California agencies are trying to figure out the implications of a vague executive order issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September that orders many policy decisions to be made with the need to “mitigate climate change” kept in mind.

A recent Sacramento Bee story suggested that among the most vexed were the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, the two pension giants with estimated unfunded liabilities of $136 billion and $107 billion, respectively, according to 2018 data.

The Bee reported that while the Newsom administration wasn’t ordering CalPERS and CalSTRS to divest from firms involved in fossil fuel, it was requiring them to make new investment decisions that reflect “the increased risks to the economy and physical environment due to climate change.”

Newsom thinks fossil fuel companies are in trouble

This reflects the assumption of the Newsom administration that there will be a rapid shift away from fossil fuels – a view that many hedge funds, mutual funds and large institutional investors don’t share. Large energy corporations remain popular with their stock pickers despite global warming fears. And contrary to the idea that these companies are in decline, some investors see fracking continuing to increase oil production in the U.S. for years to come. Last week, for example, the Motley Fool investment website strongly recommended buying ExxonMobil in 2020, noting that its annual divided “has increased more than 100 percent over the past 10 years.”

Newsom’s edict is producing heartburn with some members of the CalPERS board. That’s because, as the Bee noted, “pension systems have a financial obligation to earn as much as cash as possible to provide retirement security for millions of government employees.”

Former Garden Grove Unified manager Margaret Brown, a CalSTRS critic who won election to the board in December 2017, wrote on Twitter that “unless the governor is willing to take even more $$$ from over-taxed California citizens, Newsom should step back.” 

Corona police Sgt. Jason Perez upset CalPERS Board President Priva Mathur in the October 2018 election after running a campaign that blasted Mathur and other trustees for not focusing solely on returns in their investment decisions.

But the CalPERS and CalSTRS boards have a history of using investments for decades to make political statements. In September, state Treasurer Fiona Ma – who sits on both boards – strongly endorsed such investment activism.

CalPERS quietly shifting from low-risk ‘passive investing’

That means CalPERS and CalSTRS executives are under heavy pressure to improve returns while making investments that can be defended as socially responsible.

The Naked Capitalism website reported in October that this pressure may have led to CalPERS making a major shift in investing part of its portfolio. Instead of traditional “passive equity investing” in index funds that track the S&P 500 or other large categories of stocks and emphasize diversified portfolios, CalPERS has begun to adopt a more aggressive “factor investing” approach that has a chance of generating bigger returns by focusing on industries with better prospects for short- and medium-term gains, among its many tenets. The approach is also somewhat riskier than using index funds.

Reporter Yves Smith wrote that this was a major shift in investment strategy on a par with “CalPERS’ renouncement of hedge funds” in 2014.

The website, which is run by veterans of the global financial industry, has broken a series of stories about CalPERS in recent years.

In August 2018, it revealed that CalPERS CEO Marcia Frost had misrepresented her academic background and didn’t have a college degree.

This August, it offered evidence that CalPERS was hiding a negative audit of its hiring practices that had been triggered in part by the agency’s failure to vet Frost’s claims.

Next fiscal year, Newsom wants to give $3 billion to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. He also proposes giving up to $5.9 billion over four years to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System.

Both funds have less than 70 percent of the assets they will need to pay off promised pensions. Last year, CalSTRS’ unfunded liability was estimated to be $107.3 billion and CalPERS’ was put at $136 billion. Some see Newsom’s proposal as a confirmation of the failure of ballyhooed efforts by Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature to reform pensions and shore up the pension giants.

In 2012, they enacted the California Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act (PEPRA). It changed retirement terms for state employees hired after Jan. 1, 2013, by limiting what types of pay would apply toward pensions and by making small reductions to benefit calculation formulas and pushing back when employees could retire.

Brown hailed the law’s passage as a significant first step toward Sacramento bringing pension costs under control.

The next significant step came in 2014, when the Legislature and Brown approved a bailout of CalSTRS. It gradually raised the $5.7 billion that school districts, the state and teachers contributed to CalSTRS in 2013-14 to $11 billion in 2020-21, when the phased-in increases were complete. Districts have to pay for 70 percent of the new contributions, with the state picking up 20 percent and teachers 10 percent.

