Singing River Health System has refused to release a financial accounting of its employee pension fund, even though its own annual audit says the records are available to the public on request.
On March 9, the Sun Herald made such a request. We asked for retirement-plan financial statements from 2006 to 2014, except the year 2010-2011 because the newspaper found that statement online.
As the Sun Herald’s Anita Lee reported, without all of those records it is impossible to say how investments might have affected the retirement plan.
For months now the holy grail of reporting on the Singing River Health System disaster lay in the well rumored sweetheart related party transactions between insiders at the Health System, the Health System itself and the defined benefit pension plan the Hospital’s Board of Trustees voted in secret to terminate last November. SRHS has fought any public disclosure of its finances tooth and nail preferring instead to launch a legal jihad to remove Chancellor Harris from the related state litigation filed by retirees desperate to save the financial results of life’s work for the system.
Slabbed has documented previously undisclosed related party transactions involving the former Board of Trustee Attorney, his family and the health system. Slabbed’s commenters have uncovered even more related party transactions involving the Health System and its former Legal Services director. My guess is these limited disclosures barely scratch the surface of the cronyism that is at the heart of the SRHS financial meltdown.
So what is SRHS hiding in the pension’s financial records that Anita Lee seeks? Nunn Yabidnez posited a theory a few days ago on these pages that matches a rumor that has been circulating for a little while now and this theory is well worth exploring in the absence of any information from the Pension Plan:
Here’s a possible theory for a lot of the SRHS pension problems. I don’t claim it as fact, but the dates and the “what is known,” combined with the various external situations, tend to fit. Remember, it’s just a theory.
Some background:
One way to “benefit” from pension management is to invest the funds in places that will make a reasonable income for the fund, but also cut the management in for a taste via “commission sharing” from brokers, investing in “sweetheart” deals with “friends” and doing so via what appears to be a legit broker/manager (see FiduciaryVest). There are even ways to pull equity market manipulations. And as long as things stay fair-to-middlin’ and nobody gets too stupid or greedy, things could rock along with no one ever being the wiser. However, if one or more of the “covering factors” go south, things can get bad in a hurry, esp. if the fund is stretched too thin on “friends helping friends” deals that depended on an up market. So, what does that have to do with SRHS?That said, here’s a maybe: Continue reading “What is Singing River Health System and the Jackson County Board of Supervisors Hiding? A comment bump”