Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Board committee urges retirement system to explore fossil‑fuel divestment; forwards resolution after robust public comment
Summary
The Budget & Finance Subcommittee advanced a nonbinding resolution urging the San Francisco Employees Retirement System to cease new fossil‑fuel investments and pursue phased divestment within five years, and asked SFERS to provide additional detail on private‑equity exposure; the committee accepted amendments clarifying SFERS' fiduciary duties and potential investment‑return tradeoffs and forwarded the resolution to the full Board.
The Budget & Finance Subcommittee voted to forward to the full Board a nonbinding resolution urging the San Francisco Employees Retirement System (SFERS) to pursue a divestment strategy for publicly traded fossil‑fuel holdings. Supervisor John Avalos, the resolution’s sponsor, framed the measure as a policy response to both climate science and financial risk, saying the resolution would ask the retirement board to stop new fossil‑fuel investments and to divest over a five‑year period in a manner intended to be financially responsible.
Avalos cited reports and analysis that, he said, point to a risk that most fossil‑fuel reserves must remain unburned to prevent catastrophic warming and that valuations based on those reserves could be impaired by future regulations. He described the resolution as modeled on SFERS’ social‑investment policy…
Already have an account? Log in
Subscribe to keep reading
Unlock the rest of this article — and every article on Citizen Portal.
- Unlimited articles
- AI-powered breakdowns of topics, speakers, decisions, and budgets
- Instant alerts when your location has a new meeting
- Follow topics and more locations
- 1,000 AI Insights / month, plus AI Chat
