Judge Robie's decision in favor of civil service division's vote to incorporate will ultimately shift the balance of power to our reform controlled civil service division, and away from the old guard's perry kenny and his gang. score one for our side, the good, the just, the honorable, the industrious, the members!

those were my thoughts when i first learned of Robie's decision.

for a reality check i called civil service director jim hard and suggested we meet for another conversation, this one to discuss the upcoming incorporation.

jim agreed, and we met saturday morning at cathy hackett's city council campaign headquarters.

i arrived and pulled jim from the hubbub of cathy's campaign activities and out into the morning sun where this conversation took place.

jim and i have been friends for many years. how many years might be judged from the observation we would sometimes run an 8 mile loop along the river together.

i know him to be a good person, why settle for less
in one's friends?

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DW: Judge Robie declared last year's civil service division's vote to incorporate to be valid. Why is incorporation important to the members of civil service division?

JH: The victory on the 23rd was a great one for active state workers that pay dues to CSEA.

Incorporation is a process included within CSEA's bylaws. The supervisor's division did it over ten years ago.

Incorporation does a number of things. First of all it defines civil service division as a legal entity under California law. Corporations have stature under California law whereas divisions don't, so civil service division will gain some legal rights.

DW: Can I interrupt for a moment? Is CSEA a corporation?

JH: Yes, CSEA is a mutual benefit non-profit corporation. Civil service division will incorporate as a sub-corporation of CSEA, the way the supervisors did.

The second benefit gained by civil service division through incorporation is that once incorporated your dues revenue is protected from misuse by other divisions or CSEA's board of directors. That is very important as we bring in about 85% of all the revenues brought into CSEA, and the board of directors has misappropriated our money. Incorporation will put an end to that.

DW: Could you give an example of the board's misuse of our moneys?

JH: Sure, they have spent over $200,000 on an attorney in an attempt to crush the reform movement, and suspend our officers and remove them from membership, including myself.

We believe that is a serious waste and misuse of our dues dollars.

The most recent example is the board of directors took a $120,000 donation made to civil service division by SEIU international, and gave it to another division. That was a misappropriation of funds.

There are many examples of this in the past.

We want to put a stop to it!