Looking for Elvis

That's an ugly rumor started to explain what Judge Kantor is doing instead of making his final ruling in the Arken/Robinson cases. It has been quite awhile since the last status conference (see over to your left and you'll notice this little counter that keeps ticking off the seconds, minutes, hours, and days since that status conference in August). At the time I'm writing this, Judge Kantor has managed to tick off more than 103 days since hearing the latest arguments. That works out to about 3.5 months so far. I *hope* he's not trying to best his previous record for delaying a preliminary ruling in those same cases - almost 8 months if I recall correctly. In the meantime, Judge Kantor, if you are really looking for Elvis, here's a tip direct from the source. Elvis is dead. Kicked the bucket. Pushing up daisies. Singing to the Lord. In short, it's a great snark hunt in which nothing ever will be found. Stop looking already and rule.

Livin' in the Future

This post is a reprint of an earlier post. The FUTURE is NOW, TODAY. PLEASE GIVE SERIOUS THOUGHT TO DONATING. WE ARE GETTING CLOSER AND CLOSER TO OUR GOAL. HELP US PUSH PAST THE TARGET AND GIVE US SOME BREATHING SPACE. WE NEED ABOUT $500 MORE TO REACH OUR GOAL
For the past three months, a small group of PERS retirees have been working to construct a comprehensive library of Oregon PERS material in an attempt to address the public information access problem. This repository will eventually include more than 1,000 documents containing material related to litigation, legislation, studies, communications, audit reports, administrative rules, internal but public e-mails, and articles. The site currently offers a manual search of a limited number of documents. The manual process has many limitations especially when trying to follow a sequence of events about an issue over time.

Team members (myself included) have volunteered time, expertise, and money to get us to this point. Now the library development group has contracted with a developer to construct a database that will greatly simplify and amplify the process for locating records. Other database options have been considered and rejected. We believe this is the best and most cost effective solution. The cost of the database is estimated to be between $3,000-4,000. Half of this amount has already been pledged by members of the development group and generous donors have contributed nearly $2000. We're so close to our fund raising goals that I'm hoping another repeat of this message will send us over the top.

In the past, many PERS retirees have expressed interest in contributing to the struggle to preserve retirement benefits. While not directly related to current litigation, the PERS document library will be an important resource of information for the public about PERS decisions.

Contributions can be sent to:

OPDG Library Project
c/o PEG
6550 Huntington Cir SE
Salem OR 97306-1481

Make checks out to: OPDG Library Project. Credit card donations may also be made through a Pay Pal link at the library site.

For a better understanding of this project and for a view of the density of material already collected, visit the library web at:
http://oregonpers.info/

I have written previously about this in my entry "Power To The People" (October 5, 2007). Support for this grass roots effort affords all PERS workers and retirees an opportunity to make a difference in the struggle for our retirement benefits. No donation is too small. We will publish a final accounting of the project when work on the database is complete. Questions should be directed to :
info@oregonpers.info
In the information age, documents are the raw material that fuel research, analysis, and understanding of decisions and events. Complex issues unfolding over many years produce a flood of documents. Often these originate from many sources and are stored in many forms. Access can be difficult under the best of circumstances which means that most people don't know where to go or how to locate needed records. Over time, documents are destroyed, lost, archived, or otherwise made unavailable. With critical information unavailable the media and public are often unaware about key facts in events which can lead to skewed perceptions of events and decisions. Your support for this effort is one direct way you can make a difference.

PERS Library Development Team:

JRS, Marc (mrfearless47), PEG, & Greg

**Post appeal footnote:
When the project is complete, any balance in the donated development funds will be returned to contributors on a proportional basis. The only exceptions will be for refunds that are less than $1. To be eligible for a refund, contributors will need to provide a return mail address with their donation.

P.S. If this note looks familiar to subscribers to OPDG, it is because Greg, our chief cook and bottle washer, entered a variant of this appeal on the OPDG newsgroup. We are looking at empowering as many PERS members, retirees, legislators who do not always have a clear view of history, journalists who also do not always understand the central issues or the seemingly peripheral elements that make the trivial seem meaningful and the reverse, lawyers, indeed anyone with an interest in PERS history over the past dozen years. We hope you'll contribute to this incredible asset and we hope you'll use it. It is there, and once the new searching suite gets posted, will be quite simple to use for complex searches.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

One of the last of the true believers, Steve Delaney, has announced his resignation from PERS effective soon. He will become the Director of the Orange County (California) Public Employee Retirement System. I always found Steve to be one of the nicest, most courteous, and most helpful PERS employees. He never failed to answer a question, was always helpful whenever I had meetings with senior PERS staff (not recently, alas), and has been a true professional during this entire period where PERS has been "front and center" in the news. I wish Steve nothing but the best in his new position. It sounds like his experience within the Oregon PERS System will prepare him well for the Directorship in the land of Disney. Goodbye and good luck, Steve.

