Tom Curtis re: Accountability of STRS Board members

From Tom Curtis, January 22, 2008
Subject: Accountability Of STRS Board Members

Hello STRS Stakeholders,

It sure would seem that the stakeholders of the STRS should be able to find some way to bear pressure on STRS board members who will not answer reasonable questions about their voting records. Especially those voting against motions that are clearly beneficial to every stakeholder. In my opinion, that goes against their fiduciary responsibility.

Why are we not able to come together and bring this about? So many of us have taken the time to write these board members and ask for some accountability, but receive little or no response at all. Rarely do we receive a well thought out and to-the-point response. It does not seem justified that these individuals can simply thumb their noses at their stakeholders.

We must once again begin to contact the people in the various legal offices within our state government to find out if such accountability is possible, and if not, why not? Someone has to listen to our concerns, we just have to find that person that will make that happen. Do they exist? I am optimistic that they do and we must locate them.

In addition to this, can the stakeholders bring pressure upon the OEA/OFT to keep them from controlling the STRS board? They can and have so easily controlled the STRS board by throwing large sums of money at the election of a candidate they support (a candidate they have brainwashed with their union mentality and greed). Regardless of how these union supported board members protest, they have been brainwashed by a union and that is a tragedy for the STRS stakeholder. My bigger question to these individuals is why, they do not get paid for their efforts at the local level, whereas the OEA leaders are handsomely paid. It makes no sense at all!

Helloooooo..........the OEA leadership did absolutely nothing to support and back the OEA/STRS stakeholder, when 5 past board members (all OEA supported for election) repeatedly broke the law, as they went about the business of spending our retirement funds like kids in a candy store. In the end, their spending for travel was mostly for their own benefit and did little to benefit the stakeholder.

The OEA is the union so many of us supported throughout our careers and they did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! That, my friends, was a conscious disregard for their stakeholders and educators as a whole. The OEA leadership should be ashamed of themselves, but obviously they are not.

We have the knowledge of what has taken place in the past, present and what will likely happen in the near future. If we cannot bring accountability to the STRS board, history is bound to repeat itself.

So I ask each of you, do we the stakeholders have the capability as a group to bring pressure to bear on those board members that will not respond to our concerns for accountability?

If you believe we do, then let's put together a plan different from what we have been doing thus far. It's simply called, plan your work and work your plan.

Let's begin to research if we have the right to ask for accountability. If we do, then let's find out who is responsible for bringing that to fruition. We have a CORE treasury. We need to utilize some of that money to bring about the results we desire. Are we doing that at present? I cannot say for sure, because I stepped away from my active participation in CORE because it was making me ill.

Time is and has been wasting by continuing the methods we have been using to date. Stakeholders are making outstanding presentations to the board each and every month, but so many on the board do not even acknowledge what they have heard. That is a travesty!

John Lazares leaves the board this coming August and Dennis Leone the following August. The board will undoubtedly return to the inept board of the most recent past, which rubber stamped most anything brought to them by the administration. That, my friends, is exactly what the president of the OEA requested of the board when she recently spoke before them! Show a strong united front and vote as a whole! She obviously is not the least bit concerned that some of these people are not even qualified by any stretch of the imagination to serve on a board of an $80 billion dollar enterprise. Just who is she really posturing for?

On May 16, 2003, Dr. Dennis Leone, forced by the arrogant past executive director of the STRS, wrote and presented his historical paper addressing many of his concerns about the financial mismanagement of the STRS by both the board and the administration. Was this and all of his efforts to date in vain? God I sure hope not.

Sincerely,
Thomas Curtis
CORE member