People in glass houses should not throw stones. We’ve reported on how CalPERS is engaged in what Pulitzer Prize winner Mike Hiltzik called a “witch hunt” against board member Margaret Brown by restricting her ability to perform her duties on fabricated grounds.1 Yet it has ignored an apparent felony among its own board members, in this case Theresa Taylor, who is the Vice President of the CalPERS board.
As we’ll show, Taylor has made a cut-and-dried violation of California requirements for California officials to report all income and assets received from non-government sources in their jurisdiction. Specifically, Taylor hid at least $30,000 of income she received as Vice President/Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU 1000 from 2016 to 2018.
Taylor failed to disclose this income on Form 700,
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1 As we described longer form, and was confirmed in comments, the issue was Brown’s supposed misuse of the CalPERS name as part of her Twitter handle, even though other current and former board members have done the same without being sanctioned. Hiltzik explained in his column why Brown’s use, by her having a clear, legitimate, and disclosed relationship with CalPERS, and not being used to sell a product or service, did not fall afoul of California law, as CalPERS misleadingly asserted. CalPERS also asserted trademark and copyright violations, which are similarly implausible. A single word cannot be copyrighted. And to have any defensible intellectual property claim, CalPERS would have to have consistently and pro-actively pursued alleged abuses, which it has fatally undermined by allowing Brown to have her Twitter account for eighteen months and not asking the many other CalPERS and non-CalPERS members who incorporate “CalPERS” into their Twitter handles to cut it out.
