Attention Chicago Police / Fire Retirees........They say Financial Condition is Deteriorating

Amateurs are running the Chicago Police and Fire Pensions into the ground for Retirees, Disabled First Responders, and Widows/Widowers and Children

Eugene Roy

Retired CPD Chief of Detectives 

June 18, 2026

Those of you who follow me on this and other social media platforms know that one of my largest concerns is the financial health of the Chicago Police (CPD) and Chicago Firefighters (CFD) Pension Funds. The CPD Fund is funded at a critically low level of 22% while the CFD Fund is in even worse shape at a disasterously low level of 18%.

Yet those of us who point out the critically low funding levels of the two funds are painted as the villains in this ongoing rush to financial disaster, rather than those who continue to wring their hands and stick their heads in the sand regarding the critically low funding levels, while claiming that Springfield is mandated to save the two pensions and will do so. We all know the fallacy of that claim.

I recently came across a recent article by @EdwardSiedle, a nationally recognized expert in the field of the mismanagement of Public Pension Funds. It's a lengthy article, but I've condensed it into a number of bullet points, found below.

• It's well past time the CPD and CFD retirees and annuitants to wake up and start asking the critical questions. · Our nation's public pension boards cannot make informed investment decisions because board members are simply not informed. ·
• Members of the board of trustees overseeing the $600 billion-plus in assets under management at the nation’s largest public pension, CalPERS, are not required to have any professional investment expertise whatsoever, and most do not have investment backgrounds. 
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• The majority are elected from within public-sector employee groups and have backgrounds in labor, education, or public administration. Over the decades, a few board members have had investment or financial industry experience, but they are the rare exception. · Since CalPERS board members are not required to have, and generally lack, knowledge of investments, it follows that far-reaching investment decisions involving hundreds of billions in pension assets are made without the benefit of such knowledge or, at best, with heavy board reliance upon recommendations by pension staff and external Wall Street advisers—recommendations subject to a myriad of potential conflicts of interest which the lay board is utterly incapable of evaluating. 
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• In short, CalPERS’s board does not, and indeed cannot, make informed investment decisions because its members are simply…not informed. The pension’s record amply reveals that the board has long failed to provide meaningful oversight and perform its proper governance function. · We also note that serving on the board of the massive pension is a part-time position, which pays no compensation whatsoever—ensuring that the most qualified candidates will not seek the demanding position. 
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• Canada selects directors to oversee its public pension funds for their financial expertise and pays some six-figure salaries. In the Netherlands, board members must obtain approval from the central bank, while In the US, a lineup of unpaid union-backed reps, retirees and political appointees are the vanguards of a $4 trillion slice of the economy that looks after the nation’s retired public servants. They’re proving to be no match for a system that’s exploded in size and complexity. · 
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• The disparity is dragging on state and local finances and—together with headwinds that include a growing ratio of retirees to workers and lenient accounting standards—gobbling up an increasing share of government budgets. Precisely how much it’s costing Americans is hard to say. 
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• In the 10 years through 2015, a group of large Canadian funds delivered excess returns that beat a passive portfolio designed to match their liabilities by 2.2% a year. That return was 0.7% more than US counterparts earned for taking greater risk above a similar index—equivalent to $280 billion in missed opportunities over a decade. · Bloomberg further noted that as inflation and interest rates have jumped, America’s public pensions have turned to riskier alternative investments to boost returns. 
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• Where boards’ own expertise has fallen short, they’ve relied on investment staff and outside advisers, “whose appetites for complexity add to costs and eat into returns.” · There’s no such test for the trustees who oversee public pension funds. More than half of US directors are still drawn from rank-and-file employees, more than a quarter from the public and the remainder from government officials, according to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. 
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• While some directors have strong financial credentials, others are novices. “Part-time, lay trustees are simply no match for the agents and complexity they are expected to supervise,” said Richard Ennis, co-founder of consultancy EnnisKnupp. Please note: THIS IS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT FOR MEMBERS OF THE CPD PENSION SINCE ENNIS WAS FORMERLY THE INVESTMENT "WATCHDOG" FOR THE FUND UNTIL THEIR CONTRACT WAS NOT RENEWED. 
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• In conclusion, critics—including pension reform advocates, former board members, and some academics—have long argued that CalPERS board elections are politicized, often dominated by union politics rather than qualifications and that the board lacks expertise to properly evaluate increasingly complex investment risks and hold staff accountable.
• This lack of expertise opens the door to excessive reliance on external consultants and vulnerability to poor performance or ethical lapses. · As a result of lack of comprehensive regulatory oversight, lack of board investment expertise and political interference, America’s public pensions are often referred to by prominent financial journalists and academics as the “dumbest investors in the room”—easily exploited by more sophisticated Wall Street players. ·
• Question: Who pays the easily-avoidable price tag—hundreds of billion over the past decade— for the lack of investment knowledge of the boards overseeing $6.5 trillion in America’s state retirement assets? 
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• Answer: Pension stakeholders, including participants and taxpayers like you and me.
  
  At some point, many of these retirees are going to have to go back to work. Imagine that.