From the KDP: Matt Bevin Is Once Again Under Fire From His Own Republican Party
GOP Auditor finds that his pension board is failing to comply with bipartisan transparency law
Kentucky Democratic Party
Frankfort, KY— A week after being sued by his hand-picked lieutenant governor, Matt Bevin is once again under fire from his own party. An audit released today by the Republican Auditor Mike Harmon said that Matt Bevin’s handpicked pension board is falling “drastically short” on meeting the legally established transparency law.
Matt Bevin has continued to attack teachers, even last week falsely claiming that they protested his illegal pension cuts to get time off of work.
Meanwhile, it turns out that his pension board has failed to meet basic transparency requirements on state-funded pensions as established by bipartisan legislation, Senate Bill 2.
Findings from Auditor Mike Harmon:
"KRS has abdicated its responsibility to abide by the Open Records Act," says the audit's first finding. It says it has done so by delegating "its responsibility to redact confidential and proprietary information for those contracts to external investment managers."Harmon said at the news conference that this "would be much like a baseball player going up to bat and being allowed to call his own balls and his own strikes." [Courier Journal, 8/27/2019.
Auditors found that the Kentucky Retirement Systems and the Teachers’ Retirement System of Kentucky fail to post more than 80 percent of their investment contracts online for public review, a step required by Senate Bill 2, passed unanimously by the legislature two years ago. [Lexington Herald, 8/27/2019]
“This is a big deal,” said Marisa McNee, spokesperson for the Kentucky Democratic Party. “Not only is Matt Bevin trying to illegally cut the pensions of our teachers, social workers, first responders and other hard-working public servants, but his handpicked pension board is also failing to comply with basic transparency requirements. Instead, they are allowing big investment firms to hide their fees and any potential conflict of interests from Kentuckians. Yet again, Matt Bevin is proving that he is not on the side of Kentucky working families.”