‘Significant’ CalSTRS changes didn’t stabilize fund

The nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst’s Office described the funding law as a “significant” accomplishment with promise to keep CalSTRS on firm ground for decades to come.

But as Brown’s second term wore on, with CalPERS alternating between poor and relatively successful years with its investments, it became clear that the 2012 pension reform measure hadn’t changed the grim long-term picture for CalPERS’ finances. A 2017 Pensions & Investment report detailed how CalPERS’ 10-year record of 4.4 percent average returns wasn’t keeping up with its obligations and noted that in one poor investment year alone, CalPERS saw its unfunded liabilities soar by $27.3 billion.

And the LAO soon changed its tone on the CalSTRS bailout. In 2016, its analysts warned that liabilities continued to increase. And in November, as CalWatchdog reported, an internal CalSTRS analysis concluded there was a 50 percent chance that CalSTRS’ funding would drop to less than 50 percent over the next 30 years. Pension analysts note that few pension systems ever recover from dropping below the 50 percent level.

Perhaps the most significant hope for pension reform from the Brown era came as the surprise result of a legal challenge to some of the limits on pensions for new hires in the 2012 law. A public safety union argued that this was a violation of the “California rule,” the long-standing court precedent that held pension benefits could not be reduced for public employees without comparable additional benefits being provided.

But two appellate courts not only disagreed with the lawsuit’s premise, they held the “California rule” of inviolate pensions didn’t apply to years not yet worked by public employees, and that cheaper benefits could be collectively bargained.

The California Supreme Court held a hearing on the lawsuit last month and a decision is expected in coming weeks.

Nine months after a League of California Cities report warned that pension costs were increasingly unsustainable, more than 100 local governments in the Golden State are asking voters for tax hikes on Nov. 6 – which Bond Buyer says is nearly double the record of 56 set in November 2016.

The Nov. 6 measures are on top of 36 city and county taxes that went before voters in the June 2018 primary.

Historically, local hikes in sales and hotel taxes are approved at least 60 percent of the time in California. They’re generally linked to a specific local need – not growing labor costs. With CalPERS’ bills to local governments on track to double from 2015 to 2025, such claims would seem dubious this election year.

Nevertheless – aware that voters likely would be cool to the idea of raising taxes to pay for pensions far more generous than those in the private sector – even now, many local elected leaders depict the hikes as necessary to pay for public safety or for fixing potholes and longer library hours.

Local officials assert hikes are about adding services

In the lead-up to the June primary, virtually the entire city leadership ranks in Chula Vista campaigned for a half-cent sales tax hike on the grounds that it was crucial to adding dozens of badly needed police officers and firefighters.

The tactic worked as Chula Vistans backed the increase. But city leaders’ claims of a coming public-safety hiring spree were impossible to square with the numbers from the city’s budget office. In April, it warned of “bleak” times ahead for San Diego County’s second-largest city, including an annual structural deficit that could reach $26.6 million by 2023 – with surging pension bills mostly to blame.

In Santa Ana, where voters are being asked to raise sales taxes by 1.5 percentage points on Nov. 6, the campaign for the tax hike rarely mentions pension costs.

But once again, a city bureaucrat framed the tax hike in more candid fashion.

“We’re not immune to the labor cost increases that are occurring throughout the state of California and throughout the country. We need to be able to provide additional services to the community. The question before the voters is what level of services do they want from their government?” Jorge Garcia, a top aide in the Santa Ana city manager’s office, told Bond Buyer.

Santa Ana’s pension bill is expected to go from $45.1 million in 2017-2018 to $81.2 million by 2022-2023 – an 80 percent increase.

‘The cause of this point-blank is CalPERS’

But some politicians have no patience with misleading narratives. “The cause of this point-blank is CalPERS and our pension fund,” Lodi Councilwoman JoAnne Mounce said in June when the Lodi City Council decided to put a half-cent sales tax on the Nov. 6 ballot.

As the League of California Cities reported in January, “With local pension costs outstripping revenue growth, many cites face difficult choices that will be compounded in the next recession. Under current law, cities have two choices – attempt to increase revenue or reduce services.”

The severity of the pension crisis is illustrated by the fact that it is sharply worsening in a period in which there is often seemingly good news on the fiscal front.

