Did You Know...

**Written by Doug Powers

In a recent Time Magazine article, public sector pensions were referred to as the “single biggest threat to the U.S.’s fiscal health.” And believe it or not, that op-ed wasn’t written by Scott Walker, but rather Fareed Zakaria.

If public sector pensions are indeed a threat to America’s fiscal health, then how much will that threat go up if a comptroller who is under investigation is allowed to hand the funds over to be managed by a company under the direction of eco-shammer extraordinaire Al Gore?

Gird your coins:

Embattled city Comptroller John Liu has delivered a $16.56 million contract to the former vice president’s environmentally friendly investment firm, Generation Investment Management, to help manage hundreds of millions of dollars in city pension funds, The Post has learned.

The Comptroller’s Office had previously awarded Gore’s firm $12.8 million in pension-fund business under Liu’s predecessor, Bill Thompson.

Since 2009, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has approved $6 million in contracts to the firm, co-founded and chaired by Gore. Generation now manages nearly a half-billion dollars of state pension-fund investments, records show. In total, that’s more than $35 million in greenbacks to Gore’s firm.

Liu’s office proposes investment-management contracts to the board of trustees of the city’s five major pension funds. Generation is an investment manager for two of them: the New York City Employees Retirement System (NYCERS) and the Police Pension Fund.

But the Gore connection has been a closely held secret.

One NYCERS trustee said he didn’t even know Gore’s firm was a city investment manager.

“That’s been way under the radar. I was unaware of it,” said NYCERS trustee Gregory Floyd, head of Teamsters Local 237.

Even though the pension fund may have evaporated in a green cloud by then, retiring public employees are now at least guaranteed access to reduced-rate carbon credits and lifetime use** of a Fisker.

**The lifetime of the Fisker, not the pensioner

(h/t JWF)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe