Lest you think politics is anything but a cult of personality rather than a contest to determine the best leaders for a government, you need only look at the upcoming mayoral race in New York City.
DC37, the largest municipal union, under the Working Families Party banner have endorsed Bill Thompson for Mayor. The usual fanfare ensued as it was pointed out how in the last election, they endorsed Bloomberg, but this time around they’re not convinced he’s the right man for the job.
“Working New Yorkers are what makes New York City great,” Thompson said. “We’re going to take City Hall back for working and middle-class New Yorkers.”
DC37 endorsed Bloomberg four years ago, and got generous 4% raises last year in what some saw as a bid to win favor.
Union head Lillian Roberts said Thompson has the city’s working class at heart – and Bloomberg lost their nod by giving $9 billion in city work to outside contractors.
Uh huh. Yep. You’re gonna “take City Hall Back.” Well, let’s see about that…
The New York city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., is staking his mayoral campaign on his skills as a financial manager, which he says are exemplified by his supervision of the nation’s largest municipal pension system.
As the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr. oversees an $80 billion municipal pension system, the nation’s biggest. Mr. Thompson is the Democratic Party’s leading mayoral contender.
But a review of how the $80 billion system has performed since he took office shows it has consistently lagged behind many of its public pension peers even as the city tripled the number of money managers it uses and the fees that it pays those firms.
Over the last seven years, four of the five city pension funds performed below the median for similar funds around the country. In fact, more than two-thirds of big public pension funds did better than the city’s largest fund, the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, according to a widely used financial yardstick compiled by Wilshire Associates, an investment advisory firm.
“It’s consistently below average, and that’s not where you want to be,” said Edward A. H. Siedle, president of Benchmark Financial Services, a Florida firm that audits pension plans.
But Mr. Thompson has benefited from his association with the pension system, collecting more than $500,000 in campaign contributions from its growing roster of money managers since he first entered the 2001 race for comptroller. In some cases, the executives gave to Mr. Thompson just months before the pension funds hired them to manage tens of millions of dollars, according to interviews and public records.
So to recap… The union knows their fund is underperforming because it has consistently been doing so for the past few years under Thompson’s management. DC 37 is the largest municipal union, and they endorsed him in spite of this because he’s not as out of touch with the common man as rich-man-Bloomberg is. Does being “in touch” mean losing billions of dollars for those working-class families?
The one thing Thompson is running on, his record as Comptroller, is completely tainted by the utter mismanagement exhibited by his handling of the pension system. Will DC 37 withdraw their endorsement of the union now that it’s been exposed?
What do you think?
Interestingly enough, the NYC Teacher’s pension fund is the worst-performing city pension in the group, and that one is also managed by the illustrious Bill Thompson. Why do I bring the UFT (the United Federation of Teachers) up?
Simple.
They haven’t made their endorsement yet.
It’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out for a few reasons.
For one, the mayor’s upcoming raises for the union means in 2 years teachers will be making about 8% more than they are right now (still a gross disparity between city teachers and teachers in the more affluent suburbs, but 8% is 8%). On top of that, the UFT, formerly led by Randy Weingarten, would never endorse a Republican candidate, irrespective of what he did for the union. In fact, Bloomberg’s first act as Mayor was to up teacher salaries almost 25% to make up for the 6 years that Rudy Giuliani ignored their working without a contract.
The reality is, though, that the UFT will most likely put the fix in for Thompson. Whether he mismanaged the pension or not, and in spite of what Bloomberg has done for teachers in his nearly eight years as Mayor, he is a Republican, and he is white. Those two things don’t play well in New York City if you’re a labor union.