State revenue is expected to go up in 2018-19 for a 10th straight year.

County assessors report a 6.5 percent increase in property taxes this year. That’s triple the rate of inflation and comes even with Proposition 13 preventing increases of more than 2 percent on homes, businesses and other properties that didn’t change hands.

In July, CalPERS announced a second straight year of above-average earnings on its investment portfolio, which rose in value to $357 billion.

This prompted a news release from a top state union leader disputing talk of CalPERS’ poor health.

“While it’s important not to focus on one-year returns, these returns continue the long-term trend of CalPERS performing above or near its long-term discount rates and once again defying the sky-is-falling predictions of system critics,” wrote Dave Low, executive director of the California School Employees Association.

But despite the good returns, as of July, CalPERS only had 71 percent of funds needed to pay for its long-term financial liabilities, the Sacramento Bee reported. That’s far below the 80 percent funding level that is considered the absolute minimum for a healthy pension system.

A rowdy, muckraking financial blog that has repeatedly raised later-corroborated concerns about how the California Public Employees’ Retirement System operates has gotten traction with one of its new allegations.

The Naked Capitalism blog’s report that CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost had misled the giant pension fund about her education prompted state Treasurer John Chiang to seek an independent investigation.

Naked Capitalism blogger Susan Webber offered evidence that Frost – who does not have a college degree – allegedly told a consultant who evaluated her job application before her hiring in 2016 that she was enrolled in a degree program at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. The Sacramento Bee reported that she hadn’t taken any classes at the college since 2010. Before coming to CalPERS, Frost led Washington’s Department of Retirement Services, which oversees more than a dozen defined-benefit state pension funds.

In May, Webber’s reporting led CalPERS to oust Chief Financial Officer Charles Asubonten for making misleading claims about his employment history before he was hired.

With CalPERS’ new mess, a potentially big problem for Frost is that while she might be able to dismiss questions about whether she was honest over her education as the result of a misunderstanding, Naked Capitalism’s recent reports actually raise bigger concerns.

Accuracy of death-benefits claim questioned

For one example, Naked Capitalism writer Yves Smith last week wrote a persuasive analysis that argued that CalPERS had cherry-picked among data in claiming it was doing a better job processing death benefits in 45 days or less.

“CalPERS used an obviously cooked-up basis of comparison. Rather than take the same time period in successive years, CalPERS instead chose a set number of cases to examine (300 each) before and after a suspiciously arbitrary-looking cutoff date, February 12. Under questioning, the presenters admitted the ‘before’ cases included ones submitted in November and December,” Smith wrote.

“Why does this matter? The beginning of November through end of January is certain to be the worst time of year in terms of efficiency for a government agency. First, you have a high density of holidays compared to the rest of the year (Veterans’ Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Martin Luther King Day). Output suffers due to distractions like holiday shopping, more interaction with family members, and even getting out of the mood to work. Second, many employees also take vacation days around these holidays (and recall that CalPERS employees have generous vacation allowances). So there was also almost certainly reduced manpower to process claims during this period.”

There is no sign that Chiang or others with oversight authority are looking at this allegation. Last week, the CalPERS board made its feelings known about Frost, voting to raise her pay by 4 percent to $330,720 and to give her an $84,873 bonus.

Board officials suspicious of blog’s motives

A Sacramento Bee story last week about Naked Capitalism’s critiques of CalPERS gave space to CalPERS’ officials’ claims that there is something suspicious or perhaps partisan about an East Coast-based blog paying so much attention to a pension system across the nation.

In comments that the Bee reported were intended for Webber, CalPERS Vice President Rob Feckner said, “You’re not from California. Why would you be involved in a California election for that board? Why is it so important to you to get someone elected in that board?” Webber has been sharply critical of Feckner and other board members who have close relationships with Frost.

Naked Capitalism’s tart response: “CalPERS likes to relish its status as the biggest, highest profile public pension fund, but when it gets bad press, its stance is that it’s a parochial organization and why isn’t it left alone?” wrote Yves Smith.

No one familiar with the blog would consider it obsessed with CalPERS. The website’s roster of authors with Wall Street or banking backgrounds is long and their targets are widely varied. The site’s index cites nearly 5,000 stories about the global finance industry versus 98 about CalPERS.

