Still Standing

Sorry to have dropped off the radar for awhile. Things have been pretty quiet on the PERS front, and I'm certain that nothing will change for awhile. I'm still waiting to determine the revised hearing date for the combined Arken and Robinson cases before the Oregon Court of Appeals. When I find out, I will post a note here and on POD.

On an unrelated note, I've received some emails from readers asking if the snowmobile accident up on the Three Sisters area was my wife and daughter. To have divined that from the newspaper accounts required that you know a lot more about me than is publically available. Nevertheless, it is correct that my wife and daughter were injured in a very freak snowmobile accident this past Monday. My wife was bruised up pretty severely but is otherwise OK. My daughter had to have stitches in her knee and she has multiple facial fractures that will require surgery relatively soon. We have snowmobiled for the past five years and both I and my wife are experienced snowmobilers. We always go in a guided tour and we don't own our own equipment. We were an on unfamiliar route with a new guide when my wife lost control of her dual going around a banked curve. The right "ski" on the snowmobile got entrapped on a snow shoe mogul and made it hard to steer out. My wife's glove got caught between the thumb-throttle and handle bar and the snowmobile wouldn't slow down. In desperation, she hit the brakes and the vehicle went into a slide ending up in some brush. Both my wife and daughter were thrown from the snowmobile. My wife ended up flat on her back, pinned under the left ski of the snowmobile. We were able to lift the snowmobile free and get her out and upright. My daughter took a fall from the snowmobile and hit a tree, suffering a deep laceration in her knee, and multiple fractures of the small bones around her right eye. The Deschutes County sheriff's search and rescue teams were able to ambu-sled them out and then they were transported to St Charles Hospital in Bend. They were kept under observation until about 8:30 Monday night and then both were released. We stayed at our house in Sunriver until yesterday when both seemed stable enough to return home. Both are resting comfortably at home. My daughter has an appointment with a facial surgeon on Monday to discuss surgical plans. She will probably have some wiring done to hold all the small bones together while they heal.

Thanks to those of you who were able to figure out that this was my family. The first I knew this was a news item was Wednesday morning when a family friend called me to find out if this was really my wife and daughter. That's when we discovered that the articles had added nearly 10 years to my wife's age - she was really insulted - and had some details incorrect. In any case, I suspect we'll not be snowmobiling again anytime soon.

Little Lion Man

Phil Keisling will be giving a presentation at PSU today, entitled "The 'Other Two' Oregons: Dimnensions and Implications of our Growing Generational Divide". Of course, Phil manages to work PERS into the discussion as he argues that non-discretionary spending at the federal and state level consume more and more of tight budgets.

Keisling isn't giving this presentation just to enhance his reputation; he is a candidate for the Director of Public Services in the Mark Hatfield School of Government. So, Phil appears to be wanting to leave his cloistered world of the private sector and looking to join in the PERS or ORP program of the Oregon University System. I don't know what the candidate field looks like at PSU, but I'd say that Phil probably has a lock on this position.

Soon he will be able to issue his reports with a group of graduate students helping him do his research. Not a bad job if you can get one.

Bye, Bye, Love

One of PERS members least favorite Board members, Brenda Rocklin, seems to have been replaced by Laurie Warner. Laurie, if I recall correctly, was the acting director of PERS for a period of time after Jim Voytko resigned and before Paul Cleary became Executive Director. That position was also filled by Brenda Rocklin. It appears that our Governor has a revolving door of two people who serve on the PERB in the position of managerial representative among PERS employers. We have Brenda Rocklin (SAIF) and Laurie Warner (DAS) who seem to exchange places as acting directors and Board members. Maybe they are just clones of each other and Ted can't tell them apart. Anyway, Brenda appears to be off the Board, and Laurie seems to be the new Board members. Thanks, Paul, for noting this.

