As one of 13 CalPERS board members, J.J. Jelincic presumably has some authority. But last June and July, he filed Public Records Act requests to force CalPERS to give him weekly reports from its federal lobbyists, much like any member of the public.

 

CalPERS tripled its federal lobbying force last year from one all-purpose firm, the Lussier Group, to three separate lobbying representatives for retirement policy, investment and market regulation, and health care issues.

 

Jelincic wanted to see what CalPERS was getting for its increased spending. So he asked for the weekly reports from the lobbyists, as specified in their contracts. But the rest of the board had decided monthly reports, also specified in the contracts, are enough, and Jelincic’s informal request was denied.

 

The unusual Public Records Act requests by a board member helped trigger a CalPERS governance committee discussion last month of “board member behavior” that was clearly aimed at Jelincic.  … In addition to filing the Public Records Act requests, Jelincic was criticized by other board members for “disparaging” staff in public and taking more than his fair share of time at board meetings by asking questions.

Board targets only member who challenges staff

CalPERS’ actions got two much more savage takedowns at Naked Capitalism, a popular niche website dedicated to exposing improper and unethical behavior by large financial institutions and corporations and the government agencies which regulate them. Susan Webber, a 35-year veteran of Wall Street and high finance, writes for the site under the name Yves Smith. Among her allegations:

• CalPERS board routinely tries to hide basic information about what its doing, apparently at the behest of its staff, which doesn’t like outside scrutiny.
• CalPERS ignores state laws on taking testimony at its meetings and uses security guards to intimidate individuals who ask difficult or multiple questions.
• CalPERS is trying to break Jelincic’s will by hassling him. Some specifics from Webber:

[Some video of last month’s] Governance Committee meeting clearly shows that the board, aided and abetted by [fiduciary counsel Robert] Klausner, is in the process of establishing a procedure for implementing trumped-up sanctions against Jelincic, presumably so as to facilitate an opponent unseating him in his next election. But Jelincic’s term isn’t up until 2018, so from their perspective they are stuck with an apostate in their ranks for an uncomfortably long amount of time. Part of their strategy appears to harass him into compliance with the posture the rest of the board, that of ceding authority to staff and conducting board meetings that are largely ceremonial. …

 

The board ganging up against Jelincic comes straight out of The Peter Principle. One of its corollaries was “hierarchical exfoliation,” in which organizations expel both poor performers and notable outperformers, the latter because they make everyone else look bad. Jelincic, the lone board member willing to do his job, must be tarred and feathered for his crime of showing the rest of the board up. …

 

[It] is particularly unseemly that the board member who has been the most aggressive in pushing the illegal notion that CalPERS can and should sanction Jelincic over filing Public Records Act requests is Priya Mathur, who has been fined repeatedly for violating state ethics laws.

Jelincic has history as CalPERS maverick

This isn’t the first time Jelincic has tangled with other board members and top CalPERS officials. The Sacramento Bee reported in April on one contretemps, involving limits put on his voting to avoid conflicts of interest because his full-time job is as a CalPERS investment officer.

In 2011, Jelincic was officially reprimanded for alleged sexual harassment of co-workers in CalPERS’ investment office. But he denied the allegations and called the sanctions “politically motivated.”

But Jelincic’s campaign biography and website doesn’t focus on his maverick ways. Instead, they emphasize his history as a union leader, including time as president of the California State Employees Association. Strong union support helped him first win his seat on the CalPERS board in 2009.

SB 687 was on the agenda in the education committee. The bill would allow school districts to permit adults to volunteer time or resources for maintenance or improvement of a school, volunteer time in the classroom or help during the lunch period.

And the bill would prohibit a collective bargaining agreement from prohibiting a school district from using volunteers.

Needless to say, SB 687, authored by Sen. Joel Anderson, R-Alpine, but presented by Sen. Mark Wyland, R-Solana Beach, elicited a great deal of discussion and plenty of union pushback.

Despite the need for maintenance at so many of California’s public schools, most of the committee concern seemed to center around the displacement of union employees with volunteers and “faulty work.” The bill analysis by the committee staff said volunteers “may not have the proper qualifications and training to perform capital projects.”

Committee members cited several school volunteer projects that went awry, including a heating and air conditioning replacement and a broken drinking fountain. “It puts the safety of kids in jeopardy,” said Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego.

