Iowa Public Employees Retirement System executive Steven Herbert’s recent suspension was not his first issue at a pension fund.
State officials placed Herbert, IPERS’ chief benefits officer since March 2025, on administrative leave April 1 “concerning allegations of misconduct.” Since then, IPERS officials and Gov. Kim Reynolds have declined to provide details about the allegations against him or IPERS CEO Gregory Samorajski, whom Reynolds also suspended.
But the suspension comes four years after the Kentucky Public Pensions Authority executive director fired Herbert, who held a similarly high-ranking position in that state. In Kentucky court documents, that state’s pension leader said multiple employees complained about working with Herbert during his short tenure.
The termination led to a lengthy legal battle, with Herbert filing an unsuccessful lawsuit in which he claimed KPPA’s leader fired him for trying to expose financial impropriety.
Then-KPPA Executive Director David Eager said employees had complained to the agency’s human resources department about Herbert’s behavior. The head of the organization’s legal department said he couldn’t work with Herbert.
“He was rude, condescending, abrupt,” Eager testified. “He failed to work with other departments when he should. … It was a problem, lack of collaboration, cooperation with other departments. He didn’t follow instructions.”
The existence of the publicly filed lawsuit in Kentucky raises questions about what IPERS officials knew about Herbert before hiring him last year.
By the time Herbert joined the Iowa pension fund in March 2025, a Kentucky judge had dismissed his lawsuit against the KPPA, writing that Herbert failed to provide evidence to back up his whistleblower claims. Herbert has appealed that case.
Before Herbert’s hiring in Iowa, emails, text messages and other evidence that KPPA’s lawyers submitted in support of firing Herbert were publicly available in a Kentucky courthouse.
An IPERS spokesperson declined to comment on a list of questions submitted by the Register. Two members of the IPERS Benefits Advisory Committee who interviewed finalists for the position said they knew of Herbert’s firing and lawsuit but did not review the court filings. The committee does not vote on the hiring, and the decision rested with Samorajski, who had previously worked with Herbert.
Samorajski and a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Administrative Services, which is leading the investigation, did not return a message seeking comment. The governor has said the investigation into Herbert and Samorajski has no impact on the retirement fund’s solvency.
As of December, IPERS officials managed about $48 billion in assets for about 425,000 current and former state employees.
Herbert declined to comment on the IPERS investigation, saying someone in the organization told him he could not speak publicly about the case. He said he did not know when the Iowa Department of Administrative Services would complete the investigation.
“They told me I cannot comment,” he said. “I’ll get fired.”
He also declined to discuss the KPPA’s criticisms, citing his appeal of a judge’s December 2024 order dismissing his lawsuit.
“The case is still pending, brother,” he told the Des Moines Register.
Months after Kentucky firing, Herbert insisted he was still the chief investment officer
In Kentucky, Eager signed Herbert’s letter of termination on May 31, 2022, after his 17th month as KPPA’s chief investment officer.
But more than a year later, Herbert didn’t accept the premise that his boss had actually fired him.
“You were terminated from KPPA on May 31, 2022,” a KPPA attorney said during Herbert’s August 2023 deposition. “Is that correct?”
“No,” Herbert said. “I wasn’t terminated.”
“How did your employment end?” the attorney asked.
“It was improper,” Herbert said. “Well, they cut off my access to my files and my computer. That action was improper.”
“And we’re going to get to that,” the attorney said. “But do you agree your last day of employment with KPPA was May 31, 2022?”
“No,” Herbert said.
“When was your last day of employment?” the attorney asked.
“Well,” Herbert said, “I stopped getting paid on May 31, 2022. And they cut off my computer and files on May 31, 2022. I’m still the chief investment officer there.”
“You believe that you’re still employed with KPPA?” the attorney asked.
“I believe I’m still the chief investment officer, per the process procedure, statutes and documents,” Herbert said.
“My question was,” the attorney said, “do you believe that you’re still employed with KPPA?”
“I’m not receiving a paycheck,” Herbert said. “So if that’s the definition of employment, then I’m not still receiving a paycheck. No.”
