Mary Ellen Angeletti: Minutes of the 6/15/06 CORE meeting

The CORE Advisory Board met at STRS on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 11:45 am. In attendance were Chuck Chapman, Nancy Hamant, Betty Bell, Mary Ellen Angeletti, and Chuck Angeletti. Mary Ellen served as scribe. Guests attending the meeting were Ann Hanning, Blin Scatterday, Lou DiOrio, Mark Meuser, and Ray Variakojis.

In Dave Parshall's absence (he is in the process of moving), Mary Ellen reported the balance of the CORE financial fund which was down due to the expenses of the current STRS election. CORE will have to try to recoup these monies in some way.

The website statement promised by Dave Parshall regarding who speaks for CORE, etc. (discussed at the May CORE meeting) could not be shared today as Dave had to be absent so this will occur at our August CORE meeting.

Mary Ellen followed up on the point made at last month's CORE meeting as to the importance of communicating with our local legislators during July and August when they are in their home districts concerning support for the proposed legislation for the STRS Health Care.

Tom Curtis then reported on the June 5th CORE Retreat. He shared one suggestion which came from the Retreat was that CORE's lack of leadership by having no designated leader or figurehead to use for the purpose of making contact with other groups and that this might be hindering CORE. Tom made no motion concerning this topic; instead, he presented it as a topic for CORE to consider and perhaps study. He used the examples of our close association with Dave Speas of ORTA and explained about the visit by Gary Monto, the President of the Retired Fire and Police group.

Mr. Monto shared his suggestions at the Retreat, challenging CORE to designate officers and to develop structure like other recognized organizations, having perhaps a constitution or charter or by-laws. He suggested that in this way we could join with other pension organizations such as the Fire and Police for the purpose of exploring our own prescription drug plan rather than contract with a PBM (Pharmacy Benefit Manager such as Caremark).

Betty Bell then asked Tom if we could perhaps use the Fire and Police by-laws which she understood were simple by-laws which we could change as go along. Betty then recommended changing our CORE dues to annual dues which would help replenish our coffers. Tom felt that CORE would probably need the summer and longer to consider ramifications and suggestions for restructuring and then to present recommendations by the end of the year. Two year terms were mentioned at the Retreat.

Nancy Hamant then restated a motion made by her and seconded by Ryan Holderman at the June CORE Retreat. "I move that the CORE Advisory Board take to members the recommendation that CORE needs to have elected officers, i.e., chair or president, vice chair or vice president, treasurer, membership and regional advisor representatives as well. CORE needs to make its operation more efficient by perhaps having four meetings per year and having two CORE members attend the other STRS Board meetings. These two members would report by email a summary of the STRS meeting that they attended."

Nancy reminded us that we began chiefly as an email group so we could report on the STRS meetings by emailing the minutes. Since STRS has eleven meetings a year, we would need 22 CORE volunteers to cover the STRS meetings (one for the Thursday meeting & one for the Friday meeting each month). This motion piggybacked on the conversation of studying the proposed re-structuring of CORE. No action was taken on Nancy's motion but it was used for further discussion. Nancy offered that those of us on the CORE Advisory Board sometimes feel we are condemned to life long term limits. We need to distribute the workload.

Betty shared that a friend of hers had been contacted by STRS by phone for the purpose of conducting a survey of 12 questions. Following the survey, the caller announced that she was eligible to attend a paid ($50.00) meeting at STRS. Her friend attended this meeting and at some point, she made the suggestion that STRS should have their own PBM rather than Caremark. The STRS officials in charge of the meeting informed Betty's friend that they were not going to discuss that that day.

The CORE Advisory Board members voted by email prior to today's meeting (following the June 5th Retreat) to delay any decision-making on the issue of re-structuring CORE to the September Annual CORE meeting. It was suggested that we use today's CORE meeting as well as the August CORE meeting for discussion of pros and cons. At today's CORE meeting, it was decided to use the month of July as well, even though there is no STRS meeting in July. CORE Advisory Board members and any other CORE members interested in attending will meet at CORE in the back cafeteria room on Thursday, July 20th at 9:00 a.m. We have the room for the entire day. All are welcome to attend and give input & ideas.

