CalPERS Shake-Up Still Reverberates

Sean Harrigan’s article on the Commentary page, “The Corporations Couldn’t Tolerate My Activist Voice” (Dec. 5), is right on. It was some time ago that Ralph Nader said that the pension funds of unions, public employees and others, where the money being invested belongs to the worker, should be controlled in the best interests of the workers. It appears that Harrigan did just that.

It also appears that Harrigan is going to continue to fight until the members of a fund have the right to make some real decisions about the board of directors.

I hope all who agree with Harrigan will write to the Securities and Exchange Commission and demand approval of the proposed “proxy access” rule to protect the real owners of pension and other funds.

Joanne Nagy

Granada Hills

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Harrigan should have been fired long ago. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System has been too timid when it comes to improving corporate governance and attempting to hold directors accountable for their actions. He caused CalPERS to squander valuable time and assets on ineffective “just vote no “ campaigns. He states, “The root of all evil is a director who fails to put the shareowners’ interest above all other interests in making decisions in the boardroom.” Yet, even under current SEC proxy rules and at minimal cost, i.e., file a bare-bones proxy statement and solicit votes from about 30 fellow institutional shareholders, CalPERS could have run slates of alternative director candidates.

We, a ragtag group of individual investors who met on an Internet financial message board, did that and more.

Les Greenberg

Chairman, Committee of

Concerned Shareholders

Culver City

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Re “Allies Seek to Restore CalPERS President,” Dec. 4: As a CalPERS pension recipient, I applaud Harrigan’s efforts to challenge the management and policies of corporations in which our pension funds are invested. But he’s wrong when he suggests that business interests forced him out of his position as CalPERS president.

Though corporation executives were overjoyed by his removal, his ouster was apparently accomplished at the request of liberal Democrat Willie Brown, a career politician who appears to have his eye on the CalPERS presidency. Harrigan has represented the state personnel board on CalPERS, and by a 3-2 vote that board chose not to reappoint him when his term expires. The swing vote was cast by a Brown partisan, not by the Chamber of Commerce or corporate interests.

Ralph Shaffer

Pomona