before congress, but with some measures to protect homeowners from losing their homes in foreclosure.

Time will tell whether the OIC's decisions bear fruit, but the OIC's track record is certainly admirable up to this point. I don't think this year is going to be good for any accounts without a guarantee, and those with a guarantee will chew up enough of the reserve that the PERS Board will have a ready-made excuse to not pay anyone over the guarantee for another long stretch of time. I think they were considering a possible payment over 8% in this current year had Wall Street performed like it had since 2003. But alas, the sticky terms of HB 2001, passed in 2003 make this year's result dial the clock back again to the beginning so that PERS will have to replenish the reserves again when the market goes up, and hold the reserves stable for 3 consecutive years. As I've predicted before, HB 2001 has always been diabolical and pretty much guarantees nothing more than the guaranteed rate, whatever it is, for the rest of the Tier 1 members' life expectancies. Time conquers all.

The Beat Goes On

I am trying something different today -- live blogging. I am sitting outside Kantor's courtroom chatting with Robinson attorney Jim Coon. Everyone is shaking hands and passing around swine flu germs. Kantor is, as usual, running behind. Coon seems to be outnumbered four to one. It is he against 4 wideboys.

Unbelievably PERS is arguing how difficult it would be to undo the changes already implemented. Kantor is expressing disbelief at PERS argument. Malkin is arguing that they just don't have the money or staff and claiming it would take more than a year. The poverty argument is heart-tugging. Did you know that no PERS retiree has suffered.

Kantor just chewed out Malkin for submitting proposed orders in an inappropriate format.

Coon is up. Kantor is questioning where the money would come from?

Kantor ultimately rules in favor of the stay on the grounds that the are too many balls in the air and too much going on to bind PERS to refunding money now.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Life Sentence

In a fit of symmetry and anticlimax, the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld HB 2004 (actuarial tables) as not violating the terms of the Henderson case of 1978. For those around in 1978, the 9th Circuit held that PERS could not use separate actuarial tables for men and for women, despite the different actuarial life expectancies of the two sexes. From that point forward, PERS developed "blended" actuarial tables that combined life expectancies of men and women. There was also a stipulation that PERS would not be able to change the actuarial tables back in the future. On that basis, the PERS Coalition challenged the 2003 Legislative effort to force PERS to change the actuarial tables to reflect more modern mortality data. In HB 2004, the Legislature put into statute rules that require PERS to examine actuarial tables every two years and update them, if needed, on January 1 of odd-numbered years (legislative years coincidentally). The PERS Coalition first challenged this in Strunk, but also filed in Federal Court on the grounds that the newly enacted statute violated the terms of the Henderson case of 1978. This case was first heard by a single Appeals Court Judge, then a panel of three Appeals Court judges, and finally by a larger group of 9th Circuit Judges. A few days ago, the 9th Circuit handed down its opinion that gives the Legislature and, through it, PERS the right to change actuarial tables as spelled out in HB 2004 so long as they preserve the blended nature of the tables. As this has been happening, this is really no news at all. Nevertheless, those of you hanging by a thread hoping that somehow, some way, those nasty actuarial tables enacted in 2003 would go away. Sorry. Your life sentence was not commuted.

Shelter From The Storm

In a followup to the post of several days ago, Ley Garnett of the Oregon Treasury, emailed to correct an error he made in providing me with information about PERS' holdings in Freddie/Fannie. As it turns out, Ley reports (consistent with State Treasurer Randal Edwards) that the PERS fund only holds 0.2% in Freddie/Fannie stock - an almost trivial amount in a $60+ billion portfolio. And it is also the case that the PERS fund has weathered the latest round of slashing and gashing on Wall Street better than most. The reports I am reading (not from Treasury) suggest that the PERF is only *down* about 6% for the year so far with 3+ months to go. I can say that the Oregon Investment Council has done far better than I have. They have a lot more money to diversify with. [Help this poor soul out. Buy Apple stock. :-) ]

I Threw It All Away

The meltdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have given me pause. I'm in the process of trying to determine how much exposure the PERS Fund has to these two dismal giants and how their government takeover will affect the value of the Fund. As soon as Treasury lets me know, you'll be the first to know it here. These two housing funds are so large that any meltdown there is likely to have some significant ramifications in the value of any fund that holds them in sizeable quantities. Should know soon and will post when I get the answer.

P.S. Ley Garnett responded with a very helpful, if concerning answer. The total amount of the PERS portfolio invested in Fannie/Freddie is about $2.7 billion, mostly all in fixed income portfolios. As of the close of business today, that represents about 4% of the fund. I guess the question of the day should be, should we be worried?

It's Money That I Love

Well, not really. But it is always nice to get a raise. I noted that my bank listed my September 1 PERS benefit as already in my account. As I expected, my benefit check did, indeed, go up by 2% and my net benefit was noticeably higher than either my August 1 check or my July 1 check. This should convince the "doubting Thomases" out there that the legal fees really were a one-time reduction.

Please be safe out there this weekend. I've already had to be about several times and the old saying "it's a jungle out there" wouldn't be sufficient to describe how bad the traffic really is. Stay home and enjoy our most excellent (just kidding) Labor Day weather. This reminds me more of July 4th than Labor Day. Here's hoping for a long, pleasant fall. I don't want the rains to return anytime soon.

Foolish Mind Games

It has been said that foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. The Oregonian has once again demonstrated its miniscule mindedness. In yesterday's (Friday August 29) editorial, they displayed foolish consistency insisting that, although it would be painful, the Portland Police and Fire retirees who have benefitted from the erroneous calculations of benefits since 1995 (because of the Legislature's bill resolving the income tax gridlock coming out of Hughes v Oregon and Davis v. Michigan , should have to repay the overpayments. The PPFRS did not calculate the adjustment correctly and retirees have been receiving approximately 2.58% higher benefits since retirement. So, as in the case of PERS retirees, the Whoregonian insists that beneficiaries should repay their overpayments. My oh my, haven't we heard this line before. I hope that the coalition supporting PPFRS retirees is as agressive with their litigation as the PERS Coalition has been for PERS retirees. These are not errors for which the victims should be blamed. And there ought to be a statute of limitations on how long the funds have to recover the errors. Three years ought to be sufficient for auditing of payments and for finding mistakes. We are talking about errors that began as many as 13 years ago. Just because the administrators of these funds are totally incompetent, it doesn't mean that the beneficiaries should have to pay for their mistakes.

Tumbling Dice

My neighborhood fishwrapper (the Boregonian) reports that the Portland Police and Fire pension fund has been (surprise!) paying out about $3 million too much to retirees and their beneficiaries since about 1995. The Board will meet next Tuesday (August 26?) to discuss how to remedy the mistake, whether to recover the "overpayments" or to "eat the extra costs". This affects about half the current retiree cohort.

You can bet that the Portland Police and Fire pension fund Board will be taking cues from the PERS Board and will, if one were betting, follow PERB in collecting the overpayments. What makes this case somewhat different is that the Board is clueless about who is responsible for the mistake or how it was even made. This group didn't bother to keep minutes or notes during the period and so there is no way to actually figure out the inspiration for this error. The overpayments range from about $50 per month to slightly over $100 per month. The birdcage liner also reports that Portland Mayor Tom Potter and Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard are among those currently being overpaid pension benefits.

I wish the Portland Police and Fire Bureau the best of luck in working through this uncertainty. In my fantasy world, the retirees are left untouched and this becomes a legal precedent that can be used to benefit PERS retirees afflicted by this latest case of "no good deed ever goes unpunished."

