The Republican Party has been caught using incorrect figures in trying to slam Democrat Alex Sink, who is running for governor against Rick Scott. The ad, which stopped running Monday, has two claims: that Florida’s pension fund lost $24 billion, and that Sink was “in charge” of the SBA, which operates the fund.
As I pointed before, Sink, the state’s CFO, is one of three trustees for the pension fund. Republicans Gov. Charlie Crist and Attorney General Bill McCollum are the other two. Sink is only one of three votes. Control is clearly in GOP hands.
There is no lost in the pension fund, unless the state were to completely cash out the investments, but even then the lost would not be $24 billion. According to the St. Pete Times, if the pension fund investments were sold at their current value, Florida would lose about $8 billion compared with their peak performance during the stock market bubble in 2007.
Of course, Rick Scott and the GOP won’t run an ad that corrects this misstatements.