California public pension fund, the nation's largest, faces probe launched by concerned retirees [View all]
Source: NBC News
June 30, 2025, 6:00 AM EDT
In recent years, the handling of the nation’s largest public pension fund has caused growing alarm among a group of retirees who rely on it. They have sought an outside audit of California’s $530 billion pension fund, known as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS.
They have also tried to persuade legislators to install an inspector general to monitor its operations. Both efforts went nowhere. Now, they’ve decided to take matters into their own hands. The retired public employees are taking the unusual step of hiring a forensic pension investigator to provide clarity on the fund’s investments, the high fees it is paying to big Wall Street firms and its lagging performance.
“We’re going to take this on, on our own,” said Margaret Brown, a former CalPERS board member who is now president of the Retired Public Employees’ Association of California, a nonprofit advocacy group with roughly 22,000 members.
Retirement anxiety is a nationwide worry, of course, and it looms large for CalPERS’ 2.3 million members. CalPERS’ obligations to beneficiaries are only 75% funded, its latest financial statements show, below the national average of 83.1%, according to the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-public-pension-fund-nations-largest-faces-probe-launched-co-rcna215534
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