New York Pensions and Primaries: Results and Reminders
Pushing off a reckoning with those who want to play politics with the pension assets
The results are in, and it wasn’t close: DiNapoli won the Democratic Party primary this past Tuesday.
Don’t look at me — I’m a Republican. I can’t vote in Democratic primaries in NY.
DiNapoli, on the whole, has run his office professionally, at least I, as an outsider, can see. When I started this post, I was just reading this piece:
24 Jun 2026, Daily Voice: Westchester Group Home Employees Used Residents’ Bank Info To Make Amazon Purchases: DA
The arrests of Yonkers resident Nadajah Jackson, 28, and Staten Island resident Destiny Galan, 25, in connection with the alleged scheme were announced by Westchester County District Attorney Susan Cacace and New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli on Tuesday, June 23.
According to prosecutors, both women worked for the Association For Mentally Ill Children of Westchester, also known as AMIC, which runs The Clear View School at 480 Albany Post Rd. in Briarcliff Manor.
Jackson is accused of making purchases from Amazon and other merchants between November 2022 and January 2025 by debiting the bank accounts of four AMIC residents. Prosecutors said those purchases totaled $45,448.47.
….
The case was investigated by the Office of the New York State Comptroller, the Tarrytown Police Department, and the Westchester County District Attorney's Office Investigators Squad, with assistance from the Economic Crimes Bureau. It is being prosecuted by Complex and Pattern Crimes Deputy Bureau Chief Courtney Johnson.
I’m on the email list of the Office of the NY State Comptroller, which often has press releases on these types of arrests. I have a personal interest (due to my son, who is cognitively disabled, and will likely end up living in a home like the one above) in stories like the above. This is the press release for the above arrest: DiNapoli and DA Cacace: Group Home Employees Charged with Stealing Over $47,000 from Residents with Disabilities
The other type of arrests I follow involves fraud in general: Medicaid, pension, you name it.
Here are a few from the past month:
1 Jun 2026 DiNapoli: Four Arrested for Allegedly Defrauding Medicaid Out of Over $1.6 Million
29 May 2026 DiNapoli: Former Esperance Fire Chief Charged With Stealing $10,000
If you go back to the beginning of the year, there are more, of course. None of this is new behavior — I’ve been following his press releases for years, especially the pension fraud ones — he’s been plodding along, doing what the comptroller is supposed to do.
He’s been fine. Not flashy.
Views on New York State Pension Assets
As a reminder, this was my prior post on DiNapoli and his opponents in the primary:
New York City & State Pension Watch: No, Don't Play With the Assets
From August 2025, the commies at Jacobin touted this bright idea: [before Mamdani was elected]
Mind you, this is what DiNapoli had on his candidate statement:
Taking bold steps to transition the funds investments to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, protecting taxpayers, state and local government retirees from the fiscal impacts of climate change
….
Using shareholder influence to press companies to address climate change, increase diversity on corporate boards and more fully include women and minorities
Developing an Emerging Managers program to break down barriers that limit career options for women and people of color in the financial sector
I pulled everything I could find re: pension funds for non-fiduciary reasons from DiNapoli’s pages.
(I doubt DiNapoli is going to waste a lot of time on this for the general election… as a Republican in NY, I know there’s not much going to go on here in November. He’s safe.)
But the opponents thought the following was appropriate treatment of state pension funds:
Ray Goyle:
DIVEST FROM fossil fuels
….
DIVEST FROM foreign bonds
….
INVEST IN affordable housing
Drew Warshaw:
Drew proposes launching the largest affordable housing fund in the United States by investing $20 billion from New York’s pension fund to build and preserve homes New Yorkers can actually afford where they live and work.
This approach will not only create a much-needed, currently nonexistent source of low-cost capital for affordable homes, helping to address the most acute challenge faced by working New Yorkers, it will also help to secure the futures of our dedicated public servants.
….
As State Comptroller, Drew proposes to completely divest from fossil fuel companies. This includes any actively and passively managed investments, including public equities, fixed income, and alternatives such as private equity. All of it.
Not only is this an urgent and necessary approach to fight climate change, but it is also financially prudent. According to Drew’s report “The Fiduciary Case for Divesting the New York State & Local Retirement System’s Common Retirement Fund from Fossil Fuel Companies” had the NYS Common Retirement Fund done this 19 years ago, it would have earned a 5.4% higher rate of return. Instead, the pension fund earned worse returns for higher risk, costing taxpayers and retirees more money in the middle of an affordability crisis.
At least Drew knew he had to mouth the word “fiduciary” in there.
Drew will divest from all foreign bonds, including the $368 million in Israel that Tom DiNapoli has amassed over his 20 years in office, and at an accelerated pace in recent years.
Ooooooh, $368 million.
Out of how much?
Hmm, $145.8 billion + $226.0 billion + $41.4 billion = $413.2 billion.
So $368 million / $413.2 billion = 0.09% of the portfolio.
Let me give you a visualization of that: [courtesy of Gemini]
0.09% is a VERY SMALL AMOUNT of the New York state pensions.
I see.
