Tom Curtis' speech to STRS Board 4/20/06: This board needs to review Dennis Leone's reports of 2003

April 20, 2006

Good afternoon board members, executive staff and guests. My name is Thomas Curtis. I am speaking today on my own behalf. I am an STRS disability retiree with 27 years of service.

The first time I spoke to the STRS board was June 2003. During my first 3-minute presentation, I requested that Herb Dyer, the executive director and each board member at that time resign, due to the unethical practices they had been part of for what appeared to be many years.

WOW! That seemed very radical at that time, but then few had seen the position paper Dr. Dennis Leone presented to the board on May 16^th, 2003, entitled “STRS Organizational matters and entitled, “Restoring Faith, Trust, and Spending Practices.” That paper is still a highly relevant document. Further, to this date, there are still many unresolved issues within it. This board should not permit this, if you claim to be meeting your fiduciary responsibility. But then, we have a current board member who publicly stated she does not find it even relevant to read his paper, which, in effect, leaves only ten board members who are truly qualified, from this standpoint, to deal effectively with serious issues that will affect STRS members for the rest of their lives. Isn’t that mind-boggling? Do I want this kind of mindset on the board, No way!

Today, I am requesting the immediate review and consideration by the entire board, not only of Dr. Leone’s original position paper, but also his second, follow-up paper of August 8^th, 2003, entitled, “Restoring Faith, trust, and Confidence in the STRS.” I do not expect this public request to be ignored again. I have requested such of each board member and the executive director prior to this date and yet have never received any response to such. This is unacceptable to me. I pledge that I will continue to make this request at each board meeting from this date forward until this request has been satisfied.

The facts revealed in Dr. Leone’s first paper greatly angered many STRS members upon learning that their retirement funds had been grossly misspent by the STRS fiduciaries, the very ones who were supposed to protect them! How could they do such a thing? What is more amazing to me is that all of them denied any doing anything wrong, and were themselves angered by the accusations made against them. Most have until this date continued to deny such wrongdoing, even when some have now been found guilty of such in court, and it is my hope all of the others will be closely scrutinized as well.

Most people asked themselves, WHY did this happen?! Were the employees not being paid well enough? NO, that is ABSOLUTELY not the case. The upper management and all key employees were and still are being lavished with benefits far and above what private and corporate people receive, though much of that payment has been and still is hidden from the public eye. This is not right and must be changed; I want value for my dollar.

Why should they be paid so handsomely, when the entire STRS membership is now suffering financially and will continue to do so, probably for the rest of their lives?

Please correct me if I am wrong here, but the employees’ ONLY job has always been to take the dedicated flow of income provided by the contributions from educators and their boards and invest it wisely according to the ORC 3307.15. What is so difficult about that?

Did these employees have to produce a product and market it to produce the income to provide for our retirement? NO! All they had to do was properly fund the benefits they promised us as we paid into the system, while we worked toward our retirement. Just think of the billions of dollars that have been paid into the STRS retirement system since 1920, yet we are not receiving what we were promised. Most of us have been robbed of what we were promised for our futures.

I do not have nearly the same benefits I retired with in 1998. That will only get worse as I live on. Yes, I am and always will be angry, despite what anyone else tells me. I worked for low wages throughout my career with the understanding from my union representatives that my pension and health care benefits for my spouse and myself were safe and would provide adequately for both of us for the rest of our lives. I trusted that to be the case. That was a lie, because the STRS has already reneged on what my wife and I were told by an STRS counselor when I retired. My health care costs for the two of us now total over one third of my total pension. That will soon get much worse in January 2007, according to what I have learned by attending these board meetings.

Have the employees that the membership entrusted their retirement funds with throughout their career provided us with what we were promised?

Let me ask each of your retirees in the audience a question being asked by Howie Mandel of his guests on a new popular TV show, DEAL OR NO DEAL.

In my opinion, the answer is rather simple. These otherwise good people allowed their own greed and warped thinking to validate the pervasive culture of entitlement that had apparently become common practice at the STRS. This sense of entitlement had completely permeated the upper management. Most likely, those employees and board members who disagreed with this thinking either came into line with it, or were ostracized and deemed uncooperative. These greedy people caused many honest employees to become just as tainted as they were. That is a shameful disgrace and these people should be removed from our employment.

Thank you for permitting me to express my concerns today.