“It’s not your business,” Amalgamated Transit Union Local 698 President Jackie Lynn Jeter told Examiner reporter David Francis when he asked why she and her five fellow trustees refuse to release any information about the publicly funded pension system of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
Here’s a lesson you missed in Civics 101, Ms. Jeter: Taxpayers have an unchallengeable right to know how their tax dollars are being spent. This right supercedes any cozy deal between the Metro union and its co-dependents in Metro management.
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Unlike most private-sector workers, Metro employees are guaranteed generous pensions when they retire. How generous? As The Examiner previously reported, $70 million of overtime last year means there are actually Metro employees who will get pensions that exceed their base salaries.
If for any reason the pension fund goes broke or is otherwise unable to cover its obligations, taxpayers will be stuck with the bill. They just won’t be allowed to know why. The trustees — three Metro officials and three members appointed by the union — blatantly refuse to answer legitimate questions about their management of the trust fund. They also refuse to make public the fund’s financial audit reports. Jeter admits to being a trustee but won’t name the other two union-appointed trustees. Is this where Jimmy Hoffa has been hiding out all those years?
Jeter’s “public be damned” attitude, the secrecy surrounding the trust fund’s finances and the utter lack of accountability by the trustees overseeing the multibillion-dollar pension fund are potential warning signs of mismanagement or worse. Getting the facts is especially urgent since, as Francis reported May 30 on a day the trustees met in secret, Metro’s operating budget came up $900,000 short in February after making a contribution to the pension fund.
Other large public-pension systems in the nation minimize internal risks by submitting to rigorous outside oversight. But these six trustees won’t even disclose the fund’s total assets to union members, 150 of whom have requested confirmation of their expected benefits following The Examiner’s investigation. Union members who just got socked with a dues increase told Francis that they get none of the quarterly updates, audit reports or performance histories that are required in the private sector.
How can Metro justify giving just six individuals — only four of whom are known to the public — control of billions of dollars that are supposed to guarantee the retirement security of thousands of Metro workers? It was only four years ago that local teachers union officials and accountants were caught embezzling $4.6 million from their members. Remember the Chanel handbags, Tiffany pearls, season tickets to Redskins and Wizards games and other luxuries seized from the home of former union President Barbara Bullock, now serving jail time after pleading guilty to conspiracy and mail fraud?
Not the taxpayers’ business? Oh yes it is, every single penny of it, and this newspaper won’t stop demanding answers until we get them.
