A message from Dave Speas

Dave Speas to Molly Janczyk, June 20, 2007
Subject: NOW WHAT ARE THEY UP TO

NOW WHAT ARE THEY UP TO?

On a sunny and bright day two accidents happened. At 11:37 AM on Godspeed Road, a state legislator was killed as he took his daily walk and left six worthless bills behind. At 11:52 AM on Lookout Road a black and white skunk was hit by a car and left only one scent behind. The scuttlebutt at the sheriff's office was that it was easy to remember which place each accident took place. On Lookout road, there were skid marks but there were none on Godspeed Road.

To some, this may not be especially funny but it makes me smile as I write and talk to legislators about the topics I am covering here in this epistle. Many of them are truly out of touch with the citizens of Ohio and blind to the truth that if it "ain't broke don't fix it".

I need to warn you that if I had been born during the time the Revolutionary War was fought and the time afterwards where our national government was formed, I would have sided with Patrick Henry in his opinion about the newly written Constitution that it is too big, too impersonal, and it has too much power to intrude into individuals' lives. Personally, I am of the opinion that the less government the better because each of us have to be more involved in the daily decisions made by our communities because government is not involved. An example of this is that as the government became more involved in providing food and other tangible help our churches and other private organizations withdrew much of their effort from the acts of helping these folks on a local level. With all the problems we face today, private entities are trying to learn again how to be affective because the government cannot know the needs of each individual community.

I am going to discuss HB 151, HB 152 and the Getting It Right for Ohio amendment movement that will redesign Ohio's school funding.

House Bill 151 was written to keep the retirement systems from investing in companies doing business in Iran and Sudan. It is being fostered on us as an antiterrorism bill.

Republican Jon Husted, Speaker of the House, is the prime supporter of this bill. He has taken the position that if the retirement systems in Ohio do not voluntarily adopt taking roughly 19 companies out of their investment portfolios, the bill will go to the floor.

Let me give you a list of why this is a bad idea as follows:

1. One of the premises of open markets is that if western companies can get into countries like the Sudan and Iran they can be an influence on their economy making them embrace the free market tenants and get freedom's basic ideas next to the common people and the governments.
2. Many of the companies on the original list put forward by the legislators have businesses in Ohio, hire tens of thousands of our citizens, bring salaries and tax monies into our communities, and are not supporters of terrorism and have track records that prove so. For instance, Rolls Royce is on that list and Ohio is trying to attract them to locate in the Cleveland area. Are these mixed messages, I'd say so.
3. A legislator can sponsor a bill based on his or her own ideology and it can be changed into something quite different from what was intended with amendments.
4. The law on the books now that covers STRS, for instance, says that our retirement system has to make the best returns on investments it can for our members.
5. Every time a new party controls the legislature the pension systems would be held hostage to their party of personal ideology rather than to the spirit of the original law and to the members the systems were designed to serve.
6. Lastly, foreign policy is the job of the federal government and it should decide on the use of economic sanctions based on the country's needs to impact specific issues.

House Bill 152 was introduced by Republican Chris Widener from the Springfield area. This bill requires all K through 12 employers to offer private vendor defined benefit plans to all new employees and those with less than 5 years of service credit.

STRS and most retirees have many objections and they follow:

1. The potential to lose teachers to private vendor plans would have negative consequences on the systems funding status due to possible loss in contributions.
2. STRS already offers a defined contribution plan to its new members employed at both the K-12 level and in higher education that is competitive to private vendor plans in both its investment options and its fees. There is no demand from those affected or their employers for these additional options from private vendors.
3. I sit on a public school board of education and we are struggling as most are across this state to keep our books balanced. The addition of private vendor plans will result in an increased administrative burden and cost to school districts.
4. This bill was aimed at Ohio public school employees and not county workers, firemen, policemen, utility workers nor any other worker who receives a pay check from a county or city.

It is my personal opinion, along with others, that there are forces out there trying to destroy our retirement systems. 68 billion dollars is a magnet to those who might see it as a way out of Ohio's financial problems. There are national movements afoot trying to make all of us be part of the social security system and sometimes, I believe, legislators wittingly or unwittingly become part of the effort to destroy the systems.

Getting It Right for Ohio's Future is a grass root movement to change Ohio's funding for public schools. It is a proposed ballot issue that needs over 400,000 names on its petition to get it to the voters.

The proposed amendment would declare a high-quality public education a fundamental right of all Ohio children and gradually reduce local shares of expenses for schools and increase the state's share.

The facts you need to know follow:

1. The state's share would jump by 50% over the next nine years. That is an increase of 3.2 billion dollars.
2. The Ohio School Board of Education would identify the components and put a price tag on such an education and the General assembly would have to fund it. A new funding system would be phased in over three years. This would shift much of the burden for funding from local property owners to the state.
3. According to the Education Department's analysis, per pupil aid would increase from $5,403 this year to $7,883 in 2016, a 46% increase over nine years. (Over the past 8 years the rate went from $3663 in 1998 to $5.403 in 2007 which is a 48% jump.)

Specifically, you should know these things:

1. It would reduce the required local school district funding contribution to 20 mills of property or equivalent taxation in a 6 year phase between 2012 and 2017.
2. It would eliminate phantom revenue by exempting the 20 local mills from rate reduction factors which will greatly reduce the size, number, and frequency of operating levies.
3. It would retain all existing mileage or other equivalent forms of taxation until planned expiration or elimination by school district voters.
4. It would mandate a 5% plus inflationary increase in per-pupil funding during the two initial fiscal years prior to the full launch of the constitutionally revised system.
5. It would exempt Ohio senior citizen homeowners and disabled homeowners from property taxes on the first $40,000 of market value of their homes.
6. It would protect school state funding for facilities, local government, and higher education.

It has been 10 years since the original Ohio Supreme Court said our state funding of schools is unconstitutional. With very little response from the legislature, this is the result.

Retired teachers have been the guardians of the retirement system since its beginning. As retirees were keeping our retirements safe, we now have a duty to protect our actives' benefits. While doing so, we will also become knowledgeable about those things which may impact us. We were not doing a good job of that when the last crisis hit and we paid for our lack of diligence.

Our retirement organizations must work together to defeat bills and legislation that would hurt us or the actives. The measurement of viable retirement organizations is whether they can put small differences behind them and rally to the cause together. The combining of those who are members and those who have not joined any organization is necessary to stop these poorly thought out bills.

We retirees must get into the district meetings at the beginning of the year and make the actives aware of the work we are doing and the dangers that are lurking to take away the retirement system's ability to function for our benefit and not be prey to some lawmaker's ideology.

Teachers have been at the forefront of educating people through all the generations. Even today as retirees, we must set the example that apathy is not acceptable when government oversteps its bounds and is not responsive to what is best for its citizens.

Come on, call teachers you know who are not members and enlist their help, rally your friends and neighbors, be vocal about these bad decisions or good solutions in your churches and social organizations, get your family involved, and certainly, above all, contact your legislators along with all those you recruit.

Remember that bad laws can cause more problems than no law at all. Vigilance is the only way to keep bad government from happening to all of us.

Dave Speas, CCRTA president [Clark Co.]