The California Public Employees Retirement System and the California State Teachers Retirement System recently announced that they had exceeded their investment goals by at least 1 percentage point in fiscal 2017-18, with CalPERS citing annual gains of 8.6 percent and CalSTRS reporting 9 percent returns.

This came after strong returns in 2016-17 as well for both of the pension giants. But even with CalPERS now reporting $355 billion in assets and CalSTRS $225 billion, both systems have 70 percent or less of funds needed to cover their long-term commitments.

This troubling long-term picture is why the League of California Cities, in a January report, said it expects CalPERS to keep raising rates on local governments for years to come until they become “unsustainable.” CalSTRS, meanwhile, relies on the Legislature to set the rates it charges workers, districts and the state for pension costs – and the bailout the Legislature approved in 2014 that sharply increased what districts in particular must pay has not shored up the system nearly as much as was hoped.

Against this backdrop, CalPERS and CalSTRS are offering hints that they aren’t happy with the Legislature and think it is making their jobs more difficult.

CalSTRS’ chief investment officer, Christopher Ailman, issued a statement about the good returns that downplayed their significance: “We will rank high compared to similar funds, but it is only one year. We need to repeat that performance year in and year out, on average, over the next 30 years.”

But in an interview with the Private Equity International website that was posted July 2, Ailman elaborated on his view of investment gains. He did so in a way that challenged claims made by many Democratic lawmakers and pro-pension groups such as the Californians for Retirement Security that state pensions’ biggest problem was the Wall Street crash of a decade ago.

CalSTRS exec: Don’t blame investment results

“Ailman points out it’s often not the investment results that have led to the underfunding, it’s either poor management of liabilities or a lack of contributions,” the article said.

“Asked whether this keeps him up at night, he says he sleeps like a baby – wakes up and screams every three hours. ‘We pay out half a billion dollars a month in benefit payments, more than we bring in.’”

In the interview, Ailman also complained about Assembly Bill 2833, a state law that took effect last year that requires pension systems to disclose more information about expenses and fees related to their investments. He said the law ignored existing disclosure requirements and that it had caused CalSTRS to miss out on lucrative opportunities.

He said the “extra rules and extra issues” were having unintended but negative effects.

“We now have a situation in the state of California where CalPERS and CalSTRS have less invested in Silicon Valley than the Dutch, Asian and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. Fundamentally, as a native Californian I think that’s just so wrong, but I can’t change people’s minds. It is what it is now,” Ailman told Private Equity International.

CalPERS knocks bill to monitor divestment laws

CalPERS’ concerns about legislative actions are also plain, if more muted. The Pensions & Investments website reported July 18 that the pension fund opposes Senate Bill 783, which already passed the Senate and now is before the Assembly. It would set up a review body to analyze how CalPERS and CalSTRS had complied with state laws directing the pension funds to divest from certain industries. CalPERS says this review panel would duplicate the work of pension staffers.

Given that CalPERS and CalSTRS at times have resisted the Legislature’s attempts to micromanage their portfolios, SB783 could be seen as giving teeth to lawmakers’ attempts to have a bigger say in investments.

The debate over SB783 comes as CalSTRS faces demands from activists to divest in a new corner of the private sector: companies which run private prisons. Other recent calls for divestment have targeted assault-rifle makers; finance companies that helped with construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline; and fossil-fuel companies.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s call for his state’s biggest government pension fund to

The Common Fund – New York’s pension fund for state and local public sector employees – has $200 billion in holdings. Cuomo, a Democrat who is expected to run for president in 2020, said it was time to craft a “de-carbonization roadmap” for the fund, which “remains heavily invested in the energy economy of the past.”

New York City Comptroller Scott Stinger agreed with Cuomo and called for changes in the investment policies of the city’s five pension funds, with holdings of about $190 billion.

The announcements were hailed on social media as a reflection of the mission statement of the 2015 Paris Accord outlining international efforts to address global warming.

It’s possible Brown could use his State of the State speech later this month to reveal his call for CalPERS and CalSTRS climate-change divestment. The pension giants have already been forced to end investments in coal companies because of a 2015 law signed by the governor, selling off shares worth less than $250 million, a tiny fraction of their overall portfolios.

