From an emotional visit to Memphis by a CalPERS board member to a long-overdue COLA in Pennsylvania and an ongoing debate in New Jersey over private prisons, it was a busy week for public pensions in the United States.
Here’s what happened this week in pensions.
Willette: Workers’ Capital Must Work for Workers
This week, CalPERS pension board member and SEIU Local 521 President Mullissa Willette published a powerful reflection after visiting Memphis, where she connected the history of the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike to today’s fights over artificial intelligence, data centers, environmental risk, and pension fund governance.
Willette visited the Lorraine Motel, sat with workers at the church housing striking AFSCME sanitation workers, and then traveled to Boxtown. In this historically Black neighborhood, xAI has been running gas turbines to power its data center operations. Her piece asks a question pension trustees and worker advocates cannot ignore. When pension funds finance the infrastructure of the future, who bears the costs and who gets the benefits? Are workers’ interests truly being represented?
In short, Willette argues that pension dollars are workers’ capital. That frame guides decisions about public pensions. Fiduciaries’ core interest is the well-being of the pension beneficiaries themselves. Pension funds are not abstract pools of money, she says. The workers earn deferred compensation that funds their pensions. The people whose savings help finance these companies are often the same people living next to the data centers, breathing the pollution, working in the hospitals, and relying on public services when private companies make decisions without community consent. Those are the issues that pension leaders must weigh.
In the coming years, these tensions will increasingly shape pension policy debates. People like Willette remind us that investment returns are not the only factor to be considered.
New Jersey Public Workers Question Investment Strategies
In June, New Jersey’s public workers’ pension fund sold its investment in GEO Group, the private company that operates Newark’s federal ICE detention center at Delaney Hall. The state Department of the Treasury told NJ Spotlight News that the fund sold more than $800,000 in GEO Group corporate bonds earlier this year.
But pension stakeholders in New Jersey are still raising questions about investment priorities. “The retirement security of New Jersey’s public workers should never depend on the surveillance and detention of our neighbors,” said Communications Workers of America member Tia Block, who works at the New Jersey State Museum.
Delaney Hall has drawn protests, state scrutiny, and a lawsuit over alleged unsafe and unsanitary conditions, and GEO Group is not the only investment drawing scrutiny. ICE has widely used Palantir software, according to Wired. In many documented cases, those operations disrupted government workplaces, and, where public employees missed work and public services were disrupted due to enforcement actions. Palantir’s facial-scanning software was key to the operational infrastructure that resulted in missed work hours for civil servants.
During Minnesota’s Operation Metro Surge, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley reported that ICE agents stopped multiple off-duty Twin Cities officers of color—public employees and U.S. citizens. Data from Minnesota also show that the Palantir-aided enforcement action negatively impacted the state’s tax receipts, with more than $240 million in lost wages for workers in Minneapolis and Saint Paul alone.
Back in New Jersey, public records obtained by NJ Spotlight News show that the nearly $85 billion pension fund remains invested in Palantir Technologies. And last week, construction worker Edwin Lopez-Cornejo died in GEO Group custody. In the New York Times, National Day Laborer Organizing Network director Jorge Torres said, “His death was preventable, and his family deserves answers, accountability and justice. Edwin is one of too many people whose lives have been cut short while in ICE custody or during immigration enforcement operations.”
Legislation introduced this year in both chambers of the New Jersey Legislature would require the pension fund to curtail investments in companies whose government contracts or business practices infringe on personal data privacy. This would be for the purpose of determining immigration status. The bill does not name Palantir directly, though sponsors have pointed to concerns about the company as a reason for the proposal.
Oregon lawmakers seek comprehensive pension investment audit.
Sixteen Democratic state lawmakers asked State Treasurer Elizabeth Steiner to audit Oregon’s Employees Retirement Fund. They argue that the fund relies on private equity and that mandated periodic audits have not been conducted. The lawmakers want the review to examine asset allocation and investment governance. They also seek examination of emerging risks to keep the fund aligned with its long-term fiduciary responsibilities.
The Eugene-Springfield Lookout notes:
The Oregon Investment Council, which oversees the fund, set a 20% target for private equity, but as of May 2025, the fund had 27% allocated to that asset class. That translated to about $7 billion of excess investment in private equity. It was a costly decision because the publicly traded stock fund—which was 10 percentage points under its target—was booming. Put another way, the council and Treasury didn’t follow the independent experts’ investment advice on how best to allocate investments—and public employee pensions suffered as a result.
Minnesota grapples with PTSD among first responders.
A new Minnesota Star Tribune report examines the growing toll of post-traumatic stress on police officers, highlighting the financial costs for public safety agencies and pension plans, like the Minnesota Public Employees Retirement Association. Officers’ claims indicate psychological trauma stems from the 2020 civil unrest. Staffing shortages followed, as many walked off the job, increasing mandatory overtime. They fear every encounter could be nationally scrutinized.
Rep. Terry Stier, a police chief and Republican State Representative, says, “The fund is draining.” Stier goes so far as to accuse those abusing the system of “fraud.” The consequences extend well beyond individual officers. Every experienced officer who leaves means additional pressure on pension systems, which are forced to pay out benefits for longer periods than actuarially anticipated.
What began as a public safety crisis after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd evolved into a workforce and fiscal challenge. This has become a challenge for public pension plans. It affects workers inside and outside of law enforcement.
Some Pennsylvania Retirees Get Inflation Relief
The Erie Times-News reported that more than 60,000 Pennsylvania retirees will receive a pension increase through the new state budget. The cost-of-living adjustment applies to some of the commonwealth’s longest-retired teachers, state employees, municipal police officers, and firefighters.
For many of these retirees, this is the first pension increase in more than two decades. The Pennsylvania win is a reminder that pension policy is not only about investment returns and funding ratios. It also raises the question of whether retirees can keep up with the real cost of living after a lifetime of public service.