Executive Club Reminder!
7:00 pm • Wednesday April 5th • Airport Shilo Inn
Wanna start a fist fight? A donnybrook? A melee? A riot, perhaps?
Start talking about Oregon's Public Employees Retirement System.
Or you could poke a honey badger with a sharp stick....
Opine that we could tax all private real estate to fund it.
Or perhaps pay for it with a state-wide sales tax.
Or wonder aloud who the people are who gave us this biannual,
kick-the-can-down-the-road, impossible, budget-busting mess.
Yup. Them's fightin' words, in a system where the benefits are
"negotiated" when BOTH SIDES are PERS recipients,
where "expected earnings calculations" are wildly corrupted,
where promises have exceeded actual earnings for a decade,
and where disputes are settled by judges ALSO on PERS.
Sort of makes you want to avoid going to work in Salem, yeah?
Or, for that matter, trying to earn a living in state
increasingly determined to take more and more productive
earnings to feed a system that was wrong from the first
day, but to which state employees are now fully addicted.
So, what are the options, short of relief by Zombie Apocalypse?
Let's ask a senator from honey badger central in Salem:
State Senator Tim Knopp is a native Oregonian who has lived
in Central Oregon for almost 4 decades. For more than 3 decades,
with his wife, Melissa, and together they have 4 children.
For almost 2 decades, Tim's been a small business owner, and
now Exec. V.P. of the Central Oregon Builders Association and
the Exec. Dir. of Building Partners for Affordable Housing.
Add to that community service as little league coach, Chamber
of Commerce board member, and currently on the board of
First Story, an affordable housing non-profit.
All of which could be damaged by an out-of-control PERS.
Which gives him motivation to try to fix it, part of his focus
during 3 terms in the House and now his first in the Senate.
(We also hope to also have confirmation of a PERS-repair
advocate from the "other side", but that's just a "maybe".)
Join us Wednesday night.
We suggest you keep your money stitched into shark-proof pocket,
just in case any salivating PERS-hungry honey badgers attend
but cannot be satisfied with the Shilo's dinner offerings.
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Portland Airport Shilo Inn ~~ 11707 Northeast Airport Way
Bring a friend! ~~ $20 select menu option ~~ no host bar
And of course, the cigar room, afterward
Next meeting after this: May 3rd
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Submitting Followup Information
Executive Club passes on meeting followup information as a courtesy to our speakers and members. Any member or speaker may submit, by email, a simple update text presentation to be sent to the club mailing list, to give the membership to have more details, or just a recap of your platform presentation. To be considered for publication, please be sure to submit your update within 24 hours of the close of the meeting. Please don't include any pictures in your text, but links to web pages, or links to things stored elsewhere on the web -- .pdf files, Word documents, or even pictures -- are OK now. Formatting and inserted pictures will not be copied, just the text content, so please don't use 4 fonts and 6 colors to convey your thoughts: you will be disappointed. Look at a previous followup email, or the bottom of most of the invitation emails, to see how they are presented. The simpler and cleaner your text, the more likely it will appear exactly the same in the email we send out. Each update must also indicate the author's name and contact information -- either a phone number, email address, or website with contact information. We reserve the right to edit for brevity, or reject, any submission.
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Timely Information and Events
Some sad news:
Bob Sinnema, husband of Fran Sinnema, died last week. Both are long-time Executive Club friends.
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Cascade Policy Institute and Oregon Capitol Watch Foundation jointly released Facing Reality 2017 on February 1st. It documents $1.3 billion in cuts from Governor Brown's proposed 2017-19 budget. Coupled with small reductions in the proposed budgets of other agencies this will balance the state budget with NO TAX OR FEE INCREASES. Here are the links:
Press Release
Facing Reality 2017 (pdf)
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Details of all Cascade events and publications are available at
http://cascadepolicy.org/ and you can sign up for Cascade's free weekly Courier email list
here.
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Hello, fellow freedom lover!
Townhall.com, a national media outlet, featured Freedom Foundation's regional operation on Wednesday, March 8th:
SEIU and Government Unions Are Now Having Their Tactics Used Against Them
Quotes that gave me a boost include:
"When [Freedom Foundation] realized SEIU and the state governors weren't going to inform home health workers about their ability to leave the union, Freedom Foundation stepped in. They developed a robust ground game, in conjunction with a strong public relations effort."
"There's no need for [homecare or childcare workers] to pay union dues," McCabe explained. "They're never going to have a grievance against their employer or a workplace grievance, because their employer is their child."
Every darn day, not during a campaign or legislative cycle, but every single day; Freedom Foundation has one laser-focused mission. Inform union members of their rights (and when they know they, they leave the union), and extract money out government unions.
Stay tuned, we have some other great wins I'll let you know about in the coming weeks. We are on offense; the unions are on defense.
That is a good thing for all of us
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In December the Oregonian published a guest column I wrote on this ridiculous dance that resulted in simply growing more government.