Holy Flames of the Firespitter

Previously here, we've discussed Phil Keisling's self-appointed role as a spokesman for PERS reform. We've also discussed the flaws in Mr. Keisling's various proposals as they have sifted their way through the various levels of revision. Today, I want to direct your attention to Greg Hartman's analysis of Keisling's most recent proposal. Like my own analyses, Hartman's does not attempt to address the full scope of what Mr. Keisling says. Much of it is an historical recitation of PERS, which requires little conjecture or refutation. The rest, however, the remedies and etc, are the target of Mr. Hartman's response. You can read the Hartman answer to Keisling here.

Long Hard Road

The Oregon Court of Appeals has decided to reschedule the Arken case hearings to an unknown date in the future. At the same time, the court wisely decided to include the Robinson case for hearing simultaneously. As we know, the legal system moves at the speed of a glacier and these two cases seem to be in an interstadial whereupon they aren't moving at all. Eventually, these cases will be heard and decided by the Appellate branch, but we all know that this is just a brief hiatus before the big act before the Oregon Supreme Court. I'm still holding on my prediction of 2012 (or 2013) for final resolution of these cases. That would make the matter about 10 years to get through the entire legal system. Not bad for cases that were supposed to be "fast-tracked". It's a long hard road to get from here to there. Hopefully we will ALL still be alive to realize any benefits from these cases (note the optimism).

Stalemate

The pissing match between feckless Governor Ted and the Legislature over SB 897 is finally OVER. Today, following Friday's unanimous vote to override Governor K's veto of SB 897 in the Senate, the Oregon House voted 44-15 to override. As of around noon today, SB 897 is now LAW - the Governor be damned.

SB 897 forces PERS to establish mechanisms to ensure Quality Control on all retirement estimates beginning two years before the earliest retirement date. It requires verification of service time at all PERS employers, verification of age, beneficiary, account balances (and requires PERS to collect from employers derilect in paying employee and employer contributions, and effectively insures that when an individual puts in a retirement application, ALL the information used has been audited. Done properly and with care, there should be NO MISTAKES when someone starts receiving his/her first benefit check. The bill puts PERS on the same playing field as the Oregon Department of Revenue. Once a return (application) has been audited and closed, whatever mistakes (if any) are owned by the agency, not the individual.

This is, by no means, a land-grab by PERS members as some have claimed. PERS has until July 1, 2011 to put mechanisms in place to accomplish the audit, and with their new super-duper jClarety software package, they ought to be able to insure the accuracy of benefits to the point where people can finally stop worrying about a PERS "dropping shoe" about two or three years after retiring. This was the essence of the Kay Bell case in which PERS denied errors during Kay's working life and then suddenly found them after she retired.

I am proud of Kay for standing up through all this publicity, the trials, and the excursions through just about every aspect of her life. I'm proud that our jury system works and that Kay won punitive damages (yet to be collected) from PERS. And I'm proud of our Legislature, which had the collective wisdom to pass SB 897 in the first place, and the tenacity to stick it into the Governor's dark places when he vetoed a unaminously passed bill. I am also proud of OPRI for actively working on passing SB 897.

And to all the PERS critics out there who will see this as the beginning of a further falling of the sky, read the damn bill before bothering to criticize. It hands out nothing to anyone and grants public employees rights that you all already have. Take a chill pill and relax. The sea is not roiling, the sky is not falling, and armaggedon is not close.

Ring Them Chimes

Hallelujah! According to an email I received today from Senator Richard Devlin's office, both the House and the Senate voted unanimously to override the Governor's veto of SB 897, which passed unanimously in the 2009 legislative session. This is a major slap in Governor Kulongoski's face and an equally hard bolt upside the heads of the PERS, both of which actively opposed this measure. Now, PERS will have to take ownership of the auditing process and members will (starting on July 1, 2011) get benefit estimates and Notices of Entitlement that will actually be accurate. If PERS screws up after all the auditing, they will have to eat the costs.

This is a victory for OPRI, for PERS retirees in general, for upcoming retirees, and for Kay Bell, in particular. I stand in awe of Kay Bell for having the tenacity to keep fighting for her rights against the wall of ignorance that can sometimes be found inside PERS and in the Governor's office. I toast you Kay. I will buy you dinner sometime soon. Thanks again.

