Pensions

Museum Tower Is Sorry Their Awesome Glass Reflected on Nasher, Offers Same Solution Again

Officials at the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System, which owns the Arts District's shiniest building, Museum Tower, have loudly announced that they have a solution to their glare problem, the one muddying their neighborly relations with the Nasher Sculpture Center next door. They want the Nasher ... More >>

Dallas Morning News to Pension Fund: We Weren't Trying to "Wrongfully Record" You, and Your Lawsuit Threats Are Silly

The Dallas Police and Fire Pension System has had a rough few months, what with the widespread public perception that they've installed a big, fancy Eye of Sauron downtown . Also, they're having to deal with a lot more reporters than usual, which no one enjoys. One of those reporters is The Dallas M ... More >>

Dallas Financier Convicted of Securities Fraud Says He's Being Targeted by Nigerian Scammers

There's plenty of evidence to suggest that Dallas financier Barrett Wissman is not entirely on the up-and-up. That story he told hedge fund colleagues of taking over his father's sizable chemical company two years out of college? D reported that it was a tiny company that manufactured tablecloths an ... More >>

Dallas' Police and Fire Pension Claims the Morning News Illegally Recorded its Secret Meeting (Updated)

We've always assumed that The Dallas Morning News' white-on-rice coverage of the Museum Tower dust-up has been the product of good shoe-leather reporting on the part of Steve Thompson and Gary Jacobson: combing through open records, studying up on the arcane world of public pensions, developing sour ... More >>

Unions May Be Kidding Themselves by Banking on Getting Jobs Back After Hostess Liquidation

The bakers union's new president has finally broken his silence following the collapse of Irving-based Hostess, baker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies. It was the bakers, after all, who largely sat out the attempted restructuring in a New York federal bankruptcy court, then dynamited the negotiations by ... More >>

Was Hostess' Death a Murder, Suicide or Natural Causes?

Or was it all three?

The Nasher and Museum Tower Should Just Take This Fight to Court Where it Belongs

Sometime, just as a study of American photo journalism in print media today, go to the web site of the Dallas Morning News and take a good gander at the pictures they have published recently of anybody having anything at all to do with the Nasher Sculpture Center, and compare them to photos of anybo ... More >>

Pension Officials Have Done $1 Million of "Due Diligence" in Luxury Vacation Destinations

The Dallas Police & Fire Pension Fund stumbled into a PR disaster when it went all in on the allegedly-art destroying Museum Tower, but that was far from its only foray into real estate. At times, as Anna reported last year, as much of a third of the fund's $3 billion portfolio has been tied up in l ... More >>

Pension Officials Have Done $1 Million of "Due Diligence" in Luxury Vacation Destinations

The Dallas Police & Fire Pension Fund stumbled into a PR disaster when it went all in on the allegedly-art destroying Museum Tower, but that was far from its only foray into real estate. At times, as Anna reported last year, as much of a third of the fund's $3 billion portfolio has been tied up in l ... More >>

Dallas Police & Fire Pension Fund Says it Has "Several" Offers to Buy Museum Tower

Every month, the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System's board of trustees convenes at the break of dawn for its regular meeting. On a scale of exciting-ness, that meeting usually ranks somewhere between scrubbing the mold from one's bathroom tiles and looking at the photo album my aunt used to keep ... More >>

Government Handouts for Hollywood: Remember When Businesses and Workers Had Pride?

Today's story in The New York Times about Hollywood coming to Pontiac, Michigan, is one long sad letter from home for me. I could almost laugh if I could just get over the temptation to cry. I worked at Pontiac Motors as a young man, in the Fisher Body plant. Long long time ago. My most salient mem ... More >>

In Museum Tower vs. Nasher, Tower Officials Say the Only Sure Fix is Fixing the Nasher Roof

It seems like decades, or perhaps centuries, since we first started hearing about the feud between the Nasher Sculpture Center and its shiny new neighbor, Museum Tower, a high-end condo building owned by the pensioners of the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System. The latest development, aside fro ... More >>

The Museum Tower-Nasher Debacle is Getting Uglier By the Minute [Updated]

The Morning News has obtained an email from Dallas attorney Tom Luce, in which he tenders his resignation as the facilitator in the endless dispute between the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System. The email, sent to pension system administrator Richard Tettamant, ... More >>

Dallas Police & Fire Pension Sues State to Keep Records on a Development Private

Even as the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System (DPFP) tries to deflect media attention from its shiny, shiny Museum Tower project, Courthouse News reports that it's also fighting to avoid releasing information on a different luxury developer, one that it wholly owns. The pension system filed ... More >>

Dallas Police & Fire Pension Chairman Decries Media Scrutiny, Pushes Back Against Nasher

The Nasher Sculpture Center has been feuding with Museum Tower, its shiny new neighbor in the Arts District, over light, heat and reflectivity for going on six months now. At the end of July, we published a story showing that the tower isn't the only risky real estate project the pension fund has ... More >>

The Dallas Police and Fire Pension Keeps Paying its Advisers More Despite Bad Returns

Our cover story this week deals with the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System, the owners of the much-argued-about Museum Tower project in the Arts District. In researching the story, we obtained a draft of the fund's 2011 annual report, which hasn't been released yet. It shows that although the pens ... More >>

The Dallas Police and Fire Pension's Big Real Estate Gamble

Museum Tower isn't the only troubled real-estate deal that the pension fund has gone all in on. But so far, only its investment advisers are winning big.