But selling off stakes in energy companies would be a much more impactful event. Giant firms like ExxonMobil are among the most common holdings of pension funds around the world.

Some unions worry divestment will hurt CalPERS finances

And while the California Democratic Party has been largely unified behind Brown’s and the state Legislature’s efforts dating back to 2006 to have California lead the fight against global warming, such unanimity is unlikely should Brown follow Cuomo’s lead because some public employee unions are worried about divestment damaging the finances of CalPERS and CalSTRS.

As of July, CalPERS had $323 billion in assets and said it was 68 percent funded – meaning it had about $150 billion in unfunded liabilities. As of March, CalSTRS had $202 billion in assets and said it was 64 percent funded, leaving unfunded liabilities of about $100 billion.

CalPERS’ steady increase in rates it charges local agencies to provide pensions and the heavy costs facing school districts because of the Legislature’s 2014 CalSTRS’ bailout have taken a heavy toll on government budgets.

Corona Police Lt. Jim Auck, treasurer of the Corona Police Officers Association, has testified to the CalPERS board on several occasions, imploring members to focus on making money with investments, not making political statements.

According to a July account in the Sacramento Bee, Auck said public safety is hurt when police departments must spend ever-more money on pensions.

“The CalPERS board has a fiduciary responsibility to the membership to deliver the best returns possible,” Auck testified. “Whatever is delivering the return they need, that’s where they need to put our money.”

The International Union of Operating Engineers, which represents 12,000 state maintenance workers, has taken the same position, according to the Bee.

In New York, Gov. Cuomo also is not assured of success. The sole trustee of the Common Fund is State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. While he agreed to work with Cuomo in establishing a committee to consider possible changes in its investment strategies, his statement pointedly emphasized that there were no present plans to change the fund’s approach to energy stocks.

While DiNapoli cited his support for reducing global warming and the Paris Accord, his statement concluded with a sentence emphasizing his priorities: “I will continue to manage the pension fund in the long-term best interests of our members, retirees and the state’s taxpayers.”

This often comes in the form of divestment, by which the funds are encouraged – or even required – to sell their assets in industries that are viewed negatively by the people who push these efforts. These efforts tend to work against the goals of the funds’ professional investment staff, which are charged with getting high investment returns to fund pensions for the systems’ retirees. Both funds have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize their return on taxpayer dollars.

Yet estimates from a consulting firm suggest that CalPERS has lost approximately $8 billion in returns because of previous efforts to divest from coal-related and tobacco industries. That’s become a particularly contentious issue as funding levels have fallen to 68 percent for CalPERS and 64 percent for CalSTRS. That means they have only around two-thirds of the assets needed to make good on all the current and future pension promises made to government retirees.

Despite the troubling numbers, there’s a new push for divestment from some politicians. Following the October massacre in Las Vegas, by which a gunman murdered 59 people at a country music concert, state Treasurer John Chiang has called for the teachers’ fund to sell its assets in weapons firms and sporting-goods companies that sell any guns that are illegal in California.

“Neither taxpayer funds nor the pension contributions of any of the teachers we represent, including the three California teachers slain in Las Vegas should be invested in the purveyors of military-style assault weapons,” said Chiang, a 2018 candidate for governor and member of both pension boards. Chiang also told the Sacramento Bee that he plans on making a similar request to the CalPERS board.

The newspaper also noted that both funds “this year have faced calls to divest from companies that do business with the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline,” which would transport oil underground from North Dakota oilfields to Illinois. It has prompted protests from a variety of environmental and Native American activists.

Critics of these proposals say they are largely symbolic and would do little to influence gun sales or the pipelines. Divestment from these relatively small industries wouldn’t have much impact on the massive funds’ financial returns, either.

On Oct. 30, 12 members of California’s Democratic congressional delegation sent a letter to CalPERS chief executive officer Marcie Frost urging the pension fund to divest from a fund that has acquired a hotel owned by Donald Trump’s organization. This move is more directly political than many divestment efforts, which tend to focus on the social implications of investing in the pipeline, weapons manufacturers, coal-related industries and tobacco companies.

