Divisions on CalPERS’ Board of Administration, where Brown can count on allied appointees, opened around the controversy. Although Brown’s side in the controversy lost a close vote, plans have already been hatched for a rematch.

The bout has been a long time in coming. As summer turned to fall, Controller John Chiang took CalPERS to task for juicing up pensions while dishing them out at unsustainably high levels. Chiang was just elected state treasurer, so he will remain an ex officio member of the CalPERS board.

In late August, Brown tasked his team with doing all it could legally to prevent CalPERS from engaging in the pension spiking.

In that procedure, a public pension fund passes rules that allow pension levels to be adjusted significantly upward by taking temporary or exceptional kinds of work and pay into account. CalPERS had pushed the credibility of these measures to the breaking point, in effect securing special pension increases simply because employees did their jobs, such as librarians shelving books.

But Brown made a point to object only to CalPERS’ temporary pay rules, which allowed unique, fleeting raises for non-permanent work to be factored into pension setting.

By mid-September, Chiang had concluded that CalPERS’ pension spiking was unacceptable in theory, but unpunishable in practice. CalPERS’ “available resources” for spiking oversight, Chiang concluded, “limit its annual reviews to only 45, or 1.5 percent of the more than 3,000 reporting entities. At this current rate, pension spiking could go undetected for an extended period of time, as each reporting entity would be reviewed, at the earliest, every 66 years.”

The task of auditing CalPERS’ shenanigans had to fall, in other words, to the Legislature.

As a matter of common sense, it was much more attractive for Brown to try to exercise oversight by reforming the rules CalPERS used to set pensions, instead of by pouring the state’s time and energy into auditing those rules after scores of changes went into effect.

A tough matchup

That is why, as the Sacramento Bee reported, Brown’s appointees on the CalPERS board proceeded to force a vote on removing temporary pay from the fund’s cornucopia of pension-spiking sweeteners. Unfortunately for Brown, the vote failed, splitting 7-5 in favor of retaining the objectionable rule.

In an interview, state human resources head Richard Gillihan — a Brown ally on the board who voted against temporary-pay pension spiking — told the Bee that 2015 would offer another shot at reform. “What should or shouldn’t be included in final compensation is absolutely something that we think needs broader revisitation,” he said. “We hope to see that sooner rather than later.”

According to the fund’s website, “The CalPERS Board of Administration consists of 13 members — six elected ‘member representatives,’ three appointed representatives, and four ‘ex officio’ representatives. The elected candidates will serve a four-year term and represent active and retired members in all aspects of CalPERS’ business – including benefit and membership issues, and oversight and investment of Fund assets.”

But as the Bee observed, “The board’s composition will lean more heavily toward labor’s interests next year.” The Service Employees International Union shelled out some $250,000 to secure the election of incoming member Theresa Taylor.

Even though California taxpayers are on the hook for any CalPERS shortfall, they have no say in the six elected “member” representatives. Those representatives are chosen, according to CalPERS, by ballots “mailed to eligible, active state and public agency CalPERS members.”

Leadership trouble

A complication, however, has added further difficulties to the equation. September also saw the board approve the appointment of Ted Eliopoulos, former CalPERS senior investment officer for real estate, as its new chief investment officer.

That provoked the ire of J.J. Jelincic, a board member unable to vote against Eliopoulos because he was recused for being on leave. Jelincic told Pensions and Investments that Eliopoulos lacked “the temperament and management skills” needed for the job.

Pensions and Investments noted, “He said Mr. Eliopoulos relied 四人打麻将 too much on the advice of consultants, made the wrong decision to increase CalPERS’ exposure to riskier non-core real estate assets before the financial crisis, and played favorites with employees.”

The enmity has served to cloud Brown’s prospects even further for charting an effective course toward CalPERS reform.

Here’s the current legal situation. As Megan McArdle has detailed at Bloomberg Businessweek, the rapidly growing $1.5 billion-dollar industry is about collide with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Since experts are not yet convinced that there are significant health risks to “smoking” e-cigarettes (or “vaping,” as they say), the campaign against the free public enjoyment of the devices has fallen back on a trinity of moralism, fearmongering and progressivism.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), for instance, is currently co-sponsoring the Protecting Children from Electronic Cigarette Advertising Act. “We cannot risk undoing decades of progress in reducing youth smoking by allowing e-cigarette makers to target our kids,” she insists.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel deployed the same rhetoric in his own successful anti-e-cig campaign. “Having worked with the FDA,” he declared, “having encouraged them to take steps to protect individuals and children, they are usually an agency that leads from behind. And when it comes to the city of Chicago, when it comes to the people of the city of Chicago, when it comes to the children of the city of Chicago, I do not believe we should wait.”