Skandalouz

A recent post on the PERS Oregon Discussion group raises an interesting question about the behavior of PERS towards active members in collecting from them for Attorney Fees this past April. Recall that the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that the PERS Coalition was entitled to Attorney Fees under the "common fund" provision. This provision allows that attorney fees be collected from the winners of a civil suit in some proportion to the gains they made by the ruling. In the case of active Tier 1 PERS members - who are entitled to the 8% rate guarantee - PERB ruled that 0.03% of the guaranteed earnings for 2007 be withheld one time only at the time the earnings were payable. This is to compensate attorney fees for the nearly $400,000,000 returned to Tier 1 members by virtue of the Strunk ruling that the guarantee is in fact the minimum rate that can be paid to Tier 1 members under any circumstances. For most Tier 1 members, the 0.03% "hit" represented a relatively small sum of money - about $60 or so for the typical member. What no one really worked out was how much this really will cost Tier 1 members over the long haul. Using some simple math, we can figure that the average member is losing not only $60, but the compounding effect of the loss of that money for the rest of his/her career. In a matter of 9 years, the $60 "hit" has doubled to $120 at 8% interest. The attorneys got paid in fixed 2008 dollars in one lump sum. PERS appears to have taken enough money from active members to cover their assessment towards the attorney bill. But what becomes of the money that PERS no longer has to pay towards retirees' retirement - the money that is no longer earning 8%? By my back of the envelope calculations, there is a considerable amount of money at stake here - probably much more than the attorney fees themselves. Who gets *that* money? No provision is made for that to go back into employee accounts. It seems to me that PERS deduction takes out far more than it needs to cover the one time attorney fees.

In the larger scheme of things, PERS probably had no alternative to deducting the money. Billing active members would have met with mixed results and driven up collection costs. But it seems to me that PERS could have discounted the attorney fee assessment so that over a period of say 5 years, the compounded amount would have covered the attorney fees. In short, I think some accounts must have been padded as a result of this one time fee. By any criterion I can think of, this is hardly a one-time hit for active members? Perhaps PERS will tell me where I'm wrong, but I don't see how any alternative explanation can obtain here.

P.S. I'll be off the grid for a few days as I recover from minor surgery on Friday. Regular programming should return next week.

What Are Their Names?

The witnesses, the various people covered by the plaintiffs' (PERS Coalition in White) motion for discovery. The ubiquity of technology is on display as the attorneys go for broke in trying to gain access to all the various ways the lawyers, the PERB, and the employers communicated in the run-up to the settlement agreement culminating in the White case now. The web site for the Coalition Attorneys (here), is ripe with every document produced so far for this trial. Of course, we won't get to see all the good stuff uncovered in discovery until the trial. But you can bet that the defendants are scrambling right now to either ditch crucial technology (at some risk, I might add), or are madly trying to assemble it in an order that won't reveal their true motives in rushing the settlement agreement out of the door. Stay tuned. This is bound to get a lot more interesting and exciting as time rolls on. It will be "fright night" on display in Judge Kantor's court just before Halloween. I'll be there complete with costume.

Limbo No More

The Bennett Hartman law firm has posted documents related to the White case and the recent hearing on August 7, 2008. You can read them here and here. These documents make it clear that the discovery phase of the trial is going to get very interesting as the PERS Coalition attorneys are seeking virtually every document in electronic form ever produced in the City of Eugene case and successors/ These documents include emails, voicemails, faxes, instant messages, Blackberry messages, text messages and virtually anything else involving communications between the attorneys and plaintiffs. As a tech geek, I was fascinated by the completeness of the request and the detailed form in which the request was made. It will be really interesting to see how the wide boys escape, dodge, and elude this request. Discovery is such a nasty weapon and it can be used so effectively in cases like this. For the first time in awhile my blood is quickening at the possibility of seeing what those sleazebuckets were up to in drawing up the "poison pills" in the "settlement agreement". The "settlement agreement" has always seemed to me to be such a brazen act of collusion between a group of employers, lawyers, and PERB.

The main act of this case begins October 23 and runs through October 27th in Judge Kantor's Courtroom.

Unbelievable

Tim does it again. Last week I noted that the blog was about to cross the 600,000 visitor threshold. In an offhand remark, I asked my predictive expert, Tim, to predict when this event would occur. Tim privately emailed me that the blog would crossover at 8:08 p.m. last night. While I don't know precisely when last night it occurred, but we have crossed over and Tim guessed it right again. I don't know how you do it Tim, but perhaps you want to predict the vote in the next presidential election?

On the PERS front, most window retirees have gotten their August 1st check showing the deduction for Attorney Fees in the Strunk case. As expected, the August take home benefit increased by a small amount, or it decreased by an equally small amount. The amount by which your benefit changed on August 1 over July 1 should indicate how much your benefit take home will *increase* on September 1. Add the amount of the attorney fee back to your take home and you'll have your future take home resulting from the August 1, 2008 COLA. PERS sent out the stubs for the August check yesterday and most members should start to see them today or in the next few days.

For What It's Worth

A few days back David Crosley (of PERS) and I had an email exchange about some questions relating to the implementation of the Attorney Fee deductions that will appear in tomorrow's check/deposit. I put together some questions and PERS has now posted the answers to these questions on their website. You can find the FAQ here. I thank David and the team at PERS for their quick responses to my questions.

Shock and Awe

I'm shocked and I'm awed by the popularity of this blog. It will be less than a week before we turn 600,000 on the old viewer odometer. Who'd a thunk that we'd still be getting about 2500 to 3000 hits per week after all these years. Given the speed at which PERS reform and PERS litigation is taking place, I expect I'll still be here three or four years from now. At the current rate, it will take about three more years before we record number 1,000,000, but there is only a small likelihood that the problem will have been permanently resolved before then.

(So Tim, you still reading? If so, when does your crystal ball say we'll hit 600K?)

Big Yellow Tax[i]

There still exists some confusion in various quarters about the tax status of the attorney fee reduction in benefits on August 1, 2008. PERS has communicated with me that these reductions will be taken POST-TAX. To put this another way, your gross benefit (before taxes) on August 1, 2008 will reflect the 2% COLA. After all taxes are calculated and deducted, the attorney fee will come out once from the net benefit (after taxes). So, it is quite likely that the cost of the attorney fee reduction will be about what your COLA is after taxes. I expect few peoples' net benefit to change significantly from June to July. After this month (August 1), the net benefit should be higher by the exact amount of the attorney fee reduction.

Your Luck Won't Last

As I had suspected, the Bell case won't have any impact on the proceedings in Arken or Robinson. I finally heard from Greg Hartman yesterday. He tells me that Bennett, Hartman, Morris and Kaplan is pleased with the verdict in the Bell case and believe that it is the first step towards securing and protecting the rights of members in relying on figures given to them by PERS. Hartman also agrees that the Bell case probably has little bearing on the rights of PERS members who are already retired.

So, although there is some similarity between Kay Bell's claims and the verdict in her case to the promissory estoppel claim in Arken, the differences in facts and circumstances and approach to litigation are such that it will not bear on the outcome of cases currently in litigation and on retirees affected by Arken/Robinson. For that, we simply have to wait for the higher courts to rule. And, we also have White - a case of profound importance to all of us. If the courts rule that PERB breached its fiduciary duty to members, and the court invalidates the settlement agreement, almost everything done so far will have to be undone. I'd be placing my money on White to dig us out of this hole.

What's Been Going On?

My friend PEG just contacted Judge Henry Kantor's office and confirmed that the White Case (concerning the "settlement agreement") has been postponed to October 23, 24, and 27. It was originally scheduled for August 3 and 4. It looks like I will now be able to attend the hearings after all. There is also a motions hearing scheduled in White for August 7.

