7 Ways Private Equity Is Gaming Your Pension

Kentucky high school history teacher Randy Wieck is on a lonely mission to discover the whereabouts of the 12 percent of each paycheck he and 74,800 other educators are putting into a state pension fund. He’s especially keen to unearth details on the $1.1 billion the badly underfunded Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System has committed to private equity and hedge funds. The quest pits Wieck against billionaire fund managers, a white-shoe law firm, state pension officials, and even his own union. “It’s my money and taxpayer dollars they’re skimming,” he says. “And they refuse to say how much they’re charging.”

Wieck filed an open-records request last fall seeking access to details of the terms under which his pension plan had invested in alternative assets. Frustrated by the resistance he faced, he drafted his own legal complaint and sued the plan in Jefferson County Circuit Court in November. The suit was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds in March. Wieck is considering whether to refile in Franklin County, where the judge said the suit belongs.