Gina Raimondo has presided over one of the deadliest COVID outbreaks and helped shield nursing home companies from accountability. She could get the nation's top health care job.
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tillegg:
oh gina
The secrecy has angered
Rhode Island political leaders, unions and
pro-transparency groups, some of whom see it as a deliberate effort to protect the interests of Wall Street entities that pour campaign cash into state races while positioning themselves for lucrative pension management contracts.
"This is sycophancy not just to Wall Street but to the hedge fund managers themselves -- the 1 percent of the 1 percent -- at the expense of an informed citizenry and a robust democracy," said former Rhode Island State Representative David Segal (D) in response to Raimondo’s letter justifying the secrecy. "That Raimondo finds this a compelling excuse to keep the documents under wraps isn’t a surprise, but the raw admission that she’s doing so to protect the interests of her Wall Street underwriters is astounding, a Romney-esque slip that should be treated as her '47 percent' moment.”
[…]
The intertwined relationships are perhaps easiest to see in Rhode Island, where the state treasurer’s office openly demands secrecy as a way to protect the financial industry, which in turn has spent big on Raimondo’s political campaigns.
The
New York Times reported that in the few years since Raimondo assumed office, "the Rhode Island pension system has ramped up its investments in hedge funds, private equity and venture capital from zero to almost $2 billion, or more than one-quarter of its assets under management."
A 2013 Maryland Public Policy Institute
report found that “state pension systems that pay the most for Wall Street money management get some of the worst investment returns” -- and Rhode Island seems a case in point. As the Times noted, Raimondo’s move has delivered below average returns for Rhode Island’s pension fund, but has been a fee jackpot for the financial industry.
In a letter obtained by IBTimes, Rhode Island Treasurer Gina Raimondo justifies pension investment secrecy to protect hedge fund managers.
www.ibtimes.com