White is a very significant case. At its core is the assertion that the PERS Board breached its fiduciary responsibility to PERS members and retirees by entering into a "settlement agreement" with employers in the City of Eugene case. The settlement agreement produced some very detrimental consequences to PERS members and retirees - consequences that would not have happened otherwise because the Supreme Court had issued rulings in the Strunk case that would have prevented them. The problem is that retirees and members were stake holders in the outcome of the "settlement", yet they were not only not consulted about the settlement, they were completely excluded and kept in the dark until the agreement was announced. All the actions taken in the Strunk/Eugene "remediation" (the benefit adjustment) arise out that settlement agreement. Thus, if the Courts invalidate the settlement, PERS will be busy undoing pretty much everything it has done to us over the past few years - except for the attorney fee reductions.

I would encourage those of you within short driving distance of Portland to mark those days - October 23, 24, 27 - on you calendars. I'm a firm believer in the power of the people to impress upon the legal system that their rulings have human consequences. Seeing lots of expectant faces in a courtroom could have some influence.

Lawyers, Guns, and Money

It has been awhile since I used this particular title, but it seems appropriate again.

There has been considerable conversation both back channel and in the two newsgroups that cover Oregon PERS about the deductions for attorney fees on August 1, 2008. From the postings, it appears that the size of the deductions bear only a slight relationship to the size of the benefit. Obviously there is a fixed amount of money needed, and there is *some* (unknown) basis for apportioning that amount over the 21,000 retirees required to chip in. But, the relationship between the attorney fees, the ostensible 8/1/04 COLA and the 8/1/2008 COLA are highly variable. It has taken me a bit of time to figure out what is going on. I haven't determined precisely what influences the amounts, but these are facts I do know:

For retirees who retired prior to 8/1/2002, the 8/1/2004 COLA was 2% and the 8/1/2008 COLA will be 2% (This is slightly incorrect. Retirees between 7/1/00 and 7/1/01 get 2%; those between 8/1/01 and 7/1/02 get 1.73%. An alert reader brought this to my attention. Thanks Jim.)

For retirees who retired between 8/1/2002 and 3/1/2004, the 8/1/04 COLA was 1.36% and the 8/1/08 COLA will be 2%.

Some retirees have been "adjusted" due to the Strunk/Eugene remediation. This adjustment means that the 1999 earnings have been reduced downward to 11.33%, the final account balance duly adjusted, and the base benefit refigured. These people also have had all COLAs applied from first eligible date through to 2007 and will be getting the 2% on 8/1/08.

Some retirees have not been adjusted and are still receiving the fixed benefit, although they got a COLA on 8/1/07 and will, presumably, receive one on 8/1/08.

Taken together, these facts produce some disparities in the relationship between the attorney fee reduction amount, the 8/1/04 COLA, and the 8/1/08 COLA. The bottom line is that I've seen examples of retirees whose attorney fee reduction exceeds the 8/1/08 COLA (which means that on 8/1/08, their actual benefit will be reduced for that one month), retirees whose attorney fee reduction is only slightly less than the 8/1/08 COLA (which means that the August check will be almost the same as the 7/1/08 check), and finally, there are cases like mine, in which the 8/1/08 COLA is almost double the amount of the attorney fee reduction and will receive an 8/1/08 check larger than the 7/1/08 check. In all cases, the attorney fee reduction is ONLY FOR THE MONTH OF AUGUST. Normal checks resume again on September 1, 2008.

One thing is obvious. PERS explanation of how the attorney fee reductions affect individuals is both simplistic and suspect. It isn't the simple relationship explained in the reduction letter. All sorts of variables come into play. Rather than spell this out for the Supreme Court or for us, we are left to PERS' machinations to trust the calculations. They cannot be replicated without further information. So far, PERS hasn't offered a clear explanation of how these reductions were calculated, and we're again left wondering just exactly what PERS is doing. I suppose this de rigeur for those folks. Although PERS' motto is "transparency", this latest actions clearly fails the test for even remote clarity. Opaque would be too kind.

Make It Go Away

At Friday's PERB meeting, staff admitted there had been a "computer glitch" (there is generally no such thing; human "glitches" yes, computer "glitch" no) that delayed sending out all the notification letters to retirees eligible to participate in the big giveaway back to PERS, for attorney fees in Strunk. In any case, all letters were resent and most retirees affected by this should have received the letters in yesterday's mail, or will receive them early next week. The letter tells you what your share of the attorney fees will be for the COLA freeze win in Strunk. From what I can figure, the attorney fees pretty much consume the entire 2004 COLA on the "fixed benefit" - a COLA we never received. While I don't agree that the winners should have to pay for their own win, Oregon law provides that in beneficiary/trust law, the "winners" should have to pay in proportion to what their share of the "victory" is.

Before screaming bloody murder, remember a couple of things: 1) the PERS Coalition signed off on this fee arrangement - our own attorneys and the organization representing us agreed to the payment system; 2) this is a ONE-TIME reduction, payable only on August 1, 2008 when the benefit naturally rises from the new COLA applied to the benefit. We get 2% on August 1; we will lose about 1/2 of that due to the one-time payment, but the full benefit resumes on September 1, 2008; 3) I do not know whether the reduction will come pre-tax or post-tax; I'd prefer it be pre-tax, but fear it will be post-tax.

I hope to have more information tomorrow. Stay tuned for the next installment of "As PERS Turns (on us)".

Stop The Bus

New information available. At yesterday's PERB meeting, there were two announcements of interest. The first was the announcement that the October 2008 Board meeting would be cancelled because of its conflict with the "rescheduled" White Case hearings. Apparently, though not yet confirmed, the White case just continues to drag on, with the August 4-5 hearings postponed until sometime in October. This would hardly be a shock since the White case has been "in limbo" for nearly 4 years now. More confirmation and clarification to follow early next week when official offices are open. The second, less exciting, piece of news is the availability (soon) of a new PERS By the Numbers. It was handed out at the meeting, but not yet posted electronically. A copy will be available at the PERS Document Library as soon as it is available electronically. It is way too long to scan.

Belief

Is what will be required for the Kay Bell verdict to have any long term benefits for PERS members. The following email was sent out to a general distribution list of SEIU members.

"On July 16, 2008, a Marion County Circuit Court jury unanimously found the PERS Board liable for $200,707.04 in damages for negligent misrepresentations made to a PERS member in the case of Kay Bell v. Public Employees Retirement Board (Marion County Case No. 07C11097). PERS Coalition attorney, Aruna Masih, represented the PERS member at trial.

Prior to trial, Marion County Circuit Court Judge Claudia Burton found that the PERS Board owes a “special duty” of care to PERS members to protect them from economic loss caused by false information or other material misrepresentation made by PERS. Trial evidence established that, in this case, PERS had provided the PERS member, a school teacher and counselor, incorrect information on annual statements and estimates over a period of many years. The PERS member resigned her position and retired in reliance on that incorrect information. Only months after the PERS member retired did PERS reveal that the information it had provided her was inaccurate by over $1,100 per month. Of course, by this point, the PERS member’s former position had already been filled, and she had lost the seniority she had accrued. The PERS member testified that had PERS provided her accurate information in a timely manner, she would never have resigned her position and would have continued working until age 62.

The jury unanimously found that the PERS member reasonably relied on the false information provided by PERS and that she suffered loss of salary and benefits of $200,707.04 as a result of giving up her job in reliance on the false information provided by PERS. The PERS Board has already notified the trial court of its intent to challenge the $200,707.04 jury verdict as exceeding the caps set by the Oregon Tort Claims Act. Once the tort claims caps issue is decided by the trial judge and a judgment is entered, the case will likely also be appealed by the PERS Board.

