Christie Officials Hid Wall Street Fees From NJ Officials
"Even as Chris Christie pushed to cut benefits to retired New Jersey firefighters, teachers and other state workers, saying there simply wasn’t sufficient money in the pension fund, his administration was concealing how millions of those pension fund dollars were spent.
Faced with intensifying criticism of skyrocketing fees the state pension was paying to financial firms, the Republican governor's officials have touted their own cost estimate. But they didn't offer a complete reckoning. The officials' testimony to state lawmakers and letter to one of the state’s largest newspaper chains earlier this year appeared to prove that the state’s fees were well below other states. In fact, the Christie administration’s pension analysis, obtained through an open records request by International Business Times, omitted so-called performance fees that the state is paying to Wall Street. Those levies, which give financial firms a cut of the state’s investment gains, now total hundreds of millions of dollars a year. A Christie administration presentation to state pension trustees also obtained by IBTimes similarly omitted those performance fees.
The disclosure that the Christie administration's cost estimates hid large payments to financial firms comes as New Jersey lawmakers are set to hold a hearing on Thursday to scrutinize the more than $600 million a year the state now pays in total pension fees. The hearing follows an IBTimes’ reporting series that prompted New Jersey pension trustees to launch a separate investigation into the fees -- some of which have been paid to financial firms whose executives made campaign contributions to Republican organizations backing Christie’s election campaigns."
