This report identifies three central threats to the ability of state and local pensions to make investment decisions that benefit workers whose deferred wages make up these funds: misguided anti-ESG pension-related policies, financial deregulation, and the effects of the anti-ESG campaign on large asset managers.
It also provides a roadmap state legislatures, governors, state attorneys general, state and local treasurers and comptrollers, pension fund trustees, and pension fund staff can follow to protect pensions against these attacks and expand their ability to make investment decisions in their beneficiaries’ best interest.
“Fossil fuel and other corporate interests have made clear they want the incoming presidential administration to strangle pensions’ right and ability to make investment decisions that benefit workers, whose deferred wages make up these funds, and their communities,” said Natalia Renta, the report’s author and associate director of corporate governance and power at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “States must fight back against these federal threats and defend their pensions.”