That was the crux of the dec­la­ra­tion issued by state offi­cials to a high school his­to­ry teacher when he asked to see the terms of the agree­ments between the Ken­tucky Teach­ers’ Retire­ment Sys­tem and the Wall Street firms that are man­ag­ing the system’s mon­ey on behalf of him, his col­leagues and thou­sands of retirees.

If you are a pub­lic school teacher in Ken­tucky, the state has a mes­sage for you: You have no right to know the details of the invest­ments being made with your retire­ment savings.

The denial was the lat­est case of pub­lic offi­cials block­ing the release of infor­ma­tion about how bil­lions of dol­lars of pub­lic employ­ees’ retire­ment nest eggs are being invest­ed. Though some of the fine print of the invest­ments has occa­sion­al­ly leaked, the agree­ments are tight­ly held in most states and cities. Crit­ics say such secre­cy pre­vents law­mak­ers and the pub­lic from eval­u­at­ing the pro­pri­ety of the increas­ing fees being paid to pri­vate finan­cial firms for pen­sion man­age­ment services.

The secre­cy trend is spread­ing through­out the coun­try. Last month, for instance, Illi­nois offi­cials denied an open records request for infor­ma­tion iden­ti­fy­ing which finan­cial firms are man­ag­ing that state’s pen­sion mon­ey. Like their Ken­tucky coun­ter­parts, Illi­nois offi­cials assert­ed that the firms’ iden­ti­ties ​“con­sti­tute trade secrets.” Illi­nois’ Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act includes spe­cial exemp­tions for infor­ma­tion about pri­vate equi­ty firms.

The denial from Illi­nois pen­sion offi­cials fol­lowed a deci­sion ear­li­er this year by Rhode Island Gen­er­al Trea­sur­er Gina Rai­mon­do, a Demo­c­rat, to reject a newspaper’s open-records request for infor­ma­tion about state pen­sion invest­ments. The trea­sur­er’s office argued that finan­cial firms have the right to ​“min­i­mize atten­tion” around their com­pen­sa­tion. Last week Rai­mon­do, who is now Rhode Island’s gov­er­nor-elect, held a closed-door meet­ing of the state invest­ment com­mis­sion to review the state’s $61 mil­lion invest­ment in a con­tro­ver­sial hedge fund.

In a recent essay, Steve Judge, pres­i­dent of the Pri­vate Equi­ty Growth Cap­i­tal Coun­cil, wrote that secre­cy is nec­es­sary and appro­pri­ate to pro­tect the finan­cial industry’s com­mer­cial interests.

“The argu­ment that [agree­ments] should be acces­si­ble to the pub­lic is akin to demand­ing that Coca-Cola pub­lish its famous and secret soda recipe,” he wrote. ​“Like Coke’s secret recipe, [agree­ments] con­tain pro­pri­etary and com­mer­cial­ly sen­si­tive trade secret infor­ma­tion that, if dis­closed, could under­mine a pri­vate equi­ty fund’s abil­i­ty to invest and gen­er­ate high returns for its lim­it­ed partners.”

In Ken­tucky, that defense of secre­cy is being chal­lenged in both the state leg­is­la­ture and the courts.

Rep. Jim Wayne, a Demo­c­rat, is plan­ning to rein­tro­duce his leg­is­la­tion to sub­ject pen­sion invest­ment agree­ments to pro­cure­ment statutes that man­date pub­lic release of all gov­ern­ment con­tracts. Mean­while, Ran­dolph Wieck, the Ken­tucky high school teacher, has filed a class-action law­suit charg­ing KTRS offi­cials with, among oth­er thing, vio­lat­ing their fidu­cia­ry duty to retirees by mov­ing pen­sion mon­ey into opaque alter­na­tive investments.

Even if leg­is­la­tors and courts in Ken­tucky and else­where press for trans­paren­cy, events in Iowa sug­gest the secre­cy may con­tin­ue. There, the pri­vate equi­ty firm KKR in Octo­ber warned state pen­sion offi­cials that if they release infor­ma­tion about the fees that Iowa tax­pay­ers are shelling out to Wall Street, the finan­cial indus­try may respond by effec­tive­ly pro­hibit­ing the state from future pri­vate equi­ty investments.

Of course, maybe that threat isn’t so ter­ri­fy­ing. After all, with many high-fee Wall Street firms fail­ing to deliv­er returns that beat low-fee stock index funds, investors like War­ren Buf­fett are say­ing pub­lic pen­sion sys­tems should­n’t be plow­ing retire­ment sav­ings into hedge funds, pri­vate equi­ty and oth­er so-called ​“alter­na­tive invest­ments.” That is an espe­cial­ly pow­er­ful argu­ment when such invest­ments keep allow­ing the finan­cial indus­try to charge ever-high­er fees in near-total secrecy.