The appeal will give the Oregon appellate courts not only the opportunity to set precedent on whether the PERS Board owes a special duty of care to PERS members to provide them accurate information but also whether the Tort Claims Act should limit damages between a fiduciary and beneficiary like the PERS Board and PERS members. The jury verdict can also be used to support legislative and administrative reform of the PERS retirement audit process, requiring PERS to perform such an audit before a member retires to allow both the member and PERS sufficient time to challenge the accuracy of the information before retirement. Possible reform proposals at the next PERS Coalition meeting."

Of particular interest are the last two sentences of this email (forwarded from Hartman's office to Coalition members). Also is the question of the applicability of the "tort cap" in an instance where the tortious act arises from a fiduciary trustees' actions against a beneficiary. This is quite a different circumstance than a case of medical malpractice. PERS was screwing with Kay Bell's retirement account and denies any responsibility for accurate information. If you can't trust PERS to give you accurate information before you retire, who can you trust? The answer is that no one else has the information to enable you to audit their figures and insure they are correct before you irrevocably give up your job. It seems to me we've heard this claim before, but no Judge has felt quite the same way as a group of outraged jurors. Let's hope that this case finally pushes PERS into accountability. It is probably too late for those of us already ensnared in the web of lies fed us when *we* retired, but hopefully future retirees will be insulated against such arbitrary and capricious acts.

Viva Las Vegas

As promised, here are a few of my pictures from our helicopter flight into the western part of the Grand Canyon. Several pictures were shot from the canyon floor; several were shot from the air as we cruised over the canyon; finally, there is a single shot of Hoover Dam and the Colorado River (Lake Mead is in the foreground, cropped out for size uniformity) taken at dusk from about 3 miles away inside the backseat of the moving helicopter. The combination of speed and low light made the photo challenging. Nevertheless, it didn't turn out too badly.





On an unrelated topic, there is an excellent set of PERS-related discussions on our newsgroup - PERS Oregon Discussion. This group, hosted on Yahoo Groups, is easy to join. You can read messages there and post there. See the link on the left to get to the group's membership page. We're pushing to have about 25 new members this week. Read PERS and retirement news there; our motto is "Politik Kills". No political discussions will be found there.

Long Road Out Of Eden

We are finally back from our long drive to Southern Nevada. We managed a great trip without gambling a cent (OK, I did play a few slot machines and won a few bucks, but that was to pass a few minutes of idle time waiting for my daughter). We saw some spectacular scenery flying into the Grand Canyon and landing. I'll be posting some pictures soon. We also saw a bunch of great shows (Cirque De Soleil - Mystere, Blue Man Group, Jersey Boys, the Titanic Exhibit), had a great visit with my sister and her family, and my wife and daughter got a lot of shopping in.

While I was gone, Kay Bell won the first stage in her battle against PERS in open court. Kay was victorious on a claim that PERS gave her faulty information before she retired and at her retirement. The jury sided with Kay on a 12-0 verdict. PERS plans to appeal both the verdict and the fact that the case was allowed to get to trial in the first place. Many retirees have asked the obvious question: does Kay's victory have any benefits for others of us who also got "faulty" information from PERS prior and at retirement (and since)? The immediate answer is unknown since Kay's verdict has not been viewed by the Appelate Courts. More significantly, however, is the fact that Kay's victory was individual. It was filed using a completely different route than other class-oriented retiree cases. It also followed after Kay had exhausted all internal PERS mechanisms to appeal their decisions along the way. The gist of Kay's case follows loosely the lines of the "promissory estoppel" claims filed in Arken (which we lost), and in Strunk. Thus, while I'd like to believe that Kay's verdict will have positive implications for other retirees, I'm not entirely sold on the notion that it will. Kay's circumstances were quite different (see Peg's reports on PERS_Oregon_Discussion for the details), and the verdict quite individual. Moreover, what Kay was asking for was altogether different than what the PERS Coalition asked for in the Arken case, and what was posed in Strunk. In the meantime, all we can do is hope that Kay's verdict will be upheld in the higher courts. Kay's victory gives me hope, but I don't for a moment think that we will see any long term benefit from her case. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm having an extremely difficult time generalizing her case to those of us victimized by PERS' perfidy.

Ring Them Bells

Thanks to my friend Peg for her excellent reports on the civil trial of Kay Bell v PERS. You can read Peg's reports on the PERS_Oregon_Discussion Group (see left for link). To make a long story short, Kay Bell sued PERS for their faulty advice. She went through all the PERS hoops and lost at every stage. Finally, fed up with a system stacked against appellants, Kay decided to fight PERS in civil court. She received a jury trial and the jury ruled AGAINST PERS and in favor of Kay Bell (unanimously). The jury awarded Kay $200,000 in total. Of course, PERS will appeal the verdict, but unless the judge has made some egregious error, her 12-0 verdict may well stand. I could not be more pleased for Kay Bell. She fought the system on its own terms, and she beat PERS at its own game. Good for her.

I continue to be on vacation and do not expect to post much of anything until after I return next week. I'll try to post some of the spectacular Grand Canyon photos when I'm through running them through Photoshop. It is always spectacular to see, but my pictures were taken from a helicopter flying directly INTO the Canyon.

In Praise of the Vulnerable Man

And woman. The Kay Bell hearings begin next Tuesday in Marion County Circuit Court. The White case will be heard on August 4-5 in the Multnomah County Circuit Court (Judge Kantor again). The Bell case tests a novel theory of whether an individual can recover damages from PERS for being given incorrect information prior to retirement. This seems to me to be a reformulation of the same legal question of "promissory estoppel," which was raised in the Strunk case (and ignored) and directly in the Arken case (and overruled).

The White case challenges the settlement agreement between the City of Eugene Plaintiffs and PERS and the State of Oregon. In particular, it tests whether the PERS Board breached its fiduciary duty to PERS members and retirees by entering into an agreement that violated the rights of those members and retirees.

I will not be around to sit through these hearings. I trust others will do so and share information with me. I'll be out of town for both cases.

Vegas

Just a quick note - an experiment really with Google's new Blogger editor - to remind readers that I'll be out of town quite a bit over the next 6 weeks.  I'll be in Southern Nevada, Utah, and Arizona from July 12 to July 21, and then at our house in Central Oregon again August 1 to August 8th.  During these getaways I don't take as much time to monitor the newsgroup or post new things to this blog.  Of course, if anything really significant comes up, I will post something.  And, you do know that there are two PERS-related legal cases scheduled for hearings during the periods I'm gone.  One case - the "Best" case is scheduled for the second week in July in Marion County Circuit Court, while the "White" case is finally on tap before the inestimable and painfully slow Judge Henry Kantor of the Multnomah County Circuit.  I'm pretty sure there will be spies at both hearings and so I expect to have something useful to post here during those vacation interludes.



Supposedly, this new editor gives me better controls and access to pictures so I'm going to try a few just for fun.  You'll get to see our dog "Emma", possible a cat or two ("Pot" and "Minh"), and perhaps the Mini.  This won't be a regular feature, but as a beta tester, I'm supposed to try this kind of stuff.  So here goes:

Ok.  So the cats aren't here this time.  And you got the old picture of me with the giraffe.  I like giraffes and this one was particularly fun.  I'll get the hang of the picture posting as I go along.  Bear with me.

