Lawmakers reject Sudan divestment

BOISE – After hours of impassioned testimony that stretched over two days, an Idaho Senate committee voted 5-4 Wednesday against requiring the state retirement fund to withdraw its investments from companies linked to genocide in Darfur.

Senate State Affairs Committee Chairman Curtis McKenzie, R-Nampa, cast the tie-breaking vote after the committee deadlocked.

“If we look at what damages our society here and our children – alcohol, drugs, the tobacco industry,” he said.

“I see equal justification for a lot of those issues in divesting, but if we go down that road, I don’t know where we stop.”

Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, said, “Playing politics with retired Idahoans’ primary source of income in their senior and vulnerable years is an area of great concern.” But, he said. “I admit I don’t know where the line is drawn, but for me today, I’m going to draw it at genocide – and I’m going to support the bill.”

SB 1367 matched model legislation that has passed in 15 other states. Twenty-two states have ordered their state retirement funds to divest from Sudan, and 22 more are considering legislation this year, backers of the bill said.

“This is the first time in the history of the world that ongoing atrocities have been declared to be genocide by our government,” John Sullivan, chairman of the Idaho Sudan Divestment Task Force, told the committee.

“This is systematic extermination of an entire people. That’s the highest crime we have.”

The measure was co-sponsored by 23 Idaho legislators, from both houses and both parties.

It targeted the Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho, or PERSI, which has an $11.3 billion pension fund that includes $24.3 million invested in six foreign companies with ties to Sudan.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and 2.5 million forced from their homes in Sudan’s Darfur region since 2003.

Sen. Mike Jorgenson, R-Hayden Lake, the only Panhandle senator on the panel, opposed the bill and said if PERSI members want to take a stand, they could drop out of the retirement program.

“If a person wants to opt out of PERSI, they’re free to do that,” Jorgenson said.

“Yeah, they wouldn’t get retirement. They could go create their own personal retirement.”

Representatives of several state employee groups also opposed the bill, saying they want their retirement investments protected.

Jody Olson, chairman of the PERSI board, told the panel, “Divestment will cost money and it will lower our returns.”