Despite being entirely funded by taxpayers and Metro riders, the pension fund for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority workers is administered without government oversight and will not disclose its assets, or even the names of all of its trustees.

Unlike private-sector or other public-sector pensions, which have strict accounting and public reporting requirements, the Metro pension fund operates in a regulatory vacuum. According to the collective bargaining agreement between Metro and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, the trustees of the fund — six people named by Metro and the union — have complete control over how the retirement money is managed.