The first California County Pension Reform Conference was held Saturday, May 10, 2014 in San Rafael focusing on the SF Bay - North Coast Region.

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It took over a month to produce videos of the conference - but finally here they are.

A series of panels presented various aspects of pension reform to over 200 fellow citizens, elected local officials, media, statewide reformers, and members of county-focused reform groups.

Videos of these sessions can also be viewed at the conference website - www.CountyPensionReform.org. Here're the topics:

INTRODUCTION - KEYNOTE SPEECH: Marin County's Michael Lotito introduced keynote speaker San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed. Reed gave his explanation of why pension reform is so urgent to prevent the choking off of city and county services, and how his proposed statewide ballot initiative would help.

FINANCIAL SITUATION: Marin colleague Bill Monnet and I described the massive unfunded pension debt that's been imposed on our counties.

HISTORY AND FUTURE: Dan Pellisier (California Pension Reform), Jack Dean (Pension Tsunami), Karol Denniston (Municipal financial restructuring attorney), and Lance Christensen (Director of Pension Reform - Reason Foundation) describe aspects of the history and future of "pension reform" in California, how it got started, the current situation of municipal bankruptcies such as in Stockton, San Bernardino and Detroit, and trends affecting the next couple of years.

COUNTY & CITY OFFICIALS: Mendocino County Supervisor Dan Gjerde and City Councilpeople Linda Pfeifer from Sausalito and Larry Chu from Larkspur describe how their governing bodies are reacting (or not) to the evolving threat.

CANDIDATES: Candidates for County Supervisor in Mendocino (Holly Madrigal) and Sonoma (Ken Churchill) and for the State Assembly on the North Coast (John Lowry) talk about how unfunded pension debt is affecting their communities and how the issue affects their races. Govern for California's Andrew Crutchfield explained the six-year opportunity to change the nature of the State Legislature, and former State Republican Chair Duf Sundheim opined about the need for cross-partisan reform coalitions.

WRAP-UP: Finally I gave the conference wrap-up describing the "unity principles" that are the foundation for Mendocino County's "Reform Our County Coalition" (Let's ROCC Mendocino County).

To fellow concerned citizens of Mendocino County.

Please add your name (see below) to the letter to Mendocino County officials and others. Click this image for a copy.

Here’s why.

We believe a massive – irresponsible - unnecessary unfunded pension debt has been imposed on the People that will seriously damage our County for the next generation. Officials are now seeing the danger. But too many (not all) refuse to face up to what really caused this debt.

To quote from the letter:

Before we can solve big problems we first have to recognize we have them. Then we need to understand what they are. Before talking about solutions we need to know what’s true and accurate.

Are the analyses and findings in the report essentially correct? If they aren’t, please relieve our deep concern by proving they’re wrong.

Our County belongs to the People - not its officials - and certainly not the Retirement Board whose Pension Fund created $220 million of debt We the People have to pay.

The People deserve - and NEED to know what the impact of this debt will be and what caused it.

Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

You won’t be saying you necessarily agree with our analysis - and this doesn't bind you in any way. This is just asking officials to finally answer these questions after 6 years of mostly avoiding them.

Click to Open an Email message

Copy and paste the paragraph below into the email:

I hereby authorize “Reform Our County Coalition” to add my name to the list of concerned citizens signing the Letter to Mendocino County officials and others as shown on this website.

Type your name as you want it to appear in the list of names.

Send it away!

And ... THANKS.

Reform Our County Coalition Steering Committee

Click for copies: