Penions Archives - California Political Review

With more money than ever, California’s biggest pension funds are a political battleground

May 12, 2026 By Adam Ashton Leave a Comment

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California’s two biggest public pension funds have more money than ever — and they’re hearing from more people than ever on how those assets should be used to change the world.

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The boards at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System are facing campaigns from groups that want them to pull money out of companies associated with the Trump administration, scale back investments in fossil fuels and break with private equity firms over their labor records.

The list includes electric car maker Tesla, surveillance company Palantir, private companies that operate immigrant detention centers, ExxonMobil, Chevron and private equity firm Apollo Global Management.

To some extent, divestment campaigns are routine business at CalPERS and CalSTRS, which hold assets worth a combined $1 trillion and are headquartered in the capital of a deep blue state.

But the combination of Trump-era politics and a concerted push by labor in the Legislature to force the pension funds to open the books on private equity holdings is attracting the focus of a more diverse mix of advocates.

“It’s politics,” said Richard Costigan, a Republican who served on the CalPERS board from 2011 to 2019 as an appointee of Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown. “When you look at Palantir and Tesla, it’s driven by politics. Seriously, why would you not invest in Palantir?”

The rebuttal: Despite their earnings and stock value today, the companies affiliated with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement program are taking on serious reputational risk that could backfire on the funds. Separately, they say putting money into fossil fuel companies poses hazards both for the environment and for pension systems banking on long-term investments.

The pension funds “should be aligning their investments with the values of their state, the values of their members, and the long-term interests of their members,” said Richard Brooks, the climate finance program director at the advocacy organization Stand.Earth.

He recently released a study tallying CalPERS and CalSTRS investments in companies that participate in the Trump administration immigration sweeps, such as Palantir and private prison companies CoreCivic and GeoGroup.

“I see a disconnect right now,” he said.

Staff at CalPERS and CalSTRS oppose divestment and they consistently fight legislation that would tie their hands. Both systems are underfunded and owe tens of billions more than their assets, a crisis that in 2012 led the Legislature and then-Gov. Jerry Brown to pass a law mandating less generous pension benefits for employees hired after that year.

But CalPERS and CalSTRS have pulled money out of industries in the past. CalPERS divested from firearms in 2013 and from tobacco in 2016. They’re also barred by state law from investing in coal as well as in businesses connected to Iran.

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Pension reform initiative abandoned for 2016

January 22, 2016 By James Poulos 2 Comments

The landmark effort to take public pension reform straight to the people of California has been withdrawn from ballot consideration.

“Beleaguered by fundraising doubts and attacks from organized labor, two former California officials said Monday they are backing off plans to place a measure on the November ballot intended to curb public pension benefits,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “Instead, former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and former San Diego Councilman Carl DeMaio said in a joint announcement, ‘We have decided to re-file at least one of our pension reform measures later this year for the November 2018 ballot.’”

Staying solvent

The news marked a sharp reversal for critics of the state’s pension spending, which has ballooned apace with California’s freshly flush balance sheet. The price tag for guaranteed health coverage alone has put Sacramento on notice of the size and scale of the problem. “The state has promised an estimated $72 billion in health care benefits for its current and future retirees, an amount that will increase to more than $300 billion over the next three decades, according to the governor’s Department of Finance,” according to the Associated Press.

Gov. Jerry Brown has sought to bring those costs under control in a way that won’t spur a revolt within his own party or hand too much power to Republican legislators. “Brown proposes prefunding benefits similar to the way the state pays for pensions — by paying into a trust fund that accrues investment returns over time, reducing the amount of money that taxpayers must contribute in the future,” the AP noted. “In negotiations with public employee unions, he’s asking state workers to pay into a fund through a deduction on their paychecks. The state would pay an equal amount.”

A firmer approach

The Reed/DeMaio proposals would have tackled unions in a much different way. “Reed and DeMaio had filed two proposals for the November 2016 ballot, planning to choose one,” as the AP reported separately. “One would have put employees who first join a public pension system on or after January 2019, into 401(k)-style retirement savings plans that guarantee fixed contributions from employers instead of fixed returns. The second measure would have capped how much employers could pay for new hires’ retirement benefits to a certain percentage of their salary.”

Public opinion studies produced conflicting portraits of how much support for the initiatives Reed and DeMaio could count on. “Apparently the measure to force new employees into 401(k) style ballot initiatives did not poll well (even though a 2015 poll by Reason-Rupe showed majority support for such a shift),” as Reason observed. “The measure to cap the amount employers could contribute to pensions fared better in polls, but according to Reed, they weren’t able to raise enough money to collect signatures and prep for an expensive battle with California’s public unions.”

Finding funding

That difficulty struck at the heart of the year’s complex political landscape. “The stark reality is that within the state, there are no deep pockets to finance such a campaign,” Dan Walters noted at the Bee. “However large they may be, fast-growing pension and health care liabilities don’t discomfit any major interest groups, since their greatest impacts are on local governments, especially cities, rather than on state government.” That would have likely pushed the initiative’s supporters into a scramble for cash.

The necessity to look far and wide for money fostered its own kind of political optics problem. “Any reform campaign would be dependent on money from one or more wealthy individuals, probably from out of state, and it hasn’t materialized,” as Walters observed. “Conversely, any broad retiree benefit reform effort would draw implacable, high-dollar opposition from unions.” So even if the reform effort gained an adequate sponsor, Golden State unions would be able to portray their high-dollar spending as more of an in-state groundswell than their opposition — a potentially substantial advantage in a populist election season.

Originally posted on CalWatchdog.com