By Staff Reporter |
Arizona now enjoys nearly $7.4 billion in total assets, representing a 126% increase since Treasurer Kimberly Yee took office in 2019.
Per the latest local government investment report from the treasurer’s office, total June earnings among the four local government investment pools (LGIP) exceeded $22.8 million. Per the treasurer’s office, each LGIP is a fixed-income investment pool with multiple governmental entity contributors.
Pool 5 investment fund earnings exceeded $10.5 million; Pool 7 earnings exceeded $9 million; Pool 500 earnings exceeded $2.5 million; and Pool 700 earnings exceeded $686,000.
The treasurer’s office accomplished a record $7.6 billion in total assets last fall. The state’s Permanent Land Endowment Trust Fund has also hit record highs under the Yee administration.
Recently, Yee secured the Republican nomination over incumbent Tom Horne in the race for Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction.
She has positioned herself as a defender of parental privacy rights when it comes to school choice funds. The treasurer remained in a lawsuit filed by a media outlet seeking records not kept by the treasurer’s office which contained sensitive student and family information, some of which were educational, medical, or financial in nature.
Earlier this month, Yee prevailed in that case in the Maricopa County Superior Court.
“We will continue to provide transparency regarding records in our custody, consistent with our statutory duties, while safeguarding confidential information entrusted to the state,” stated Yee at the time.
Yee also partnered with the State Financial Officers Foundation this year to produce a report on fraud and mismanagement of federal education tax dollars within state education departments and school districts. The report described oversight of public funding within education as more than bureaucratic duty, but “an economic and moral imperative” given the growing affordability crisis facing families.
The collaborative report including Yee’s contributions relied on more than six years’ worth of semiannual reports to Congress by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General (OIG), which yielded approximately 90 instances of confirmed and prosecuted fraud and abuse.
Arizona was not included in the report highlights. However, one Arizona case was within the cited OIG data, concerning the Bradley Academy of Excellence enrollment fraud scheme that resulted in the theft of $2.5 million.
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