Lloyd Knudsen then asked Lou DiOrio, Ann Hanning, and Blin Scatterday if their organizations have ever considered developing their own PBM (Pharmacy Benefit Manager). Ann replied that ORTA was part of the Ohio Retiree Coalition (all five pension systems) which met throughout 2004 - 2005. It was decided that each of the pension systems needed to get their own houses in order first.

Someone mentioned that the Health Care Advocates feel that their work is done. They have a proposal for obtaining a long term dedicated stream of revenue for HC if the legislature accepts it. Ann Hanning offered that the Health Care Advocates do NOT have a final plan in place yet. Health Savings Accounts are not going to cover the expenses of health care for public employees.

Tom Curtis then asked Lou DiOrio if he attended the Health Care Advocate meetings. Lou said that the other systems backed out at the time of these discussions but they must now come together as a coalition. Tom asked Lou DiOrio about PBM experiences, to which Lou stated that the state of Wisconsin's public pension systems have come together to form their own PBM. All of us felt that this was an important achievement to note that it HAS BEEN DONE.

Nancy Hamant reminded us that three fifths of the states are suing Caremark (which took over Advance PCS) which operates ILLEGALLY. She said that the PBMs are crooks which give kickbacks to their organizations such as STRS. Blin Scatterday shared that only a Plan A was offered to the legislature so that they will stay with Plan A and won't consider or know about any other perhaps better choices (active teachers paying all of the 5% and shaming the employers). Gary offered that they only had six months to study the PBMs. Perhaps Caremark was the best deal, to which Chuck Angeletti offered that perhaps Caremark gave the best kickback to STRS.

Lou DiOrio offered that his group (OCHER, Ohio Council of Higher Education Retirees) has no funds, either. He said he is not paid so he doesn't have to attend meetings if he doesn't want to. Whereas Ann Hanning HAS to attend the STRS meetings because she is paid to do so. She is not a volunteer. He told us that this was something CORE had to consider (paying volunteers). He feels we do not get structure in any other way than to have a paid position. He reminded us that we are a focus group and a good one. He feels that CORE structure is needed. Ray warned that legislators love to see us fighting among ourselves.

Ryan Holderman then volunteered that when he retired in 2003, he joined ORTA but soon saw a reluctance on ORTA's part to accept and investigate Dr. Leone's findings. No reply from Ann or Blin.

Ideas offered at today's meeting:

1. We need a spokesperson to make contact with other groups.
2. Ryan Holderman offered to contact Paul Boyer who has already offered to work on by-laws, charter, mission statement, or constitution. These two have volunteered to study some form of guiding principles if re-structuring of CORE occurs. They will try to communicate via email and provide some sort of outline or draft to present to us at the July 20th meeting.
3. A slate of officers cannot be done until we define responsibilities for positions.
4. CORE meetings are critical. Could we do four only? The September Annual Meeting is a must.
5. We must capture the effectiveness of email. This is how we started.
6. We consider a chairman, a vice chairman, a treasurer, and an advisory board. Should any of these positions be paid positions?
7. We retain our current advisory board which would be a central part of CORE.
8. The Chairperson would have responsibility to promote what the Advisory Board advises.
9. There should be term limits for positions perhaps two year terms.
10. We will meet in July.
11. Recommendations must be sent out to all prior to the September Annual CORE meeting so that all of CORE has time to study and prepare to vote at the Sept. meeting.
12. Do we want to consider ANNUAL dues for CORE?
13. Should we have regional advisory representatives?
14. Should we ask for volunteers to cover one STRS meeting a year and report minutes to us via email? We would need to recruit 22 volunteers.

We ended our meeting with a discussion of whether CORE should endorse political candidates or not. ORTA offered that they do not since they must work with everyone. Ray Variakojis, OFT, suggested that CORE endorse issues instead especially since our constituency represents both parties and Independents, too. Nancy Hamant recommends that we endorse a dedicated stream of revenue for Health Care since Health Saving Accounts cannot begin to pay for our health care expenses in the future. Ann suggested that the local RTA chapters get legislators to join them and thus gain their support and their ears in this way.

We did not have time to discuss input for direction and focus for CORE for the coming year. Will it be Health Care?

The next meeting for CORE will be Thursday, July 20th at 9:30 am at the back cafeteria room at STRS. All are welcome.