Opinion
No. 78 C 342.
December 9, 2004
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund ("Pension Fund") has moved for clarification of the court's October 21, 2004, Memorandum Opinion and Order. The movants for disclosure of quarterly reports ("New York Times" and "individual movants" or "movants") have responded. The net result is that the Pension Fund seeks to preserve the confidentiality of quarterly reports issued after August 5, 2003, the last quarterly report before the November 17, 2003, Memorandum and Order, or at least determine a date sometime after August 5, 2003, after which the quarterly reports need not be disclosed. The movants seek disclosure of the subsequent quarterly reports, the New York Times seeks quarterly reports back to the beginning of 1997, and the individual movants want to go back to the beginning of 2001.
We adhere to the view that the quarterly reports subsequent to August 5, 2003, must be disclosed. The court's function is to ensure compliance with the Consent Decree, which requires compliance with ERISA. That monitoring, for the present, relates to compliance with ERISA minimum contribution requirements.
The New York Times' reason for going back to 1997 is that the quarterly reports may explain changes in fiduciaries and investment policies. It is mistaken. The Consent Decree requires court approval for such changes. They are initiated by motion, the Department of Labor comments, and the court rules. All that documentation is and always has been a judicial record, part of the court files and open to public scrutiny. They are not the stuff of quarterly reports, which, at most, briefly note what the motion was, the Department of Labor's response and the court ruling.
More compelling is the desire of the movants to learn from an earlier date the concerns over projected funding problems. The New York Times refers to the bursting of the technology bubble from the beginning of 2000. The individual movants seek information from the beginning of 2001. The subject first surfaced in the August 3, 2000, quarterly report, although then, even with a worst case scenario, any problems lie many years ahead. Still, it then became something that needed to be followed as part of the monitoring of compliance with the Consent Decree. Accordingly, we grant disclosure of the quarterly reports from August 3, 2000, forward. The Pension fund shall recommend appropriate redaction to the court and the ISC by December 17, 2004, and the ISC shall comment to the court on those recommendations by December 23, 2004.