The election for a seat on the SFERS' Board of Directors is crucially important.

The election for a seat on the SFERS' Board of Directors is crucially important.

To be very clear, only one seat is up for election to SFERS' Board, but has two candidates: Incumbent Miscellaneous member Herb Meiberger — who is eminently more qualified — and retired Police Captain Al Casciato, whose credentials, education, and experience are woeful in comparison to Meiberger's qualifications to serve!

Curiously, retired Police Captain Al Casciato has elided — failed to mention, or deleted — any mention at all in his two official candidate campaign statements, on his election web site, and his two glossy, "full-bleed" campaign mailers sent in U.S. Mail, that he's a retired cop. Apparently he doesn't want to admit that if he should win, Public Safety (police officers and firefighters) would control all three of the elected seats on the San Francisco Employees' Retirement System's Board of Directors.

His campaign surrogates wrongly claim "we are all one," as if our men and women in blue uniforms will somehow magically stand up and advocate for Miscellaneous members of the Retirement Fund. "Miscellaneous" refers to doctors, nurses, secretaries, accountants, lawyers, bus drivers, custodians, and park gardeners — and everyone else in between — lumped into a single group derogatorily called "Miscellaneous" employees. We are not all one, regardless of our uniforms, or lack of uniforms, and police and fire Public Safety employees are in this to protect their own best interests. We are not "all one"! And police and fire do not really consider Miscellaneous current and retired City employees as their equals.

The election underway includes the likelihood that if Casciato manages to unseat current Miscellaneous Board incumbent Herb Meiberger in the election now being conducted, there's a very strong probability that the Retirement Board will increase the amount of Pension Fund assets allocated to high fees, high-risk, low yield, very illiquid, and opaque (not transparent!) Hedge Fund investments, gambling with your pension fund! Warning: You get who you vote for!



As the attached flyer shows, there is clear and compelling evidence that Miscellaneous employees are subsidizing the pensions of Public Safety personnel. While Miscellaneous member comprised 85.4% of retirees, they received just 68.1% of pension payouts in FY 2015–2016!

There's no getting around this fact. During FY 2014–2015 employee and employer contributions made on behalf of Public Safety officers totaled just $151.9 million in "contributions ‘in’.” But during FY 2015–2016, public safety members totaled $368.6 million in pension payments "out." The data for Public Safety and Miscellaneous member payments during FY 2015–2016 won't be released until early Spring in 2017, but the trend will likely be similar. The data portends contributions on behalf of Miscellaneous members will continued subsidizing Public Safety pensions by $200 million or more, annually.

Consider this: When the then-President of SFERS' Board Al Casciato resigned from SFERS' Board in 2012 and retired from the Police Department, he ended up collecting $75,834 in accumulated vacation and vested sick pay-out, pocketed another $62,046 in "wellness" payout, and deposited into his fortune another $56,096 in accrued compensatory time payout! Quite a haul of a combined $195,976 in lump-sum payouts most Miscellaneous members could only dream of receiving. In addition, Casciato also received another $201,318 in a lump-sum payout from the DROP (Deferred Retirement Option Program) only police officers had been afforded — before the City and Board of Supervisors eventually came to their senses and decided DROP had not ever been "cost neutral," as had been promised when Casciato advocated that the DROP program be adopted.

Notably, each Labor Union "bargains" during contract negotiations for the level and percentages of payouts for such things as various categories of accumulated benefits. It is thought that the Police Officers Union has negotiated at the bargaining table to include in the accumulated benefits payouts a formula factor for the number of years they served in City government. It is thought no other Labor Union has been able to negotiate a "factor of years served" into their payout formulas. Back in 2008 or 2009, IFPTE Local 21 members retired en mass when their accumulated sick pay and wellness benefits were slashed. They retired quickly in order to collect benefits owed them under prior union contracts. Not so with police and fire, who appear to have bargained for, and obtained, better "formulas."

Worse, chief surrogate for candidate Al Casciato is none other than current SFERS' Board member Fire Captain Joe Driscoll, who on December 27 was observed by a dozen or so Miscellaneous members at a rally outside of the POA's headquarters covertly spying on and photographing the protestors — as if Driscoll were an undercover cop, not an on-duty firefighter!

The stakes are high in this election. Please vote for Herb, and forward this e-mail to everyone you know who is allowed to vote in this election and encourage them — in the strongest possible of terms — to vote for Meiberger!

Patrick Monette-Shaw
Retiree
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