Pa. Treasurer Joe Torsella tried to reform the state’s biggest pension funds. Then he lost his job.

Torsella says his clash with the pensions was a rough schooling in a “corrupt system” that too often helps financiers and hedge funds, not the retirees, or taxpayers.

What happens when you, an honest citizen, try to reform a large public pension system? (Shades of Dennis Leone and STRS and OEA)? At least Dr. Leone didn't have a job to lose (he was a retired member of the STRS Board, 2005-2009), but he was greatly vilified by his peers on that Board when he provided proof upon proof of of misdeeds and mismanagement by the STRS Board at that time. What has changed since? You be the judge. 

From John Curry

March 14, 2021

[John Curry]: Let us compare with Pennsylvania public retirement systems....see any similarities? I see lots of them! Is what happened to Pennsylvania's teachers retirement system the same thing that has and is happening at Ohio STRS? Read on....

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In sum, Torsella said, he found that the pension plans, especially the teachers’ fund, treated Wall Street as a close partner rather than as a hired servant and were enmeshed in “a culture that was staff-driven, where robust dissent was sometimes frowned on.

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Pa. Treasurer Joe Torsella tried to reform the state’s biggest pension funds. Then he lost his job.

by Joseph N. DiStefano

Philadelphia Inquirer

Published Feb 19, 2021

In his 30 years of public service in places ranging from Philadelphia City Hall to the United Nations, Joe Torsella says he thought he had seen every kind of government dysfunction.

Then he went to Harrisburg to become state treasurer.

After four tumultuous years in office, Torsella looks back with a mixture of pride and exasperation. As treasurer, he took on the state’s mammoth, multibillion-dollar pension funds and tried to shake them down to their roots.

He made lots of headway — pushing to make secret money manager fees public, exposing poor performance, blocking political insiders from lobbying for contracts — but also lots of enemies. And after all his troubles, voters dumped him in November.

Now, Torsella says his clash with the pensions systems was a rough schooling in “how incredibly hard it is to change the ecosystem around certain parts of government, especially those that involve Wall Street.” The funds are the prize, he says, in a “corrupt system” that too often helps financiers and hedge funds, not the retirees, or taxpayers.

Read the article here: https://www.inquirer.com/business/joe-torsella-treasurer-pa-pennsylvania-psers-pensions-teachers-lost-harrisburg-20210220.html?fbclid=IwAR372q0TWEnf5hAIJ26OwmXT_KjA4uPnbenF0lvp9qWJK5Xhhhr-5Irjgkk