Kill To Get Crimson

Last night, my wife and I attended our third Mark Knopfler concert. To say we are fans would be an understatement. The founder and lead guitarist and singer of the group "Dire Straits" has been on his own (in a manner of speaking) for about 16 years now. He's done 6 solo records and has scored at least a half dozen sound tracks for films. He puts on a fantastic show that highlights his guitar virtuosity and makes him, in my opinion, one of the three or four best guitarists in the world. The set last night was wide-ranging, covering tracks from all his solo albums as well as digging deep into the "Dire Straits" catalog for crowd favorites. All in all we had a great time.

Mark Knopfler is an artist whose fame doesn't seem to extend so much to the younger set. Last night's crowd was mostly baby boomers. I ran into at least a dozen PERS retirees who recognized me from my pictures posted hither and yon on the net. It was really fun to chat up these fellow music fans and retirees. Judging from the crowd, I'd hazard a guess that I met only the tip of the iceberg at the show. I'd imagine that there were lots more PERS members/retirees there. We all have good taste, except for the few idiots so drunk that they could barely speak, much less walk or follow instructions.

If you were at the show, leave a comment. PERS retirees have a life, just like everyone else. I like concerts and evidently quite a few of you do too. Incidently, if you were at the show, you may have been as perplexed by the same two things I was: the opening act was positively awful, something typically unheard of at a Mark Knopfler show, and second, the absence of the title track from the new CD and name of the tour. That hasn't been on the set list for any part of the US tour.

Letters Home From the Garden of Stone

Sometime back last year, OPRI and the PERS Coalition began to consider whether to push for an ad hoc increase in retiree benefits to make up for the effects of inflation. In January 2008, the OPRI Board heard a report from the Coalition that it intended to make ad hoc benefit increases an issue in the 2009 legislature. The crucial factor in ad hoc benefit increases is whether purchasing power of retirees has fallen significantly (to, say, less than 90%) from its current value. Apparently, the PERS Board also was concerned about this and so they requested that their actuarial firm, Mercer, study purchasing power of retirees for the entire retiree cohort. On Friday (last week) PERS posted the results of that study, which you can read here. The upshot is that the retiree cohorts going back into the early 1990's are still within the acceptable window for purchasing power and would not be candidates for any ad hoc benefit increases. Mercer considered the original benefits as well as all applicable COLA increases to figure where retirees are with respect to purchasing power. While this does not bode well for recent retirees, it is possible that when the figures for 2008 are totted up, the situation might change. It is unlikely that retirees within the current decade would benefit, but earlier retirees might qualify. The problem is that unless there is a heavier weighting for transportation costs, food costs, and insurance costs (especially medical), the actual CPI will not go up anywhere near the rates of inflation most of us are experiencing.

It would be nice to get something more than we're getting right now, but consider this just another letter home from those folks who run the garden of stone.

Big Man With A Gun

Marion County's big man, Paul Lipscomb, is retiring at the end of this month. I told you that yesterday. But here's the irony. Lipscomb is retiring so that he can maximize his PERS benefit. While I can't begrudge Lipscomb his opportunity to game PERS to the max, I can't resist observing that for those of us who did the same thing, we've earned the public's undying enmity and wrath. But when the big man does it, he's a great public servant who deserves the benefit he's getting. So, Judge Lipscomb. Enjoy your "maxed out" PERS benefit. Laugh all the way to the bank. In the meantime, try not to think about all of those who who have used your ruling in the City of Eugene case to excoriate us "window retirees" for being "losers", "pigs at the trough", "lazy, undeserving public employees", and other such unpleasant epithets. We hope you enjoy your new life as a private mediator helping out august bodies who will pay you the big bucks to go along with your PERS monthly check. Like Greg Macpherson, we won't miss you either.

Giggling Again For No Reason

It might be the great weather. It might be enjoying my Mini's gas mileage. Or it just might be the news that Judge Paul Lipscomb, Marion County Circuit Court Judge, has decided to retire at the end of this month. Judge Lipscomb is the originator of most recent retirees' angst. It was his ruling in the City of Eugene v PERS case that set the stage for the ream job done on PERS retirees and actives over the 1999 earnings crediting decision. We owe Judge Lipscomb credit for the 11.33% refiguring of 1999 (instead of 20%); we can thank Judge Lipscomb for forcing on us his own unique way of calculating the variable match so that most retirees lose a significant amount from the employers at retirement. We can thank him for looking out for retirees in his feeble caution to the Legislature and to the Supreme Court to not do anything that would harm retirees. I'm sure Judge Lipscomb deserves thanks for many other elements of our current state of despair.

The good news is that he is off the court in about one week. He will become a PERS retiree and then will go out and draw a private sector salary and will do a variety of other things to enrich his retirement life. I recently returned from a week in Sunriver. While there, I read about a complex lawsuit involving the Sunriver Home Owners Association (SROA) and a developer who wants to redo the Sunriver Mall provided the SROA gives him permission to build about 400 condominiums above all the retail stores in the Mall. This has reached a critical stage and Judge Lipscomb has come to the rescue as a mediator. I don't think the SROA has a chance in this. With friends like Judge Lipscomb, neither SROA nor PERS members/retirees need any enemies.

If you wish to leave Judge Lipscomb your best wishes in his retirement, please feel free to leave your comments here. I'll make sure they are forwarded his way.

Citizen of the Planet

It is always fascinating to determine the readership of this blog. Now that I have tools installed, I can see where every visitor comes from. Below I hope you can see where the visitors to this blog come from. The flags do not represent (necessarily) a single viewer, but simply details where each IP address comes from entering the blog. One flag might represent 500 different visitors (if you have Comcast, for example), or it might represent a single visitor, if you're the only person checking in from Mexico, for example. Our readers cover the US, although there is a notorious absence of visitors from the plains states, and the deep south. On the other hand, we have Canadian visitors, Mexican visitors, UK visitors and at least one from the Scandinavian countries. Here is a map to show the story.

Mr Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

He's on vacation as of today. He will respond to comments but will probably not generate any new posts unless something truly offensive happens in the next week. Please feel free to leave your comments and I will comment on your comments unless you simply speak truth to power. I expect that many will start getting the PERS letter about attorney fees. If they don't understand it, send them here. They may not understand it any better after coming here, but I'm sure they'll be madder than hell after reading my doublespeak (or is that PERS' doublespeak). Think of it this way. PERS will not give you the benefit of any doubt anywhere, anytime. They compute amounts owed to them based on your highest (and least likely) benefit, and compute what they owe you on the lowest benefit to which you are entitled. I like to think of this as being screwed at both ends simultaneously. Those folks at PERS have truly gone to the dark side. They reply ONLY to employers and to the Governor, both of whom have already told the retirees and members to "kiss off." Be grateful for what you have. It ain't gonna get any better.

Boogie Oogie Oogie

My 15 seconds of fame appeared in yesterday's USA Today. There is even a picture, although it probably wouldn't have been my first choice of all the one's taken. But, as I've said elsewhere, I don't look like I'm insane, which is quite a relief to my family. I was busy having dental surgery yesterday, which probably accounts for how I missed the article in the first place.

If you are even slightly interested, you can find the article here.

March Of The Pigs

Actually it's June, but no matter. Those sleazers over at PERS just keep getting bolder and bolder with their collection efforts. In yesterday's post, I described the attorney fee reduction charged to window retirees for their "victory" on the COLA freeze in the Strunk (Sartain) case. I mentioned that PERS was charging me about 90% of my 7/1/04 COLA. What I didn't mention, probably because I was distracted by the more obvious aspects of this, is the base benefit PERS chose to use for computing my share of the attorney fees.