Dallas Police & Fire Pension Fund Decides Maybe Not Quite So Much of Their Money Should Be in Real Estate

At the ungodly hour of 8:30 a.m. today, the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System board of trustees held their monthly meeting. We decided to join them, both due to our love of waking up in what was basically the middle of the night to sit in a conference room, and because of the presence of one tanta ... More >>

Police and Fire Pension Fund Want to Invest in 'Infrastructure.' Whatever Could That Be?

This morning I found a story in my copy of The Dallas Morning News called "Dallas Police & Fire Pension System looks to reduce its real estate exposure." Translated into ordinary English, that headline would be: "Boson Six Pineapple Hiccup-Hiccup Do Not Read This Story." Of course I rushed into th ... More >>

Dallas Police & Fire Pension Says Lawsuit Isn't Imminent, Questions Morning News' Ethics

Perhaps you've heard by now: the Morning News reports that negotiations "have all but broken down" between the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System, who own the neighboring Museum Tower, which its critics say is really lighting up the neighborhood. But a statement ... More >>

Dallas Police & Fire Pension Fund "Would Look Very Hard At Investing in Dallas Again" After Museum Tower, Administrator Says

Museum Tower and the Nasher Sculpture Center have been in mediation for months now to try to hammer out the Case of All That Incredibly Reflective Glass. In an interview with The Dallas Morning News today, Nasher architect Renzo Piano harshly criticized Museum Tower's owners and developers, saying t ... More >>

Dallas Police and Fire Pension Boss: Fund's Risky Investments "Are Building America"

The Nasher Sculpture Center and the developers of the Museum Tower project are continuing to hammer out their white light, white heat debacle behind closed doors. They recently hired a mediator in lawyer Tom Luce, who promptly asked both sides to quit talking to the media already. Above, however, y ... More >>

Mitt Romney: American Parasite

Mitt Romney’s years at Bain Capital represent everything you hate about capitalism.

Fight! Fight! Rich People Duke It Out Over Art and Real Estate! Someone Lend them a Knife!

Art fight! Art fight! Everybody ditch class and run out in the halls to watch! The rich kids are fighting about their art! On this day when the national economy is still on life support, Texas schools are sinking into Dickensian poverty and the city can't afford sewers, our city's one and only, sol ... More >>

GOP Talking About Sex While Big Money Screws Pensioners

You wait. When this whole presidential election gets rolling in earnest, pensions are going to be a whole lot sexier issue than condoms. People just haven't figured it out yet. Josh Gotbaum, director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., is quoted in a Q&A in The Dallas Morning News today saying t ... More >>

Is Bankrupt AMR About To Throw its Employees Under the Plane?

​Stories in today's Dallas Morning News and New York Times report that American Airlines could try to ditch some or all of its pension plans during its trip through bankruptcy court. We should all hate that. Every time we allow another business to slash the throats of its own retirees, we ex ... More >>

More Tarnish for the "Texas Miracle"

New report finds the Lone Star swimming in deep debt.

The public school finance crisis is waking up moderates from their Tea Party-induced slumber.

Citing "Great Recession," Dallas Police & Fire Pension Fund Trims Benefits For "New Hires"

Richard Tettamant​Back in mid-June came The Big Announcement: The Dallas Police & Fire Pension System was ponying up the $200 million needed to build the long-stalled-out Museum Tower high-rise in the Arts District. That same day, you may recall, we revisited a blast from the past -- the syste ... More >>

The Virtues of Gerard Arpey

​Back in May, you may recall, JP Morgan analyst Jamie Baker kinda gave it to American Airlines CEO Gerard Arpey during a first-quarter earnings conference call. Said Baker to Arpey, following a discussion of dwindling earnings and a vague "flight plan" for the future, "I guess you just don't sound ... More >>

How's the Dallas Police & Fire Pension Fund's $27-Mil Investment in Arizona Working Out?

This is right about where the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System invested $27 million four years ago.​Speaking of the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System, which is investing $200 million in the looooong-in-the-works Museum Tower in the Arts District, I was reminded that way back in '06, t ... More >>

Another Dallas Money Man is Charged in New York State Pension Fund Scandal

In February, the Dallas Business Journal ran a Q&A headlined "Two Minutes with Saul Meyer," referring to the founder of and partner at  Harwood Street-based Aldus Equity. In the piece, Meyer said that what set Aldus apart from other private equity firms is its "degree of governance and tran ... More >>

Barrett Wissman, Not Makin' St. Mark's Proud

Barrett WissmanThe New York Times reported this morning that Dallas-based hedge fund manager Barrett Wissman has pleaded guilty to securities fraud in New York, where he's cooperating with the New York State Attorney General and the Securities and Exchange Commission's investigations into corruption ... More >>

Don't Mince Words, Frederick Rowe, How Do You Really Feel About Public Pensions?

Incidentally, this shirt costs $40.This morning, Bloomberg News takes a peek at public pension funds across the country and, after adding up the dwindling numbers, finds a crisis-in-the-making: "With stock market losses this year, public pensions in the U.S. are now underfunded by more than $1 trill ... More >>

TXU, The Buyout and the Power of "Greenmail"

Dallas Firefighters and Cops Love...Tucson?

Sticker Shock

Our bill finally comes in for the Kirk/Ware era

Busted

Even in these boom times, Dallas is broke, thanks to a city council that has been giving away the store

Tension Fund

Concerns about the soundness of the city's retirement fund are buried in a political mud fight