Divestment advocates sometimes argue that these controversial products may be poor long-term investments. For instance, the Public Divestiture of Thermal Coal Companies Act of 2015 and similar efforts by the state insurance commissioner were based in part on the notion that these coal-related companies may face diminishing values as the world shifts away from carbon-based fuels – a point rebutted by those who note that the current price of the stocks already reflects that risk.

But the Trump-related divestment call, led by U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu of Torrance, is designed to target the president. The members of Congress expressed their disappointment that CalPERS “has not divested its interest” in that fund “nor has taken any actions to ensure that its fees are not being transferred to President Trump,” according to their letter. They criticized CalPERS for taking a “wait-and-see” approach toward the matter.

These members of Congress claim that this CalPERS investment could be in violation of the Domestic Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states that “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” This would be an unusual interpretation of an arcane clause.

Meanwhile, the pension funds have been expanding other divestment and socially motivated investment efforts. Last December, the CalPERS investment staff “recommended that the board remove its 16-year ban on tobacco investments in light of an increasing demand to improve investment returns and pay benefits,” according to a Reuters report. But instead of removing the ban, the board “voted to remain divested and to expand the ban to externally managed portfolios and affiliated funds.”

And last year CalPERS adopted a five year Environmental, Social and Governance plan that focuses on socially responsible investing. The fund has long used its financial clout to push companies it invests in to promote, for instance, board diversity and other social goals.

Whatever their chances for approval, the latest efforts are not out of the ordinary. But they will rekindle the long-running debate between political and financial goals, and whether the former imperils the latter given both funds’ large unfunded liabilities.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

The underfunded California Public Employees’ Retirement System faces daunting challenges in coming years, with local governments increasingly vocal about not being able to afford the ever-growing cost of their CalPERS-managed pension programs, as CalWatchdog

The nation’s largest public pension fund could face these challenges with a board that appears both solidly pro-union and solidly in the corner of the pension giant’s top management. Or the board could once again have a rabble-rouser in its midst.

That was the takeaway from the voting that concluded last week for two of the six member-at-large seats on the 13-member board that are elected by CalPERS members. (The other seven members are chosen by various state leaders.)

David Miller, a state regulator and former president of the California Association of Professional Scientists, was elected to replace J.J. Jelincic, a maverick board member who has long accused CalPERS executives of poor management, bad decisions and a lack of openness.

Jelincic decided not to seek re-election in June after facing harsh criticism from other CalPERS leaders for allegedly leaking confidential information. In May, he made headlines on investment blogs for likening a top CalPERS lawyer to Roy Cohn, a notorious New York lawyer known for his ruthlessness. In particular, Jelincic’s acidic remarks have long drawn praise from writers at the Naked Capitalism website who share his low opening of how CalPERS is run.

Miller, who was backed by public employee unions and has emphasized the importance of preserving and protecting government pensions, easily defeated former CalPERS board member Michael Flaherman, who was backed by Jelincic and has a history of being open to pension reform.

Union-backed board incumbent denied re-election in initial voting

The union-backed candidate for a second member-at-large seat, incumbent Michael Bilbrey, led voting but was forced into a runoff next month after no one garnered majority support in a four-way race. Bilbrey’s opponent is a Jelincic-like wild card – Garden Grove Unified School District manager Margaret Brown.

While Brown too has vowed to protect and preserve government pensions, she has offered sharp criticism of CalPERS’ upper ranks.

In May, she accused CalPERS’ top officials of knowingly cooking the books – hiding investment costs to make the pension agency’s investment record look better than it actually was so annual bonuses would be larger.

In September, Brown wrote a letter to CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost, CalPERS board members and state officials including Attorney General Xavier Becerra alleging that the new rules for mail voting for the just-held elections broke state laws and made it possible that individual union members’ votes could be made public.

The runoff is also a mail election. Ballots must be mailed by Nov. 10. In initial voting, Bilbrey got 49,801 votes (40.8 percent) to Brown’s 43,132 (35.4 percent).

Jelincic took a final shot at a top CalPERS official on his way out the door. In a September email to Naked Capitalism, Jelincic mocked board President Rob Feckner’s remark that he had never been misled by CalPERS staff in his 18 years on the board.

Jelincic noted that Feckner was “board president while the CEO was collecting shoe boxes of cash.”

That was a reference to Fred Buenrostro, who was sentenced to a 4½-year prison term last year after after pleading guilty in 2014 to taking more than $250,000 in bribes during his six years as CalPERS CEO.

