Jump to full article: Washington (PA) Observer-Reporter, 2009-08-21
Author: Barbara S. Miller, Staff writer
Intro: Washington County Commissioner Bracken Burns was fuming Thursday when it appeared that a ban on tobacco-related stocks in the county employees' pension fund was about to go up in smoke.
Even after Burns read an eight-minute statement on tobacco-related mortality statistics and the high cost of illness from smoking, the retirement board voted 2-1 to lift a restriction excluding tobacco stocks from its employees' pension portfolio.
"These people are actively in the business of addicting our young folks to a known carcinogen," Burns said of tobacco companies after the meeting. "The link between tobacco and cancer death and the deleterious effect it has on our society is 100 percent clear."
Burns said he quit smoking 40 years ago, but that wasn't the reason he favored a continuation of a tobacco-stock ban he and then-members of the retirement board voted for 12 years ago.
The two votes to reverse the no-tobacco stocks policy were also those of nonsmokers: Commission Chairman Larry Maggi and Controller Michael Namie, who were not on the board in 1997.
While each said they had no quarrel with Burns' statistics, Namie cited a report in June from Twin Capital Management that the county's investment restrictions, "particularly the 5 percent initialization restriction on Exxon Mobil and the restriction on tobacco holdings," were responsible for about 30 percent underperformance.
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