Brad Lander calls for state probe into city DOE pension fund
City Comptroller Brad Lander has called for a state probe into the Board of Education Retirement System (BERS) after the pension fund’s deputy director allegedly lied to get a hefty raise.
Landꦬer penned a letter to state Department of Financial Services Superintendent Adrienne A. Harris, requesting her agency review BERS over what he calls its “broad dereliction of its duties.”
Daniel Miller, deputy executive director of BERS, received a $28,549 pay hike to $255,000 in 2018 after asking his boss to match the salary he claimed an Ohio pension system had offered him, the DOE pension fund’s Inspector General Anastasia Coleman found in an Aug. 9 report provided to The Post.
Miller 🎃applied for the job but never received an offer from the Ohio School Employees Retirement System – and continued to lie about it, even to investigators, Coleman claime🐠d.
BERS executive director Sanford Rich granted Miller the raise without verifying the nonexistent job offer ♒– and without consulting the board, investigators said. Rich then used Miller’s raise to plead for a bigger paycheck for himself.
Miller, 41, now collects $262,650 a year. Rich, 64, pockets $235,599. The pair are among the highest paid public employees in all of New York City. For comparison Mayor Eric Adams’ salary is $258,750.
Fꦿollowing the release of the report, Lander called on the city pension board to fire Rich and demote Miller, but trustees defeated the push by vote in October.
“The board’s failure to hold them accountable for their breaches♔ of public trust has placed me in a difficult position as the City’꧟s chief fiscal officer,” Lander wrote in his letter to Harris.
Funded largely with taxpayer contributions, BERS is the smallest of the city’s five retirement systems, c꧅overing over 57,000 central DOE staffers, school aides, cafeteria workers, and nurses, among others.🍃
However, Lander noted that its budget is the third largest out of the five systems, with a 2🐓023 budget of $34,657,458.
“The BERS Board has not exercised meaningful oversight of the budget, allowing the same staff who breached the public trust in relations🐻hip to their own salaries untrammeled control over a rapidly expanding budget,” Lander said.
Lander also claimed that BERS provides staff with minimal information about decisions regarding its $8 billion investment 🍷and that decisions are made with “little oversight and safeguards.”
“These failures by the BERS Board add up to a broad dereliction of its duties, and they have led to my loss of confidence in the ability of the board of trustees of BERS to provide fiduciary oversight to the system,” Lande♕r wrote.
“It is with a heavy heart that I raise these concerns. While I have begun a 🎃formal audit of the BERS through my capacity as the Comptroller of the City of New York, I feel obligated to raise these issu🙈es to the Department of Financial Services for a broader review.”