Torres’ comment draws guffaws

“There nothing in the current law preventing parents from volunteering in schools,” said Sen. Norma Torres, D-Chino, who noted that parents and volunteers do community beautification projects at school campuses in her district once a year. “And they are always done side by side with the classified employees, to plant flowers, remove graffiti, to do small things that improve the quality of life of that student while they are there,” she said.

“I am concerned about infrastructure improvements,” Torres said. “I don’t know — I am very concerned that everybody is talking about a water fountain as if it was no big deal. But some of our water fountains here in the Capitol had been infected with worms.”

Her comment prompted some guffaws and giggles.

“I don’t think that’s funny,” Torres said. “Our children deserve better than that. There’s asbestosis — some child may not know until 30 years from now that they got asbestosis from some parent cracking a wall and tapping into those types of contaminates.”

Torres continued: “Lead poisoning — we tried to do a painting project that included painting fences around the school, unknowingly that there was lead. Thank goodness that the classified employees, the people in the building trades that were assigned to work with the parents that day, understood what the volunteers did not understand.”

“I think this is a slippery slope and going down the …  um … wrong tube here with this proposal, and I’m not supporting it.”

Long list of unions oppose bill

After testimony in opposition of the bill by the California Teachers Association, California School Employees Association, California Federation of Teachers, and California Labor Federation – all labor unions or groups — Committee Chairwoman Sen. Carol Liu, D–La Cañada Flintridge, said she would keep the bill in the committee to allow Anderson to make changes to it.

Bill Lucia with Ed Voice, offered support for SB 687, saying it should be a local control, district by district issue, particularly to deal with irregular maintenance in schools.

But don’t expect to see parent volunteers at schools doing anything but planting flowers.

By Katy Grimes

For most parents in California, education is a nonpartisan issue. But too many of the state’s elected politicians, who claim to represent all constituents, accept teachers union campaign contributions — and lots of them.

This makes education very political.

Because of politics, a very good education reform bill was killed by Senate Democrats Wednesday.

SB 441 by Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, would have required school districts to regularly evaluate the performance of teachers and school principals.

School districts are currently required only to evaluate teachers as “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.” And these performance evaluations are not exactly pop quizzes; they are scheduled in advance so teachers will not be caught off guard.

Calderon’s bill would create four different evaluation grades, and would increase the frequency of evaluations for veteran teachers from every five years to every three years.

Students are evaluated four times each school year.

“I didn’t realize you were a person interested in education,” Education Committee Chairwoman Sen. Carol Liu, D-La Cañada Flintridge, said to Calderon before he began testimony. “Oh, and I see you’ve brought your friends,” she added when hundreds of parents, students, reform advocates and public school teachers in the audience stood up to testify in support of SB 441.

“If the hundreds of people here today had given $2,000 each [in campaign contributions to Legislators], we might have matched the teachers union contributions to fight this bill,” one reform advocate told the committee.

Opponents of the bill, teachers and school employee labor unions, included the the California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Teachers and the California Labor Federation. Also opposing was California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson. Despite Calderon’s amendment, the unions said the bill was unacceptable for threatening “to silence the voices of teachers in this important method of improving teaching.” The unions also said SB 441 “undermines the usefulness of an evaluation system by focusing on just four unproven measures of performance that the bill’s backers ‘assume’ will boost teacher effectiveness.”

“Teachers devote their entire lives to make every child succeed,” said Seth Bramble, legislative advocate for the CTA. Bramble said parents already have a part in the collective bargaining agreement at the beginning of the local collective bargaining process.

“How often teachers get evaluated is by mutual agreement,” Bramble said, to shouts of “no” from the audience.

Lynn Fox with the CFT said, “Teachers’ voices are neglected.”

Reform bill killed

Last week, the Senate Education Committee heard from dozens of parents, teachers and students who support teacher evaluations, but the measure stalled on a 4-4 vote.

Calderon asked the committee for reconsideration and SB 441 was heard again Wednesday.

The sticking point last week was only about collective bargaining — teachers union members claimed that the bill allowed parents to have input in the collective bargaining process. Calderon amended SB 441 to clarify that the parent involvement piece does not impact teachers’ collective bargaining.

The CTA’s response to Calderon’s bill was par for the course. The teachers union referred to its 2012 document of union-preferred teacher evaluation procedures.

“It’s difficult to believe that the union is serious about augmenting such a convoluted strategy, but since it needs to feign concern, it throws out an unrealistic alternative, knowing that it will never see the light of day,” Union Watch website wrote. “CTA’s main concern seems to be that teachers’ collective bargaining rights are going to be diminished. But there is nothing in this tame bill that would affect collective bargaining except for the increase in the frequency of teacher evaluations.”