Give Me Something

Anything. According to my little widget PERS has been failing to comply with state law for 1599 days, 19 hours (for those who don't think that way, that has been since 7/1/03). While PERS would argue that they HAVE been following the law, the key elements of HB 2003 were overturned March 10, 2005 and specified that PERS members be restored to their position on 7/1/03. To date, that has never happened, and if PERS has its way, it never will. If I were you, I'd be angry, very angry. But being angry isn't enough. You have to be willing to do something about it. Electing the right candidates is one approach. Organizing a large constituency to petition Judge Kantor to hold PERS in contempt f Court would be another matter. Sitting on your hands is not, in my opinion, an option. The more inactive you are, the flatter you will be when the PERS steamroller runs over you. Use every lick of intellect you have. Fight back and get others to fight along side you. The PERS Coalition can't do all the heavy lifting. At some point personal responsibility comes into play. As we rapidly approach 1600 days of willful disobedience of the law, now is as good a tiime as any to start kicking ass and taking names. Better late than never.

Changing of the Guards - Part 2

I was sorely tempted to title this post "Alas poor Orrick", but I decided that was stretching artistic license too far and would break my music oriented theme. In any case, I finally have my answer about how Orrick came to be the attorneys of record for the PERS Board. Rather than try to rephrase the complicated story, I'll let David Crosley's answer speak for itself:

"In August 2003, acting upon a request by PERS, the Attorney General granted approval for PERS to retain fiduciary and litigation counsel independent of DOJ pursuant to ORS 238.657. An answer or other first appearance to the Oregon Supreme Court and the U.S. District Court was due by August 21, 2003 in response to lawsuits relating to PERS Reform.

The request for proposal (RFP) required each firm to provide a statement of qualifications and answers to questions regarding its background and qualifications.

Using the authority granted in OAR 125-247-0295, the PERS Board received responses to the RFP from Lane, Powell, Spears, Lubersky LLP (Lane Powell); Bullivant Houser Bailey PC (Bullivant); and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP (Orrick).

The factors in choosing Orrick were based on the selection criteria in OAR 125-247-0295: (A) The knowledge, skills and ability of the Firm that will provide Authorized Legal Services. The Firm's ability to provide Authorized
Legal Services includes the training and expertise of the Firm attorneys, including Outside Counsel. Outside Counsel must be a member of the Oregon State Bar pursuant to ORS 180.235(2);

(B) The Firm's experience, level of expertise and suitability to perform the Authorized Legal Services; (C) Whether the Firm's available personnel possess any required licenses or certifications required to perform the legal services for the Authorized Legal Services, such as licenses to practice law in the appropriate jurisdiction, or to appear in a certain forum; (D) The Outside Counsel's availability and capability to perform the Authorized Legal Services and meet the Agency's needs; (E) The commitment the Outside Counsel and Counsel's Firm can make to the Authorized Agency to meet the Agency's needs; (F) The value of the Firm's legal services, taking into account the cost of the Firm's legal services; and (G) Other factors the Authorized Agency considers relevant to accomplish an optimal, timely outcome. "

So there you have the story of how Orrick came to have the contract with PERB to represent it in the ongoing litigation. I'm particularly interested in how Orrick met criteria (B) and (D) and how (F) and (G) can be reconciled with the actual costs being incurred. I still have this visceral feeling that the deck was stacked in favor of Orrick and nothing in the responses to the RFP would have changed that outcome. I don't know what leverage Orrick has over State agencies and why it has insinuated itself into almost every level of state and local government. I *know* the firm specializes in certain fiduciary instruments, such as bonds, but I still cannot find a whit of evidence that they are experts in public employee pension law. And so, for $750 an hour, PERS (and its members) are paying for a firm that specializes in bonds and high stakes litigation. Draw whatever conclusions you wish. I'm still not buying the argument that the RFP process produced a level playing field. This was a time for a changing of the guards and I suspect Orrick was right there ready and willing to jump into the fray. They acted just like Willie Sutton, the infamous bank robber, who robbed banks because that's where the money was. Orrick robs our public employee pension fund because that's where the money is in the State of Oregon. Nice work if you can get it.

Good Times Bad Times

As Dickens once wrote, "these are the best of times, these are the worst of times." In the latter category, more people than ever are being invoiced and readjusted from PERS and more people are waking up after 5 years of somnolence to discover that while they slept, the Legislature and PERS did a whole big bad number on them and now they're pissed. I'm glad to have these folks now at the party; I just wished they'd been paying attention in school when the Legislature was giving them their assignments. Just keep reading folks - the party isn't over until the fat lady sings (or until Judge Kantor gives his opinion, whichever comes first).

