Councilman seeks to freeze pension board travel

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Baltimore City Council Member Kenneth Harris, who recently asked the Judiciary and Investigation Committee to investigate the foreign travel of Baltimore Employees’ Retirement Systems board members, said he would attach an amendment to the new city budget to freeze travel now.

“I want to make sure the travel stops until the board has proper procedures in place,” said Harris, D-District 4.

Harris said the amendment would ask for an outside entity, either the ethics board or another yet-to-be determined city agency, to assist the ERS board in developing a new process for handling trustee travel.

“They need to set up new policies and procedures,” Harris said. “The budget process allows me to try to freeze the spending now while we’re investigating it.”

The budget, which the city charter requires be passed by June 30, will be introduced to the City Council this month. Hearings will be held by the Budget and Appropriations Committee from May until the deadline in June. By law, the City Council cannot add to the budget, only cut.

Harris said that if the amendment does not succeed, he will introduce separate legislation.

“If my colleagues don’t support this, I will introduce it as a piece of regular legislation,” he said.

The ERS board has been under increasing scrutiny since an Examiner investigation revealed that various members of the board took a series of paid overseas trips to investment conferences over the past 16 months, including Paris, Monte Carlo, Vancouver, B.C., and Bangalore, India. The trips have raised questions about the ethics of travel to conferences sponsored by investment advisers seeking to do business with the city.

Harris recently sent a letter to Council Member Robert Curran, chairman of the Judiciary and Legislative Committee, which oversees City Council investigations, asking him to look into whether the travel is “appropriate.” Curran, D-District 3, said at a recent council hearing to review ERS investment performance that he would “investigate the matter fully.”

sjanis@baltimoreexaminer.com

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