"To me, it is of primary importance," McNulty said in an interview at the Capitol. "Whether it is $1 or $100 million, the state of Colorado should park that money elsewhere until such a time when Iran is not killing U.S. soldiers.
"The Colorado Public Employee Retirement Association should not be participating in financially supporting the rogue regime in Iran," he said.
Earlier this year, lawmakers divested PERA funds from countries which have committed "genocide" in the words of either Congress or the President. Specifically, that targeted companies doing business with the African nation of Sudan, whose government has killed hundreds of thousands of its own residents and displaced hundreds of thousands more from their homes in the Darfur region.
Sen. Peter Groff (D-Denver) sponsored that legislation and says the "high standard" was intentional. While he says he's no "fan of what's going on in Teheran (Iran's capital)," he worries about Colorado lawmakers becoming a "pseudo State Department."
"We set a very high standard (with the Sudan legislation), so we wouldn't have to come back each year and try to figure out what we do with the next renegade nation," said Groff, in an interview at his Denver home. "We've got to be careful how we do this. Otherwise, we're going to start picking and choosing whatever country we may be having issues with at any given time."
PERA has $38 billion in assets, 182,404 members and 75,024 benefit recipients, according to its Web site.