Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier says he is working to protect Florida’s pensioners.
That’s a responsibility worth taking seriously.
The question his actions now raise is: Who is protecting Florida’s pensioners from the cost of their protection?
Uthmeier has demanded six years of corporate records from The New York Times Company, arguing that the newspaper’s journalism and its board’s oversight may have damaged the value of Florida’s investment.
Florida reportedly holds approximately 160,000 shares of Times stock through the Florida Retirement System Trust Fund (FRS). As of Monday’s New York Stock Exchange closing price of roughly $65 per share, that’s about a $10.4 million investment.
That sounds like a lot of money.
Until you put it in context.
As of June 30, 2025, the Florida State Board of Administration reported that the FRS Pension Plan held approximately $211.5 billion.
If the math is correct, Florida’s Times investment therefore represents roughly 0.005 percent of the pension fund.
For every $1 million in the pension fund, approximately $49 is invested in New York Times stock.
None of that means the investment should escape scrutiny.
Shareholders have rights. Institutional investors have responsibilities. If corporate directors are harming a company through negligence or mismanagement, shareholders have every reason to ask questions.
Florida does this routinely.
The State Board of Administration (SBA) votes proxies for thousands of companies and engages with corporations on governance, executive compensation, financial reporting, and other matters that could affect shareholder value.
That’s not government harassment. That’s responsible investing.
And Uthmeier should be afforded the same presumption of legitimate purpose when he questions the Times.
But fiduciary responsibility cuts both ways.
If the justification for investigating the Times is to protect the financial interests of Florida retirees, then the investigation itself should be subjected to the same test:
Does it make financial sense?
That isn’t our standard. It is Florida’s standard.
The SBA says its shareholder decisions are to be based on “pecuniary factors” intended to produce the best risk-adjusted returns for beneficiaries, not to advance social, political, or ideological interests.
Even more interesting is what the SBA’s own corporate-governance guidelines say about shareholder activism. Citing research on the subject, the guidelines acknowledge that activism imposes concentrated costs while producing widely dispersed benefits. As a result, they note, investors generally need sufficiently large positions for the potential return to justify those costs.
Let’s apply that principle here.
Florida has about $10.4 million invested in the Times within a pension portfolio exceeding $211 billion.
How much is the Attorney General prepared to spend on the investigation?
We don’t know.
How much staff time will be required to review six years of records?
We don’t know.
If the Times refuses to comply and litigation ensues, how much will Florida spend on lawyers, including Delaware counsel if proceedings move there?
We don’t know.
How long could litigation last?
We don’t know.
And most important:
What measurable financial return does the Attorney General expect Florida’s pensioners to receive from this effort?
We don’t know that either.
Those aren’t arguments for The New York Times.
They are questions for Florida taxpayers.
The Times should not receive special immunity from shareholder scrutiny simply because it publishes a newspaper. Journalism organizations make mistakes. Newspapers should correct them. Corporate boards have fiduciary responsibilities whether their companies manufacture automobiles, sell coffee, or publish journalism.
But the reverse is also true.
Government doesn’t receive immunity from scrutiny simply because it invokes the term “fiduciary responsibility.”
And because this corporation publishes journalism, another consideration cannot simply be brushed aside: The First Amendment.
When a government official seeks years of internal records while explicitly challenging the quality and character of a newspaper’s journalism, reasonable people are entitled to ask whether the government is protecting an investment or using its status as an investor to scrutinize editorial decisions it dislikes.
That does not prove improper motive.
It makes transparency about motive and cost more important.
There is also an obvious alternative.
If Florida’s investment managers determine that The New York Times Company’s journalism or corporate governance poses an unacceptable financial risk, they can sell the stock.
That doesn’t necessarily mean they should. Large institutional investors often engage with corporate management rather than immediately divest, and there are legitimate reasons for doing so.
But selling makes the cost-benefit question impossible to avoid.
If a $10.4 million investment is sufficiently at risk to warrant an extraordinary government investigation, why is retaining it preferable to selling it and reinvesting the proceeds elsewhere?
Perhaps there is a persuasive financial answer.
Florida should provide it.
The State Board of Administration’s own records show that it has communicated with other companies, including Starbucks, Tesla, Cracker Barrel, Nike, and Costco, on corporate-governance matters. That’s evidence that shareholder engagement is hardly extraordinary.
But the Times case is different in one fundamental respect.
The product being scrutinized is journalism.
That raises the stakes for both sides.
The Times should be accountable for its journalism, and its history of that is well documented and on record going back decades and decades. Florida officials should be accountable for their use of government power and taxpayer resources.
Before this becomes a six-year-long legal battle over a newspaper’s internal records, Floridians deserve something considerably simpler:
Show us the math.
What is the pension fund’s financial exposure?
What specific economic harm has occurred?
What will the investigation cost?
What financial benefit is expected?
At what point does the cost of pursuing the Times exceed the financial risk of owning its stock?
And why is investigation more prudent than divestment?
If the Attorney General’s case is truly about fiduciary responsibility, those shouldn’t be hostile questions.
They are fiduciary questions.
Sources: Florida SBA_2024-2025 Annual Investment Report; Florida SBA_Corporate Governance Program; Florida SBA_Corporate Governance Principles and Proxy Voting Guidelines. Any math errors are strictly the author’s. Note: Many reporters, including this one, went into journalism because there was “no math.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.