On the best of times department, I am happy to report that the subject of one of my blog entries "Linda" has finally won her victory over PERS. "Linda" persisted until PERS accounted for every penny of her account, correcting error after error along the way. You'll recall that I told Linda's story back in September ("Fixing a Hole", September 26). Hers was a case of impeccable records butting heads with sloppy files. "Linda", the CPA, wasn't going to back down and, with my encouragement, tracked down some helpful people at PERS who *finaly* got her account straightened out. It only took her two and a half months, not 30 days, but would have been impossible without some intervention. What Linda's case communicates to me is that PERS is shooting itself in the foot over and over again, pissing members off, making others suspicious, and contributing to a culture of incompetence and/or malignity. It is awfully nice to hear of these stories of victory. They are all too rare these days.

On another note, our database project is growing daily. We're getting good community support with donations coming in nearly daily. We haven't reached our $4000 project goal, but we can make it with your donations. If you read this blog, please consider giving a donation as recognition of what this blog contributes to your information content. Now, imagine the information level times 50, which is what the document site is. It is a collection of a staggering array of documents to help you understand this entire mess and help you to understand how things got where they did. It costs money to build a first rate search engine. People have asked what they can do for ME to repay ME for my hard work. Donate to the library. I'm involved there and it is a project that I've contributed many documents from this site to. You can get all the information you need at OregonPERS.info

Excitable Boy

I woke up this morning and checked in with the blog to see if there were new comments to moderate. I hadn't been paying attention to the hit counter for quite some time. Today I see that we're past the 499,000 mark and closing in rapidly on 500,000 hits since October 2003. That's pretty amazing and I'm excited. Half a million page views in 4 years is pretty impressive. Not CNN and not Jack Bog, put compelling nonetheless. Either PERS members have nothing else to do, or the site has proven to be a valuable source of unexpurgated opinion, facts, and (occasionally) humor. The information never stops flowing; my brain never stops working overtime trying to figure out this whole mess. I guess I'm just an excitable boy who's enjoying retirement. Keep up the entertainment PERS. If I didn't have you to kick around, I guess I'd have to kick my dog. She's too cute to kick, so I guess I'll have to console myself that you're not cute, you're not cuddly, and your actions are ugly, mean-spirited, and illegal.

Jigsaw Falling Into Place

We had a pretty good turnout for yesterday's poll. About 77% of the respondents wanted Governor Ted Kulongoski to advise the PERS Board to settle the litigation with the PERS Coalition and be done with this mess. I'm not really surprised by those results, as that has been what the PERS Coalition has been aiming for all along. We want OUR settlement agreement along the lines of the City of Eugene settlement agreement, only in reverse. This time we want what we have won, legally, in court. If we happen to win the Arken case outright, that is icing on the cake, but we've already won and people just can't figure out why we have to keep fighting to get what is already ours.

The perverse twist in all this is that we've got this California law firm, called Orrick, that keeps billing PERS at $750 per hour and has no incentive to settle. They've got this cash cow going and they're milking PERS (the members and retirees) for every nickel it can get. Digging deeper into this manure, Orrick has its fingerprints all over Oregon government, dating back to at least the 1980's. So they've been suckling at the public teat for a very long time. What's odd is that if you look at Orrick's legal portfolio, they clearly have little or no experience in public employee retirement plans or litigation thereof. You have to wonder why, of all the law firms in the US, in Oregon, in the Northwest, would a Public EmployEE Retirement System hire a firm with so demonstrably little experience in litigating pension legislation. Head wide boy Joe Malkin, who oozes sleaze from every pore, specializes in "high stakes litigation" and has represented such clients as the tobacco and drug industry. While I realize that the current PERS litigation is "high stakes" (for retirees, chump change for PERS), nothing in it has any resemblance to product liability litigation. Maybe I'm just living in a different world, one where you'd choose your attorney on the basis of his/her skill set in representing your interests in the type of litigation needed. While I haven't a shred of evidence to support my conjecture, I'd almost be willing to bet that there's a Neil Goldschmidt connection somewhere in all this. Orrick just appears, like Minerva from the brow of Zeus, to rescue PERB in about October 2003, about one month after the new PERS Board takes over and not long before the Goldschmidt scandal breaks into the wide open. I've scoured the net and I find all sorts of possible connections and exposure to Orrick by current PERB members. Maybe they just knew Orrick's work and it was the first name that rolled off their collective tongues. Perhaps they didn't think that Stoel, Rives' great pension attorney - Greg Macpherson - might have a recommendation (or maybe he did. Wonder if Macpherson's run for AG is being financed in any way by donations from Orrick? Note to self - check finance lists).

