Incompetence and heavy turnover in the Cabinet Secretary ranks may doom the Pension Committee before it even barely gets started.
A major force and chair John Ferris quit as Finance Secretary last week leaving a gaping hole and a leadership vacuum. The Vice Chair Brian Crall, Secretary of the Personnel Cabinet has shown his ineffectiveness on the KRS board.
The other driving force Brad Cowgill is rumored to be leaving as state Budget Director to fill the hole over in education. Ferris and Cowgill’s absence effectively kills the committee. They have already started canceling meetings.
The Fletcher administration’s has a record of incompetence with pensions at Kentucky Retirement Systems (KRS). They have been so inept they cannot even get their own people appointed to the KRS board. There are still 2 Patton appointees they have not bothered to replace.
The botched hiring job at Education has made the headlines. But the botched KRS Chief Investment Officer (CIO) hire and current Executive Director search are just as important or more. In many states like Texas where the CIO can make as much as $700,000 a year these are the highest paid jobs.
Fletcher’s 2 personnel secretaries Erwin Roberts and Crall have presided over a number of botched personnel decisions. Roberts presided over the CIO and Chief Operating Officer (COO) resignations due to the land buying scandal and never uttered a word.
Crall with a single Google search could have found out that hired CIO Adam Tosh last place of employment was under investigation for mismanaging a hedge fund for Ohio.
“Mimi Forbes, an MDL spokeswoman, confirmed Mr. Tosh resigned in December 2005. Ms. Forbes said he left because of family reasons and not because of a lawsuit filed in June 2005 against MDL by the Ohio attorney general's office on behalf of the $14 billion Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation.”
Tosh’s old boss Mark Lay was indicted on a number of federal and state charges, and it would not be a surprise if Tosh was indicted as well since he was the director of risk management for MDL.
KRS has decided to hire a headhunter to fill the Executive Director position since they have such a bad national reputation that despite national ads.
They had only 2 inside applicants - Bob Leggett the former KRS CIO from 4 years ago who is just took a job in Louisiana and current COO - Bill Thielen.
