New York’s city comptrollers are supposed to safeguard taxpayer dollars, but many have treated the city pension funds they oversee as their own play money — and Mark Levine is no different.
Thursday, Levine announced that he’ll skim $4 billion in pension-fund cash to boost “affordable housing,” in response to a “worsening housing crisis.”
Huh? New York pols have bemoaned the housing crisis for nearly a century — which makes it more the status quo than a “crisis.”
Yes, the city does need more housing, but that’s largely because lefty pols (like Levine) have pushed policies that stifle development and erode the housing stock.
Equally problematic is when comptrollers tap pension-fund cash for their own pet causes.
That money, remember, is supposed to be invested to fund payouts of public employees’ pensions.
Those payments are guaranteed by taxpayers, so when the funds’ value falls short, Joe and Jane New Yorker have to make up the difference.
And when comptrollers invest pension funds in the cause du jour, they risk sacrificing returns — leaving taxpayers on the hook.
It’s a major breach of their fiduciary duty.
If Levine’s “affordable housing” investment is truly a good financial investment, then his announcement is a charade: It has nothing to do with boosting affordable housing.
If, however, he’s aiming to expand housing, despite lower expected pension-fund returns, then he’s hurting the funds at the public’s expense.
He can’t have it both ways.
Note, too, that Gov. Kathy Hochul & Co. are poised to pass pension-plan “fixes” (lowering the retirement age, for instance) as a suck-up to the unions.
That’ll only make the taxpayers’ bill even higher — to the tune of $328 million a year in Gotham alone; all the more reason to safeguard pension-fund cash.
In any event, it’s not the job of a comptroller, the city’s financial manager, to decide which social investments to make; that’s a political, not financial, decision.
Levine isn’t the first comptroller to overstep, of course; his immediate predecessor, Brad Lander, sold off Israel bonds because he despises the Jewish state’s elected leaders.
We get it: Eyeing higher office, comptrollers look to pander for future support.
But again, their job is to minimize taxpayer costs by maximizing returns, not divert funds to bolster their personal popularity.
If Levine doesn’t get that, he shouldn’t be comptroller, let alone ever hold any higher office.
