I found your editorial titled “Tightening Pension Rules” and your dogged pursuit of the ill-conceived concept of a board of trustees to oversee New York State’s employee pension fund amusing. The first argument you used, that the comptroller's office often becomes the springboard for higher political ambitions, such as a run for governor is a stretch. A quick check of the facts shows that the last Comptroller that actually became Governor was Martin H. Glynn in 1913.

Your claim that spreading out responsibility of the fund’s performance is somehow a benefit is terribly mistaken. You’d have people believe that the Comptroller makes decisions regarding pension investments while sitting at his breakfast table sipping his morning coffee, or that a shadowy pension board that is not directly accountable to the voters of New York state are somehow immune from personal and political influence.

Reason, in this case, calls for the system to stay the way it is. As President of a union representing 58,000 professional, scientific and technical state workers one of my primary concerns is the viability of the state’s pension fund. The current system is working just fine. The rates of return on mine and my members’ and the taxpayers’ money are consistently at or above the benchmarks. Any problems that may exist relate to decisions about who else would be investing pension funds, not in the actual investment decisions of the Office of the State Comptroller. These concerns are all addressed by the just announced reforms which the Public Employees Federation (PEF) supports.

As a member of the retirement system, a taxpayer, and a voter, I want to be able to choose the person responsible for the fund’s performance, not rely on some board members who are accountable only to the politicians who appointed them.