The Public Divestiture of Thermal Coal Companies Act of 2015 required CalPERS to “identify, engage and potentially divest from companies meeting the definition of ‘thermal coal companies.’” The pension fund was directed to do so “consistent with its fiduciary responsibilities,” providing some wiggle room for the fund, whose primary duty is to maximize investment returns to make good on its public-employee pension obligations.

Nevertheless, CalPERS promptly identified two dozen publicly traded companies that generate at least 50 percent of their revenue from mining thermal coal, as required by the law. As the recent report explains, three companies adapted their business model and redirected their investments toward clean energy. As such, they were exempt from divestment. CalPERS had no holding in eight other companies identified under the act.

But 14 companies “failed to indicate applicable business plan adaptations, or failed to respond to CalPERS engagement efforts and were subject to divestment,” according to the report. As the Sacramento Bee explained, “stocks for 13 of the 14 companies are worth more than they were a year ago when the pension fund was divesting from the industry.” The shares of one of those firms were trading at 15 times their April 2016 levels.

There’s little question that the act was designed to achieve a social goal, rather than one related to increasing CalPERS’ investment returns. “Coal combustion for energy generation is the single leading cause of the pollution that causes global climate change,” said the bill’s author, Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, as quoted in the Senate bill analysis. He added that coal is “a leading cause of smog, acid rain, and toxic air pollution” and that “most U.S. coal plants have not installed these technologies.”

CalPERS’ investment staff tends to oppose socially oriented investments, but the CalPERS board has the final say. The issue was debated at the CalPERS Board of Administration meeting in May. The Sacramento Bee reported on union officials who criticized the policy at the board meeting. “We cannot afford to lose funding for law enforcement officers in exchange for a socially responsible investment policy,” said Jim Auck, treasurer of the Corona Police Officers Association.

This isn’t the first time that there’s been tension between the fund’s politically oriented investment goals and its desire to increase investment returns. At a board meeting last year, CalPERS investment officials argued for an end to a 16-year ban on tobacco-related investments made by the system’s own investment officers. (Tobacco investments by outside firms were still allowed.) Because tobacco stocks had rebounded since 2000, news reports estimated that the pension fund had lost about $3 billion because of that decision. The fund’s total investments are valued at more than $300 billion.

Instead of following the investment team’s advice, the CalPERS board continued to ban tobacco investments and also decided to divest about $547 million in tobacco-related investments handled by outside firms. That decision also was based on social goals. Advocates for tobacco divestment argued that CalPERS ought not invest in firms that sell deadly products.

At the time, the tobacco-divestment decision was particularly controversial because CalPERS faced investment returns of a measly 0.61 percent. Now, with CalPERS’ latest returns showing a robust 11.2 percent gain, it makes continuing with the coal divestment plan – and other socially oriented investment strategies – an easier option to pursue.

Regarding coal, CalPERS isn’t the only state agency to pursue divestment. Last summer, California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones launched his Climate Risk Carbon Initiative, which called for any insurance companies that do business in California to divest “voluntarily” from most of their thermal-coal investments. The state vowed to publicize the names of companies that didn’t comply and ramped up mandatory reporting requirements.

Insurance commissioners regulate insurers to assure they have the resources to pay any claims. Yet the department’s divestment request clearly had a social (and some say political) goal. Jones justified it by arguing that such investments put the companies at risk. “As utilities decrease their use of coal and other carbon fuel sources … investments in coal and the carbon economy run the risk of becoming a stranded asset of diminishing value,” he said in a statement.

But critics of the policy, including a 2016 study by this writer, note that insurers are invested in extremely conservative positions, mostly in fixed-income bonds, and that even the insurer with the largest percentage of coal-related investments (TIAA-CREF) had only 1.76 percent of its total assets in such holdings. Furthermore, the value of the stocks already reflects the well-known uncertainties that the insurance commissioner raised. Jones’ office argued, in response, that “since 2011, coal prices, cash flows, and company valuations have fallen sharply thus adversely affecting and bankrupting numerous coal companies.”

The broad question, especially for CalPERS, is the one raised by the union officials at the recent board meeting: Are the political and social gains of divesting from these industries worth the costs in investment returns?

