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The Public Employees’ Retirement Law (PERL) and State Teachers’ Retirement Law (STRL) provide defined benefit retirement plans administered by CalPERS or CalSTRS, respectively, for eligible employees of participating public agencies (“employers”).  To fund these plans, public education agency employers report member compensation to either CalPERS or CalSTRS directly, or through their county offices of education. 

You’ve probably heard the term “Skelly” meeting or conference hundreds, if not thousands of times, but what does “Skelly” really mean?  Even if you think you know, a refresher can’t hurt, right?!

Most California public employees have what is known as a constitutionally protected “property” interest in continued employment, once and

Over the last several years, virtually all levels of government have increasingly recognized the critical link between building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace and effectively meeting the needs of the communities they serve—in particular, historically underserved and marginalized communities.

At the federal level, the Biden Administration has issued several Executive Orders that recognize the

Who will be our Country’s next President is not the only issue on the ballot November 3.  If you’ve voted in California before, are in the middle of studying your ballot, don’t mute your TV commercials during election season, or read text messages that you receive from campaign volunteers, you know that California has a

Last month, the Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District of California issued a decision in Pico Neighborhood Association, et al v. City of Santa Monica (Jul. 9, 2020, No. B295935) __ Cal.App.3d __ [2020 WL 3866741] (“Pico”), finding that the City of Santa Monica’s at-large voting system did not violate the

If you are a supervisory employee for a public agency or private school in California, or a member of your employer’s human resources department, you have most likely sat through a 2-hour supervisory training regarding preventing harassment in the workplace.  You may know this training as “AB 1825  Training.”  If you are a non-supervisory employee,

Over the last several years, the California Courts of Appeal have addressed questions regarding the California State Teachers’ Retirement System’s (CalSTRS) ability to collect overpayments of monthly retirement benefits paid to retirees because of, among other things, miscalculations of the retirees’ compensation earnable.  A Court of Appeal handed down the most recent case,   Blaser v.

This post was authored by Alysha Stein-Manes and Daniel Seitz

Remote surveillance is an area of expanding interest for law enforcement agencies.  Police departments continue to equip their sworn officers with body-mounted video cameras (“body cams”), and, in California, the Legislature has begun to regulate discoverability of body cam footage.  Agencies in California and across

This blog was authored by Alysha Stein-Manes.

April 1, 2020, is national Census Day and will kick off a year-long process of counting every resident in the United States.  In California, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission (the “Commission”), a non-partisan commission comprised of democratic, republican and independent (decline-to-state or no party preference) voters, is