Article (Flashback; Kostyu): STRS board meetings lose enraged audience (12/18/03)
By Paul E. Kostyu
Copley Columbus Bureau Chief
COLUMBUS -- What a difference five months make.
Instead of people being turned away for lack of room, seats were empty at the monthly meeting of the State Teachers Retirement System board.
Instead of 30 people wanting a chance to criticize the board, eight speakers signed up Friday, and just three were critics. The others complimented the board.
Where critic’s comments in the past would have drawn enthusiastic applause, this week the silence was deafening.
Where there were television cameras, now there are none. Of the five seats reserved for the media Friday, one was occupied.
Things appeared to be almost back to normal for the State Teachers Retirement System board.
That’s a far cry from meetings in July, August and September, when members of the system demanded the entire board resign following media reports about spending on travel, artwork, dinners, parties, staff bonuses, benefits and perks, while the investment portfolio tanked and health-care costs for members skyrocketed.
No board member resigned over the flap, though embattled Hazel A. Sidaway, a Canton teacher, left the board because she retired. Now five months after her resignation, the board unanimously passed a resolution commending her 17 years of service to the system and board.
“Through her own words, actions, deeds and epiphanies, she never let her fellow board members nor associates forget that service to our members and benefit recipients must always be a top priority,” the resolution said in part.
The resolution would have been met with intense scorn had it come earlier when she was pegged as the top spender of system money for trips across the country. She spent $54,216 in expenses in her last three years on the board, including trips to Honolulu, Boston, New York and Florida. She called her critics, who were State Teachers Retirement System members, ignorant. The board spent $4,100 of system dollars to throw her a going-away party in June.
At Friday’s meeting, board members dealt with issues as they have in the past, routinely and, for the most part, unanimously.
Still, a couple of critics let the board know they are still watching.
Paul L. Boyer, a retired teacher from Lima, blasted board chairman Eugene Norris for painting a rosy picture of the State Teachers Retirement System operation last week when he gave a speech to delegates of the Ohio Education Association Assembly.
“Did you tell them how you and your four OEA active teacher members rubber-stamped extravagant expenditures for this new building ..., extravagant bonuses, all the unnecessary trips you took at STRS expense?” he said. “Were those the accomplishments you reported? I am sure you kept very quiet about them. Shame on you.”
Retired teacher Dan Norris, who’s not related to the chairman, said the board had the same problem faced by the rest of the country. They are motivated by greed.
And Chillicothe Superintendent Dennis Leone, who initiated the investigations into State Teachers Retirement System spending as far back as May, returned once again to the board meeting. He reiterated his call for reducing the staff and their fringe benefits, saying “they far exceeded the norm.”
But even Leone, saying he had obligations in his district, left the meeting early.
posted by Kathie Bracy at 8:33 PM
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