Nappier ending long activist tenure

State Treasurer Denise L. Nappier announced Wednesday she is not seeking re-election to the office she first won in 1998, leaving her with exactly one year left in a remarkable run of activism and reform, with some pretty good financial returns.

“I’ve reached the conclusion that it’s time. It’s time,” the 66-year-old Democrat said after delivering a lengthy statement about her tenure. “I don’t think I have to convince people that it’s time for new blood, it’s time for someone that is well qualified with fresh ideas to take the reins and move this office forward in the manner that I did.”

Nappier’s decision throws wide open a race that already includes some people in both parties considering a run for the powerful office, which controls pension funds now valued at more than $34 billion.

Three Democrats likely to run are

Arunan Arulampalam, a Hartford lawyer and former lobbyist; John Blankley, a Greenwich business executive and town official; and Shawn Wooden, a Hartford lawyer who was president of the city council.

Arulampalam and Blankley have both formed exploratory committees and issued statements Wednesday praising Nappier. Wooden has told people he intended to explore a run if Nappier did not seek re-election, according to numerous sources.

In January 1999, Nappier inherited a state Treasury that would soon be wracked by an investigation leading to a guilty plea in a kickback scheme and federal prison time for Paul Silvester, the predecessor she defeated.

In her second year, she helped push through reforms that included creating a chief investment officer and boosting the role of the investment advisory committee.

Nineteen years and four re-elections later, she oversees an office that has hit its investment targets, for the most part; launched or dramatically enlarged programs such as the state’s college savings vehicle and financial literacy; and made a national name for itself — herself — as a shareholder activist on corporate governance.

Over the years Nappier waved a flag for the state to address its dangerously underfunded pensions. As recently as a few months ago she railed against a change in the teachers’ pension system that will leave it slightly less funded.

Nappier showed some bitterness Wednesday that, for years, people didn’t listen to her warnings about an admittedly dry topic. “The Legislature didn’t think it was all that significant,” she said.

And from the start, Nappier made the office one of the nation’s most prominent shareholder advocates for corporate governance reforms — leading the call at many publicly traded companies for up-or-down votes on executive pay; for separating the roles of chairman and chief executive officer; for requiring that auditors are not also doing lucrative consulting work at the companies they audit; and against corporate investments in nations that commit or sanction genocide.

In another strain of her activism, Nappier has crusaded for policies on greenhouse gas emissions to address global warming. She co-founded the Investor Summit on Climate Risk at the United Nations, which by 2016 grew to more than 100 institutional investors with $13 trillion in assets.

Numerous companies have come under fire from Nappier including The Walt Disney Co., Mattel, Office Depot, McDonald’s, General Electric, Caterpillar, Stanley Black & Decker, and many energy companies as part of her climate work.

Shareholder activism for a state treasurer “was the road less traveled” in the early years, Nappier said.

“Nearly 20 years later, that road is crowded and active,” she added, proudly citing a fellow state treasurer who claimed he was using the “Nappier Playbook.”

That playbook has earned sharp barbs for Nappier from some business groups who say she overreaches. Nappier, in response, insists her efforts are part of smart investing — making sure the companies whose stocks were held by the state pension funds were well run and therefore more likely to be profitable with rising stock values.

In one example, Nappier in 2002 wrote to board members at Stanley, then The Stanley Works, urging them to reject an ill-conceived corporate headquarters move to Bermuda, known as an inversion, because, she said, the move would leave shareholders less protected by governance rules — and create ill-will among customers. She also fought layoffs in Connecticut at MetLife.

Amid harsh public criticism of companies, Nappier has also quietly negotiated reforms with management, using leverage as one of the most powerful fiduciaries in the country; Connecticut law does not require approval of investment decisions by a board or by other public officials.

Nappier was the first African-American woman elected as a state treasurer anywhere, and the first elected to statewide office in Connecticut. In 2006, she was named one of the 100 most powerful people in finance by Treasury & Risk Management magazine.

Despite her activism and testimony at the Capitol, Nappier has generally maintained a low profile when it comes to speaking engagements, including on the campaign trail.

In 2011, Hartford police issued Nappier a summons charging her with misusing license plates and operating an unregistered vehicle that lacked insurance after questioning her in the parking lot of a Hartford housing project. They towed her state car and she walked three miles to her West End home. Six days later, the Hartford state’s attorney said the car, in the state fleet, had been registered and that the summons was unwarranted.

Nappier told the Hartford Courant she suspected her race was a factor in how police handled the incident.

In the last election, 2014, she narrowly beat Republican Tim Herbst, then the Trumbull first selectman, now a candidate for governor. Herbst criticized Nappier in part because the pension funds are underfunded. She countered that returns under her watch generally beat benchmarks.

The Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds stood at a record $32.4 billion on June 30 after a year with 14.2 percent returns, one of the best among states. Five months later the fund had grown to $34.2 billion.

The yearly performance she mentioned on Wednesday? Fiscal 2009, when the fund was down more than 17 percent — but still outperformed its benchmarks.

Nappier will be the second state constitutional officer to declare she’s not seeking another term in 2018, after Attorney General George Jepsen, who has served for eight years — also as an activist on a national level, leading many multistate lawsuits.

Nappier said her decision was not due to any sense that the fund is in for rocky times again, though we all know the boom market can’t last forever. She asked, “Who wouldn’t want to go out on top?”

Nappier