LACERS Board Considers Charter Recommendations

The LACERS Board has been considering potential changes to recommend to the City’s Charter Reform Commission. As of the time this article was written, the Board has not yet adopted any of these recommendations but is scheduled to further con sider them. The City is required to conduct management audits of LACERS every ten years. These audits are commissioned by the Controller, City Council and Mayor (not LACERS). The first several recommendations under consideration stem from these management audits of LACERS. These recommendations include:

• Providing LACERS the authority to determine its own staff hiring and compensation. LACERS already has full authority over its budget, but not over these other two areas.
• Providing LACERS the authority to determine the frequency and timing of its Board meetings. Currently, the LACERS Board meeting schedule is dictated as being the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month. It is unusual for retirement boards to meet this frequently and not to have more flexibility over meeting scheduling.
• Requiring that appointed LACERS Board Members be removed only by the mayor based on a stated cause based on the Board Member’s fiduciary responsibility. While it may be perfectly appropriate for the mayor to remove members from other City boards without cause, the argument in favor of this provision is that LACERS Board Members have fiduciary duties to LACERS members, not the mayor, once appointed and confirmed.
• Giving the LACERS Board the independent authority to choose its General Manager. Currently, the LACERS Board conducts a hiring process and forwards its recommendation for Mayoral and City Council approval. This proposed recommendation would give the LACERS Board the final say over the hiring, which is consistent with the processes of most other public pension plans.

Other Charter change recommendations under consideration by the LACERS Board include:

• Clarifying language in Charter Section 1164. The clarification would help ensure Retired LACERS members could have subsequent City service (such as working for the LADWP) beyond temporary City service – up to 120 days per fiscal calendar year depending on the specific employment or based on appointments to City boards or commissions.
• Extending the requirement that an enrolled actuary provides the cost of proposed benefit increases in writing to situations where a benefit change is proposed through the initiative process. This requirement already is in place for benefit changes that come through the City Council consideration process.