This post is beginning to wander. In any case, the poll indicates that a large percentage of our readers today think Governor Kulongoski should get on the PERS Board's case to settle the litigation and move on. And I suspect that won't happen, not because of what we think or even what the Governor thinks, but because Orrick is milking too much money out of these cases to quit. Ah, I can see the jigsaw pieces falling into place.

Don't You Wish It Was True?

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Funny How Time Slips Away

I was bored this morning while waiting for my daughter to get ready for school. I have the new Mac operating system, Leopard. It comes with Dashcode - a very nice developers tool for whipping out Mac widgets. This are little tiny applications that run from OS X Dashboard and do things useful. I have a widget available to pull RSS feeds from this site. I've just built a new widget called "PERS Lawbreakers" just for fun. If you have a Mac running Tiger or later, you can download this widget just for fun from my personal widget factory. Stuffit will unpack the widget. Just click on the widget and it will load into your Dashboard. For your information, the base date is July 1, 2003. Have fun - or get really pissed off, take your pick.

Bodysnatchers

It's revenge of the bodysnatcher's day - Halloween (or is that tomorrow, All Saints Day?). Whatever. PERS seems completely without shame. They are sending out recalculation notices with reckless abandon. Some members have received notices dated as recently as 10/29 (two days ago) announcing benefit adjustments to be effective on November 1 (tomorrow, All Saints Day). The ratio of bad news to minor good news is about 4 to 1. Polls of retirees on OPDG indicate that only one retiree for every four is getting a small benefit increase from the recalculations. This is diametrically opposed to what PERS brazenly told Judge Kantor on August 16, 2007. This qualifies as PERS' sleaziest move to date. Let's cut the benefits of 80% of recent retirees with a day or two's notice. Kinda hard to plan a budget based on a fixed amount that suddenly changes. I hope that Judge Kantor not only smacks PERS upside the head for this blatant flaunting of the law (see e.g. Judge Kantor's June 2007 ruling, or, perhaps, the Supreme Court's Strunk ruling in March 2005), but I hope they leave the entire PERB and senior PERS officials in a room with Jack Bauer or Alberto Gonzalez for some torture for their behavior. If all this doesn't constitute an "abuse of discretion" or worse, I can't imagine what qualifies.

Whatever Judge Kantor does I want him, the PERS Coalition, the Governor, and all retirees to know that it my humble opinion that what PERS is currently doing is blatantly criminal. It rises above the crap floating around about what Ted K knew about Neil's peccadillos (or is that pecker dildoes - sorry if I offended, I'm in a really foul mood today). It rises above Bernie Guisto's sleaze. What PERS and PERB are doing is just plain wrong and criminal. They deserve jail, not merely a trip into a court to have their hands and faces slapped. They deserve a visit from the Bodysnatchers and the Dementors. Please feel free to add your own opinions here. I know PERS is reading....

Live Out the String

I haven't vanished. PERS news is slim right now. The only thing disturbing this period of quiescence is the fact that PERS seems to be sending out recalculation notices at an incredibly rapid pace these days. My guess is they are trying to get as many people as possible recalculated before Judge Kantor issues his ruling on what PERS is permitted to do. If Judge Kantor rules that PERS is NOT permitted to recalculate benefits, then PERS can drag its feet recalculating them back to what they should be according to the Supreme Court ruling in Strunk (Sartain). I can see it now: California wideboys standing before Judge Kantor smirking and telling him that these are really difficult calculations and that PERS just can't do it quickly. We beg you Judge to permit us to delay just a tiny bit longer. And I hope Judge Kantor has the huevos to tell them to stick it where the sun don't shine.

To entertain myself in this period of lull, I'm upgrading my entire home network to Apple's new operating system "Leopard". Leopard is Apple's answer to Windows Vista, except done correctly IMO. It took me nearly two weeks to upgrade a single computer to Windows Vista from Windows XP. Microsoft had so many different versions of Vista that I kept getting the wrong one to match what version of XP I had before. Apple, on the other hand, has a single version of Leopard that includes the same features for all users. They even sell a family pack that allows installation on up to 5 computers. How convenient: my home Apple network has exactly 5 Apple computers. And I don't think Apple counts all that closely. The first computer took just slightly more than an hour to upgrade. As far as I can tell, it was flawless. I found a couple of programs that require upgrades before they will run properly under "Leopard", but none are critical. Most programs just run as is. My second computer upgrade was on my primary network server. This was a leap of faith but I had three backups of the system in case something disastrous happened. I can't say the upgrade went flawlessly, but it only took me one perusal of the Apple newsgroups to figure out how to fix a problem created during the upgrade. It took a little bit longer to download all the needed upgrades to various pieces of the network software and all the utilities I normally use to make life easier. I've been using the updated system for about 6 hours now and I've only run into one piece of software that just plain doesn't run. This piece is important to me, but there are a dozen alternatives I can use in the meantime. While I'm writing this, system number 3 is "doing its thing". I expect no problems there either.

