Tag: Joseph N. DiStefano

Pa. pension fund down over $3 billion in tough market, and braces for losses ahead

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.inquirer.com/business/sers-pension-drop-investments-retirement-20220923.html

Graphic:

Excerpt:

The drop in global stock and bond values has shaved about $3 billion off the Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System (SERS) during the second quarter, staff and consultants warned trustees in Thursday’s investment meeting.

The fund was worth $34.5 billion at midyear, down from $38 billion three months before, after counting an 8.5% investment loss for the quarter, along with payouts to 130,000 pensioners, and ongoing contributions from taxpayers and 100,000 state workers — lawmakers, judges, college staff, corrections officers, troopers, social workers — who hope to retire someday with pensions from the system.

The fund posted the decline as legislators have been weighing how to cope with pressure to boost pensions for more than 70,000 older state and public school retirees, whose last “cost of living allowance” increases took effect in 2004. Their pension checks, unchanged since that time, are losing pricing power after food, fuel, and other prices rose earlier this year at the fastest rate since the early 1980s.

Author(s): Joseph DiStefano

Publication Date: 23 Sept 2022

Publication Site: Philadelphia Enquirer

Pennsylvania pension fund says it won’t require board to sign secrecy oaths to hear key report

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.post-gazette.com/news/state/2022/01/27/psers-pennsylvania-school-pension-fund-ndas-nondisclosure-agreements-board-members-investigation-womble-bond-dickinson/stories/202201270116

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Members of the board of Pennsylvania’s $73 billion school pension fund won’t be required to sign nondisclosure agreements before hearing on Monday the long-awaited findings of an internal investigation into the mammoth plan.

The Public School Employees’ Retirement System is still asking the board to sign the secrecy pacts but is not insisting upon it, the plan’s spokesperson says. Her statement clarified a previous controversial email from the board’s chairman, who asked members to sign NDAs without saying they had the option to refuse.

A law firm is to unveil the results of its investigation at a closed-door session for the PSERS board Monday morning. But the board has yet to decide whether, how soon and how completely those findings will be made public after the meeting.

Author(s): ANGELA COULOUMBIS, JOSEPH N. DISTEFANO AND CRAIG R. MCCOY

Publication Date: 27 Jan 2022

Publication Site: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pennsylvania lawmakers mull pension reforms as PSERS remains under scrutiny

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.timesleader.com/wire/state-wire/1535867/pennsylvania-lawmakers-mull-pension-reforms-as-psers-remains-under-scrutiny

Excerpt:

State lawmakers met with officials of Pennsylvania’s public pension funds Thursday to vet reform measures that have been introduced to increase transparency and oversight of the pension system.

The measures are working their way through the legislative process and could be considered for passage this year. Thursday’s hearing offered participants a chance to voice concerns or probe for costs and conflicts that could derail the measures.

….

Among the proposals reviewed by pension officials and legislators was a bill that would force the funds to more closely track more than $1 billion of annual investment manager fees, and profit-sharing and other money-management costs. The measure would also require video copies of hours-long board meetings to be made publicly available — online for three years, and then by request.

Author(s): Joseph N. DiStefano

Publication Date: 21 Jan 2022

Publication Site: Times Leader

Board members of Pa.’s largest pension fund asked to sign secrecy oaths

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.witf.org/2022/01/21/board-members-of-pa-s-largest-pension-fund-asked-to-sign-secrecy-oaths/

Excerpt:

Leaders of Pennsylvania’s beleaguered teachers’ pension fund are requesting that board members sign oaths of secrecy before receiving a critical update on the botched investment calculation scandal that has led to multiple federal investigations.

On Thursday morning, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System board told members in an email that they must sign a yet-to-be-drafted non-disclosure agreement to participate in a closed-door meeting later this month.

The meeting, scheduled for Jan. 31, is pivotal: Board members are poised to be presented with the findings of a taxpayer-funded inquiry into an investment calculation mistake in late 2020 that wrongly spared teachers a potential hike in their pension payments, leaving taxpayers to make up the difference over time. The calculation was later fixed, and teacher payments increased.

The inquiry was conducted by Womble Bond Dickinson, a law firm hired by the board last year to conduct an internal investigation into the error as PSERS coped with the federal probes. The system has agreed to pay Womble up to $367,600 in fees for its work, with partners collecting up to $695 an hour.

Author(s): Angela Couloumbis of Spotlight PA and Joseph N. DiStefano of The Inquirer

Publication Date: 21 Jan 2022

Publication Site: WITF

PSERS bet big on this scrubs brand whose IPO boosted a Steelers owner’s billions

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.inquirer.com/business/figs-scrubs-psers-steelers-tull-ipo-20210602.html

Excerpt:

Figs Inc., which sells stylish hospital scrubs, has pulled off a successful public stock offering that has enriched a Pittsburgh investor along with Pennsylvania’s beleaguered school pension fund and other early backers, at least on paper.

Investors’ appetite for attractive new stocks appears to have paid off for Thomas Tull, a billionaire tech investor and Steelers part-owner, by more than $20-$1, while quadrupling the PSERS pension fund’s investment — if it can cash out its shares at today’s bullish prices.

Early private investors typically face a “lock-up” period, often six months, before they can sell all shares. The stock could gain value or crash before the shares are sold.

Still, a big Figs payday would be a boost to beleaguered PSERS chief investment officer James Grossman. His team’s complex and often secretive investments have been criticized by a growing reform faction of PSERS trustees who say the fund could do better in low-cost index funds.

Author(s): Joseph N. DiStefano

Publication Date: 2 June 2021

Publication Site: The Philadelphia Inquirer

Internal PSERS documents show how Pa’s biggest pension fund got key financial calculation wrong

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.inquirer.com/business/psers-pension-error-mistake-teachers-fbi-20210530.html

Graphic:

Excerpt:

After Pennsylvania’s biggest pension plan botched a crucial financial calculation, the FBI launched an investigation, the fund’s board began its own probe, and 100,000 public school employees suddenly faced paying more into the retirement system.

