Recently ArnoldWatch called on
the Governor to divest his $1 million-plus holdings in Dimensional Fund
Advisors – a private mutual fund company that has a contract to manage
$636 million for CalPERS, the state’s pension fund.
If the conflict of a governor gaining financially from the decisions of
a CalPERS board he has control over isn’t bad enough, here’s another
reason Arnold must sell off his shares – purported to be up to 25% of
the company’s ownership (though his actual stake is as-of-yet
undisclosed):
Dimensional manages money for an extensive list of corporate clients,
including some of the biggest special interests active in the state:
Verizon Communications, Citigroup, Pfizer Inc., Unocal, and WellPoint
Health Networks (Blue Cross), AT&T Corporation, BellSouth
Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Boise Cascade Corporation, Kellogg
Company, PepsiCo, Inc., Sprint Corporation. These companies have a huge
stake in many of California’s hotly debated issues.
While the maximum campaign donation these corporations can
make is $21,200, any one of them could give $21 million or more for
Dimensional to manage, from which Arnold can make a fortune. And all
the corporate money coming to the Gov through Dimensional won’t be seen
by the public since privately-held Dimensional reports little to the
SEC, and the governor doesn’t have to disclose more than the limited
information we already have. We may never know how deep the Dimensional
slush fund goes.
Arnold must clean up his own financial house if he has any hope of credibly laying claim to cleaning up Sacramen
