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Just fascinating reading the three account of the latest on the pension front. Those from Smydo,  Vidonic and Potter.   You have to wonder what those future archeologists will think of us when they dig this stuff up.

However, I have to give the award of the day to Vidonic though because once you dug through the chaff that was yesterday, the center of gravity all traced back to what the state has to say on all of this.  As best I can tell only he got a hold of the person who both enabled yesterday’s soap opera and will determine the end game to all of this.. PERC(the Pennsylvania Employee Retirement Commission)’s Jim McAneny.   Per the Trib’s version of all of this:

“It’s too late,” said James McAneny, executive director of the Pennsylvania Public Employee Retirement Commission. “Even if they got $500 million next year, it wouldn’t change the takeover, unless the General Assembly changes the law.”

There you have it.  Given that quote in itself, I am at a loss to figure what yesterday was all about.  I am actually kind of befuddled how he even enabled this latest little spat.  Did he really give hope to folks in Council that there was some alternative path, and if he did why?   My only guess is that he, like many in Harrisburg, are generally befuddled by city politics and whatever comments he made were never intended to enable a scene like yesterday (see above stories, but for the painfil details of yesterday see Potter’s).   So in learning of all that I bet he was a bit shocked, which probably is what lead to that quote in the Trib. Just a guess.

and with all that..  there is still that hanging conditional he left out there…  unless the General Assembly changes the law.  Only beginning to go down the rabbit hole on this.  You really have to wonder why the fear of having the state manage the investments of the pension fund is so extreme.

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