Now The Inquirer and Spotlight PA have obtained new internal fund documents that shed light on that consequential mistake. The material traces the error to “data corruption” in just one month — April 2015 — over the near-decade-long period reviewed for the calculation.

The error was small. It falsely boosted the $64 billion PSERS fund’s performance by only about a third of a percentage point over a financial quarter. Even so, it was just enough to wrongly lift the fund’s financial returns over a key state-mandated hurdle used to gauge performance.

The documents reveal that a fund consultant, Aon, blamed the mistake on its clerical staff for inputting bad data. The material also shows that even though the fund hired a consultant, the ACA Compliance Group, to check the calculations, the consultant made only limited checks, and skipped over the month with the critical errors.

Author(s): Joseph N. DiStefano, Craig R. McCoy, Angela Couloumbis

Publication Date: 30 May 2021

Publication Site: Philadelphia Inquirer

Pennsylvanians pay extra for public pensions

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.inquirer.com/business/psers-teachers-cost-deficit-shared-risk-sers-pension-20210424.html

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Forced to cover the higher pension checks, state and local taxpayer funding for PSERS, the big retirement plan for public-school educators, has risen year after year, soaring from just over $600 million in 2010 to $5 billion this year.

Now a little-noticed provision of a reform passed in 2010, known as the “shared risk” rule, has come back to haunt PSERS officials — and teachers, too.

Under the rule, teachers, not just taxpayers, must pay more into the $64 billion pension system whenever profits fall short on investments.

In an embarrassing admission, its board said on Monday that the policy meant many teachers will face a hike in their payments this year. This was the first time this has happened since the law was adopted.

The board for PSERS — the Public School Employees’ Retirement System — acknowledged it had previously endorsed an inflated number for investment returns, a figure it incorrectly thought was just high enough to spare teachers any increase.

Author(s): Joseph N. DiStefano

Publication Date: 24 April 2021

Publication Site: Philadelphia Inquirer

Bad math: Pa.’s biggest pension fund was warned but inflated investment returns anyway

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.inquirer.com/news/psers-grell-pension-teachers-recalculation-20210418.html

Excerpt:

The board of Pennsylvania’s biggest pension fund adopted an inflated number for its investment performance even after the state treasurer raised skeptical questions about the calculation last summer, newly obtained documents show.

That decision by the PSERS board has emerged as a costly and disruptive mistake, raising the possibility that the $64 billion pension fund for teachers may soon have to hike their payments to support the mammoth but underfunded plan. The panel is to meet Monday to consider doing that.

In his August 2020 letter, then-Treasurer Joe Torsella raised doubts about a decision by the fund’s professional staff to go back almost a decade to revise — and improve — figures for past investment performance.

Author(s): Joseph DiStefano

Publication Date: 18 April 2021

Publication Site: Philadelphia Inquirer

PSERS and its troubles: A guide to the woes facing Pa.’s biggest pension plan

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.inquirer.com/business/psers-sers-pension-fbi-scandal-investigaton-teachers-20210411.html

Excerpt:

The board in December found that PSERS yearly investment returns had averaged 6.38% over the last nine years — just above the 6.36% threshold needed to avoid an increase in pension payments from 100,000 school employees hired since 2011.

In 2010, the state adopted a so-called “risk sharing” mandate that requires school staff to pay more, as taxpayers do, when PSERS investments underperform. The law mandated that the review in 2020 look at average returns over the past nine years.

Author(s): Joseph N. DiStefano, Craig R. McCoy

Publication Date: 11 April 2021

Publication Site: Philadelphia Inquirer

Pa. officials outraged over multimillion-dollar ‘error’ by teachers pension managers

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.inquirer.com/news/psers-error-teachers-pension-monson-20210316.html

Excerpt:

Uri Monson, the chief financial officer of the Philadelphia School District, the state’s largest, in a social media posting called for “an independent investigation” by State Attorney General Josh Shapiro or newly elected Auditor General Timothy DeFoor.

“If there is any evidence of board members or anyone else directing staff to create a false report,” Monson said, “they should be fired and charged with Honest Services Fraud.”

In a reform imposed by the legislature and governor, the fund adopted a so-called risk-sharing rule some years ago that requires education workers to pay extra if their pension fund falls short of its investment target.

Author(s): Joseph N. DiStefano

Publication Date: 16 March 2021

Publication Site: Philadelphia Inquirer

Pa. Treasurer Joe Torsella tried to reform the state’s biggest pension funds. Then he lost his job.

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.inquirer.com/business/joe-torsella-treasurer-pa-pennsylvania-psers-pensions-teachers-lost-harrisburg-20210220.html

Graphic:

Excerpt:

As treasurer, Torsella automatically got a board seat on Pennsylvania’s two massive pension plans, the $60 billion PSERS for public school employees and the $30 billion SERS for state workers. (The letters stand for the Public School Employees’ Retirement System and the State Employees’ Retirement System.)

Everything about them is supersized. Together, they serve more than 700,000 retired and working Pennsylvanians. Taxpayers pay $7 billion into the funds annually, up from near zero in the early 2000s, and five times what employees contribute. Despite that, the plans are hugely underfunded — collectively short $65 billion.

Their health is heavily dependent on their investments. Once on board, Torsella asked to see investment contracts and fee deals with outside money managers — and was told they were not public. It was as if they were somehow more confidential than a town paving contract or a sanitation worker’s salary.

Author(s): Joseph N. DiStefano

Publication Date: 19 February 2021

Publication Site: Philadelphia Inquirer