Submitted by George N. Spitz, Dec 22, 2006 05:28

The New York Sun Editorial is on target. The somewhat shabby matter of using employees as servants for his ailing wife is far less serious and costly to New York than Hevesi's taking advantage of his position as sole Trustee of New York State and Local Government pension funds to reap in campaign contributions from trial lawyers and money managers that benefited from pension fund contracts. Hevesi's questionable pension fund operations have been skillfully exposed by the New York Sun.

Because of Hevesi's mismanagement, New York state and local governments were forced to contribute $2.7 billion to the pension fund that Hevesi manages this year, more than 10 times the $263 million they contributed in 2002, the year before Mr. Hevesi took office. This has forced many local governments to either raise real estate taxes or reduce services.

My contention has been that the approximately $14.5 billion New York State pension fund assets should be invested only in government securities, which if bearing interest of a little over 4 percent would more than suffice to pay for the roughly $6 billion required to pay annual retiree benefits. Hevesi disagreed and continued to place a major portion of pension funds in domestic and foreign stocks and invests and other speculative ventures, many of which offer very little and some no annual return.

Although I am Liberal Democrat, I supported Herman Badillo, a CPA, for City Comptroller in 1993, J, whoever Hevesi's GOP opponent was in 1997, John Faso for State Comptroller in 2002 and Christopher Callaghan, an accounting major, last month. All were better qualified than Hevesi, and it will be a disgrace if Sheldon Silver and company are allowed to pick his successor

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