Edward Siedle: ‘The Hostility Is Led by Governor Walz’: How VP Pick Ignored Furious Teachers, Worked To Squash Probe of ‘Corrupt’ Pension Plan That Could Leave Teachers High and Dry

Washington Beacon writes about Walz administration's aggressive, preemptive effort to thwart Minnesota pension investigation.

EDWARD SIEDLE

OCT 10, 2024

Renowned fraud investigator’s probe into misuse of teacher pension funds posed ‘a very serious risk to trust in government,’ Walz administration said.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz knew he had a big problem on his hands when members of his administration caught wind in February that thousands of angry public school teachers had banded together to retain a renowned pension fraud investigator to probe their state retirement plan.

The teachers’ long-simmering rage about Minnesota’s two-tiered teacher pension plan—in which teachers hired in 1989 or later get much smaller retirement payments than teachers hired before 1989—was reaching a boil. Many "Tier 2" teachers, hired after 1989, felt they were effectively subsidizing the lavish benefits of their older "Tier 1" counterparts, while their own retirement payouts would be much smaller. Even worse, they feared the chronically underfunded pension fund might not be able to afford their reduced retirement benefits when it came time for them to exit the workforce. These fears were compounded by what the teachers said was Minnesota’s "demonstrated lack of transparency" and history of presenting the public with misinformation about the pension.

And so in February, the angry teachers  raised $75,000 and hired Edward Siedle, a former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer who has won some of the largest whistleblower awards for financial fraud in American history, including forcing tens of millions of dollars in payments from J.P. Morgan over its failure to disclose conflicts of interests to wealth management clients. The educators raised the money in just 19 days, "which shows you how absolutely pissed off teachers are," Minnesota teacher Maggie Temple, a leader in the effort to hire Siedle, told the newsletter Political News Items.

Read entire Washington Beacon article here:

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/the-hostility-is-led-by-governor-walz-how-vp-pick-ignored-furious-teachers-worked-to-squash-probe-of-corrupt-pension-plan-that-could-leave-teachers-high-and-dry/ 

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