Paul Boyer to Betty Montgomery: Congratulations on your upcoming retirement and thanks for nothing!

From Paul Boyer, November 9, 2006
Dear Mrs. Montgomery:
I am very pleased to congratulate you in your soon retirement, seeing as you were not victorious in the election on Tuesday. It gives me real pleasure to be able to send you this message because I was one of the many retired and perhaps active teachers who urged the voters of Ohio to not send you back to the Attorney General's office. You see, we feel that you failed to uphold your fiduciary duty when you, by law, were a member of the State Teachers Retirement System for about ten years. You allowed the Executive Director, Herb Dyer and members of the board to lavish themselves with all kinds of gifts, travel, etc., paid for with OUR (teachers) money and did nothing to stop it.

I have been one of the leaders in CORE, Concerned Ohio Retired Educators, who for the past three or four years have worked diligently to get these people off of the board and to see that they were punished for it. You did nothing!! A few years ago we were successful in having the legislature put a line in that year's budget to give the Inspector General the power to investigate the STRS system. We have been told by several people that you and Mr. Petro went to the governor and asked him to line item veto that statement, which he did. When we asked you and Mr. Petro directly, as officers of the state, to investigate, you both claimed that you could not do that because it would be a conflict of interest. Of course, you did not want to suffer the fate of some of the other board members who were charged with ethics violations.

When the legislature later began to draft a new reform pension bill, we were again successful in removing the auditor and attorney general from the system boards.

We helped Mr. Petro get defeated in the primary election and then turned our resources on you for the general election. We spent very little money and what we did spend came from our own pockets but we feel that we influenced many people to vote against you and to vote for Marc Dann. I am a lifelong Republican but I had to stray a little this year when it came to protecting my retirement income.

My last act in this was to have a letter to the editor published in The Lima News over the weekend in which I urged ALL voters not to vote for you. How good it was to hear the election results.

Have a good day, Betty, and enjoy your retirement.
Paul L. Boyer
Retired since 1985
Life member OEA/OEA-R,
NEA, ORTA, CORE
Proud to be named
“Core” of CORE