Tom Curtis: Letter to legislators on ethics issues

May 21, 2006

Hello Representative [or Senator],

This message comes from a retired teacher who has been highly involved for the past 3 years in helping to bring about the much needed reform at the STRS. I have worked side by side with Dr. Dennis Leone, the whistle blower who brought the STRS misspending to light.

I realize I may not be in your district, but I reach hundreds of thousands of STRS members by email everyday. You can be assured that we are very conscious about ethics violations and blame many Ohio government officials for turning their backs on us.

Two former fiduciaries of the STRS have been found guilty of ethics violations to date, with many more awaiting the same fate. However, those convictions do nothing to replace the millions of dollars misspent by these fiduciaries.

Ethics violations are becoming far too common and are reaching epidemic proportion. Our state is the laughing stock of the country concerning this issue.

You hold a position that could help to call for the remedy of much of this. Yet, neither of the bills currently being considered by the House and the one passed by the Senate address the ethics issue properly.

Neither bill includes provisions for enforcement nor outside monitoring, which is where current rules governing lobbying really fall down.

As stated by Fred Wertheimer, a Washington reform coalition head, "The bill does nothing about fixing the scandalous, failed House ethics enforcement system, nothing about preventing corporations from making company planes available to members at deeply discounted costs, nothing about providing the public with information about the fundraisers lobbyists hold for members, the parties they finance to 'honor' members, and the conferences and retreats held by members for which the lobbyists pay, and nothing about providing the public with information about the huge sums being secretly spent by professional lobbying firms on campaigns to stimulate lobbying by the public, including multimillion dollar advertising campaigns."

You were elected to your position to do better then this. Please take your oath to heart and address this issue of ethics properly, instead of passing a bill that is basically useless for the sake of passing something.

Again, I realize I may not live in your district, but teachers alone represent 430,000 votes. I have contact by email with many of them almost daily.

Best Regards,

Thomas Curtis,

Life Member of the STRS, CORE, ORTA, SCRTA & AARP