Remember that PERS has claimed all along that I (you too) was never entitled to the benefit paid me when I retired. This is because, as they claim, the 1999 earnings were not final when I retired. Thus, I was (and have been) recalculated to a new base benefit on the effective date of my retirement and all COLA adjustments applied to the revised base benefit. So, let me pose a rhetorical question. If PERS believed that my base benefit was calculated wrongly and that I was not entitled to that base benefit, and that PERS was entitled to recompute my base benefit to reflect an 11.33% credit for 1999 instead of 20%, just why do they have the right to use the WRONG (in their opinion), illegal, incorrect benefit as the base for computing (a) my July 1, 2004 COLA and (b) my share of attorney fees. PERS claims "In accordance with the Court's decision [in Strunk], PERS calculated the COLA amounts each recipient would have received July 1, 2004." Wait, wait, wait, wait. How can PERS do this? How can PERS speak out of both sides of its mouth at the same time. How can PERS claim it is following the Strunk court's order, when they spent the whole of the Arken case INTERPRETING the Strunk Court's order in a completely different way? Maybe I'm stupid, or maybe a little naive, but I'm not dumb. PERS cannot have it both ways. It cannot claim my COLA amount is one thing based on a benefit they claim I'm not entitled to, and then turn around and claim the benefit I'm not entitled to is the basis of their computing an amount I owe them to pay for their f**kup. I don't get it. Perhaps someone smarter than I am can explain this to me. Perhaps Greg Hartman, or Judge DeMuniz, or Judge Kantor, or Paul Cleary. How is it legally possible to remain on both sides of the street at the same time?

It Ain't Right

It is always nice to get those June communiques from PERS. Today's mail brought me the news that my July 1 benefit would be reduced by a significant amount - once only of course - to pay for my victory (?#!!!!) in the Strunk case. My share of attorney's fees in the Strunk case reduced my July 1, 2004 COLA by about 98%. I'm always thrilled to pay my fair share of a victory that could be best described as pryrrhic. Let's see. PERS loses in court and the court tells PERS "you can't withhold COLA from retirees. It is part of their contract." So PERS, in compliance, figures out a dodgy way to "give me" my COLA on some bogus benefit and then turn around and charge ME for the victory that retirees won in Strunk. Retirees got their revenge on Greg Macpherson. Now, if we can only figure out a way to exact similar revenge on Bill Gary, Paul Cleary, Mike Pittman, Eva Kripilani, Brenda Rocklin, Jim Dalton, and Tom Grimsley. May their souls rot in hell.

Both Sides Now

Democratic Attorney General Candidate and nominee John Kroger appears to have won the Republican primary for Attorney General as well. The republicans had no nominee and primary voters had the choice of not voting or writing in a candidate. The major worry was that Ron Saxton would end up being the Republican nominee by virtue of an effort to get citizens to write his name in. Apparently, this was bogus as no credible effort was made to get Saxton's name on the ballot. In the end, there were something like 13,000 write-in votes in the Republican primary. When all votes were sorted and counted, Kroger had the highest write-in total of any candidate on the Republican side. So, by June 19th, when the votes are certified, Kroger should have the nominations of both parties and will be the undisputed winner of the Attorney General's mantle. Those of her at PERS Info headquarters give John our best wishes for a successful occupancy of the Oregon Attorney General's Office.

Waking Up

Every morning exploring USA Today for the big story I was interviewed for (yeah, I know about that dangling preposition). Still can't find it. Some editor must be sitting on it, waiting for a large enough space in which to fit it and all the great pictures. I'll keep looking and when (if?) I find it, I'll be happy to post a link.

In the meantime, another PERS-related case is scheduled for its first hearing in the Marion County Circuit Court. This is the case captioned "Kay Bell" in the Hartman archives. This lawsuit tests the proposition that PERS should be held accountable for its information as employees relied on PERS' representations to make retirement decisions. The case is scheduled for July 15th. While it would be nice to get a definitive ruling on this, it seems to me that both the Strunk hearings and the Arken hearings touched on this issue. Each time it gets brought up, some judge or Justices swat it down. I'd like to think that Kay Bell will get a fairer view, but I'm not encouraged by the previous rulings. What those rulings say to me is that if you depend on PERS, you do so at your own peril. PERS can lie to you either explicitly (Notice of Entitlement) or implicitly (by failing to tell you some crucial piece of information, such as that the earnings for one critical year in your retirement account may not be the same as what you've been led to believe). This has always seemed to me to be the Achilles heel of the PERS system, and the courts haven't been very sympathetic to retirees on this one. We exchange our jobs for a promised retirement benefit. Our jobs are filled and no longer available even if we wanted them back. Then PERS gets to turn around and say, "whoopsie. We boo booed and you get to suffer the consequences." This has never struck me as fair. The analogy is always drawn to a bank error, but the difference to me is that banks don't wait four or five years or more to tell you and then go to great lengths to recover the money. There, at least, ought to be some statute of limitations at play here. Six years is way too long in a retirement setting. The banks usually find the error in a matter of days, if not weeks. I know of no example where a bank has come back on an error years after it occurs.

What do you think about this? Fair or unfair?

The Story

Is not in today's USA Today. The website is a fairly accurate reflection of what is in the dead tree version. Checked both and the PERS article is definitely not in either of today's editions. Will, no doubt, be in one of next week's papers. I'll keep my eyes and ears open and let people know.

Nothing else new to report. The week's still been weird and it is probably time for it to end. Maybe with some sunshine and not rain. As an Oregonian for 38 years now, I have to confess to being really, really, really tired of the rain this year. My backyard is a giant mud pit, which the Lab loves, but our yardcare person is growing to loathe. Big, deep footprints and lawnmower treads dig in everywhere in the back. I can see the repaired drainage plan coming soon.

Waiting On The World To Change

Many of my readers are early baby boomers and "window retirees." It was sobering today to realize that 40 years ago today, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated following a victory party celebrating his win in the California Primary, held at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. I was attending UCLA and had just finished my junior year. A bunch of us had been in Santa Monica (not too far away from the Ambassador Hotel) hanging out with McCarthy (Eugene) supporters. We had decided to cruise over to the Ambassador and see how the Kennedy celebration was going. We never made it. By the time we had cruised down Wilshire Blvd in the awful LA traffic and navigating through all the various roadblocks that were set up, we had heard that Kennedy had been assassinated. We somberly went home, not knowing what else to do. We weren't going to get to the Ambassador to share our grief with that of all the others who were there stunned by yet another senseless political assassination. I was in high school when President Kennedy was assassinated. I hadn't yet come around to RFK's camp, but would have supported him for President had he lived and been nominated. Instead, we got Hubert Humphrey, the Chicago 7, Mayor Daley and ultimately Richard Nixon. We'd gotten Ronald Reagan as California Governor in 1966, and I still refuse to show my undergraduate diploma because it has that scoundrel, Reagan's signature on it. (You had to be in California to understand why the UC students hated him so much. He was a much better President than he was California governor). In the meantime, here we are 40 years later and we are still waiting on the world to change. Those of us around during both Kennedy assassinations, not to mention the assassinations of MLK and Malcolm X, have been disillusioned for a long time. I'm still waiting for all this to change. I'm beginning to feel that the old axiom - the more things change, the more they stay the same - holds true for many of us. I'm not especially disillusioned right now, but I was hoping for two more elevating candidates for the US Presidency. I can't say I'm terribly pleased with either of the choices. We have one who is young and inexperienced, and another who is old and isn't enough different from the current President to make him a viable choice for me. My choice is clear, although I'm not excited about it.