CORRECTION (9 p.m.): only the Senate voted today to override SB 897. The Oregon House will vote on Monday. If you haven't written your House Representative, now would be a good time. I think the confusion arose because the Senate voted to override TWO of the Governor's vetoes. The syntax of the response I received made no mention of the second veto. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that the House will also override this veto as well.

The Chain

It is that time of year again. PERS just sent out the 1099R forms for you to begin the task of preparing your State and Federal Income taxes. Just for you, I've gathered together a couple of good deals from Amazon. You can find them here. Personally, I use Turbo Tax, but I've used Tax Cut and a few of the others as well. I just find TurboTax to be easier to use than most, plus it imports information about as easily as it comes. Amazon's prices are pretty good, typically matching Costco's fairly closely. And you'll get free shipping. For me, this is a painful time of year because I get to find out how good (or usually bad) my tax planning has been.

There'll Be Some Changes Made

After receiving 58 yes votes and 0 no votes and then being vetoed by Oregon's pimp daddy, Ted Kulongoski, SB 897 is back for a veto override on February 1 in the Legislative Special Session. If you recall from my harangues last summer, SB 897 is a bill that would require PERS to clean up its estimates and take ownership of them. This would prevent the kinds of fiascoes that Kay Bell was subjected to when PERS kept reassuring her there were no errors in her estimates and then found the same error she had been reporting for years, after she retired. The veto override is being led by Senator Ted Ferrioli (R, John Day).

Bullet With Butterfly Wings

On Wednesday the Oregon PERS Board held a joint meeting with the Oregon Investment Council and interested stakeholders. I didn't attend, but a reliable scribe was in attendance. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that the PERS Board might as well have declared the following: "Dear Current PERS Retiree: Please drop dead as soon as possible." At issue were the growing employer rates for the PERS Retirement System. The Board seemed to think that the real problem is that employers had to continue to pay for existing retirees and that retirees were making it hard because they weren't dying. Of course other ideas were also floated, including the possibility of a Tier 4, for new hires which would be no retirement system at all.

The fact that any of this was discussed in a public meeting is utterly repugnant and contemptible. The current PERS Board acts like PERS members and retirees are an inconvenient group of people for them to deal with (please see note below for a correction). They'd prefer dealing only with employers. Of course, without PERS Members and Retirees, there isn't a retirement system. Unless my understanding of state statute has been gravely flawed, it is stated in law that the PERS Board acts as the fiduciary for the system. They are responsible TO and FOR members. WE ARE NOT INCONVENIENT STATISTICS THAT MUST BE TRIFLED WITH. I find this behavior by the Board, even if tongue in cheek to be reprehensible and I hope the Board finds a copy of this post in its collective mailbox. Otherwise, the bullet will have butterfly wings and, if you recall, chaos theory starts with the flapping of butterfly wings. Expect a tsunami of complaint about this stupidity. I'm offended deeply and even sorrier I wasn't able to make the meeting. Had I been there, I would have objected out loud and in person face-to-face.

Note added at 8:00 p.m. My source for this information attended today's meeting as well. I was corrected that the remark about pesky retirees didn't come from a PERB member but a member of the Oregon Investment Council. I'm not any more mollified to know this as the OIC is also charged with the responsibility to invest OUR money. If they find us annoying and pesky and inconvenient, every member has the option of resigning. I'm sure there are many other folks out there who would be perfectly happy investing our money and would do just as well.