Michael Bloomberg himself, of course, surprised no one by being the first mayor of a major American city to crack down on vaping. Sure enough, as the New York Post reported, “city Health Commissioner Tom Farley said allowing electronic cigs in public places would make smoking socially acceptable again among youths and undermine gains in curbing tobacco use. He said they look like regular cigarettes, mimic the action of smoking, and are popular with youths.”

And so, as McArdle explains, one of “the FDA’s most difficult decisions will be determining whether e-cigarettes will be a gateway product, encouraging young smokers to develop a nicotine habit that might lead to tobacco use. After all, many of the things that make e-cigarettes attractive to smokers make them even more attractive to minors.”

L.A. next front in ‘vape’ fight

A municipal vaping ban is now on the agenda for Los Angeles. A proposed ordinance to treat e-cigs like regular cigarettes is now headed to the L.A. City Council. “Lawmakers,” recounts the Los Angeles Times, “acted after Jonathan Fielding, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said e-cigarettes threaten to make smoking socially acceptable after years of advocacy to discourage the habit. Young people who get hooked on the nicotine in e-cigarettes may then turn to tobacco use, he said.”

Can anything stop the regulation’s momentum? It’s possible that an appeal to logic and reason could prevail. At least one former surgeon general, Dr. Richard Carmona, has written forcefully against the ban, arguing that it would actually hurt anti-smoking efforts. In fact, he attributes his decision to join the board of NJOY, “the leading independent e-cigarette company,” because its “ambitions” are “to make obsolete the tobacco cigarette entirely.”

On the other hand, California’s social mores might do more to complicate life for anti-vape regulators. In the Los Angeles metro area, for instance, the public use of e-cigarettes is particularly appealing for a complex set of reasons. Take the city’s outdoor culture, permissive parenting, soft school discipline and widespread recreational marijuana use. Add tight municipal bans on cigarette smoking, and you’ve got all the makings of some broad opposition to e-cigarette restrictions.

At first blush, it would seem that the anti-vape crowd could rally public support based on reports that L.A. kids are using vapes to get high in class. But it’s one thing to prohibit, say, drinking alcohol at school — and another thing to impose such strictures on the general public. Plenty of people in Los Angeles still like to smoke, and not in the privacy of their own homes, either. It’s not difficult to find bars in town that have found careful, quiet ways around the city’s tough regulations.

Still, support for cigarette smoking in public spaces is probably not as strong as L.A.’s tacit support for discreet marijuana smoking. In a city where even smokers respect those who don’t want secondhand smoke anywhere near them, vapes offer everyone what some locals might describe as a more chill vibe.

Lax on pot but tough on e-cigs? Unlikely

Using e-cigs to deliver a marijuana high takes that unofficial agreement a step further. Conduct yourself with a minimum of self-control, and nobody in Los Angeles is apt to turn you in for leaving the house under the influence of pot. The huge number of “medical” dispensaries in the city — just a fraction of local pot suppliers — is a stunning testament to the strength of market demand for the drug. It’s not outlandish to conclude that in L.A., the pot industry and the e-cig industry are poised for a much closer partnership than ever had time to develop in, say, Chicago or New York. That means it’s harder in Los Angeles to fully associate e-cigs with regular cigarettes. In a perhaps unexpected way, the city’s fairly lax pot regime probably makes it harder to mobilize public compliance with e-cig bans in the spirit of “saving the children.”

That sets up the L.A. City Council with two hurdles. Not only does the anti-vaping ordinance have to pass in the first place; it then must be enforced. Of course, a cynic might say that today’s bad governance puts a great deal of energy into passing flavor-of-the-month legislation, but much less energy into dutifully executing the minute and detailed rules. California cities like Los Angeles are primed for widespread public disobedience of anti-vaping laws. L.A.’s experience with e-cigarettes may well speak to the larger issue of how long American politicians can build support around regulations that lack strong support from experts and citizens alike.