Watchdog reporting examines a pension officer’s fossil fuel trades and a fire truck monopoly

Two investigations published this month by the nonprofit newsroom The Lever examine forms of corporate conduct that seldom reach the front pages: a public pension executive personally trading oil and gas stocks while steering one of the country’s largest retirement funds away from divestment, and a wave of lawsuits accusing private equity firms of monopolizing the fire truck industry.

According to The Lever, Scott Chan, chief investment officer of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, personally traded fossil fuel stocks after publicly opposing divestment. The Lever reported that Chan, chief investment officer for the roughly $390 billion, one-million-member CalSTRS, dissuaded state workers from divesting from fossil fuel investments, then bought and sold more than $1 million in oil and gas stocks, according to state records the outlet obtained.

The outlet reported that Chan began trading fossil fuel stocks in 2023, the year after he told teachers that divesting from the sector could potentially result in a $20 billion loss for the fund. The Lever also reported that Chan was not the only CalSTRS employee trading fossil fuel stocks.

Deborah Silvey, a retired community college instructor and cofounder of Fossil Free California, a group pressing CalSTRS and the state’s larger public employee fund to divest, told The Lever that Chan’s stock trading was “disappointing to say the least.” The Lever noted that fossil fuel stocks have been found to routinely underperform other sectors. NationofChange was not able to independently review the trading records described in the report.

Consolidation in the fire truck market

The Lever’s second report, also published by Jacobin, followed a growing set of antitrust lawsuits over fire apparatus manufacturing. As Jacobin described it, the city of Emeryville, California, on May 21 joined at least nineteen other municipalities in suing private equity-backed manufacturers, three of which together control roughly 70 percent of the fire truck market.

The reporting drew on work by anti-monopoly attorney Basel Musharbash, whose newsletter analysis traced the industry’s consolidation. Musharbash detailed how the private equity firm American Industrial Partners began acquiring fire truck manufacturers after the 2008 financial crisis and eventually rolled them into a single company, REV Group, which told investors it controlled about 44 percent of fire truck and ambulance sales in 2017 and roughly 33 percent today; over that same period, the price of a pumper truck rose from around $300,000 to $500,000 in the mid-2010s to nearly $1 million.

Individual departments and cities describe similar effects in court filings. The city of Allentown, Pennsylvania, alleges that American Industrial Partners bought up struggling fire truck makers and eliminated competitors to create a monopoly. Allentown’s suit says a custom aerial truck it bought for $1.46 million in 2021 cost $2 million by 2023, and that the delivery window nearly tripled in just over three years. A spokesperson for the private equity firm said it “disagrees with the allegations in the complaint and intends to defend itself vigorously.”

In Pittsburgh, which filed its own suit, firefighters union vice president Tim Leech said long wait times force apparatus to last beyond their planned service life. Leech explained that this results in more mechanical failures and longer downtimes, and said the city has had times when trucks went out of service for mechanical issues with no replacement available in the station. That report noted that three manufacturers, REV Group, Oshkosh and Rosenbauer, control more than 70 percent of U.S. production, and that REV and Oshkosh are defendants in the Pittsburgh suit. An Oshkosh spokesperson told WESA the allegations have no merit.

Public officials have taken up the issue as well. San Diego County’s Board of Supervisors voted to challenge the market’s consolidation. Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer called it “a crisis that’s not coming from wildfires but from a supply chain that’s been taken over by corporate consolidation and greed.” Her office cited a February New York Times investigation reporting that dozens of rigs that could have carried extra personnel were out of service during January’s Los Angeles wildfires, with departments still awaiting replacements. The International Association of Fire Fighters and the American Economic Liberties Project have urged the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission to investigate REV Group, Oshkosh and Rosenbauer for possible antitrust practices. The liberties project’s executive director, Nidhi Hegde, called the consolidation “textbook monopolization.”

REV Group’s merger with Terex was completed on February 2, 2026, according to the companies’ announcement.