CalPERS board president ousted in vote

Corona police officer defeats reelection bid as pension fund sees more turnover at top.

SACRAMENTO — The president of the board of administration of CalPERS, the state’s largest public employee pension fund, lost her bid for reelection to a Corona police officer, the agency announced on Thursday after tallying votes from members cast over the last two months.

Priya Mathur, who has served on the board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System since 2003, will be replaced by Jason Perez, a police sergeant who serves as president of the Corona Police Officers Assn. Mathur was selected in January as president of the CalPERS board and her defeat marks the second recent shake-up of the pension fund’s leadership in less than a year.

Perez focused his campaign squarely on Mathur’s record representing public agency workers and on what he argues is a record by the pension fund of being overly focused on the political implications of its investments.

“In the past, it’s been used more as a political action committee than a retirement fund,” Perez said in an interview on Thursday. “I think the public agency [employees] are just sick of the shenanigans.”

Perez could bring a different approach to the pension governance board. In March, he lashed out at state Treasurer John Chiang, who sits on the CalPERS board, during a debate over whether the fund should embrace Chiang ’s request to divest from certain gun retailers.

“This is nothing more than a political ploy,” Perez said during public comment. “It has nothing to do with CalPERS and its fiduciary responsibility to invest, to maximize returns.”

The board ultimately declined to accept Chiang’s proposal.

CalPERS officials reported Thursday that Perez received about 57% of the roughly 16,000 votes cast by members. Thirteen people serve on the pension fund’s board.

Last December, Margaret Brown — a Garden Grove schools employee and vocal CalPERS critic — defeated an incumbent who had strong support from public employee unions. The pension fund has also faced a number of changes in the ranks of its top staff, including the hiring of Gov. Jerry Brown’s former budget director as chief financial officer and a new chief investment officer.

Two other board members won new terms after running unopposed: Rob Feckner, a Napa schools employee who has been on the board since 1999, and Theresa Taylor, a state Franchise Tax Board employee first elected in 2015.

A call to Mathur’s political consulting firm for comment wasn’t returned.