Need You Now

The Oregon Legislature's special session convenes on February 1, 2010 and will run to February 26, 2010. One of the first agenda items will be to consider a motion to override Governor Kulongoski's ill-informed decision to veto SB 897, which passed in the House and Senate by a combined 58-0 vote. SB 897 is intended to require PERS to develop a mechanism that insures potential retirees of getting accurate and audited and certified benefit estimates BEFORE retiring and that such benefits would be fixed (as in not subject to change) after retirement. This bill was inspired by the Kay Bell litigation. It is vitally important that you write to your legislators (Representative and Senator) and urge them to support the veto override. Only by overriding this veto can prospective retirees get a grip on their benefits and the important assurance that PERS won't be coming back long after you retire and say, "oops. We made a small mistake. You owe us $100,000 payable in non-sequential $20 bills". A form of a letter was sent to me today, which will serve as a useful template. I reprint here a slightly modified version:

Dear Representative XXXXXX:

Dear Senator XXXXXX:


As a member of [fill in your union, your organization, whatever], I’m extremely appreciative that both the House and Senate voted unanimously to pass Senate Bill 897 in the 2009 Legislature. This broad support reflected the fact that the legislation will provide fairness and accountability for Oregon’s public employees by requiring that PERS’ benefit calculations be accurate and, once fully verified, become my fixed base benefit. I want to urge you to vote to override Govenor Kulongoski’s ill-considered veto of Senate Bill 897 when the legislature meets for its February 2010 special session.

Thank you for your consideration.


Sincerely,


your name
address
phone number


You can find email addresses for all legislators by searching for "Oregon Legislature" using the search engine of your choosing. If you don't know who your legislators are, the same search will take you to the Oregon Legislature's web site where you can enter your address and find out who your legislators are.

Since this veto override will be taken up at the beginning of the Special Session, we need you now to send these emails, phone calls, or letters. If you wait until after the session starts, it may be too late. If you are interested in equity for PERS retirees, this issue is vitally important and your support is needed to urge any reluctant legislator to really consider voting FOR the veto override.

Thanks.

Bad Romance

I hope that OPRI officials get the message that its romance with lobbyist Mark Nelson is not popular with the rank and file. The poll below, at the time of this writing, shows that 156 people of 179 voting, think that OPRI should find a new lobbying firm. While OPRI seems to have taken no "official" stand on Measures 66 and 67, its affiliation with Nelson's group leaves it in the curious position of being "associated" with the NO on 66 and 67 group. If OPRI wants a reason to sever a bad romance, there are quite a few we could list. Just pursue a list of all the lobbying efforts Nelson's PAC Counsel has been associated with - no on tobacco taxes, no on beer/wine taxes, no on any other taxes, against health care reform, and the list goes on and on and on. If I were involved with the administration of OPRI, I would run as fast as I can AWAY from Nelson and his confederates. He's bad news and he's bad company. I'd take out a restraining order to keep him away. OPRI is still seen as an advocate for PERS members and retirees, but this lobbying relationship is straining bonds of credulity.

If you are reading this Kathleen, et al, take a page from AOF's book. Find a new firm and contract out with an unrelated firm to run your office.

Stay or Go?

Should OPRI continue with Mark Nelson's group - Public Affairs Counsel, or should they part company like AOF and several other groups recently.  Follow the link below for the poll.

