NYS comptroller candidate Drew Warshaw attacks incumbent Thomas DiNapoli's handling of pension funds

ALBANY — One of several challengers seeking to replace state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli believes the state’s pension fund has been mismanaged, potentially costing taxpayers billions.

Drew Warshaw, most recently the co-CEO of the affordable housing nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners, argued DiNapoli's approach to managing the $291 billion fund has been ineffective.

DiNapoli was appointed to the statewide office in 2007 after serving in the Assembly. He won his first election as comptroller in 2010 and has been reelected three times since, never facing a primary challenge.

As comptroller, DiNapoli oversees the state’s Common Retirement Fund. Warshaw said DiNapoli has squandered state taxpayer dollars by investing in actively managed funds. Those funds typically look to outperform certain benchmarks or the market as a whole.

Warshaw argues that if the comptroller chose to invest the pension fund in a diversified set of index funds, it would have saved taxpayers billions of dollars over DiNapoli’s tenure.

Warshaw released a report with an analysis of the fund under DiNapoli and what taxpayers could have saved under an alternative approach that saw the fund hit certain benchmarks. The alternative approach was based on data from the state pension fund's annual financial reports. Warshaw pegged the savings at close to $60 billion.

He estimated the comptroller’s office had paid hundreds of investment managers $11.3 billion in fees over the last 18 years.

"There is a direct connection between this pension fund's underperformance and New Yorkers' pocketbooks," Warshaw said during a news conference Monday at the state Capitol.

Warshaw said if elected, he would cut out actively managed investment accounts.

"It is crushing property tax and income taxpayers," he said. "This isn't complicated. It's not ideological, it's math and it's common sense."

DiNapoli campaign manager Daniel Pereira dismissed the conclusions in Warshaw’s report.

"This report is full of basic math errors and is proposing a plan that would risk the retirement of more than a million working families, retirees, and public employees. The pension is virtually fully funded and one of the strongest in the nation," Pereira said in a statement. "Using self-funded reports with shoddy math to endanger the financial security of working families is the politics of Donald Trump, and New Yorkers are sick of it."

Warshaw noted DiNapoli often points out how the state’s pension fund is fully funded. But that is because it’s required under state law, Warshaw said.

"Mickey Mouse could have been New York State controller, and the pension fund would have to be fully funded," he said.

Warshaw has raised more than $1 million to fund his campaign. He reported $899,385 on hand in his last state campaign finance report. DiNapoli had $618,914 on hand.

Two other men, former Kansas legislator Raj Goyle, and former Central Brooklyn congressional candidate Adem Bunkeddeko are also running in the Democratic primary.

Health care company CEO and Wall Street investor Joseph Hernandez is seeking the Republican nomination.