CalPERS’ Harrigan Got His Just Deserts

It is entirely appropriate that union boss Sean Harrigan was replaced on the board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (“Activist Chief at CalPERS Is Voted Out,” Dec. 2).

Harrigan demonstrated the same conflicts of interest that he and his fellow CalPERS board members were so critical of in businesses across the U.S.

Harrigan, who works for United Food and Commercial Workers, used his CalPERS post as a bully pulpit to advance the causes of organized labor and other political agendas.

As a highly visible spokesman for independence in corporate governance who was not practicing what he preached, Harrigan had to be fired.

Karen Scott

Folsom, Calif.

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We should be thankful that CalPERS has thrown out that evil activist anti-business chief.

How else will big business be able to keep bringing us such wonderful things as obscene executive salaries, gaming of energy programs like Enron and cheating of stockholders like WorldCom?

Larry Severson

Fountain Valley

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Congratulations for Michael Hiltzik’s “Who Gains From Ouster? Not Retirees” (Golden State, Dec. 6).

We have heard endless moaning about the lack of ethics in corporate governance.

But now the California State Personnel Board has seen fit to target one of the very few people who was effectively doing something to reform the system by firing Sean Harrigan as head of CalPERS. Way to go. Let no good deed go unpunished.

Gerald Levy

Oxnard