So, if you're bored, have a recent model Apple computer, and want a way to live out the string on a Saturday afternoon, pick up a copy of Apple's Leopard and install it. Your life will be much improved .

Changing of the Guards

Once upon a time there was an organization called OPRI (Oregon PERS Retirees, Inc). It was started by a small group of people in Jack Sollis' den to fight a legislative change that made PERS pensions taxable. OPRI fought this legislative change, won in the Supreme Court, and established itself as THE force to deal with on PERS retiree issues. The OPRI website documents their history well; it is not my intent to repeat it. Fast forward to 2003. PERS Retirees are being lambasted by the media for lavish retirement benefits, the legislature gets in the act and OPRI goes into action again to fight all the changes by the Legislature. Enter Martha Sartain. She's the plaintiff OPRI selects to fight the Legislative change in HB 2003 that suspends (freezes) the COLA for certain retirees ("window retirees"). OPRI hires a top-flight attorney, Scott Johnson, who, along with pension expert Greg Hartman, successfully petition the Oregon Supreme Court to overturn two key provisions of the 2003 law. During the fight, OPRI raises a good deal of money from members for its legal defense fund. Jack Sollis promises members that their donations would be returned to the extent possible if they win attorney fees in the Oregon Supreme Court. Both Jack Sollis and Martha Sartain die during 2007 - Jack of a lengthy illness; Martha of a short illness. During Martha's time as a Board Member she expresses private frustration to me that the OPRI Board seems unresponsive to the needs of recent retirees. She is also frustrated by recent retirees lack of involvement in the process. We both agree that part of the problem stems from PERS' decision - mandated by State law - to NOT give OPRI space in the retirement package to include membership information as they had in the past. Consequently OPRI has no easy way to contact recent retirees. Nevertheless, modern communication technologies make it possible to reach many people at once using the web and various web technologies including blogs, newsletters, mailing lists, and newsgroups. During the peak of legislative activity, my own blog evolved out of an ever-expanding mailing list that reached close to 2500 at its peak. The Oregon PERS Discussion Group (OPDG) has currently over 1000 members and has over 20,000 messages posted since November 2003. Thus, despite the limitations imposed by privacy requirements, use of modern technology has enabled many retirees to get information they otherwise would not have. Martha's objective during her short tenure on the OPRI Board was to modernize its communications system to take advantage of the instant nature of Web 2.0. She was partly successful, but not successful enough to maintain her energy to fight the inertia she described on the OPRI Board.

A constant theme in the OPDG discussion group is "where is OPRI?". The current OPRI Board is governed by an archaic set of bylaws that make it nearly impossible for newcomers to penetrate the inner circle. Board members are selected by Board members; bylaw changes are voted on by Board members. Who guards the guards? Once OPRI takes your money, you have no further voice in the operation of the organization. As an old commercial once asked: "Is this any way to run an airline?" A number of OPRI members worked out a proposal to amend the bylaws to make them more democratic. They were presented to the OPRI Board about a year ago. Not all Board members were present; there were enough for a quorum, which rejected the bylaw changes.

This month, two Board seat terms expire. OPRI put out a call for volunteers for these two seats. Kathleen Beaufait, current Board Chair of OPRI, announced some time ago that she intended to run again for her seat. The other seat, held by a public school administrative or certificated retiree, was being vacated by the incumbent and would be open. The current Board consists of 6 non-recent retirees (pre-2000) and 3 "window" retirees. The two vacancies were from pre-2000 retirees. Informed sources tell me that the 3 "window" retirees have little voice on the Board. Many people, including me, put out an appeal for qualified applicants to put their name up to OPRI for these Board positions. No one responded. Ms. Beaufait was reappointed; OPRI is still looking for the public school administrative or certificated retiree.

