CalPERS is a retirement fund. It is not a policy-making (especially transportation policy-making) agency of the state. The fact that CalPERS was spawned from the state government, and for now at least exists only for the benefit of government employees (at both state and local levels), has nothing to do with how they choose their investments, within some limits imposed by the legislature. They have a fiduciary responsibility to their members to have enough money to cover their retirements, no matter how bloated or otherwise (mostly otherwise, despite the newsjerks' stories, though these days it only takes one - and there is certainly more than one though not a large number - who can game the system into something obscene to get the rabid rabble roused). They do that by taking a percentage of employee compensation and investing it in a way that they think will produce what they need when they need it. ALL RETIREMENT FUNDS WORK THIS WAY including your little 401K that loses most of its value to management fees while increasing at maybe 1/2 the rate of the market in good times and falling faster than the market in bad - over the long term, CalPERS has done much better than that. The other issues that some people scream about are incidental to that investment management process.

If PERS thinks they need some shares of TJ or whatever corporate megafauna owns them to help produce the investment proceeds they need, then they should be free to invest in them. Just like you would be if your 401K has enough in it to play in that market. If they happen to (and I haven't verified that they do) own a bit of TJ that produces no conflict of interest for the state at all.

/rant. Back to our regularly scheduled CAHSR tirades.