Chicago Michigan–Wacker Historic District from the DuSable Bridge.
For years, progressives have been funneling public employees’ retirement money into their pet political projects. New legislation introduced by Michigan Senator Jim Runestad would prevent them from using other people’s hard-earned cash to promote their left-wing social agenda.
Any public employee, left or right, wants their retirement money to be invested in companies that net the most amount of money back. This idea is known as fiduciary duty, a responsibility that anyone investing on behalf of another holds, that they must prioritize making money first and foremost.
It sounds like common sense, but for some, this concept is foreign.
Rather than focus on their fiduciary duty, Progressives would rather consider “alternative” factors, known as ESG, or Environmental, Social, and Governance. What advocates of ESG investments posit is that some amount of return on investment can be sacrificed in the name of social good.
Any individual is free to do what they want with their money. However, when it’s no longer one’s own money at risk, or even something so serious as someone’s retirement, it is downright wrong to purposely choose a less-than-ideal strategy, especially when the retirees in question may not even support the sociopolitical goals their money is being wasted on.
Michigan’s SB 300 would disallow bureaucrats from considering anything besides pecuniary interest when choosing where to invest public employees’ money.
In a press release on the subject, Sen. Runestad said, “There’s been a sad trend of progressive activism taking hold in corporate boardrooms and public institutions across the country. But public boards have a duty to protect funds promised to retirees. They shouldn’t be gambling with public money on the always-spinning roulette wheel of dizzying wokeism.”
Whether one agrees with these “woke” ideas or not, the necessity of this policy should be obvious. It isn’t the place of unelected bureaucrats to divert money they didn’t earn into their pet social causes.
If these progressives are feeling charitable, they should donate with their own money, not yours.
Michigan ought to be focused on paying back its nearly $30 million in public pension debt. To do that, they can start by focusing on strong investments, not ESG strategies that studies have proven time and time again do not work.
