Local lawmaker calls for state pension funds to divest from “border wall” companies

A Coachella Valley assemblyman and two fellow lawmakers today introduced a bill that would require California’s pension funds to divest from companies involved in the construction of a proposed border wall along the U.S-Mexico border.

AB 946, co-authored by Assembly members Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, and Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego, would require that CalPERS and CalSTRS — the nation’s two largest pension funds — liquidate any investments in companies involved in the wall within one year.

By 2019, the pension funds would also have to provide the governor and legislature with a list of companies from which they have liquidated investments or plan to do so.

President Donald Trump’s budget, released last week, includes $2.6 billion for the wall, one of the administration’s core goals aimed at preventing illegal immigration.

“It is counterproductive to invest in projects that will not serve the best interest of all Californians. It is the responsibility of our legislature to safeguard our values and create opportunities for economic growth, rather than to bar them,” Garcia said. “We cannot build up our dreams if our resources are being used to build a wall.”

Ting called the project “a wall of shame.”

“We must stand together and fight this wall because it symbolizes weakness and hate to the world,” he said.

Gonzalez Fletcher said: “The state’s contracting and investment practices should reflect the values of our state. It’s clear the people of California don’t want to invest in the hateful values that the Trump wall represents.”

The bill’s introduction follows two Requests for Proposal issued last Friday by the federal government for border wall prototypes, which call for a concrete wall at least 18 feet tall and possibly as tall as 30 feet.