“I’m evaluated four times a year. Teachers are not even evaluated four times in a decade,” one student testified.

The final vote Wednesday, after a contentious and long hearing, was 3-0, leaving SB 441 very dead. The three votes cast in favor of SB 441 were by Sen. Mark Wyland, R-Escondido, Sen. Minority Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, and Sen. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana.

“Time and time again, senators on both sides of the aisle pledge their support for fixing our broken education system,” Jessica Ng with the reform group Students First said. “But when given the opportunity to vote for even modest reforms, like those in Senate Bill 441, only three members of the Senate Education Committee had the courage to do what’s right for California’s kids.

“In failing to vote on SB 441, six California legislators ignored the will of their constituents and instead put adult interests ahead of student interests. Yet again, the outsized influence of Sacramento’s special-interest groups have blocked reforms that would help improve our schools — and California’s students are the ones who will suffer as a result.”

And that outsized influence was never more obvious than when Sen. Liu and Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, tried to explain to Calderon why his bill was going to fail. “I just think there are some people missing from the table here,” Jackson said. “I want to see people who are here with people who are not here. Without it, this bill is just too flawed.”

The audience roared with disapproval. Parents, teachers, students and education reform advocates loudly asked who was missing from the table.

Lawmaker confronted on the issues

One of the six senators who failed to vote on SB 441 got an earful from parents, students, reform advocates and teachers on his way out of the Capitol Wednesday. Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, was confronted by a group after the hearing just outside of the Capitol.

Several members of the group told Block they had traveled all the way from his district in San Diego to the Capitol, for the second week in a row, to try to impress upon lawmakers just how important SB 441’s modest request was to education.

Sarah Hernholm, the founder of Whatever it Takes, an organization focused on empowering youth to take on leadership roles in their community, told Block that the committee chairwoman, Sen. Carol Liu, had cut off one of the students Hernholm brought to the hearing, preventing the student from giving a statement in support. Hernholm had the high school junior share her statement with Block. The student told Block that, because she was too young to vote, he was her voice at the Capitol. But he wasn’t at the hearing, and did not vote. She wanted to know why.

Block said he is pushing his own bill, and didn’t want to hurt his chances of getting it passed by voting on Calderon’s bill (see video above). Block added that he didn’t want to jeopardize the supporters of his bill by involving himself in Calderon’s bill, so he abstained on both votes.

Block said his bill, SB 657, is a two-year bill. This incensed the spontaneous crowd. “We’ve watched over 30 years for reforms,” one teacher said. “Why is it we’re ranked 47th?” Meaning California schools commonly are ranked near the bottom of the 50 states on national tests.

The StudentsFirst State Policy Report Card gave California an “F” grade for teaching, an “F” grade for parental inclusion, and a “D” grade for spending and wise governing.

But this didn’t matter to Liu, Jackson or the other committee members who did not vote on the bill. Not voting was an blatant abdication of their responsibility as elected lawmakers.

One education advocate summed up the problem the best: “If we don’t fix the broken teacher evaluation system, the courts will.”

By Chris Reed

On Monday, the day that finally saw criminal charges filed over CalPERS’ brazen pay-to-play bribery scheme, there were signs that some Democratic state lawmakers finally are figuring out that believing California’s pension status quo is ridiculous isn’t just partisan right-wing posturing.

Ed Mendel, one of a handful of elite reporters on pension machinations, has the scoop at Capitol Weekly:

“Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, an upset victor last fall in a new election process, has introduced a bill containing Gov. Brown’s stalled proposal to restructure the CalPERS board, adding financial expertise and loosening labor control.

“The proposal to change the board, which needs voter approval because of a labor-backed initiative in 1992, would double the number of gubernatorial appointees to six, matching the number of labor representatives.

“’In the past, the lack of independence and financial sophistication on public retirement boards has contributed to unaffordable pension benefit increases,’ said the 12-point pension reform proposed by Brown in October 2011.

“The proposal said pension boards need members with ‘independence and sophistication’ to ensure that retirees receive promised benefits ‘without exposing taxpayers to large unfunded liabilities.’”

‘Unsophisticated’? Or union double agents?

Journalistic decorum requires Mendel to pretend the problem is a lack of sophistication on board members’ part, not the fact that they are union tools. Why is this problematic? More from Ed:

“CalPERS sponsored legislation, SB 400 in 1999, that gave state workers a major retroactive pension increase. A deep pension cut in 1991 was rolled back. Retirees received a 1 to 6 percent increase in their pensions.

