CalPERS’ Domestic Principles of Accountable Corporate Governance (United States) unequivocally assert:

No director can fulfill his or her potential as an effective board member without a personal dedication of time and energy.

The same principle would seem to apply to members of CalPERS’ own Board of Administration. Surprisingly, however, state law allows two members of the CalPERS Board to send proxies to meetings. These two members are the elected local government official appointed by the Governor (currently, Tony Oliveira) and the Director of the Department of Administration (currently, Ronald Yank). Government Code Section 20090.1. Under the statute, the deputies may exercise the same powers that the elected official or Director could exercise if he or she were personally present. The designating official or Director are responsible for the acts of the deputy. This special right, conferred on only two of the 13 members of CalPERS’ Board reminds one of the right of English peers as related by Sir William Blackstone in his famous Commentaries on the Laws of England:

ANOTHER privilege is, that every peer, by license obtained from the king, may make another lord of parliament his proxy, to vote for him in his absence.