Benatar, the youngest person in Arizona history to serve as county treasurer, gave written and oral testimony before the House Financial Institutions Subcommittee during the trip.

The title of the hearing was “Climate risk: Are financial regulators politically independent?” Lawmakers explored why regulators are considering climate change and climate risks in their decision-making processes. This included examining the relevance of the Biden administration’s climate change policies and the impact of recommendations from international non-governmental organizations.

Mr. Benatar was joined by the Federal Reserve’s Director of Supervision and Regulation, the Senior Deputy Supervisor of Large Banks Supervision under the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Deputy Commissioner of the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), and the Director of Risk Management and Oversight of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

“I’m always nervous, but from my perspective, it was an opportunity to share a local story,” she said. “These concerns are not unique to Coconino County. They are seen by county officials across the country.”

As Coconino County Treasurer, it is Mr. Benatar’s duty to protect, invest and manage public funds.

In doing so, she said, she considers three things: the security of taxpayers’ money, liquidity and the return on investments made for local governments.

In addition to his elected role, Mr. Benatar is also president of the Arizona Association of Countyes (AACo), a member of the National Association of Counties (NACo), and president of the National Association of Hispanic County Clerks.

Benatar said those skills have allowed him to understand how other local leaders are thinking through climate change and financial regulation.

“We are all concerned about risk. We are all up and working long hours to mitigate risk. We all want to make sure taxpayer money is safe. “I was able to share stories that often go untold in Washington, D.C. It was an honor for me to be able to share what is really happening through the eyes of people who work on the front lines and live by what they see every day.”

In his testimony, Benatar spoke directly about the relationship between climate and finance, based on his observations in Coconino County.

“Last year we had wildfires, floods, tornadoes, record snowfall, and now record heat,” Benatar said.

She said these events have had a big impact on how she works.

It’s her duty to make sure the county pays for firefighting, flood mitigation, and snow removal. As she invests taxpayer dollars in corporate bonds and commercial paper, she also looks at how changing weather patterns and changing public perceptions of energy can affect the health of investments.

During the hearings, House members tried to understand why climate change was part of the financial risk management framework in the first place, but some hinted that climate change itself might not be justified.

Benatar’s position on this issue is clear.

“It’s not a hypothesis,” she said. “These are the realities we see every day.

She also said that considering climate change concerns for local trustees is a matter of best practice, which predates some of the political pressures being questioned at the hearings.

In planning for the county’s financial future, Mr. Benatar testified that environmental factors need to be considered alongside other forms of financial risk.

During the hearing, the subject of discussion was whether climate change should be taken into account in financial decision-making.

“In my testimony, I talked about having all the tools in your toolbox. As a government official, as someone responsible for all the money, you should have all the tools in your toolbox so that you can analyze the risks to public money,” Benatar said.

He said climate change is by no means the only factor to be factored into the risk management framework. Benatar said he would consider aspects such as cybersecurity and the impact of emerging technologies such as AI on the market before investing public money.

“Risk is always adapting. To track risk, track trends and see what’s going on, you need to be always on top of things. We need to adapt our analytics to the real risks. No example is better than our county on a daily basis,” said Benatar.

She wants Congress to define what risks financial regulators and local governments can assess, and is concerned that certain considerations are intentionally prohibited.

“I hear climate change is not a real risk.

He said lawmakers are taking a market-driven process and making it political by identifying issues that regulators and public money managers can and can’t consider.

“Across the country, legislation is being introduced that will drastically curtail the policies that the Treasury Department can adopt to assess the range of banks it can trade with, what it can invest in, and the risks associated with managing public funds,” Benatar said in testimony Tuesday. “Many of these proposals claim to depoliticize financial regulation, but instead incorporate new political tests that protect special interests from market competition.”

Earlier this year, Benatar signed a letter opposing Arizona’s “anti-ESG” laws. ESG is an abbreviation for Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance Policy and has become a political buzzword.

The letter, signed by 14 of Arizona’s 15 county treasurers, opposed SB 1138 and SB 1139, bills aimed at restricting government partnerships with businesses working on causes such as climate action and social equity.

Benatar’s office contracts with federally regulated banking agencies to manage processes such as payroll for local government employees.

At the time, she was worried that anti-ESG laws would limit the banks she could do business with and that she would leave the Treasury Office with no banks at all.

Benatar argues that being told not to consider risk factors because they fall under “ESG policy” effectively blinds people with fiduciary responsibilities.

“It’s not political. It shouldn’t be political. We’re talking about best practices that have been in place for quite some time,” Benatar said. “The word ESG is new. So you’re factoring in our approach to ensuring safety and making it political. That’s nothing new.

Local officials never want to bankrupt the government, she said. If we are forced to blindly invest or choose bank contracts based solely on a financial institution’s decision not to have an ESG policy, I am not sure that public funds can be managed safely.

Speaking with Arizona Daily Sun Benatar, from Austin, Texas, who is attending the NACo conference, said he hopes his testimony will make an impression in Washington.

“Hearing local-level concerns about how detrimental this kind of legislation is to our ability as fiduciaries of public money and to our ability to be good fiduciaries of public money, I hope they walk away from that hearing.