"As Chair of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Board's Audit and Compliance Committee, we are committed to ensuring that each board member has complete access to all of the information necessary for the execution of his or her fiduciary duties. To that end, the Board and external counsel had developed a methodology to account for the Board's transparency obligations while also ensuring the integrity of the PSERS document collection and preservation processes, thereby maintaining our ability to comply with an ongoing federal grand jury investigation as well as an internal investigation.
System members entrust the Board to undertake all functions relating to the oversight of the System, including the oversight of investment decisions and compliance with government inquiries. A public dispute pitting Board members against each other leaves no victor and distracts from the more pressing inquiry such as enhancing returns for System members.
We and outside counsel remain available to continue to timely address any information access requests. But pursuing access to requested information through costly and protracted litigation depletes the very funds that this Board is meant to protect and diverts time and effort from protecting the interests of the beneficiaries in responsibly addressing the subject matter of these investigations."
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