Ryan Holderman: Clarification of Dyer's conviction

From: Ryan Holderman
To: One & All!
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2006
Subject: Clarification of Mr. Dyer's conviction!

Dear One & All:

I want to clarify something that I said in my earlier E-mail. I said, "It was during the period when OEA had a five member control of the Board that Executive Director Herb Dyer, recently convicted of felonies related to his tenure at STRS, let it be known that he felt STRS should get out of the "health care business!" I was using the word felony in the general sense of a serious violation of the law. Legally, Mr. Dyer was convicted of a misdemeanor. The article below outlines that charge.

Sincerely, Ryan Holderman

Ex-chief of teachers' retirement system pleads no contest

The Columbus Dispatch

Thursday, September 1, 2005

The former executive director of the State Teachers Retirement System was found guilty of an ethics violation today for failing to report gifts of meals and golf from 2002.

Herbert L. Dyer, 66, of Powell, appeared in Franklin County Municipal Court and entered a no contest plea to one misdemeanor charge. He said he failed to report nearly $400 in free meals and one golf game paid for by a contractor working with the retirement system.

Judge Michael T. Brandt fined Dyer $700 and ordered that he pay $394 in restitution to the pension fund by mid-September.

Dyer, who resigned in 2003 amid accusations of extravagant spending by his agency, was investigated by the Ohio Ethics Commission for accepting meals for him and his spouse, travel and tickets to a Broadway musical between 1998 and 2003. The gifts were provided by the Frank Russell Corp., a real-estate adviser.

The charges, which were brought by the city attorney's office, are for not disclosing the source of the gifts on his state-mandated ethics statements. Assistant City Prosecutor Lara Baker agreed to dismiss four other counts in exchange for the plea.

``I took into consideration that he had filed many other disclosure forms that were above board,'' Brandt said after the sentencing.

Court records show Dyer paid his fine before leaving the courthouse. He was making $153,000 a year before his retirement.