Politico
Danielle Muoio
NEW YORK — National environmental advocates flanked Bill de Blasio in January as the mayor announced the first steps toward stripping $5 billion in New York City pension fund investments from Big Oil. Fossil fuel corporations have profited from “horrible, disgusting” practices, de Blasio said, and New York has to be a “beacon to the world. … We have to show it can be done.”
But de Blasio’s proposal — which was not actually to divest, but to simply study its effects — immediately drew skepticism from New York City’s five pension boards, which worried that dropping oil and gas stocks would hurt their retirees’ financial futures. The police pension board quickly rejected the idea. The firefighters’ board tabled the notion. Trustees on the other three boards approved the study, but still expressed wariness.
It turns out that even in some of the country’s bluest states and cities, the notion of threatening pensions in pursuit of a healthier environment is proving a tough sell.
Ambitious Democratic politicians across the country seeking to burnish their green credentials, like de Blasio, are increasingly taking up the flag of divestment. But they’re frequently finding themselves in an unusual battle with their traditional allies in organized labor. Unions contend that divestiture may be a politically expedient rallying cry for liberals, but they say it’s coming at the expense of real fiscal concerns about the health of public employee pension systems, which experts describe as increasingly underfunded.
“This should not be funded on the backs of our members and the city members that belong to NYCERS,” said Michael Carrube, president of the Subway Surface Supervisors Association union, whose pensions are funded through the New York City Employees’ Retirement System.
And the state’s comptroller, Tom DiNapoli, has his own concerns. “We all know that public pension funds are often under attack … so you really need to look carefully at these kinds of questions,” said DiNapoli, a divestment opponent, in an interview. “We have to really be concerned about the bottom line.”…
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