New York City's five pension funds will provide greater public access to information, including webcasts of pension board meetings and an online library of pension fund information, in an initiative that will begin July 1, city Comptroller John C. Liu announced March 28.
“Greater transparency ultimately will lead to stronger performance, Mr. Liu said in a news release describing the initiative, called Pension NYC.
“When compared to other large pension funds, the New York City pension funds do not reside among the leaders in transparency,” Michael Loughran, a spokesman for Mr. Liu, wrote in an e-mail. “The Pension NYC initiative will change that.”
Information about the pension funds — including quarterly and annual reports — will be available online. Also, by year's end, Mr. Liu also hopes to incorporate pension fund expenditure information into Checkbook NYC, an existing program that posts city agency spending online in real time, the news release said. And by the end of 2012, he hopes to provide real-time data on pension fund holdings.
Mr. Liu is investment adviser, custodian and trustee of the five city pension funds, which had combined assets of $113.4 billion as of Dec. 31. The five funds are the New York City Employees' Retirement System, Teachers' Retirement System, Police Pension Fund, Fire Department Pension Fund and Board of Education Retirement System.