Herbert tells boss it’s his duty to express opinions about laws
In a February 2022 memo, Eager wrote that Herbert spent too much time trying to interpret Kentucky’s statutes and debating KPPA attorneys.
Eager would later say in his deposition that Herbert argued state laws allowed him to make some purchases without going through the approval process that most employees follow. In a February 2022 email, Herbert wrote that he did not believe a law requiring the governor’s approval for traveling out of state applied to him or other members of the pension fund’s investment team.
KPPA’s attorney disagreed with Herbert, Eager responded. Eager sided with the lawyer.
“I count on you and your staff to continue to do the excellent job you do with our investments and leave legal interpretations and initiatives at the direction of the Legal Department,” Eager wrote.
“Even though I can also see you don’t want me to comment on statutes,” Herbert responded, “it is clearly my duty to do so.”
Herbert then offered a detailed legal analysis about why he and his employees were exempt from the Kentucky law. Herbert did not list a law degree on the application he submitted to Kentucky officials.
“You tried to make a case without all the facts and form legal opinions outside of your jurisdiction,” Eager wrote. “Statutes are pretty clear in most cases, but when they aren’t, reach out for legal or administrative help. Do not independently use your own (differing) interpretations. Seek clarifications if you are confused. Get the facts right.”
In May 2022, Herbert flew to San Francisco to meet with executives from Bay Hills Capital, an investment firm that Kentucky’s pension system had previously paid to invest assets. Bay Hills sued the system in 2018 during a dispute about management fees.
The case was still pending when Herbert met with Bay Hills, but KPPA leaders hoped to settle. A pension fund executive emailed Herbert before the trip, asking him to relay to Bay Hills leaders that the KPPA needed “sufficient, reliable documents” from the investment firm to resolve the case. The executive attached a list of documents he wanted Herbert to retrieve.
Eager later testified that Herbert did not return with the requested documents. When KPPA executives asked to discuss the trip, Herbert said he could not give them many details about his meetings. He said a KPPA attorney had advised him to talk with Bay Hills “off the record,” and he couldn’t discuss much.
As part of Herbert’s own lawsuit, KPPA attorneys compared Herbert’s approach to negotiating against his own employer.
After Herbert declined to meet with KPPA officials, Eager testified, the organization’s general counsel said he couldn’t work with Herbert anymore.
“I sympathized and empathized with the legal department,” Eager said, “knowing what I did about the history.”
Pension fund executive warned Herbert about ‘being rude’ multiple times
Eager also testified that “a lot of people” complained to KPPA’s human resources department about Herbert.
He said Herbert yelled at a KPPA attorney and was “repeatedly abrupt and rude” to the organization’s director of investment operations. In a motion to dismiss Herbert’s lawsuit, KPPA officials alleged a private attorney representing the state in a separate case hung up the phone during a call with KPPA employees because “Herbert acted in such a rude and condescending manner.”
Herbert addressed some of those allegations during his own deposition. He said he was “confused” when he learned that the director of investment operations was upset with emails he sent her. He added that he learned she didn’t want to work with him and “was actively trying to get away from me.”
He said complaints about his behavior were overdramatic, and some coworkers resisted his attempts to improve KPPA operations. One employee was a “hurdle,” he said. Two co-workers made a “mountain out of a molehill.”
Concerning the outside attorney who hung up on KPPA staffers, Herbert denied that she cut off the call because of how he spoke to her. Instead, he said, the lawyer was on a case “that KPPA wasn’t involved in,” and she became mad when he refused to work for her.
Eager testified that he talked to Herbert about “his abrupt style” and “being rude” multiple times.
Eager and KPPA’s human resources director held a video conference with Herbert after his executive assistant complained that he was “combative and unprofessional,” according to a KPPA court motion.
During his deposition, Herbert confirmed that the assistant complained about him. But, he said, “she didn’t seem up to the job.”
In a memo about Herbert’s performance, Eager praised him for some accomplishments, including saving the organization “millions of dollars” on contracts with outside money managers. Board members also praised Herbert for a training that he led, according to the memo.
