West Virginia
West Virginia has one main public pension fund administrator: the West Virginia Consolidated Public Retirement Board (CPRB). The Investment Management Board (IMB) manages the assets of the CPRB.
- The IMB consists of 13 members: 3 Ex Officio (Governor, State Auditor, State Treasurer); 10 are appointed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the West Virginia Senate. Of the remaining 10 appointees, 1 must be an attorney, 1 must be a certified public accountant (CPA) and all must have experience in pension management, institutional management or financial markets. No more than 6 of the 10 appointed trustees may be from the same political party.
The “By Asset Manager” and “Asset Manager Voting” tables show the proxy voting records of the state’s asset managers who manage the pensions’ stock market portfolio through index, exchange-traded, or mutual funds. Since these are externally managed funds, the asset managers typically retain and exercise proxy voting privileges. This data is used to calculate the state’s pro-ESG and anti-ESG scores to see how the state leverages its externally managed funds in proxy voting.
The “State Voting” table shows CPRB’s proxy voting records for directly owned securities through pension fund portfolios. This data was obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request since West Virginia does not publicly disclose this information to its pensioners. The 1792 Exchange encourages West Virginia to publish its proxy voting records instead of keeping its pensioners in the dark about how the state votes on ESG issues with their money.
Both tables are important to show a comprehensive picture of the state’s proxy voting record.
