'Block 4' exposed: They WANT the executive director to have the power to pay those legal fees!!

Dennis Leone to Molly Janczyk, January 17, 2008
Subject: Questions Posed at STRS Board Meeting

Molly – at today’s STRS Board meeting, I posed three questions publicly to Asst. State Attorney General John Patterson. Here are they, plus Patterson’s answers, which are on the tape of the meeting:

1. If an STRS employee in member benefits feels she was threatened by an angry retiree, and if this employee goes outside and decides to hire a law firm to give her advice, then if this employee turns in a legal bill to Damon Asbury after the fact, isn’t it true that Damon has the power to have STRS pay the bill without board involvement or board action?

Patterson answer: Yes, current board policy gives him this power.

2. Does the board have the power to decide that such a bill will not be paid?

Patterson answer: Yes.

3. If you (John Patterson) happened to recommend to the board that STRS pay the legal fees of a staff member in a situation like this, doesn’t the board have the power to tell you no, we’re not going to do that?

Patterson answer: Yes.

So much for Mark Meuser’s belief that the State Attorney General will always decide whether the board will or will not provide outside legal counsel advice to an employee, of whether a bill must be paid. The bottom line is that it’s the board power to decide what to do. It is plainly nuts that this board permits the executive director to make these kinds of crazy expenditures, when simple policies would prevent it. Meuser, Cervantes, Chapman and Ramser just need to tell the truth – which is that they WANT the executive director to have the power to pay these things.

Dennis Leone