This week this blog examines another quick-fix canard: That pension fund boards like California's are inherently superior to solely administered pension funds like New York's.
And to ascertain how much and how so--just like with initiative and referendum, term limits and tax caps--California again leads the way. So the next time the New York Post writes that New York's morphing into California, bloggers like NGD get to write that as long as we stay away from term limits, tax caps, referendum-on-demand--and now pension boards--New York should be OK.
At any rate, here's what the Wall Street Journal writes last week on California's pension fund management by board:
America's largest public-pension fund, Calpers, revealed that a former board member had reaped more than $50 million in fees for arranging investments that could saddle state taxpayers with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
The disclosure deepens concerns that alleged conflicts of interest are undermining state retirement funds.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System said it is launching a "special review" into payments by money managers -- including billionaire Leon Black's Apollo Management LP -- to firms including Arvco Financial Ventures LLC. Arvco is headed by Al Villalobos, who served on Calpers's board from 1993 to 1995.
To think that this problem with pension fund boards is somehow limited to California is equally unaware. Or even confined to pay-to-play issues.
The question New Yorkers should as themselves is this: Has the current state comptroller has been anything other than a model of probity and rectitude in administering New York's common retirement fund?
No, I didn't think so.
But if he has--or does a crappy investing job--we get to vote him the hell out of office next year.
Look, just because Eliot Spitzer was a spittle-spewing lunatic doesn't mean some new kind of dispersed decision-making contraption should now run the state.
The problem with Spitzer and Hevesi is/was the person in the office and not the office itself.
