Pritzker and removing political agendas from my teacher pension investments.

The Illinois Investment Policy Board.

My drawing and paintings are on Instagram @klonskyart

Most Illinois teachers want their pension fund invested wisely and not used to promote different political causes. Teachers are focused on a good honest return on the fund’s investments.

I know this to be true because Illinois union teachers vote that way at every state meeting.

Personally there are times when I supported investment boycotts for political reasons and opposed others for the same reason.

But members have been resolute.

With massive underfunding of our teacher pensions by the state legislators there are fewer dollars to invest, adding to the fund’s deficit and increasing the percentage of high-risk, alternative investment strategies.

The use of our pension dollars for political purposes reached a turning point in 2015.

The law (SB1761) passed the state assembly without a single nay vote in 2015. It amended the Illinois Pension Code prohibiting transactions by retirement systems with companies that “boycott Israel,” as well as with companies that don’t boycott Iran and Sudan. The law created the Illinois Policy Investment Board to investigate companies who don’t meet the Israeli lobby’s standards.

The law, which was the first of its kind, gave birth to 34 more anti-BDS laws in other states.

The same legislature that underfunded our pensions for decades was not inserting itself in our investment strategy, pressed by the Israel lobby.

Every single Illinois legislator voted in favor.

Chicago City Council also has passed a similar bill.

This all bubbled up when the Board voted to remove investments from Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream which sells their product in Israel, but removed it from the shelves in the Israeli Occupied Territories.

Ben and Jerry’s is owned by Unilever and so all Unilever’s multiple companies were also hit with an Illinois pension investment boycott.

It’s insane. The entire unelected Board should be abolished.

In the mean time, I heard today that the three Bruce Rauner appointees to the Board are gone. The seats are vacant.

Replacements are appointed by the Governor.

It is not likely the legislature will show enough spine to take on the Israel Lobby and dissolve the committee.

Meanwhile Pritzker could leave the vacancies vacant.

Or appoint three members who see their primary fiduciary responsibility without investing based on some outside group’s agenda.