Public pays but Metro only offers secrecy

Examiner.com reports:

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.

Many public pension funds voluntarily follow standards set by the Government Accounting Standards Board, which obligates plans to report deficits or surpluses.

The Metro fund has adopted no such reporting requirements and is not required by law to publicly reveal details about the its financial performance or solvency. The last public disclosure of the fund’s assets came in 1999, when news reports put its value at $2.5 billion.

Enron wishes it could have gotten away with this.