Evelyn Cuthbert: Fisher's resignation

From: Evelyn Cuthbert, Fri, July 14, 2006

Subject: The resignation

Dear Ms Ramser, Ms Fisher and Governor Taft:

I am the wife of a retiree and have been involved in educating myself for the past several years in the operations at STRS since the loss of our 13th check, the outrageous cost of our healthcare, and after reading Dennis Leone's list of facts and outrageous expenditures at STRS.

I was appalled at the reason, Ms Fisher, you gave for your resignation. I have only known Dr. Leone for the past several years but I have found him to act only in a professional manor and in many types of circumstances. He is not the type to display actions that would jeopardize his credibility. He has done so much good and is well known. It's only because of Dennis and John Lazares that changes were made at all at STRS. I will, however, say he is probably passionate about doing things the right way to prevent any other catastrophes from inept decisions. He is looking to the future with 20-20 hindsight.

I find that some women in positions of power don't often embrace someone who has such passionate feelings toward their responsibilities and in this case fiduciary responsibilities especially women who have never been in a position of power before. An example may be cautioning the approval of contracts without having the contract in hand or reviewing the contract and taking at face value the Director's mere explanation of it's contents -- yet approving the contract. This to me defies logic and common sense. Some women look at such passion and expertise with cool reserve and do the opposite of what is necessary since those suggestions may not have been initiated by the women themselves or they may feel that a man is telling them what to do and they don't appreciate the expertise.

In my opinion if you felt "driven to resign", you must not have possessed the confidence in yourself necessary for the round table and your ability to debate the issues. This makes you sound unable to cope. There is a lot of pressure there and there should be -- tens of thousands of people and billions of dollars depend on your decisions and many of us who know about the outrageous expenditures do not trust most of you -- you have not proven yourselves to us. It's not all baseball games, Broadway shows and trips to Alaska anymore. What you do may cause even more lawsuits from those who are hired to serve us and not vise versa.

I guess it also depends on what frame of reference you serve as a board member. From what I have seen and heard, Dennis' main goal is to prevent further injury to the system and prevent any further inept decisions that will cost us more in millions like the handling of the lawsuit from the STRS employees.

When it comes to respect, in my opinion that there are 2 kinds. The respect one has for human life and people in general and the respect for a colleague and their professional expertise. Respect in the latter is something that is earned through actions.