Detroit pension exec earns twice as much as Michigan governor

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Pershgo)

Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones and others are blasting big raises for investment executives who oversee Detroit's Police and Fire Retirement System and its General Retirement System.

The executives were hired and had their pay set by an oversight committee that makes decisions about the $5-billion fund under terms of the city's exit from bankruptcy in 2014.

The Detroit News has the story:

In recent months, the committee responsible for the police and fire pension fund has approved two raises that amount to a 30% hike in the salary for the system's Chief Investment Officer Ryan Bigelow. It first adopted a proposal in December that boosted his annual $242,000 salary to $264,000. And, in March, it voted to up his pay to $315,000.

Meanwhile, the pay of Bigelow's deputy, Kevin Kenneally, has gone up nearly 38%, rising from $162,781 when he was hired in February 2018 to $224,000, under an action taken by the committee last month. Both are to be paid retroactively to Jan. 1, 2019.

Jones, a pension fund trustee, called the raises "ridiculous and unacceptable." The News reports other trustees are also angered by the bonuses.

Police and Fire Retirement System Chairman Jeffrey Pegg said it doesn't sit well with some pension trustees that the investment committee can hire staff, create salaries and use pension dollars toward paying them, without the trustees having any say.

"We're still a bankrupt city," said Pegg, who also has a seat on the investment committee and voted against the raises. "I can't support something of that amount."

The salaries are much higher than those of the mayor of Detroit and governor of Michigan — who make $175,000 and $159,000, respectively.

But The News reports the initial salaries for the execs were much lower than those of their peers in other cities. The investment committee chairman defended the raises, saying the executives should be paid "competitively."