Contact your state representative TODAY

From John Curry, May 17, 2007
Subject: ***CORE ALERT*** 5/17/07 House Bills 151 & 152

Dave Parshall, CORE President, has issued a sample letter (below) that you may use (or modify) to send to your local Ohio House Representative in regards to two Ohio House bills that will cause serious harm to our State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio. CORE urges you to write to your local Representative and ask him/her to not align themselves with either of these bills - House Bill 151 and House Bill 152. Contact email and mailing addresses can be accessed by clicking here

May 17, 2007

The Honorable Representative

I am writing in regards to H.B. 152 (formerly H.B. 700) and H.B. 151. Both of these recently introduced bills will do great harm to the State Teachers Retirement System and the thousands of current and future retirees that depend on STRS for their survival.

H.B. 152 would force Ohio’s school boards to offer teachers with five years or less service an Alternative Retirement plan separate from STRS. This would mean about 15,000 or more teachers would not be contributing to STRS. This would adversely affect current and future retired teachers who depend on STRS for their pensions and healthcare. The unfunded liability of STRS is already great and needs to be reduced not increased. The negative impact of this legislation is far reaching for all concerned. Do not play politics with the lives of so many retired hard working public educators. Ohio needs to continue to live up to the promise made to Ohio’s educators for so many decades not withdraw from it.

H.B. 151 sounds harmless enough and may appear patriotic. The reality is something different. It would be all but impossible to determine which foreign companies are in fact doing business with Iran. Halliburton a U.S. company is doing business with Iran through subsidiaries in Europe. This was disclosed via their own testimony two weeks ago in Congress. Consequently, it’s not clear that U.S. companies are not doing business with Iran through the back door, so how would pension systems like STRS determine which company to divest? The harm that would be done to Ohio’s pension systems like STRS would be immeasurable.

STRS has heavily invested in foreign markets since Enron. The system would suffer great financial harm, which would translate to reduction in benefits. STRS already has an unfunded liability of at least 47.5 years and a major healthcare problem. The sponsors of this legislation, mainly Republicans, are trying to win political points and look like they are being strong on Islamic terrorism. The truth is the main effect will be to harm the lives of the thousands upon thousands of Ohio’s public retirees. This bill is just another attempt to not face the diplomatic failure of the Bush Administration. We need direct talks with Iran, not legislation that looks good, but which will have little effect on Iran. I urge you to not support H.B. 152 and H.B. 151. Short term political gain that harms thousands of seniors is not what Ohio needs.

Yours truly,