Although some may think that OPRI's day may have come and gone, I'm not yet persuaded. If we can gain one more seat on the Board, the pre-2000 retirees will hold a slim majority of 5-4, not unlike our Supreme Court. If the right person goes up for the Board and is selected, perhaps he or she might convince the Board of the wisdom of reaching out to this large group of retirees (numbers exceeding 40,000 if PERS' reports are accurate) and enfranchising them. This is not a class struggle, but the reluctance of the current Board to make the kind of changes needed to persuade new leaders to come forward is maddening and frustrating. The proposals introduced last year were fair, were necessary, and would have energized the organization. Moreover, they would have energized members, many of whom are questioning what they are getting for their dues (however small they might be). Of course, life would be much easier for recent retirees if they had a majority on the OPRI Board.

Since I've never been bashful before, I'm not going to be bashful now. It really is time for some of the current OPRI Board to step aside and let some new blood energize the organization. Let some of the recent retirees make the kind of changes needed to democratize OPRI. Let members have a vote in bylaw changes and in Board membership. OPRI is no longer the club it used to be. Public employment is no longer as civilized as it used to be in the 1960's and 1970's. Public employment no longer works at all like it did 30 or 40 years ago. It is a nasty world out there and there are some mean people out to trample public employees into the dust. There are people out to destroy public employee collective bargaining. There are people out there who want to take more pension benefits away from active employees as well as current retirees. We need a strong OPRI to fight off these changes. The current OPRI is limp, resting on its past victories, and completely ineffective in dealing with all the SOB's of the world. It is time for a change.

(P.S. For those current Board apologists who will argue that no recent retirees apply for their open positions, see the discussion of the archaic bylaws. There are plenty of people who would be interested in getting involved with an energized OPRI but are restricted by the bylaws which limit voting to members of the Board.)

Walking On Thin Ice

I'm in a cranky mood today. I'm annoyed that with two OPRI Board seats opening, NO (none, zero, nada, zip) recent retiree applied. Consequently, the OPRI Board remains unchanged for another couple of years. The OPRI Board is controlled by people from a different retirement era and who, thus, have very little interest or concern in the problems faced by recent and soon-to-be retirees. The old-guard is dying off and recent retirees outnumber them considerably. Yet, despite that demographic fact, not a single member of the 38,000 "window retiree" cohort took the time or interest to apply for those open positions, which would have resulted in a recent retiree majority. I *would* have applied, but the OPRI bylaws prevented me because I didn't work for one of the areas from which the open positions derived (State of Oregon, not Higher Education, or public schools, not Higher Education). But, I'd hazard a guess that those two areas covered about one-third of the "window retirees" - about 13,000 possible candidates.

Here we had a golden opportunity to have a significant influence on the direction that OPRI takes. Yet, only pure apathy can describe this lack of movement. It can't be ignorance because this blog and OPDG had countless announcements of the vacancies.

I'm getting very discouraged by things like this. While I appreciate all the individual kudos I get for writing this blog, and I appreciate the individuals who have contributed to the development of a high-class database of all PERS-related documents, it is the lack of effort on the part of most readers of this blog, most lurkers on OPDG, and the rest of the 38,000+ affected retirees that puts us in a sorry predicament. We have NO (none, zero, nada, zip) organization that exclusively represents the interests of recent PERS retirees. Right now, we have a couple of lawsuits out there that might change our collective fates, but legal representation costs megabucks and those megabucks are coming largely from the unions representing active workers, not retirees. How much longer do you think the unions are going to spend the kind of money required to litigate every injustice done to retirees, especially with the abject apathy evident. If people really cared, they'd be scrambling to overtake OPRI with current retirees; they'd be scrambling to be at PERS Board meetings where the action is; they'd show up at every court hearing on any of these cases. In fact, retiree inaction is so pitiful that we've let PERS walk right over the top of us. Do you think if we had a strong and highly visible presence, we'd have been stomped so hard? Either people have been lulled into a false sense of security that the litigation will eventually play out in their favor, or more likely they've chosen to bury their heads in the sand. Worse still, perhaps they don't care. Perhaps in the ultimate act of masochism towards oneself and sadism towards fellow retirees, they are into self-flagellation. I've seen this from a few - "We don't deserve the size retirement benefits we got. The current actions are fair." When I hear that, my blood pressure goes through the roof. Talk about blaming the victim. I sure as hell don't think my pension is too high. I chose to retire when I did on the expectation of getting my fixed pension plus COLA each year. I retired before any of this Lipscomb shit came down. Why the hell should I be screwed for the stupidity of the PERS Board. Their only fault was abject stupidity. They did nothing illegal and my pension does not contain any errors except for the COLA that PERS has been withholding since 2003.

