Harvey L. Leiderman

With the spate of cash-strapped municipalities these days, Leiderman has been in big demand.

"Everything I'm doing now stems from the collision course of promised pension benefits with municipal budgets that can't pay them," he said. "Something's got to give."

Leiderman serves as fiduciary, investment and trial counsel to the two largest public pension funds in the state: the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, as well as the funds for the city of Los Angeles, the city of San Jose and the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Merced, Orange, Santa Barbara and Stanislaus.

Leiderman served as lead counsel in successfully defending a pension board against a constitutional challenge to collectively bargained retirement benefits involving hundreds of millions of dollars of promised pensions to retired law enforcement officials. Orange County v. Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, 192 Cal. App. 4th 21 (Cal. App. 2nd Dist. Jan. 26, 2011).

Leiderman also served as an adviser to the state's Little Hoover Commission in developing its 2011 report on public pension benefit and funding challenges.

"My job is to shine light on what's going on and assure that the pension trustees understand and make prudent judgments on administering benefits and investing billions of dollars of trust funds," he said. "You need to promote balance and complete transparency in pension board decision making."

Leiderman said that he also helps pension trustees avoid politics.

"It's when you let political influences cloud people's judgment, you end up with short-sighted decisions that come back to haunt you," he said. "I try to get people focused back on the same long-term goal and reduce political influences."

Meanwhile, Leiderman soldiers on.

"We've inherited the unrealistic optimism of our predecessors and now we have to deal with something that they failed to deal with," he said. "They played, now we have to work, like the 'Grasshopper and the Ant.'"

- PAT BRODERICK