City of Austin Employees' Retirement System

City of Austin Employees' Retirement System

The City of Austin Employees' Retirement System was established in 1941 to provide retirement, disability, and death benefits for municipal workers. Executive Director Christopher Hanson leads the plan alongside CIO David Kushner, with plan sponsorship and contributions flowing from the City of Austin itself. The board is chaired by the City's own CFO, Ed Van Eenoo, a governance structure that closely ties the retirement system to the fiscal health of the municipality it serves. The fund deploys capital across a mix of traditional and alternative assets. Observable allocations include global infrastructure through IFM Global Infrastructure, US commercial property via Principal US Property, and a gold futures strategy managed by NISA. Kushner's membership in the Alternative Investment Management Association signals ongoing engagement with hedge fund strategies, expanding the fund's toolkit beyond public equity and fixed income to address long-duration liabilities. COAERS serves over 20,000 active members, retirees, and surviving beneficiaries. The internal investment team includes Deputy CIO David Stafford, operating from the fund's Austin headquarters. The fund participates in several public-pension peer networks, including the Texas Association of Public Employee Retirement Systems and the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems, which function as information-sharing and advocacy channels for plan governance and investment practices. Unlike many public plans that outsource the majority of their investment decisions, COAERS maintains an in-house investment staff under Kushner while directly engaging with external managers for specialized exposures. The dual reporting line — with the Executive Director running operations and the CIO running the portfolio, both answering to a board chaired by the City's CFO — creates a check-and-balance architecture that embeds municipal fiscal oversight into the investment function.