I hate to say this but recent PERS retirees, in the main, have walked right into this buzzsaw and seem not to care. The apathy is PERS' strongest weapon. Recent retirees are walking on thin ice and are about to fall in and drown. Inactivity is our own worst enemy. I'm afraid that the longer I see this, the less motivation I have to keep spending the time and energy researching all these topics. If I can't motivate people to become more informed, more proactive, more reactive, and more energized to participate in all the various opportunities we have had to effect some change in our fates, then it may be time to retire in peace. I *know* my fate. I *know* how to fight and I will fight, but on my behalf. If 38,000+ people don't care enough to help themselves, why should I care so much? It is a question I find myself asking more and more each day. I'm gonna need a lot of convincing to stay at this.

P.S. Added at 9 p.m. I've learned that there might have been one applicant for the State Employee position but I don't know whether this was Kathleen Beaufait, incumbent in the position, or her and one other person. The fact is that Kathleen was reappointed. The other position, for a public school system retiree, remains open for anyone to apply for. The incumbent in that position chose not to "re-up".

Beware of Darkness

The PERS Document Library project is going well. The developer is meeting early benchmarks and we are on track to have an operational multithread database in about 6 weeks. We've raised about $2400 towards the expected $3000 to $4000 goal, but that leaves us far short of our needs. You have no idea how important this library really is. For people who are trying to figure out what PERS is done, what PERS has done, or what PERS is likely to do next, this library will be invaluable. I've already used it about a dozen times because it conveniently locates a boatload of documents in one place. Knowledge is power; information is knowledge; and access to information is the most important facet of a free society. Please consider a small, medium, or large donation. Whatever your budget can afford will help. The only thing we all have to fear is darkness. PERS has kept a lot of people in the dark for many years. Help shed some light on PERS and we can all watch the rats and cockroaches scramble from the corners they've been hiding in for years.

Pull My Strings

The notice PERS sends out with its recalculation letter contains some fascinating revisionist legal obfuscation. My favorite sentence in the whole letter reads: "At this time, there is a lawsuit pending in Multnomah County Circuit Court addressing the issue of whether PERS can collect this overpayment amount from you." This is the most blatant bit of blarney I've read in a very long time. How wrong is this sentence? Let me count the ways. First, there is not one lawsuit pending, but three (Arken, Robinson, and White). Both Arken and Robinson address questions related to whether PERS can collect the overpayment. White addresses the question of whether the PERS Board breached its fiduciary duty to members and retirees by entering into the so-called settlement agreement with employers. Second, not only is the issue of collecting overpayments at issue, there is also the question of whether PERS can reduce your benefit, particularly if you are a window retiree (Arken). Finally, there is the whole question of whether the Legislature even intended for retirees to be dunned if the City of Eugene case (now both mooted and vacated) was ruled in favor of the employers. There is this section of the 2003 legislation that deals with how PERS is supposed to treat retirees in the event the Lipscomb decision were upheld. The Robinson litigation argues that PERS has no right to collect from retirees using section 238.715; instead, they must use either a COLA freeze (ruled a breach of contract by the Supreme Court), or charge the expenses off to administrative costs from future earnings. Judge Kantor has already ruled that PERS is bound by section 14b of the 2003 legislation.

So, if you read PERS' letter, do not be misled into thinking that there is only one case with legal bearing on PERS and you, and do not believe that those cases before Multnomah County Circuit Court only address the limited question of whether PERS can collect overpayments from you. There is much more at stake than that. PERS is simply pulling your strings and watching you dance. Not me.

A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

And I sure as hell hope PERS drowns in it. Got my "invoice" today. I'm not surprised. PERS has been throwing everything they have at getting as many of these suckers out as they can *before* Judge Kantor rules. You can bet I will appeal, but I'm not telling anyone when my appeal will hit PERS. Mine doesn't contain any surprises, much less any good news. I "owe" those SOB's $14K+ for benefits that are genuinely mine, and my monthly benefit will drop by about $54 per month as a result of recalculations. I'm sure the calculations are correct. After all, my own calculator gave me the correct answer 6 months ago. But, I'm not going after THOSE calculations. I have my mind wrapped around a bunch of other things. Just wait for that hard rain. I've got an umbrella.

A Cold Wind Blows Through Your Door

The PERS folks are at it again. Although this is not new information, many of us are just discovering its implications. Remember the old days? The days when you would get a new PERS Member Handbook every couple of years. It would describe membership benefits, information about past Board decisions and legislation, describe all the retirement options, and in general make you feel warm and fuzzy about your retirement plan. You know the plan. The one that your employer kept telling you that it would make up for the crummy salary they were paying you. The plan that would take care of you in your retirement. Yes, that one. Well between 2005 and 2007, PERS decided to "retire" (their word, not mine) the Member Handbook and replace it with their online version of A-Z questions and answers. While it is nice to have an electronic version of typical questions and answers, this in no way replaces the Handbook. I have an entire file of handbooks from my time waiting for PERS to take care of me. They are, except their definition of "taking care" of me is to continually stab me in the back stripping little things from me regularly. The "public" reason given for "retiring" the Member Handbook is that it saves the organization money. True enough, except that the money doesn't seem to be finding its way back to members. In the scheme of things, the cost of printing the members handbook, or putting a pdf version online, is trivial. My hunch is that since the member handbook has been one of the "bones of contention" during the Strunk hearings and later, PERS didn't want to put anything in such permanent writing. If they post it on the web, it is ephemeral, and can be changed with the flip of a switch.

