TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2009 Welcome and Unwelcome TRS Trends--Rebounding Investments; Governor's Tightening Grip As the Teacher Retirement System board of trustees met this week, two ongoing trends were notable--one welcome, the other not. The welcome trend is the steady rise in value of TRS investments of your pension fund.  As officially reported this week, the fund's net assets as of July 31 had rebounded to $86.5 billion from a recent low in February of $70.9 billion. In addition, an unofficial report for the two months since July showed a continuation of the net rise in your pension fund's assets. However, the good news is tempered by the fact that TRS still has a long way to go to return to the all-time peak in asset value reached in October 2007, when the fund briefly stood at $118 billion. The unwelcome trend in evidence this week is Gov. Rick Perry's apparent drive to bring the Teacher Retirement System under his closer control. Board chair Linus Wright, a retired superintendent who has led the board for less than a year, received notice this week that Perry will replace him with one of the governor's business-sector appointees. This move is the latest in a series of steps that have caused concern, including the installation of one of the governor's close aides as the TRS deputy director and the ouster of the board's longtime investment-ethics adviser under questionable circumstances. These personnel moves have coincided with trial balloons floated by the governor's office to promote the use of the TRS pension fund to invest in the governor's enterprise-development fund and possibly even state highway projects.  Heightened vigilance is clearly in order to ensure that decisions about the investment of your pension dollars are based on the best interests of TRS members, not some other priority.