Here's the start of the story:
In the spring of 2008, the Denver public school system needed to plug a $400 million hole in its pension fund. Bankers at JPMorgan Chase offered what seemed to be a perfect solution.The bankers said that the school system could raise $750 million in an exotic transaction that would eliminate the pension gap and save tens of millions of dollars annually in debt costs -- money that could be plowed back into Denver's classrooms, starved in recent years for funds.
To members of the Denver Board of Education, it sounded ideal. It was complex, involving several different financial institutions and transactions. But Michael F. Bennet, now a United States senator from Colorado who was superintendent of the school system at the time, and Thomas Boasberg, then the system's chief operating officer, persuaded the seven-person board of the deal's advantages, according to interviews with its members.
And how do those boardmembers feel about the deal today? Jeannie Kaplan, a source for the story, will be on David Sirota's show on 760 AM at 7 a.m. this morning talking about the deal.
UPDATE: DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg joined the discussion on the Sirota show, and it got heated. Listen to it here.
