Politics

San Diego County Pension Board Backtracks To Avoid Conflict Of Interest

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published April 1, 2010 at 12:12 PM PDT

This story was published more than 14 years ago.

San Diego County’s Pension Board is considering a plan to hand over the job of managing the $7 Billion pension fund to a private contractor. But attorneys have warned the board to beware of conflicts of interest.

San Diego County’s Pension Board is considering a plan to hand over the job of managing the $7 billion pension fund to a private contractor. But attorneys have warned the board to beware of conflicts of interest.

The Pension Board has already hired Lee Partridge of Integrity Capital to manage the fund’s investments. The former investment manager was a public employee and earned around $200,000 a year. Partridge will earn more than a million annually.

But Partridge told the County it could save $25 million by outsourcing the whole investment department. He offered his own company.

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County Treasurer Dan McAllister says pension fund attorneys advised that granting that contract would be grounds for conflict of interest charges.

“They came back today and said that, in their opinion, it would set the system up for a problem if, in fact, he were to get this contract.”

The county pension board is independent from the board of supervisors, but Supervisor Diane Jacob sits on the board as a representative of the County. She wants to see if county employees could compete with private bidders.

The Board will research its options before proceeding.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.