Dallas Pension Data

Dallas Cops’ Pension Fund Nears Insolvency In Wake Of Shady Real Estate Deals, FBI Raid

The Dallas Police & Fire Pension (DPFP), which covers nearly 10,000 police and firefighters, is on the verge of collapse as its board and the City of Dallas struggle to pitch benefit cuts to save the plan from complete failure.  According the the National Real Estate Investor, DPFP was once applauded for it’s “diverse investment portfolio” but turns out it may have all been a fraud as the pension’s former real estate investment manager, CDK Realy Advisors, was raided by the FBI in April 2016 and the fund was subsequently forced to mark down their entire real estate book by 32%.  Guess it’s pretty easy to generate good returns if you manage a book of illiquid assets that can be marked at your “discretion”.

To provide a little background, per the Dallas Morning News, Richard Tettamant served as the DPFP’s administrator for a couple of decades right up until he was forced out in June 2014.  Starting in 2005, Tettamant oversaw a plan to “diversify” the pension into “hard assets” and away from the “risky” stock market…because there’s no risk if you don’t have to mark your book every day.  By the time the “diversification” was complete, Tettamant had invested half of the DPFP’s assets in, effectively, the housing bubble.  Investments included a $200mm luxury apartment building in Dallas, luxury Hawaiian homes, a tract of undeveloped land in the Arizona desert, Uruguayan timber, the American Idol production company and a resort in Napa. 

Despite huge exposure to bubbly 2005/2006 vintage real estate investments, DPFP assets “performed” remarkably well throughout the “great recession.”  But as it turns out, Tettamant’s “performance” was only as good as the illiquidity of his investments.  We guess returns are easier to come by when you invest your whole book in illiquid, private assets and have “discretion” over how they’re valued.

Not unlike other public plans so anxious to justify 8% valuation interest rates that they invest pension money with anyone willing to tell them that’s what they are getting.

Though looking over their actuarial reports the Dallas Employees’ Retirement Fund is not much better.