Click here to read it.
Thank you for your ongoing, strident support of freedom. We have done much in the last two years to drive the message that Oregon is transparency challenged and to continue to press our leaders to account for their ridiculous policies and postures. Your support has supported these efforts and so much more. The sky is the limit. A more free Oregon is on the horizon.
We believe the only path to freedom is achieved when the relationship between the liberal left and labor unions is dissolved.
We won't stop. We press on the gas every day. Join us. Click on our website listed below. You can sign up on the lower part of the page to receive our weekly email. You can click in the upper left corner to give a tax deductible donation as the year comes to a close.
Blessings,
Anne Marie Gurney
Oregon Director |
Freedom Foundation
AGurney@FreedomFoundation.com
cell 503-901-5635 l ofc 503.951.6208 | PO Box 18146 Salem, OR 97305
FreedomFoundation.com
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Metro is like many other government agencies. They do whatever they want because there are never any consequences even when caught.
In violation of state ethics laws Metro employees have been collecting frequent flyer benefits and using them for personal benefit.
http://www.oregonmetro.gov/follow-audit-report-frequent-flyer-benefits
Paid family leave abuse grew after audit exposed it.
http://rim.oregonmetro.gov/webdrawer/rec/272227/view
HR created new reports that would allow for better management of family leave and costs agency-wide. We analyzed these reports and found that the monthly average number of Metro employees out on a family leave case each month increased by 23% over the last two years and the annual payroll costs for family leave have increased by 48%.
Original family leave audit:
http://www.oregonmetro.gov/news/leave-management-audit-follow
1. Metro does NOT track the effectiveness of their transportation planning strategies. Case studies show failure.
http://rim.oregonmetro.gov/webdrawer/rec/212993/view
2. Metro does not track the effectiveness of their costly Transit Oriented Development program. Case studies show failure.
http://rim.oregonmetro.gov/webdrawer/rec/212992/view
3. Metro's public involvement/communication is lopsided advocacy with staff free to choose what suits their advocacy.
http://rim.oregonmetro.gov/webdrawer/rec/212480/view
4. Metro's Capital Project spending is not recorded or tracked.
http://www.oregonmetro.gov/sites/default/files/Capital%20Project%20Planning%20Audit_0.pdf
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The central point in all of this is that Metro and TriMet are failing to produce their vision, intentions and objectives. They are covering up the failure and advancing more of it through perpetual propaganda.
Metro has been asked numerous times to reveal the cost ot date of the $3 Billion SW Corridor Light Rail planning. We now know why they have refused. Much like the CRC, they have no idea or intention of doing so.
No information was reported in some quarterly reports for some of the projects we reviewed.
It takes just a little bit of reading to grasp how severely Metro is out of control. As someone else says, it's "huge".
The punch line first: The cumulative detriment of such comprehensive government recklessness is responsible for much of the region's waste and worsening gridlock and housing crisis.
I have been hammering Metro to reveal the cost of planning the SW Corridor Light rail for at least least two years. In the middle of that span ODOT's region 1 manager Jason Tell warned the SW Corridor Steering committee that the projects could turn out to be as costly as the CRC and end up with the same result. That concern was omitted from Metro's reports on the project and never reported in the media. Jason Tell (soon after his warning) left ODOT to work for Parson's Brinkerhoff (light rail engineering firm ) and is now an advocate for the same project.
Clackamas County Chair John Ludlow also repeatedly requested the cost to date for planning the $3 billion light rail project and got no numbers in return. It may be that Metro and TriMet are nearing CRC levels of expenditure.
These chaotic Metro capital projects spending practices (below) exacerbate the impact of their planning practices. Former Metro Auditor reported that Metro does nothing to measure the effectiveness of neither their transportation or land use planning .
Consider how derelict this is. There is no reliable tracking of spending or merit in what they are doing with the money. Not surprising, the former Metro auditor also reported that Metro excessively spends the bulk of their public involvement & communication budget on feeding the public advocacy for their agenda vs gathering what the public wants etc.
Metro needs to improve its project management capability to better manage the scope, schedule and budget of capital projects. Spending on some projects did not go as planned. Some projects exceeded approved budgets and others moved forward without required planning and approval. We found that policies and procedures were inconsistently applied among departments, funding sources, and project types. This reduced the accuracy, completeness, and transparency of project planning and reporting. We were unable to determine the approved budgets for some projects. Annual budget amounts had not been established in either document for some projects. Budget amounts differed between the two documents.
That meant that two budgets had been approved for the same project in some cases. Without a baseline budget, it would be very difficult to determine if projects were on track. Planning documents for some projects were not complete, which may have contributed to the uncertainty about budget amounts. Some project plans had been completed but not signed by the appropriate authority, which should have prevented spending on them. We were told some projects did not require these forms because they were routine or ongoing projects. It was not clear who had the authority to make those decisions. Even when planning documents were signed they did not appear to be used as intended.
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