Trumka, Weingarten and Ayres: AFL-CIO/AFT [American Federation of Teachers] "At the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) - America yesterday the AFL-CIO announced a $10 billion commitment to invest in America's infrastructure. This commitment puts labor’s money where their mouth is.
This initiative will help create mechanisms to finance infrastructure projects. Over the next 5 years at least $10 billion will be raised to invest in infrastructure projects– beginning with investment specifically geared toward retrofitting large commercial buildings to be energy efficient. The money will be recruited from pension funds, state and federal governments, beginning with union pension funds..."
with new, innovative thought processes.... ways to extort tax payer money
They’re going to put their members pensions at risk? There has to be some sort of back door guarantee. No way do they simply throw members pensions at risk like that.
There are ways in which this type of investment can make money. A lot of buildings have lousy windows that leak like a sieve, inefficient ventiliation and poor lighting which for a relatively small investment can be greatly improved. Spend the money on the building and then be paid part of the the energy savings over the next twenty years.
On the other hand, since the unions are involved I suspect that this is either a way to skim the members' retirement funds into the union general fund to be spent for political control or else just a little seed money to get a pile of government dollars back.