A Lifeless Ordinary

Not surprisingly, Mark Nelson, OPRI Lobbyist, is about as popular as the plague for all his work for anti-tax clients. Nelson was recently ranked as one of the most "awful" lobbyists by a recent article in the Portland Mercury. Today, it was announced that the Association of Oregon Faculties, which represents faculty members in the Oregon University System, parted ways with Nelson (see article in Blue Oregon by Carla Axtman). They gave him his walking papers because they had become fed up with his work with clients taking stands inimical to what AOF represented, and they were getting a lot of flak from their members about this association. One wonders what it will take to get OPRI to part ways with Nelson. He is a cancer and a pox and I will not encourage anyone to donate to OPRI's lobbying fund - indeed I will encourage people to sit on their wallets - if OPRI does not tear up their contract with Public Affairs Counsel (Nelson's firm). In addition to Mark Nelson, they also employ, David Reinhardt, the former conservative columnist from the Oregonian whose hatred of public employees was palpable in his columns. Nelson and his group may be effective in its lobbying efforts - something the Mercury acknowledges - but they are regarded as utter scumbags by those interviewed for the Mercury's piece. So, AOF has gotten religion and dissassociated itself with Nelson and his band of merry pranksters, while OPRI does nothing. Sooner or later, this association with Public Affairs Counsel will come back to bite OPRI really hard, in the pocketbook where it will hurt most. Since there are alternative lobbying firms that have both good reputations as progressive, and equal effectiveness as Nelson, it makes no sense for OPRI to continue in this unhealthy relationship. OPRI needs a divorce soon. Otherwise their effectiveness, whatever it is, will be diminished by its affiliation with a lobbying firm that is consistently on the wrong side of issues that affect PERS members and retirees. AOF got the message. Will OPRI? I'd suggest you contact OPRI to register your displeasure, but all OPRI email and phone calls go directly to Mark Nelson's group. OPRI contracts out all business operations of the organization to Mark Nelson's Public Affairs Counsel. This makes it hard to criticize OPRI's affiliation since we have the fox guarding the henhouse. So, I think that would not be the obvious way to go. Perhaps by tomorrow I can get together a poll posted on this blog that will give OPRI some feedback on how we, as members, feel about continuing this unhealthy relationship. Look for a poll in tomorrow's blog followup. Feel free to add your comments as well to this post. The more the merrier.

Bagpipes from Baghdad

In a surprising move, Elizabeth Hovde, the new resident conservative at the local Portland paper has published a followup to her partial hit piece linking PERS and Measures 66 and 67. Surprised by the more than 100 comments she received at Oregonlive.com she tries to set the record straight on the blog. Basically, she admits that she didn't expect the flack from PERS members and retirees and she didn't mean to 'dis public employees. She essentially apologized and then cited her sources for much of the information she provided in the original piece. Not surprisingly, she doesn't back down on much but relies on slippery semantics to try to qualify her answers. It is true that she didn't say "all" public employees get fully-paid medical care, but then cites the numbers who do. She acknowledges my point about the diminishing numbers of Tier 1 members subject to the rate guarantee, but then says she hasn't verified my numbers. At least she admits they "might" be right.

In the end she accepts that Tier 1 members and retirees are probably safe from any further changes to the system, citing the court decisions that have made this abundantly clear. But she argues that the unions and the members are going to have to sit down with management and negotiate out of the current mess (which is?) so that the system will be sustainable for all.

More entertaining are the responses to Hovde. One PERS retiree is having a field day tweaking all the conservatives and others by raving about his benefits and how much he is enjoying retirement life. While I understand the principle, deliberately flaunting this in peoples' faces is probably not a strategy I would use. It is sufficient to make the point that the benefits were earned fairly and squarely by hard work and under a unilateral contract. Beyond that, lavishing attention on the benefits in retirement is like poking sticks in people's eyes. I think it is counterproductive to our cause. The more attention we draw to ourselves by writing these kinds of inflammatory responses, the worse off we'll be. Some may think I'm being hypocritical as I am the most prominent defender of PERS benefits in the state. Nevertheless, if you go back and read my posts you'll see that I've been careful not to expose my benefits to people on a public blog. I'm very happy with my benefits, but that's as much as I'm going to say about them.

On an unrelated topic, the PERS Board and the Oregon Investment Council will be having a joint meeting in late January (the 29th) beginning at noon. This will be preceded by a conference meeting on January 27th. The topic of discussion will be employer rates for the next biennium in light of PERS' returns for 2009. The semi-official returns through November 30, 2009 were 15.5% and with December's runup, the final year's earnings ought to be pretty good. California's PERS ended up with an 11+% gain for CY 2009, which helps their bottom line tremendously. I think the 2009 returns may help mitigate the size of the employers' rates for 2011-2013, although there will be no way for the employers to completely avoid the 2008 hit. You can run, but you can't hide.

