Janet Cowell may no longer be a senator, but she's still interested in legislation.

The Democratic state treasurer is lobbying for at least 11 bills in the General Assembly this session, most of which affect her office:

Investment Risk Reduction: Give treasurer's office more flexibility on types of investments for the state pension fund.

Stimulus Reconciliation: Authorizes state to issue different kinds of debt to take advantage of the federal stimulus package.

Treasurer Transparency: Expands treasurer's Investment Advisory Board and sets a standard for assessing decisions.

Property Protection: Limits amount that businesses or individuals can charge for retrieving property held in escheat by the state.

Public Campaign Financing: Expands public campaign finance program to include state treasurer among other offices.

Electronic Reporting: Requires banks and insurance companies reporting large amount of escheats to use state-approved software.

Data Sharing: Permits N.C. Department of Revenue to share certain tax information with the treasurer's office.

Energy Savings Contracts: Removes the cap on energy saving contracts, requires life-cycle cost analyses of conservation measures, among other things.

Pension Corrections: Makes technical corrections to the statutes covering the pension fund and similar state funds.

Retirement COLAs: Addresses cost-of-living adjustments for retirees under the state pension fund and judicial pension fund.

Fire and Rescue Pension: Increases the monthly payment for members of the Firemen's and Rescue Squad Workers Pension Fund.

North Carolina's pension lost about $4.1 billion in the first three months of 2009.

State Treasurer Janet Cowell said Tuesday that the negative 6.4 percent return, which left the pension fund valued at $55.9 billion, was about average.

About 41 percent of the funds are invested in stocks, another 47 percent in bonds, six percent in real estate and the remainder in other investments.

Cowell asked lawmakers to put $358 million into the system over the next two years to make up the losses, but a projected $3 billion budget deficit makes that unlikely. (WRAL)

The Senate Finance Committee, meantime, gave is approval to a bill that would expand the types of investments Cowell can make for the fund, allowing 10 percent more to go into nontraditional investments.

Cowell said that would reduce risk. (Insider)