But, Eager added, “He needs to continue to work more effectively with the rest of the organization.”
Kentucky judge dismisses Herbert’s whistleblower lawsuit, citing lack of evidence
Herbert sued the KPPA in December 2022, alleging that the pension fund’s leaders violated a whistleblower law that protects employees who try to expose illegal activity.
His case centered on a two complicated financial transactions.
First, Herbert said KPPA’s process for moving money between bank accounts at JP Morgan Chase and BNY Mellon was risky and potentially illegal. Eager testified in his deposition that he agreed with Herbert’s assessment that the cash flow process didn’t comply with a Kentucky law.
Second, Herbert said he suggested ways for the organization’s board to better oversee a real estate subsidiary’s finances. He made the suggestion after an auditor alleged about $420,000 in questionable spending at the subsidiary. Herbert said board members did not follow his suggestions.
He alleged in his lawsuit that accounting problems and other financial records indicated that someone stole about $10 million from the real estate subsidiary. When Herbert suggested that the pension system press charges, he said other, unnamed officials declined to do so because the suspect had “connections” in the local courthouse.
In response to the legal filings, KPPA’s attorneys argued that Eager did not fire Herbert because of these issues, instead pointing to KPPA internal emails that showed officials arguing with Herbert about how he did his job. In his deposition, Eager said he fired Herbert for “myriad” reasons.
In a December 2024 ruling, Judge Phillip Shepherd sided with the KPPA and dismissed the case.
Shepherd wrote that Herbert was not a whistleblower because he did not expose hidden problems. The KPPA disclosed its use of two banks in financial reports for at least 20 years, and pension fund officials had debated the cash flow process in the past. An internal auditor, meanwhile, discovered problems with the real estate subsidiary’s finances before the organization hired Herbert.
Further, Shepherd wrote, Herbert didn’t provide evidence that he tried to alert outside law enforcement agencies or regulators about KPPA improprieties before Eager fired him.
“He remained silent about these concerns until he was fired,” Shepherd wrote, “at which time he attempted to link these concerns to his termination.”
Board members did not review Herbert’s court case
Lowell Dauenbaugh, one of three IPERS Benefits Advisory Committee members who interviewed candidates for the chief benefits officer position last year, said Herbert had more pension fund experience than the other candidates.
Dauenbaugh said he interviewed about five finalists, along with Samorajski, Deputy Chief Benefits Officer Jan Hawkins and the other committee members. He said the committee recommended three of those finalists, and Samorajski picked Herbert. The committee does not vote on the position.
The group knew that the CEO and Herbert worked for Alaska-based McKinley Capital Management at the same time for about a decade. According to their resumes and LinkedIn profiles, Samorajski was the firm’s director of investments, while Herbert was director of institutional marketing.
“But I do not know what that relationship was,” Dauenbaugh said. “(Samorajski) said he had known him and had run across him in some meetings. But I don’t know any more.”
“It did not seem to be terribly close,” said Melissa Peterson, another Benefits Advisory Committee member who interviewed the candidates.
Peterson said she knew that the Kentucky pension system fired Herbert, but she didn’t know many details. She said someone informed her that Herbert had been a whistleblower.
Dauenbaugh said an IPERS official contacted the KPPA to learn why the authority fired Herbert. He said someone in Kentucky “indicated the issue,” which Dauenbaugh believed to be a dispute over how the organization operated.
He and Matt Carver, the third Benefits Advisory Committee member who interviewed candidates, said they did not learn of any significant problems.
“I would have been very cautious if there was something that was shared with me that was of concern,” Carver said.
Dauenbaugh was not sure whether IPERS officials reviewed the court filings in Herbert’s case.
“I don’t believe so,” he said. “I know I did not. I don’t believe anybody had actually looked at that.”
Tyler Jett is an investigative reporter for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at tjett@registermedia.com, 515-284-8215, or on X at @LetsJett. He also accepts encrypted messages at tjett@proton.me.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Did IPERS miss red flags in hirings of exec fired from Kentucky post?
Reporting by Tyler Jett, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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