I close with my personal thanks to PERS for helping a friend in need. I can't tell you how much it means for people to know that PERS is actually going out of their way to help a family whose situation is, to say the least, quite dire. I do this for friends; I do this for total strangers. If you are frustrated with your dealings with PERS and can't seem to get anyone to listen, please let me know. I do have contacts and I'm not afraid to use them.

It Happens

Please make a note that if you were planning on attending the Court of Appeals arguments in the Arken et al case, the Court of Appeals has rescheduled the hearings for Friday morning, March 5, 2010 at 9:00 a.m. I will post updated information as soon as I get the location firmed up. I presume the hearing will be in Salem, but I don't know where exactly yet. Just remember that this is change in both day and time.

No reason to get annoyed or upset about the time and date change. This kind of stuff happens a lot in court cases.

Roll On

I hope you notice the new Amazon links to the side of this blog. I've added them to help defray the costs of running this blog (time, ISP, computer equipment, etc). If you link through this site to Amazon and purchase (at the identical price you'd pay anyway), this blog will receive a small percentage of your purchase price for the referral. It isn't much, but every bit counts. While I do this as a labor of love, there are expenses even though the platform (Blogger) is free. So I'd appreciate it if you use Amazon that you consider linking through the boxes on the left side of this blog. You're here anyway. Why not save a few keystrokes and a few seconds of your time to make the link directly and contribute a few cents to the ongoing operation of this site.

Let It Go (already)

The Whoregonian's new resident conservative, Elizabeth Hovde, still doesn't seem to grasp anything about the PERS system. The fact that she works for the local rag may have something to do with it. The editors of that paper must wear a pair of shades over their eyes that prevents them from seeing the constant error their staff makes about PERS. In today's screed against PERS, Hovde repeats the same tired crap that has cluttered the news for at least the last 15 years. It is time for them to both let is go and to get a clue.

Earth to Elizabeth: only a small fraction of PERS members have a "guaranteed" rate of return. The Oregon Supreme Court ruled in 1996 in OSPOA v Oregon that the earnings rate guarantee for Tier 1 members was part of the members' contract and therefore could not be changed, period, end of story. Furthermore, the court in 2005 in Strunk et al v Oregon ruled that PERS could not temporarily reduce the guarantee to zero. The guarantee is the guarantee. How many more court decisions do you need to spell out that the guarantee is not going away, now or ever until the last Tier 1 member and beneficiary dies.

I realize that this galls people, but there is absolutely nothing, zero, nada, and zilch the state, the legislature, or the courts can do about it. Get over it already. Move on to another topic. This fish won't fly.

It does no good to tell the Oregonian any of this. They KNOW it; they just don't want to acknowledge it. It is an unpleasant fact that they want to go away. If you repeat something often enough, it still doesn't make it true.

I will give Elizabeth Hovde one clap. She did her smarmy best to NOT trash PERS members. Her angst is with the unions and the employers. One cheer for the Oregonian today.

Concrete and Barbed Wire

A trip to Salem across the concrete and near the barbed wire seems to be in order. The Oregon Court of Appeals has set the date for oral arguments in the Arken et al litigation for 1:30 on Wednesday March 3, 2010. I don't know the location of the hearing (note to self: probably the Oregon Court of Appeals in Salem). According to what I've heard, this will be a very short hearing and will focus almost exclusively on legal issues. I'm not sure I'll drive all the way to Salem for a half hour hearing, but those of you living in the area might want to attend. It will be interesting to see who presides over this appeal.

Mystery In The Makings

I've gotten notes from several 2009 retirees that they are still waiting after 6 or so months of retirement without an official Notice of Entitlement. They are receiving estimated benefits that are deliberately low so that there is no possibility that the retiree will owe PERS money for overpayments. While this is very thoughtful of PERS, I'm having trouble understanding why it is taking PERS so long to get out a Notice of Entitlement. The cases I've heard about are all pretty straightforward and PERS is not *that* overworked right now. Why would retirees in June and July still be waiting for their Notices? Anyone else having this trouble with PERS? If so, it might be time for a group exorcism.