Chief investment officers “invest for value and don’t appreciate being hamstrung by legislators who don’t know how to manage a diversified portfolio,” said Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, who voted against Sen. de Leon’s divestment act. “I think I’m the only legislator who managed a $7 billion portfolio. And the studies I’ve seen have shown that social investing has produced lower returns.”

Despite the recent good-news returns, CalPERS has an enormous amount of unfunded liabilities – the shortfall in assets to make good on all the long-term pension promises made to government employees. The system is only funded at around 68 percent. This should be of concern not only to the agency, the Legislature and public employees who depend on a CalPERS retirement, but to California taxpayers. Ultimately, they are the ones who will pay for any pension shortfalls.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

Last week’s announcement by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System that it had strong

Sacramento Democratic insider Steve Maviglio and the Californians for Retirement Security – a union-backed group that opposes any effort to change public employee pensions – shared a Twitter post about how the news “should quiet pension bashers.”

But credit ratings agencies, actuaries and investment experts aren’t likely to see the news as reason to change their grim view of CalPERS’ medium- and long-term prospects. Even with the strong year, CalPERS still only has 68 percent of funds in hand to cover its pension obligations – a roughly $100 billion shortfall – and that’s based on a forecast of 7 percent annual returns that CalPERS’ own consultant said should be reduced to 6.2 percent.

Meanwhile, local governments around the state are in no mood for happy talk about the nation’s largest public pension agency. Their required CalPERS’ pension payments are soaring and appear likely to keep increasing for years to come – even if CalPERS achieves its 7 percent return goal. Aging public agency work forces are swelling the ranks of retirees and “smoothing” practices that phased in CalPERS rate increases over the last 15 years no longer offer much of a cushion to governments’ bottom lines.

Modesto official: CalPERS status quo will collapse

In May, Joe Lopez, Modesto’s acting city manager, said the city eventually wouldn’t be able to afford its CalPERS bill, which will nearly double over the next eight years.

“Ultimately there is going to have to be a substantial change made to the way the pension system is run,” Lopez told a City Council budget committee hearing, according to the Modesto Bee. “We can’t continue to rely, CalPERS can’t continue to rely, on revenue [from cities and its other public sector members to meet its pension obligations]. There is going to have to be substantial changes to the actual benefit packages if these are ever going to be sustainable.”

There are similar worries in many small cities around the state.

Last month, Chico Councilman Randall Stone – a financial planner – predicted CalPERS would eventually collapse as the benefits it paid out exceeded the money it was taking in.

The grim assessment was triggered by a report showing the city’s CalPERS bill will go up about $370,000 in 2018-19, $803,000 in 2019-20 and nearly $2 million in 2020-21 alone.

“I think generally speaking, the community doesn’t understand what a time bomb this is,” Stone told the Chico Enterprise-Record. “You should be screaming with your hair on fire from the rooftops.”

In May, the Bay Area News Group reported that three small East Bay towns – Pittsburg, Walnut Creek and Martinez – had to cut several agencies’ budgets for 2017-18 to pay their CalPERS bills. And these cuts are even before the large pending CalPERS hikes.

In March, the Ventura County Star reported on how local cities were reeling because of the CalPERS hikes. Tiny Port Hueneme’s pension bill went from $774,000 in 2014-15 to $1.3 million in 2017-18 and will reach $3.2 million in 2022-23 – more than quadrupling over an eight-year span.

SEIU leader: Pension shortfall like drought

But union officials have not expressed sympathy with struggling local governments. In a June 26 op-ed for the Sacramento Bee, Yvonne Walker, president of the Service Employees International Union Local 1000, mocked “doomsday predictions about California’s public worker pension funds.” She likened the recent poor CalPERS returns to the state’s drought, which came to an abrupt end this winter.

This analogy – and Walker’s long-term optimism – prompted a tart response from David Crane, a financial expert and former aide to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“No financial expert can present any real evidence showing that CalPERS can grow its way back from its current 63 percent funded ratio to anywhere close to 100 percent,” Crane wrote on the Medium website.

The 63 percent funded figure went up to 68 percent after CalPERS’ good returns were noted, but Crane stands by his dismissal of any optimism about CalPERS recovering from its current woes.