No I don’t meet another zip drive of public records. I mean the Oregon Supreme Court case on the 2013 PERS reforms. Laura Gunderson of the Oregonian has the details on today’s OSC ruling here:
The Oregon Supreme Court issued a ruling on Thursday harkening back to a basic playground rule: If you make a promise, you can’t take it back.
In a decision that will affect every public agency budget in the state, the court ruled that it wasn’t fair to go back on promises the state made years ago to its workers. The ruling reverses two controversial changes lawmakers made to the Public Employees Retirement System two years ago.
In 2013, lawmakers aimed to stop what they saw as a drain on the state’s budget by reworking the contracts of 100,000 retirees. The change cut annual cost-of-living increases promised as part of the workers’ pension benefits.
That change, along with a few others, was set to save the state about $1 billion in the 2015-17 budget. Today’s ruling means a big hole has opened up that agencies and local governments across the state will have to fill. …
Gary and Rudnick argued that the reforms were legal. They lost – although presumably they succeeded bringing in a lot of billable hours for HLGR, paid for with taxpayer money. The winning side was represented by longtime labor lawyer Greg Hartman, among others. Full decision here:
This post was made purely out of animus. If you wanted to talk about an important ruling for the state, you would have titled this post, “Oregon Supreme Court rules on PERS case.” Why even mention the lawyers–this isn’t about them. Lawyers win and lose cases all the time, and I’ve never once seen you make a post about HLGR’s victories. You have a bizarre, obsessive mind.
Thanks, but you are too kind. Actually I’ve made note of Sharon Rudnick’s success in winning tobacco litigation cases for Phillip Morris, and Bill Gary and Dave Frohnmayer’s 2014 lobbying victory for BP, which kept the state from using leftover class action damages to fund legal assistance for the poor. (The BP victory was short lived, Governor Brown got the law through a month or so ago.)
The point of the post wasn’t about PERS… this isn’t the PERS Matters Blog, is it? It was about the professional record of a firm that has a direct relation to university actions that this blog perceives as unethical.
attorneys do make horrible arguments all the time and need to be brought to task when that is the case.It is absurd to merely highlight their victoriesThey are hired to win and desreve the harsh light of scrutiny when they do not do their due diligence.This is such a case.