Inside Oakland Breakfast Forum Featuring Daniel Borenstein, Bay Area News Group Columnist

Come to the "Inside Oakland Breakfast Forum" and hear from people who affect the policies and progress of the city in which we live and do business.

Friday, July 16, 2010
8:30 - 10:00 a.m.
Oakland Chamber Board Room

Featured Speaker: Daniel Borenstein, Bay Area News Group Columnist

DANIEL BORENSTEIN is a columnist and editorial writer for the Bay Area News Group which publishes the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, and San Jose Mercury News, among others. In recent months, Borenstein has spotlighted local public agency excesses and provided blow-by-blow coverage of the escalating government spending that is driving cities and counties in California ever closer to crisis.

In conducting research for a series of columns spotlighting public-employee pension spiking, Borenstein didn't have an easy time obtaining public employee retirement records, as one of the pensioners even filed a lawsuit to block the release of the data. Following the battle that occurred just to get the information in hand, Borenstein had to construct spreadsheets to dissect and analyze it, and unravel the methods that certain public employees used to retire with pensions significantly higher than their final salaries. Borenstein's hard-hitting series of columns on abuses of the retirement system presented the issue with clarity and precision, making it easy for readers to comprehend how their tax dollars were being eaten by savvy public employees who knew which levers of the retirement system to. As a result of Borenstein's work, public agencies in the East Bay are reforming their practices to curb abuses of the retirement system.

**Admission: Free to Chamber members; $10 for non-members.

**RSVP required by Wednesday, July 14, 2010. RSVP to speterson@oaklandchamber.com or 510-874-4817.