CTPF Pension Election Really Heating Up
The Chicago Teacher Pension Fund (CTPF) Elections are right around the corner and that means negative attack ads and dirty politics are swirling in the air.
The Pension Fund Election Committee announced this week the five teacher candidates certified to run on the ballot for two Active Teacher Trustee positions - Paula S. Barajas, Alison Eichorn, Erika Meza, Tammie F. Vinson and Philip Weiss.
The four retired teachers certified to run as candidates for three Retired Teacher positions in the election are Lois Nelson, Mary Sharon Reilly, Maria J. Rodriguez and Jack Silver.
And the negative attacks ads were flying before the candidates were even certified.
A flyer entitled ‘Beware of Phil Weiss’ took aim at the Member’s First Trustee who chairs the powerful Investment Committee. The flyer said Weiss worked with anti-union forces including the Illinois Policy Institute and Paul Vallas campaign against CTU Organizer and elected Mayor Brandon Johnson.
The flyer further stated that he publically supported Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner who went to war against the unions and President Donald Trump in the 2016 Elections. They also claimed he called for the CTPF to invest in a private equity firm that fired over 30,000 employees at ToysRUs, charged exorbitant fees to funds and funded fracking and oil extraction at the expense of poor and indigenous people.
“It’s full of lies, they’re just afraid of me,” Phil told Second City Teachers. “They know my voting record is democrat. I did support Paul Vallas because I thought he was better on crime and he was going to keep taxes under control.”
Weiss said he has made a video and he will answer the attacks in it closer to the election.
The big party is CORE and their two candidates Tammie Vinson and Paula Barrajas. They currently control a majority of the seats on the Pension Board and have been fighting Members First. However, the CORE majority voted for Weiss to chair the Investment Committee and Weiss joined up with CTPF President Jeffery Blackwell and other CORE Trustees to censure three Trustees Tina Padilla, Maria J. Rodriguez and Gervaise Clay, and reprimand Sharon Reilly.
The fight between Weiss and CORE appears to be more rhetoric than substance. The CORE trustees have voted for every motion Weiss has put forth.
Former Teacher Trustee Padilla who runs the Pension Advocacy Group said they have not made an endorsement in this election. “We strongly believe that political caucuses are irrelavant to providing the best person for Trustee.”
The two incumbents are Weiss and Vinson, who replaced Padilla when she retired last year as a teacher trustee. Weiss had replaced Padilla as the Investment Chair after he had upset the CORE candidates in 2020 on the Members First ticket. His background in real estate and investing and videos he posted on the MF FB page helped him win.
The three challenger teacher candidates are Barrajas (CORE) who also serves as her school delegate at Ruiz Elementary School, Erika Meza and Allison Eichorn.
Meza and Eichorn are running on the REAL caucus ticket who along with MF challenged CORE in the last president election. Meza is currently chairperson of the CTU Tier Two Pension Committee and has an extensive background in pension investing. She has been especially vocal on the high fees money managers charge the pension funds. Eichorn served as a Trustee for the Chicago Teachers Union until she challenged the union for certain expenditures and was eventually forced out.
CORE is no stranger when it comes to politics and advertising. As incumbents they are the modern day version of the old United Progressive Caucus (UPC) who have vastly superior resources to send a mailer that one candidate estimates costs about $6,000.
They also cleverly snuck in a last-minute endorsement of their three candidates from the CTU delegates during the Q&A period toward the end of a very long meeting last month. I spoke against the motion to endorse the CORE candidates on the grounds that more democracy would be shown by allowing each candidate to speak before the House made its endorsement, as happened in the last election. But delegates voted to endorse the three CORE candidates - Teachers Barrajas and Vinson and Retired Teacher Jack Silver.
The Retired Teacher candidates are long-time incumbents Lois Nelson (CORE), Mary Sharon Reilly (CORE), Jack Silver (CORE) and Maria J. Rodriguez (Independent).
Nelson, Reilly and Silver had earlier served as UPC teacher trustees, but switched parties (most likely so they could win), while Rodriguez was also a former UPC Trustee, but is an independent who has called for a forensic audit of the Fund and asks lots of questions.
The question is who wants to win more. MF was hungry the first time around, but today attacks by the union leadership against them have been mostly unanswered. Their FB page is not as active as it was three years ago when Weiss won.
This election is important. There are many questions regarding the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund. Those questions include the heavy fees private equity and large number of money managers are charging the Pension Fund, a pending forensic audit that questions how the money is spent, a fund that is only 45 percent funded, and the fight to fix the grossly unfair Tier 2 Pension for new teachers.
Second City Teachers reported that CTPF Executive Director Carlton Lenoir was placed on a Do Not Hire List at the Teacher Retirement System, but the Board put out a statement to support him. However, Retired Trustee Maria J. Rodriguez stated on record that she did not agree with supporting the director who was placed on the list for emailing himself members social security numbers. He pleaded the 5th and refused to answer questions by the OEIG investigators for the state.
Active members will vote online. All eligible voters will receive a unique voter identification number by mail and, if available, by email. Pensioners will have the option of voting online or with a paper ballot. Online voting will open the day materials are mailed, the week of October 16, 2023. Voting closes on November 3, 2023, at 5:00 p.m. (CT).
The two Teacher Trustees will serve 3-year terms from Nov. 2023 - 2026.
The three Pensioner Trustees will serve 2-year terms from Nov. 2023 - 2025.