Tom Curtis to Attorney General Marc Dann re: Divestment

From Tom Curtis, July 23, 2007
Subject: Curtis To Att General Dann, Divestment

Attorney General Dann,

My name is Thomas Curtis. I am an STRS retiree and one of the initial founding members of CORE.

I want to commend you for having broken new ground by cleaning-up many of the troubling and illegal practices that were overlooked or ignored by our past Ohio administration. It appears you are doing exactly what you said you would do if elected. Please continue your reform process.

However, I am concerned that you have not entered into and stopped the state legislature in their illegal attempts to alter social investing and divestment of our public pension funds.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but is it not the job of the Federal Government to order the divestment of funds in countries deemed to be terrorist related, or for any other reason and not the job of our state legislature?

The divestment action proposed in HB 151 and SB 161 I believe is not within the realm of jurisdiction of our legislators. This action by our legislature is unnecessary, costly, time consuming and must be stopped in the future.

It is my opinion that there are far too many issues needing the legislatures' attention to be spending time in areas that they do not have the legal jurisdiction to be concerned with.

Please consider offering an opinion in the future on issues our legislature has no legal authority to even consider.

And last, why does the legislature feel they can utilize our pension funds for such purposes, which are supposedly secured according to ORC 3307? This type of consideration is unwarranted and causes much concern to public pension retirees.

I will thank you in advance for a timely response to my questions.

Thomas Curtis
North Canton, OH