Another Reason Illinois is Broke

Along the lines of the below Navy Pier article, they're paying for poor performance:

• The only thing Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner wants to say about his state’s pension system is that he thinks the required payouts are so burdensome, there should be a constitutional amendment that would allow him to cut them.
  
  Rauner himself is a former private equity executive who managed hundreds of millions of dollars from public pension funds (including some in Illinois). As the pension funding crisis has become increasingly acute, he has avoided talking about how his own industry may have contributed to the crisis: specifically, through high fees and underperformance -- and, according to a new report, influence peddling.
  
  
• This new study suggests the involvement of placement agents in pension investments may have significantly worsened pension liabilities in states that were already facing substantial gaps between what they’ve saved for workers’ retirement and what they are contractually obligated to pay out in benefits.
  
  In Illinois, where Rauner is pushing retirement benefit cuts, the trend is illustrative. There, the $18.9 billion Illinois State Universities Retirement System (SURS) used placement agents for 15.6 percent of its private equity investments -- which then underperformed the pension fund’s other private equity investments by -9.2 percent. The underperformance may have cost the system hundreds of millions of dollars, money could have been used to shore up the plan’s funding.

The middle men get rich, while public employees get fleeced - twice. Read it all - the article ties in California, New York and Virginia under-performing funds along with Illinois.