That is not making or breaking the pension funds, and that certainly isn’t much money when it comes to Israel, either. Would you like to explain what’s going on, Drew? Ray?
I mean, I know what y’all are about.
If you don’t know that 0.09% is an immaterial amount in the allocation of the pension funds, other than to try to curry favor with Jew-haters, well.
NYC: What about the Affordable Housing?
This is not intended to be unique to New York, but it was mentioned by both the DiNapoli opponents and it’s pointing out NYC issues … and something just got worse (which I will get to shortly).
22 Jun 2026, Masha Liberman and Ilya Inozemtsev: Can affordable housing save American pensions?
New York is constantly in the spotlight for having one of the nation’s largest housing deficits. Recently, median asking rents in the city rose to 20% above pre-pandemic levels. In 2026, it is safe to say that New York has become a place where many people can barely afford to live. In April, a major commitment was announced to invest pension fund capital in affordable housing. The initiative came from Mark Levine, the New York City comptroller, who agreed to invest $4 billion in affordable housing across the five boroughs. On paper, billions of dollars are going toward something the general population desperately needs. The response, however, tells a different story.
….
[then the state comptroller race]
But this year is different, DiNapoli is facing a challenge from two Democratic candidates, Drew Warshaw and Raj Goyle. Even though these are two different people, they both are running with a similar platform that DiNapoli failed to manage the $291 billion pension fund fairly, relying too much on Wall Street fees and did nothing to help the state resolve its housing problem. They say, while utility rates in New York have been soaring, DiNapoli, incumbent state comptroller, was idle and seemingly indifferent to the problem.
….
Now Warshaw eyes the NYS comptroller’s job with the intention to invest $20 billion from the pension fund into affordable housing relying on his experience as a former executive for a housing non-profit. It’s five times bigger than the NYC initiative and probably won’t be met with open arms by the general public but Warshaw’s platform may have a point.
Oh wait.
Drew Warshaw bitched about $0.4 billion in Israeli bonds, and he wants to take $20 billion to play with for affordable housing?
But we need to build housing!
I will come back to this in a moment.
I want to point out something: [yes, I’ve added bolding]
Nowadays, there’s plenty of proof that affordable housing construction is a better investment than many. What’s even more reassuring is that the upside is not a high risk as it may be the case with private ventures. According to Mark S. McDaniel, president and CEO of Cinnaire Corp., a community development non-profit organisation, in 2023 noted that the returns on affordable housing space range from 4 to 7.25%. This range is on par or even higher that the return on ten year treasury bonds.
Of course, over the long term the index spread investments by pension funds such as into S&P 500 delivers an average annual return exceeding 10% but the portfolio needs to be diversified. In 2024, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that pension funds in recent years had increased investments in affordable housing in part because it could be more stable over the long term than market-rate housing.
Could be, perhaps.
But here is the rub: the political risk.
Here is the latest in NYC:
25 Jun 2026, NYPost: NYC enacts rent freeze on 1M stabilized units after Mamdani is accused of stacking board: ‘Absolute farce’
The New York City Rent Guidelines Board approved Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s key campaign promise to “freeze the rent” on Thursday — in a move that landlord advocates slammed as “an absolute farce.”
The board passed a rent freeze on both one-year and two-year leases for the Big Apple’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized units in a 7-1 vote. Arpit Gupta, an appointee of Mamdani’s immediate predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, was the one no vote.
It came hours after the public resignation of one of the RGB’s nine members, Christina Smyth, who accused the panel of ignoring its own data during the lengthy process to decide whether to adjust rents — claiming the decision was made “last year on the campaign trail.”
That’s only NYC, which is one of the few places needing “affordable” housing.
There are a bunch of people who would love to live in NYC, and specifically Manhattan, even though they really have no business being there.
(-cough- -cough- the UN)
But that is getting into some of the affordable real estate problems — political risk, as mentioned before. These projects get built under certain circumstances, often with stipulations (and perhaps subsidies), but the question becomes: what happens when the politicians decides it’s expedient to change the conditions?
That base 4% to 7.25% return may no longer hold, would it… not if there are votes to buy, eh?
But hey, it’s all government money, right?
Taxpayer money that went to contributions for government pensions, that went to pay for government projects in affordable housing… that went to making sure the right people stayed in government.
(And made money from government)
That’s what it’s all about!
With respect to NYC specifically, it’s difficult to take these “investments” in projects that have huge political risk due to government interference, such as rent freezes (or worse).
I’m pretty sure Trump has mentioned how many local pols he had to pay off to do his deals in NYC (or Chicago)… but what does it mean when it’s the pols in charge of the pension money having to pay themselves off?
That’s the oldest political trick in the book.
One of the biggest problems already is that there are trillions in public pensions overall, and individual public pension funds can be billions alone.
I’m not saying that the pensions shouldn’t invest in housing at all — residential and commercial real estate are legitimate investments, even “affordable” projects (i.e., where there are limitations) — just that there are risks involved, just as with all other investments.
And that with respect to NEW YORK CITY specifically, some risks have been shown recently. Some that were known to have existed before.
No.
No specific asset class will save any public pensions.
Not affordable housing. Not private equity. Not index funds. None of them.