Pistachios in California, citrus in Florida, hotels, retail malls and mobile home parks across 18 states. And, let’s not forget, the former site of The Patriot-News in downtown Harrisburg. Pennsylvania taxpayers own all this and more thanks to several decades’ worth of investments made by the Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS), the pension fund that safeguards the retirements of some 500,000 educators statewide. The pension fund reported $1.2 billion in directly-owned real estate investments nationwide through the start of this year, a figure that — according to internal documents — includes various costs, including “site development” at the former...