N.C. treasurer praises anti-ESG law, says people want states to lead way

North Carolina Treasurer Dale Folwell praised the General Assembly’s override of Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of legislation on environmental social and governance issues.

Late last month, the General Assembly overrode the governor’s veto of House Bill 750, which removed political and social considerations from state pension plan investment decisions.

Folwell said the law protects retirees’ money from being used for what he called Wall Street’s “wacktivist” agenda. Instead, Folwell said he supports an ESG policy that promotes energy independence, safe streets and neighborhoods and good governance.

People across the nation were looking to the states for leadership, he said, and North Carolina is leading the way.

“I have zero confidence that Washington, D.C., can do anything on any topic at any time,” Folwell told The Bond Buyer during a call Tuesday. “I think the citizens of this country are looking to the states to actually try to resolve some of these ESG issues.”

He has taken other steps to isolate the North Carolina Retirement Systems, which is valued at about $110.9 billion, from ESG precepts, including assuming control of the state’s proxy votes rather than letting BlackRock Management Co. vote those shares for it.

Significantly, these steps did not include barring BlackRock from managing state funds, as was done in Texas and West Virginia.

Back in December, the treasurer’s office said it was taking a different approach to how to deal with BlackRock and its CEO Larry Fink in the wake of Fink’s 2020 annual letter to CEOs, in which he said climate risk was investment risk and required a fundamental reshaping of finance.

“We were very clear that, unlike what some other state treasurers were doing — we have had a long-term relationship with BlackRock. We have worked tirelessly with them to negotiate our fees down to the lowest possible levels,” Folwell said.

“We did three things in December,” he said. “We secured the lowering of all these fees; we pulled all of our proxies out of New York from Larry Fink and BlackRock so they can no longer politicize our assets; and I asked for Larry Fink to be removed from his position.”

“We own BlackRock stock, the management company, and that stock has fallen dramatically over a period of time because of it losing assets … such as when we see large pension plans like Texas Retirement, who because of ESG policies took their money away from BlackRock. We think we led on this issue — we get calls from other states asking us why we did it the way we did it,” he said.

“We’ve never had any ESG policies at the state treasurer’s office,” he said. “That was true yesterday, that’s true today and that will be true tomorrow.”

He stressed a state law on ESG passed, with input from his office, will impact the treasurer’s office.

Folwell recently praised the state House’s override of Senate Bill 299, legislation aimed at promoting financial accountability for municipalities across the state.

The bill, the “act to increase compliance by counties and municipalities that fail to timely submit an annual audit report,” was vetoed by Cooper, who said its enforcement provisions were too harsh for smaller localities to bear. Cooper, a Democrat, is often at odds with the GOP-controlled legislature.

Separately, the state Local Government Commission has given the green light to Pender County’s request for bonds to build schools and renovate existing ones.

At its Tuesday meeting, the LGC approved the county’s sale of $178 million in general obligation bonds to perform the work. Pender County voters approved GO sale in a November referendum.

Proceeds will go toward building a middle school for 1,200 students and a K-5 elementary school for 800 pupils. Some of the proceeds will pay for renovations to Topsail Middle School for a grade 9-10 academy due to overcrowding at the high school, an elementary school addition and rebuilding the Burgaw Middle School cafeteria.

A central services and maintenance building and an eight-bay garage and maintenance building are also part of the bond package.

Most municipal bond sales in the state must be approved by the commission, which is chaired by Folwell, which reviews if the amount of money that municipalities want to borrow is reasonable for the projects proposed and whether they can pay it back.

Additionally, the LGC approved Johnston County’s request to sell $85 million of revenue bonds to upgrade the Timothy G. Broome Water Treatment Plant.

Also, Gastonia was given the okay to issue $42 million in revenue bonds to complete various improvements along the city’s water and sanitary sewer systems and to build a wastewater pump station.