Metro

Pension politics

Call it the $1 billion bungle.

About a year and a half ago, a minor miracle occurred in city government. Comptroller John Liu and Mayor Bloomberg put aside their long-held animosities and jointly proposed a restructuring of the city’s five pension systems under a single pension-investment board.

The model was based on the Toronto teachers pension fund, which routinely beats the returns of older and clunkier systems, such as New York’s.

Some farsighted union leaders quickly jumped aboard. Others held back.

When Liu, who came up with the idea, got mixed up in a federal investigation of his campaign, the plan was shelved.

Too bad.

As of June 30, 2012, the city pension funds have posted a 10-year rate of return of 6.63 percent.

Meanwhile, the Toronto teachers fund, which reports by calendar year, generated 8 percent through the decade ending on Dec. 31, 2011.

Each 1 percent is worth more than $1 billion to taxpayers, who are bound by law to guarantee the returns of the retirement systems.

The Democratic mayoral candidates were given a chance to weigh in on the issue during the National Organization for Women forum last week.

Except for Liu — who suggested that the change he’d proposed could yield as much as $2 billion extra a year — the others all punted.

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio had a problem with “transparency.”

“I don’t think the various stakeholders were consulted in such a way as to create consensus on how to proceed,” he said.

The candidates vigorously denied that opposition by union chiefs — who have considerable clout in a mayoral election year — was a factor.

But with $1 billion or more on the line, it’s curious that the only Democratic candidate calling for the pension overhaul is the guy the unions once saw as their closest ally.

“We’re still investing pension assets as we have done for the past 70 years, I think, when President Roosevelt was in office,” Liu said.

david.seifman@nypost.com