Mass. Pension Chief Resigns Days After Records Ruled Public

The head of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) pension fund on Monday revealed he’d be stepping down in August.

His fund has been at the center of controversy because, until recently, it was not subject to FOIA laws and does not hold open meetings. It has also had its accounting questioned.

Mass. Governor Charlie Baker signed a bill last month changing that. Additionally, a judge in March ruled that records should be public.

More from the Boston Globe:

A former bus driver who served as general manager of the transit authority before moving to the $1.5 billion pension fund, [Michael H.] Mulhern said he was leaving with “decidedly mixed emotions” after a decade in the job.

Mulhern, 57, has been under pressure from union and administration officials over the pension’s lack of transparency, after a $25 million hedge fund loss in 2012 went undisclosed for more than a year.

The pension fund for employees at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is organized as a private trust and has used that status to avoid disclosures that are typical of other pension funds for public workers in the state. The fund does not hold open meetings, for example, and for years has published late and incomplete annual reports.

[…]

There are other potential issues lurking in the projections, critics say, including the valuation of alternative assets such as hedge funds and private equity that the FTI report did not fully examine.

In addition, the fund disclosed in a recent audit that it assumes 100 percent of its employees are men, while, in reality, one-quarter are women.