NBPSPP, retiree rights and the Board

What rights do retirees have?

Really...what rights do we have??
One goes to the annual meeting of the plan. Not many people attend and few ask questions. An educational session which the Board might consider is one about the rights of pensioner in guiding their own Plan. 

Our rights

So, what are our rights?

1. We have the right to receive the Annual Report...and we do receive that. Together with that, we have the right to attend the annual meeting either in person or when it is streamed. So, in real time.
2. We have the right to take legal action if we think that the directors have acted illegally. Fortunately, in looking at the bio's of the current board, I rather doubt tat this right will need to acted upon any time soon. It would appear any issues are more the sin of omission rather than commission.
3. We ought to have the right to elect and re-elect directors. The problems of having an opaque nominations and selection process (opaque to the pensioners) is compounded by the fact that the directors are named rather than elected. 
4. We ought to be allowed to elect the Auditors. And , the Audit firm should be subjected to a time limit. I have written about the weakness of the current audit process and have noted that the process is replete with conflict of interest. This does need to be cleaned up.
5. We ought to have a say on pay based on performance. I have written about this. Assuring us that Vestcorp's pay is somewhat below the mean for similar plans elsewhere is Canada is not a way to compensate. It only means we get  a management group who comes cheaper than others. Therefore, say on pay should be based on demonstrable performance metrics.
6. A say in strategic planning...and at the very least we ought to know what that plan is. 
7. Rather than entertaining a report from the Board and its committees, there ought to be an opportunity for dialogue. And , ordinarily, this would be facilitated by the Board Chair. 

Improved communication is never bad

What might be the basis of this dialogue? 

Answer: the Plan's goals, its strategy, and its governance performance. 

Why bother?

Answer:

• to enhance transparency in decision making;
• improve the long term value of the Plan;
• to reduce the risk that poor strategic decisions will lead to "catastrophic outcomes"
• aid improved governance practices

Are these radical?

Not at all. In fact, these are tepid recommendations. Try reading Senator Chuck Schumer's [proposed shareholder rights. He recommends aggressive regulator oversight, mandatory say on pay (no advisories), directors to receive more than 50% vote in uncontested elections; annual re-elections; mandatory risk management committees.

Further, stakeholder democracy has been a cornerstone of all governance reports since Cadbury.

The |Board announced in one of its missives to us that it was going to unveil a website in 2018 to enhance communication. Here are a few items for them to consider:

1. will there be a coincident policy regarding social networking?
2. will on line postings be secure?
3. who will police on line activity. A few risk issues to consider include: reputational damage; disclosure breaches, data leaks (retirees personal information) potential for brand damage.

Avoiding Disruption

So, what might the Board expect if they were to implement any or even all of these recommendations?

• reduces the risk of (embarrassing) activism either at the annual meeting or on the website
• participation in activities making the plan better is up
• reduces the reliance on consultants and advisory financial reports to assuage the fears of jittery (or pain in the ass) retirees
• retirees are assured that the Board's priority is on transparency and disclosure.

Next are questions you, as the retiree, should ask of the board about the operations. 

City of Saint John and its Open Data Project

The beautiful City of Saint John NB Can, has been working on the development of its open data portal for about 2 years. 
catalogue-saintjohn.opendata.arcgis.com

You will notice that the open data portal has a catalogue listing of areas where one might seek data about the city and a dashboard denoting what the city managers might consider performance indicators. 

There are a few things missing from the catalogue.

1. Who created the data?
2. What stakeholders were involved?
3. What was the data development process?
4. Why was this data catalogued as opposed to something else? 
5. Why was this data collected-as opposed to other data sets?

While I am sure that there are answers to these 5 questions, they are not apparent when rooting around the portal.

What are the issues confronting the city?

If one is considering citizen engagement, one can only note that fewer than 30% of citizens vote locally. 

If one is considering entrepreneurial activity, there are currently no data sets publicly available which record start up's , business development opportunities, new business activity. 

32% of families live in  poverty.

1:4 children live in poverty. 1:3 children go to school hungry. 

The city's debt is $125m (cdn) (high for a city of about 90k people).

On the other hand, Saint John is a university town and has a community college. It is 1 hour on either side of 2 other universities. It is a 1 hour flight from Boston, 2 hours from New York. It is situated in Canada's only bilingual province. It is situated on the coast and is 1 hour form the US border. 

There may be other significant data sets available, but this paints a grim picture of the state of the city. So, what to do with the open data project?

A team needs first to be developed to identify what issues are confronting the city and what strategies are proposed to both address those issues and take advantage of the of its opportunities.

How do the data sets inform strategies? 

I don't know. They include:

• GIS data such as city boundaries
• topography (why)
• community safety (but no crime stats)
• development (only residential and not business)
• parks and recreation ( locations only)
• points of interest (if you are a tourist)
• transportation (fine for bus routes but not linked,, for example, to restaurants, entertainment, libraries, shopping)
• air photos ( why?)
• historic maps (why?)
• statistics (maybe this would be of interest to prospective business interests, start ups but fails to provide data which targets any specific kind of industry or sector)
• administration (city of Saint John already available on the web site)

Looks like some one threw mud at a target hoping to hit something. 

More on this tomorrow. Who might be involved in developing data sets? What does the city's strategic plan say about recruiting certain sectors to the city? What skill sets are available in such a university town?