It’s no secret that some folks oppose political speech rights for corporations. And leading that charge are two New York City politicians who, to their credit, are more transparent about their goals and motivations than most.
I’m referring to Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and City Comptroller John Liu. Both sit on the boards of the City’s major pension funds, and both have been pushing for greater limitations on corporate political spending.
But they are at least transparent about it, explicitly saying that they want to shut down corporate speech. In Mr. de Blasio’s words: “[w]orking with pension funds here in New York and nationwide we can continue to get corporations to reject the political activities afforded them by Citizens United.” Admittedly, Liu and de Blasio do continue the “reform” community’s charade of hiding behind entirely-speculative (and, to date, largely-debunked) theories that political spending poses concrete risks to corporate profitability. But they are at least honest enough to say that what they really want is not shareholder control, or disclosure, but rather corporate silence.
And why would that be? Well, Mr. Liu’s press releases suggests an answer, right at the bottom of the page.
While Messrs. De Blasio and Liu are the most prominent board members of New York City’s pension funds, the entire board membership is listed on each press release. To take but two examples, the board of the Teachers’ Retirement System includes three representatives from the United Federation of Teachers. And the New York City Employees’ Retirement System board includes the leaders of three local unions.
In short, New York City’s enormous pension funds are strongly allied with organized labor. This isn’t really news, but the obviousness of their political advocacy is stunning.
Those funds are intended to pay for the retirements of New York City’s public servants. Their boards have an obligation to maximize the funds’ value, not use them to further any political agenda. But unions are politically active, intensely so in New York, and are major players in electoral politics. In that light, attempts to use their members’ pension funds to silence potential political competitors is not only unfortunate, it does a disservice to the pensioners whose livelihoods depend on these politicians behaving responsibility.