So, where were you on June 5, 1968? What do you remember about that time? I remember plenty, and there are many times I'd rather forget.

I Got the News

Dennis Cauchon, the USA Today reporter who interviewed me, tells me that the PERS article will probably appear in tomorrow's (Friday June 6, 2008) edition. It will probably appear as a "news" item - front section - rather than in the Money section. I'll confirm tomorrow by checking the USA Today web site. If it is there, I'll probably go out and buy a few copies to share with friends and family who don't follow this issue in other states.

In other news, the PERS Oregon Discussion group now has crested the 200 member number. Remember, we're trying for 250 members by June 13th (Friday the 13th). If you haven't joined, and are interested in following more real-time discussion of PERS news, you can click the Yahoo! button on the left side of this blog. Joining is easy and free.

Just My Imagination

This has been a bizarre week. Today is the 1800th day that, in my opinion, PERS has been breaking the law towards "Window retirees." I'm still waiting for them to implement the Strunk opinion literally, not in their own interesting and twisted interpretation. July 1, 2003 was exactly 1800 days ago today. FYI.

The USA Today photographer stopped to shoot off 40 or 50 shots of yours truly. God knows which of the pictures and which of the quotes will show up in the article. The photographer was a very amiable young man whose day job is with the Salem Statesman Journal, but who does contract work with other papers. We talked cameras and lenses; he and I share the same passion for Canon products. I don't know when this PERS article and photographs will appear, but I promise to let you know when I do. I suspect this will be a more focused article about Oregon PERS than I originally thought. The reporter told me that he had talked to Paul Cleary and to Randall Edwards, State Treasurer, earlier. Today I found out that he also interviewed Randall Pozdena, former head of the Oregon Investment Council, who was concerned about the PERS funding situation back in 1999. This suggests an article that is more focused on PERS, or that covers the various "success" stories in public employee pensions than I originally suspected. Of course, one man's success usually means another's failure or loss. Voila, our loss! Liars all of them.

The dog got her stitches out yesterday and can run free again. That was a two-week ordeal that left us about $1000 poorer. Yellow labs are high maintenance. At least she's loveable and fun. All her injuries are self-inflicted and result from an unquenchable curiosity and uncontained enthusiasm. Not to mention, her ability to reduce anything breakable into microscopic particles in mere seconds.

I took a nasty spill on Sunday and have hematomas (doctor-speak for nasty bruises) on my arm and elbow, coupled with the most incredibly nasty and triangular bruise on my tailbone. It is practically the shape of my tailbone, which shockingly enough, is more-or-less triangular in shape. I'm OK, but my dignity is diminished, my personal trainer laughed at me, and I discovered that the pain medication I take for my hip and knee won't touch the pain from this kind of trauma. I think the pharmacy and I have finally reached some truce about refills about the pain medication. I was having to call them in 4 weeks in advance just to insure that I got them on time. I got pissed and started on a rampage through pharmacy supervisors, membership services, and anyone else in a position of power. What rattled me was that I could see electronically that my doctor had approved the refills weeks before the pharmacy filled them and none of us could figure out why it was taking so long. We still don't know, but the chief cook and bottle washer of pharmacy services assures me that things are now straightened out. I'll believe it when I see it, but for now, it provided a way to relieve some of the anger built up over Judge Kantor's decision late last week (or was it the week before?).

My daughter's belated birthday present was a set of concert tickets to a concert held last night at the Rose Garden. As promised, I escorted my daughter and her friend to the concert, dropped them off, and then went off to my PSU office to hang out until the concert was over. Around 11 pm, I booked over to the Rose Garden, parked the car illegally and waited, and waited, and waited. While waiting, I listened to the BBC news. Interesting to hear about US politics from a British perspective. In any case, about 11:45 I spot my daughter and her friend coming towards me and I go to start the car. Uh oh. No start. I just then discovered the peril of parking a car for a week at a time before getting it out to drive. Dead battery. Not enough driving time to charge the OEM battery on a 4 year old car. So, I called AAA. At midnight. The battery guy showed up at 1:15 a.m. He jump started my car, tested the battery, assured me the battery itself was OK, and so I drove it home to Lake Oswego. I finally got to sleep about 2:30 this morning. Fortunately, the car started fine this morning. I think it is getting time to think about replacing that battery. Don't think I can be inconvenienced at that time of night again in someplace like the Rose Quarter.

So you tell me. Is it just my imagination, or has my week been more bizarre than normal?

Semi-Interesting Week

Not long after I wrote yesterday's post, the phone rang. The caller ID said "USA Today". I figured they weren't trying to sell me a subscription; it must be the reporter I'd exchanged emails with earlier in the day. Indeed, it was. I'm not sure what he was looking for when he found me, but it was clear that he had been looking for someone who didn't believe that the rosy outlook for Oregon PERS was the result of the 2003 reforms. The interview started out with Tier 3 (the OPSRP) and I had to redirect the interview to make certain he understood that Tier 3 was about the least controversial element of the 2003 reforms. There were no lawsuits involving the OPSRP, there had been no howls from the unions about it and that had nothing else happened, there probably would have been no litigation. Then I tried to explain to him what happened in 2003, raising along the way some of the disparities between what PERS has said, and what the PEW report claims. We spent some time trying to dissect the 2002 numbers, which suggested that PERS was either in poor shape or in better than average shape, depending on the source. He had a copy of the PEW report and could tell me a bit about their sources, and it began to occur to me that there might be a story there as well. But, I recounted the story of all the little twists and turns of the knife that occurred to shaft "window retirees", active employees, post-"window" retirees. I'm sure lots of that will be left out of the story. The interview lasted about an hour. I was pleased with the quality of the questions and the semi-free ranging attitude of the interviewer. I gave him my take on just how much I think the reform legislation contributed to PERS' current success, and much more I thought the stock market and the Oregon Investment Council contributed to the rest. In short, I told him that I didn't think that more than about 20% of the improvement in PERS' financial condition could be attributed to reform legislation, and that of that, about 75% is currently in dispute under litigation.

He's interviewing State Treasurer Randal Edwards today. Tomorrow, one of his Portland-based photographers will come by at 9:30 a.m. to take a picture of me. How so very exciting. I get 15 minutes more of fame, and a picture to boot. I have no idea when the story will come out. I'm sure that Google News will carry it when it does. All-in-all, not a bad start to a semi-interesting week.

Second Hand News

Andy Warhol once said that every person is entitled to 15 minutes of fame. I've probably had at least 45, so I'm not due any more famousness yet. But, every once in awhile, an opportunity comes along that I might not be able to refuse. I got an email today from a reporter for USA Today, that bastion of national reporting run by Al Neuharth. The article he is writing is about, among other things, the 2003 Oregon PERS reforms. Apparently, he's been talking to those behind the changes and possibly the PERS senior leadership (I don't actually know, really), but he's discovered that they're pretty happy with all the changes (as the French would say, quel surprise!). He wanted to know whether he could interview me to get another take on the reforms, or suggest someone else he could talk to. Lawyers are never good people to include in your story, because, frankly, no one trusts anything a lawyer says. So, like the dutiful soldier I am, I volunteered to be interviewed. I even gave the fellow my phone number so he could call me and, if this follows all my other interview experiences, misquote me directly.

I will report back here if the phone call comes in. I'm not holding my breath, but I was pleasantly surprised that someone gave him my name. Or maybe he just knows how to use Google effectively and found my name showing up with frequent criticisms of Oregon PERS. We'll see.

Frail Grasp On the Big Picture

Several different interpretations of the Kantor rulings have surfaced. The first, which I reprint here, was sent by Aruna Masih, one of Hartman's partners, to all of the plaintiffs in the Arken case. In it, she gives her take on what happened and what the next steps will be. She writes:

" As you will recall, in last year's decision, Judge Kantor found in favor of you and Robinson petitioners, but on grounds we did not raise. Therefore, we asked Judge Kantor to clarify this decision, asking him to rule specifically on the main claim we did raise on your behalf, which was that you have a contractual right to keep the 20 percent earnings because in the Strunk case, the Oregon Supreme Court held that the 2003 Legislation created a new entitlement to a fixed retirement benefit based on the 20 percent earnings plus COLA. Also, we alleged that even if you did not have a contractual right to keep the 20 percent earnings, you retired in reliance on the fact that your retirement benefit would be based on the 20 percent earnings plus COLA and that reliance was reasonable.

In yesterday's decision, Judge Kantor ruled against us on that breach of contract and reliance (promissory estoppel) theory. Therefore, the contract claim will have to be decided by the appellate courts. While we are disappointed by the decision, we want to remind you all that we have always expected this case to be decided ultimately by the Oregon Supreme Court. We are busy researching ways to petition the Court of Appeals to certify the appeal directly to the Supreme Court so that you do not have to wait even longer for a final decision on this issue.

In the meantime, Judge Kantor's initial decision protecting all window retirees under the Section 14b reasoning still stands. We are certain Judge Kantor will be asked in the Robinson case to enter some judgment regarding that ruling within the next few months. We will keep you updated on the trial court's progress in the Robinson case as well as the appellate progress in this case. " (My thanks to Michael Arken for sharing this communication with me and for permitting me to post it here.)

In contrast, the PERS website has its interpretation of what went down in Tuesday's ruling. You can read it here. The document can be found in a link at the upper right corner of the blog under current news.

After reading both, you get to decide which of the two sides has the firmest grasp on the big picture, and which doesn't.

For more discussion and news on the Arken case, please stop by the PERS Oregon Discussion group (POD), which you can join by clicking on the Yahoo link on the left.

March of the Pigs

Yesterday's ruling by Multnomah Country Circuit Court Judge Henry Kantor, has left many PERS retirees in despair. While the ruling was hardly uplifting, it wasn't a surprise (at least not to me). If Judge Kantor had wanted to gobsmack PERS for what they admitted they were doing last August 16, I suspect he would have done it right then and there. That he didn't, and that he needed more time to study it, suggested that we wouldn't get a favorable ruling. This, even though I sat through that entire hearing and watched Judge Kantor's facial expressions that suggested he wasn't happy with the wide boys working for PERS. But if there is anything I've learned in my years of sitting in the back benches of courtrooms is that it is impossible to read anything into Judge's expressions, body language, or even their questions.

What exactly did Judge Kantor do to help the pigs out even more than they've already been helped by the actions of a couple of really slimy lawyers? First, and foremost, Judge Kantor ruled unequivocally that PERS could NOT collect the overpayments PERS was wanting to collect in their Strunk/Eugene remediation project. This was the essence of the Robinson case. Judge Kantor ruled that PERS' January 2007 order and its March 2007 "collection notice" were illegal on their face. Period, end of story. PERS cannot collect that large chunk of money by any means. To be clear here, this is only Judge Kantor's ruling. Before this story is over, this ruling will be reviewed by the Oregon Court of Appeals (possibly) and the Oregon Supreme Court (for sure).

The second ruling Judge Kantor made was that the 20% earnings credit for 1999 had never been finalized because it had been appealed in a timely manner, according to the law. Therefore, neither retirees nor members had any right to expect earnings that high, especially following the ruling in the City of Eugene case and its subsequent codification in statute (HB 2003). Thus, while retirement benefits had been calculated on the 20% in some cases, and notices of entitlement went out with that figured into the resulting benefit, PERS had no obligation to continue paying an erroneous benefit. Judge Kantor ruled that "promissory estoppel" did not apply in cases like this; therefore, retirees had no claim against PERS for supplying faulty advice, incorrect information etc. This, to me, was the most disappointing part of the ruling. PERS does not have to give people correct information and they can't be held responsible if what they give is faulty advice. (This has bearing on another case in the pipeline.)

Finally, Judge Kantor ruled that it was perfectly permissible for PERS to adjust retiree benefits, as PERS has been doing, when there has been an error made in the calculation (i.e. the 1999 20% crediting, versus the "correct" amount of 11.33%).

At this point, both Arken and Robinson head to the Oregon Court of Appeals. There has been considerable talk about petitioning the Court of Appeals for a "pass" and moving the entire show onto the Oregon Supreme Court. I'm ambivalent about this. As much as I'd like this whole thing to be over, I'm not sure I'm ready for this to move before the White case has had its day in Court. If Arken/Robinson get their pass to the OSC, I'll be OK with it, but I'd like a ruling on White before the Court hears any more cases.

P.S. Press the Yahoo! button to join our new newsgroup where we can discuss this ruling in as much detail as people want, in near real-time. We're growing by leaps and bounds and the discussion has been really good so far. And it is all about PERS.

Slow Train Turning

Greg Hartman just sent me the news that Judge Kantor has issued his ruling in the Arken/Robinson cases this morning. I cannot tell you what the news is, or even read the opinion yet as it is nowhere to be found on the net yet. But have no fear. I will have it by this evening come hell or high water. In the meantime, consider Hartman's final line in his email to me. "On to the Court of Appeals...." I could draw all sorts of inferences from that, but I'd simply prefer to read the opinion. I will have it up as soon as I can get my hands on it.

Here's the ruling. Try to enjoy even though we didn't win anything we didn't already have.

Come Together

The new PERS Oregon Discussion group (affectionately known as POD) is coming together nicely. Over the holiday weekend when it went live, we picked up 98 new members and have over 80 posted messages. Not bad given the limited amount of publicity we've gone for. The questions, so far, have almost ALL been about PERS, and clearly there has been a pent-up demand for a place to ask and to get these questions answered. I suspect that the other PERS newsgroup became fairly intimidating for some our new members as the political volume rose. Just an hypothesis, but I can't believe our new members wouldn't have asked them there (OPDG) if the invective and political level had been eliminated or the volume turned way down. Nevertheless, POD welcomes ALL questions of a PERS and retirement nature. And we promise to answer any questions you have, and we promise to direct you to relevant PERS employees if we can't answer your questions. I also promise to answer any question of a more personal level about PERS back channel by email if I don't think it appropriate to be revealing the specifics of your case in a public forum. I am really excited by the success so far, and anticipate that we will have a really useful forum for years to come.

If you are reading about the new group for the first time, and you want to join, there is a Yahoo! button in the left column. You can click the button and you will be taken directly to the "join" page for the new group. If you are already a member of other Yahoo groups (including OPDG) the "joining" process is quite simple. Even if you aren't a Yahoo member, the process is quite simple. I encourage you and all your PERS friends to join. The more members we have, the more diversity in the types of questions we'll get. And, this ISN"T JUST FOR RETIREES. We welcome membership from all active PERS members, OPSRP members, and inactive, but not retired, members. In short, there is nothing from the PERS membership we aren't interested in. Even questions about the OUS optional retirement plan, the Oregon 457 deferred compensation program, and the higher education 403B plan are welcomed. We may not always have the expertise to answer questions about those latter programs, but we do know who to recommend that you contact for deeper answers.

So come on in, enjoy the water, the fresh air, and the stimulating discussion. I've been astonished by the quality of the questions so far, and the overall enthusiasm of the members. We're shooting for 250 members by June 13. Think of this like an OPB pledge drive, except it won't cost you any money.