Targeting of BlackRock is Mickey Mouse government

Florida’s chief financial officer announced last week to loud fanfare that he was freezing $2 billion of taxpayers’ money because the asset management firm’s world views don’t match his politics. That is irresponsible. It’s not his money, it’s ours.

Jimmy Patronis did not say he would get better returns for taxpayers elsewhere. He did not say where “elsewhere” is. He just said he’s stripping state funds from the world’s largest money manager for institutional investors because “BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is on a campaign to change the world.”

That’s Florida political grandstanding.

Florida cannot operate based on which firms agree with elected officers or what election contributions they make. This state must stop provoking huge corporations like Disney and others because they don’t think right (as in right wing). The attacks make us a Mickey Mouse state.

Like all corporate giants, BlackRock’s record has blotches. I hold no brief for the firm. But nothing shows that its investors lose money or that it pays low returns.

The problem Mr. Patronis has is merely politics. When BlackRock invests money it manages, it considers such points as product safety, supply-chain labor standards, privacy and data security, executive compensation, racial inequalities, carbon emissions, and climate-change vulnerability. Mr.

Patronis says that is undemocratic.

We think it’s undemocratic for the man handling money that belongs to all the taxpayers to tell us these are non-considerations and to bar experts who think about such potential risks to us from managing our money.

Certainly, many of us as individuals worry about such things. If I were buying a waterfront home, for example, I’d consider sea levels and climate change, and whether I could buy insurance at a reasonable rate because of those issues. How undemocratic is it that investors of my tax money look at those issues too? It’s smart investing.

If you were buying into a small company, you’d be concerned if the CEO was being paid millions the company can’t afford. Wouldn’t you also worry if employees’ efforts weren’t being maximized because of discrimination, racial or otherwise? Or that the company might soon face large costs to upgrade environmental practices?

Those concerns aren’t political but economic. And that money belongs to every Floridian, not to Mr. Patronis, who is free to ignore such dangers personally but not as our chief financial officer.

As for his being against efforts to change the world, Mr. Patronis actually is trying to change it himself – just in another direction. He wants Florida to emulate an ostrich with its head in the sand rather than look at a world that can certainly use many improvements.

Wouldn’t he like to end the war in Ukraine? That is changing the world. Most likely he doesn’t oppose all changes, only those he personally disagrees with.

We know he wants to change where Florida’s money is managed. But he announced change before he could say where it would go or how taxpayers would benefit – known as the “leap before you look” theory of investing.

If he sought higher investment returns, we’d understand a shift. But he didn’t say a word about that. The issue is not cash return or safety – or money at all – but ideology and publicity.

This political money shift won’t cripple BlackRock. The firm oversees $8 trillion globally, employs 18,400 and last year made $5.9 billion profit. It’s one of the largest shareholders of Apple, Microsoft, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase. Managing $2 billion less is a financial blip.

And for all the state’s ballyhoo, it’s not pivotal to Florida. The state manages about $60 billion under Mr. Patronis’ control. Shifting $2 billion could have been done without a word of publicity or a big fiscal impact.

The big deal is not what Mr. Patronis did but why, an elected state official using our money to lash out at views with which he disagrees and get global publicity out of it. Now, that’s Mickey Mouse.