“Highway Patrol pensions increased 50 percent, setting a costly bargaining benchmark for local police and firefighters that critics say is unsustainable. All of this, CalPERS erroneously said, would be paid for by investment earnings, not costing taxpayers ‘a dime.’”

Here’s a factoid that goes a long way to explain why California is so screwed up. Who is the president of the CalPERS’ Board of Administration?

Is it a UC Berkeley economist? A CEO of a thriving Califoria firm? A respected former statewide official considered an independent straight-shooter?

Nah.

It’s this guy.

“Mr. Feckner is the Past President of the California School Employees Association. He also serves as an Executive Vice President of the California Labor Federation.”

How insane that a guy with such preposterous and extreme conflicts of interest is CalPERS’ board chairman.

How … California.

By KATY GRIMES

Despite warnings that tooth decay in children can lead to a life in prison, the latest attempt at a single-payer health care bill in California failed to pass the Senate Thursday.

Surprising many supporters, SB 810, authored by San Francisco Democratic Sen. Mark Leno, didn’t get enough votes even from his own party to pass the “Medicare for all” bill.

Perhaps the projected $250 billion annual cost of the government-run healthcare system weighed heavily on the minds of lawmakers.

Democrats have lauded SB 810 as providing “Medicare for all” in California. But it failed on a 19-15 vote, with four Democrats abstaining, and one voting against it. No Republicans voted in favor of it.

Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed SB 810 out of the committee on a party-line vote of 6-2. The committee estimated the cost of a single-payer healthcare system in the state to be as high as $250 billion annually.

Sponsored by the California Nurses Association and the California School Employees Association, the bill would cover a government-run healthcare system for all 37 million California residents.

A New Healthcare Agency

In all of the floor debate between Republican and Democratic Senators, not once was it mentioned that the bill would establish an entirely new state agency. “This bill would establish the California Healthcare System to be administered by the newly created California Healthcare Agency under the control of a Healthcare Commissioner appointed by the Governor and subject to confirmation by the Senate,” the bill’s language reads.

Described as a public-private partnership, Leno said the proposal would make sure that every Californian has a primary care provider. “It’s not socialized medicine. What changes is who pays for it.”

“12 million Californians went without some type of health care last year,” Leno said. “500,000 children missed school last year due to tooth decay. This is criminal.” Leno said that missing school leads to dropping out of school, no diploma, no job and eventually prison.

“The author mentioned kids with tooth decay and then all of a sudden they’re not making it in life,” Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Moorpark, said. “It’s almost like that cable commercial where if you don’t buy cable, you’ll end up with a grandson with a spiked dog collar.”

“If you want the compassion of the IRS and the efficiency of the DMV running your healthcare, then this bill is for you. SB 810 doubles the size of state government,” Strickland added.

According to Strickland, the Department of Finance opposes it. The LAO has warned against implementing statewide single-payer healthcare. “SB 810 promises health care for everyone, but it’s more like Medi-Cal for everyone,” Strickland said, comparing it to the state’s government assistance healthcare system.

Another Dental Analogy

“Medicare for all extends to every human being in California. Our prisons are filled with people who couldn’t succeed in school because of dental pain, because they couldn’t hear or see,” said Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, using the same analogy that a lack of health care leads to prison.

Hancock said that nurses and doctors support SB 810, but warned, “the insurance company mill literally tortures them – this is the most important topic we can address.”

Hostile Business Climate

Sen. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, said that he talks to frustrated doctors who currently can’t get Medi-Cal to reimburse them. “California is becoming more of an island of hostile practices. We can’t afford to lose more employers in this hostile business environment,” said LaMalfa.

Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, said the debate was only about whether every Californian ought to have access to health care.

“We are living in an era of limits,” said Sen. Sam Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo. “I can’t imagine the pressure on education if this $250 billion cost competes with the $30 billion for education.”

In a letter sent to the Senate Appropriations Committee last week about SB 810, the California Taxpayers Association wrote, “The Legislative Analyst’s Office opined in a 2008 report that payroll taxes for employers and employees would need to be 4 percent higher than they are now for single-payer costs and revenues to balance. The necessary increase in taxes would discourage business growth, hurt investments and chase jobs away from this state.”

This is not the first single-payer healthcare bill for California. However, all previous attempts have either failed to pass the Legislature, or were vetoed, most recently by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Introduced in February 2011, Tuesday is the deadline for passage of SB 810.