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Turner seeks to expand probe into Delphi pensions

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By Thomas Gnau, Staff Writer Updated 12:38 PM Sunday, December 4, 2011

DAYTON — After bringing a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee field hearing to Dayton last month, U.S. Rep. Mike Turner is asking the committee’s chairman to expand an investigation into the treatment of pensions for Delphi salaried retirees.

Turner, R-Centerville, wrote to U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, last week, asking that the committee examine “any possible conflicts of interest” from Tim Geithner’s simultaneous roles as U.S. treasury secretary and member of what was the Presidential Auto Task Force on the Auto Industry. The task force presided over key decisions that helped lead General Motors and Chrysler through bankruptcy in 2009. GM once owned Delphi and remains Delphi’s biggest customer for auto components.

In 2009, a then-bankrupt Delphi relinquished its employee pension obligations to the federally backed Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC). Delphi salaried retirees say the move cost them 30 to 70 percent of their pensions, and a group of salaried retirees are suing in federal court to restore their full pensions.

Delphi emerged from bankruptcy in October 2009, a few months after GM did the same. But the PBGC retains control of Delphi pensions.

“Local leadership of the Delphi Salaried Retirees in my district estimate that nearly 20,000 current and future retirees across the nation and 1,000 retirees in the Dayton area were negatively affected by the decisions of the Treasury, Auto Task Force and the PBGC,” Turner wrote to Issa in a letter dated Dec. 1.

On Sunday, Turner told the Dayton Daily News that the Obama administration “was on all sides of this transaction. They picked winners and losers.”

The administration had a responsibility to protect the pensions “first,” not just to help GM out of bankruptcy, the congressman said.

“It clearly appears to be a conflict of interest,” Turner said of Geithner’s roles.

A spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department could not be immediately reached Sunday.

Den Black, chair of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association, distributed the letter to association members Saturday. “Wanted to keep you advised of the latest developments as the more than 20,000 Delphi salaried people continue our unrelenting quest to obtain justice with regard to receiving the pension benefits that we worked a lifetime to earn,” Black wrote.

Last month, at a field hearing held at Sinclair Community College, Issa, Turner and other committee members sought to determine why Delphi salaried pensions were cut. Some salaried retirees contend they didn’t have the political clout that they feel union-represented retirees had.

“The least powerful group was always going to get screwed,” Issa said in the Dayton hearing last month.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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