This latest trick is an injustice to all of those people who don't have regular access to a computer, but also to all those people who can find something easily by using a Table of Contents and an Index - something that appeared in the Member Handbook. The best WE can do is to collect as many documents, as many page impressions, and as much support we have to build the library of documents described above (Livin' in the Future) and below (Power To the People). If you want to thwart PERS' effort to make less information available, please help us in our effort to invert that and make as MUCH information public and accessible as possible. Support the database project. Complain to PERS about discontinuing the Member Handbook. That cold wind you feel is coming from PERS slowly sucking as much available printed information as possible into the electronic bit bucket.

It Ain't Right

Something is up at PERS. For the longest time I'd hear from a few readers per week about their invoices from PERS. I'd help them understand what PERS was doing and would point out how I might appeal if I were in their positions. Something changed late last week. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but all of a sudden my mailbox is overrun with notes from readers about being invoiced. Since yesterday, I've received exactly 25 emails from readers who found invoices in their mailboxes yesterday and today. Add that to the nearly two dozen I received last week and this adds up to a major campaign by PERS to push those invoices out the door. I find the timing somewhat suspicious. Of course I'm a conspiracy theorist. After all, I watch CSI, House, Grey's Anatomy, Cold Case, the Sopranos where everything is strange and suspicious. In PERS' case, I wonder if there is an in-house agenda to get the invoices out as quickly as possible so that by the time Judge Kantor rules, PERS can plead how complicated it will be to undo all the invoicing they've just busted hump to get out. And of course, with the plea will come the now-tired explanation that their staff is overworked and it will take a very long time to undo what they've done. And oh, how much money it will cost. This is common PERS blarney and I hope that Judge Kantor looks those dirtbag attorneys from California in the eye and says: "Tough shit cowboy. Fix it quickly." And I plan to be in court the day this happens, if Judge Kantor issues his ruling "in person." Otherwise, I plan to be a fly on the wall inside PERS and listen to the wideboys try to explain this to PERS staff by saying: "Whoops, the gig is up. We've exhausted that ploy. Time for some new lame excuses. Got any ideas." All the while, I'll be saying: It ain't right to make those PERS boys behave. They're bad to the core.

Power To The People

Since 2002, I've been writing and then blogging about PERS issues. I've had access to thousands of documents, none private, but many not circulated widely. Others I know have their own set of documents. Over the years, it has become increasingly hard to lay hands on a document related to PERS, the PERS "crisis", the PERS Legislation, and the PERS litigation without a lengthy search. A few months ago about 5 of us decided that we had to put our heads together to solve the document access problem. Pretty soon a plan developed, largely due to the skills and motivation of Greg Scott, to put all these collected documents into a searchable library. Our plan involves developing a search engine that will enable interested readers to find documents by keywords, phrases, author, possibly date. The search engine is under development. We have marshaled many documents - more than one thousand -- and collected them into a single place - http://oregonpers.info. As is noted at this site, it is dedicated to the memory of Martha Sartain, an incredibly smart, persistent, and avid chronicler of PERS. Martha not only sacrificed her life (perhaps not literally, but figuratively) by agreeing to be the OPRI plaintiff in the Strunk case. Martha's case - Sartain v PERS - was about the retiree COLA freeze. It was one of two cases where the Oregon Supreme Court ruled in retirees favor, agreeing that the Legislature had already made the COLA integral to the retirement contract and could not arbitrarily withhold the COLA from benefits. Although PERS has still failed to implement the Supreme Court's version of the COLA freeze - and Martha died before this issue was resolved - it was her intellect, her sense of righteous indignation, her understanding of PERS history, and her ability to communicate all this to OPRI's lawyer that resulted in an excellent and winning case to the OSC.

This library is now open, although the intelligent search functions are not yet ready, and is devoted to our collective belief that "knowledge is power". Information is knowledge in this day and age and we believe in power to the people. Please visit http://oregonpers.info and see for yourself the vast array of documents assembled. Please make sure you send comments, opinions, documents, criticisms, and suggestions to the link at the site. I will have a link on the left for this new site in a day or two. (Puppy calls).