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Pay-to-Play: Quid Pro Quo or Coincidence?
You be the judge.
In a single week in May 1998, a money manager received (1) an invitation to attend a $1,000 per plate fundraising dinner for Wayne Curry, Prince George's County Executive in Maryland, and (2) a notice from Curry's office that the money manager had been "selected to make a presentation for its Large Capitalization Core product(s) to the Prince George's Police and Fire Service Plans."
The money manager wrote to Chairman Levitt that he was "told by someone involved in the search to let them know if I made a personal donation so they could let the officials know it came from within my firm. We refuse to make political donations and would rather be judged on merit."
Review copies of the correspondence on this page, and judge for yourself whether public pension funds would be better served if money managers were prohibited from buying management contracts with campaign contributions.