Dear Mr. Levitt,
Hi. It’s me again.
Say, I’ve been reading your report and see that you were unable to determine why it took the Pension Reform Committee (PRC) a year to issue its report. Had you asked me (I was the Chair), I would have explained.
- First I would like to point out that this was a Council-appointed committee. In California, this means that all meetings are public and must be fully noticed. It also means you must provide time for public comment at each meeting.
- Second, we requested and received volumes of information which all had to be digested. Please keep in mind that we were meeting around the same time as the SEC and FBI investigations began. When it came to providing documents, everyone’s requests had priority over ours.
- Third, every matter we discussed led to new matters that needed to be covered. Did you not find this to be true with your investigation?
- Fourth, after my experience on the Blue Ribbon Committee, I was not the least bit interested in dividing the issues up and having different people focus on different areas of concern. Everyone on the PRC heard all of the discussion on all of the topics.
- Fifth, again after my experience on the Blue Ribbon Committee, there was no way that staff was going to be allowed to draft the report. I personally prepared the straw-man first draft and all changes thereafter were made in public in an open session.
Remember, the PRC members were all volunteers. We charged the city nothing for our time. And, as you point out, our conclusions were all valid. The problem is that they weren’t all implemented.
Could you please remind me again….how long did it take you to complete your report?
– April Boling