A Baltimore senator and Comptroller Peter Franchot raised concerns Wednesday about the failure to appoint an African-American investment manager to an unpaid committee that advises the state?s $37 billion pension fund.
Larry Jennings, senior managing director of TouchStone Partners, had applied for the vacant position but later withdrew his name after an interview “because they were told of the assassination of their character behind closed doors,” Sen. Catherine Pugh told the Board of Public Works meeting. She would not spell out the “bad news[that] traveled throughout the investment community.” Jennings himself declined to comment.
Franchot, who serves on the board with the state treasurer and governor, had nominated Jennings to the unpaid post and said he was “quite troubled” by the nature of the discussion of Jennings? nomination for a position that?s been open for 10 months.
Franchot still voted to reappoint Wayne Shaner, a former Lockheed Martin Corp. investment manager, to the advisory committee.
State Treasurer Nancy Kopp, chair of the pension board, said she regretted what happened in this case and promised that procedures would be spelled out in greater detail.
Kopp said two female investment managers had also applied to the open position, and there are no women advisers either.
Both Pugh and Franchot have championed the hiring of more investment firms owned by blacks and women to be among the paid private managers of parts of the state retirement fund, and Pugh sponsored a law signed in May that provides for that.
But Kopp, who also supported the law requiring greater diversity among the managers, noted that the pension system?s executive director now makes those selections, not the volunteer investment advisory board Jennings had applied for.
In other action, Kopp and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who waschairing the board since Gov. Martin O?Malley is vacationing in Ireland, rejected Franchot?s proposal that the board hold its July 16 meeting on the Eastern Shore instead of Annapolis so people could attend the annual Tawes crab feast in Crisfield. But a $400 million bond sale is scheduled that day, and Kopp said the time and place for the electronic sale had been widely advertised.
