Tom Curtis: Complaint to the Ohio Attorney General's Office

Tom Curtis to Robert Morrmann, March 18, 2009
Subject: 031809 Public Records Request

Hello Mr. Morrmann,

I wish to file a complaint against the executive director of OSTRS, Mr. Michael Nehf, for the failure to provide a stakeholder with what I believe to be public records.

On February 19, 2009 I made a written request by email with Mr. Nehf for the month by month employee counts from 1990 to present, both full and part-time.

I requested this budgetary information in hope that I might determine at what period(s) the staff at the OSTRS grew to the large number that it stands at yet today.

Mr. Nehf's first response was that he would have the staff prepare the information and it would be forthcoming. After a few weeks and no results, I made my request with Mr. Nehf again. He apologized and said he had been out of the office and had forgotten about it, but that it would be forthcoming.

The next day I received an email of a document that he had presented to the entire board at the February board meeting. This document listed the employee counts for full-time employees for the past ten years, but made absolutely no mention of the part-time employee counts.

I responded by email and again made it quite clear as to what I desired.

His response:

[From Mike Nehf, March 6, 2009
Subject: RE: Employee Counts]

Tom,

STRS Ohio does not have this information available to copy for you. It would have to be compiled. I apologize that I cannot comply with your request. I reiterate that STRS is working diligently during these difficult times to serve our members’ most important needs. Tom, I hope you understand. Is there any additional information we can provide that we may already have developed?

Sincerely,
Mike Nehf

My response to the above was that I had no thought the information I requested would be something that could simply be copied and encouraged him to comply.

Mr. Nehf followed with the information I requested on all full-time employees for the time period I requested, but indicated that he could not provide the information I requested on all part-time employees. I continued to request that information but his final response was:

[From Mike Nehf, March 13, 2009
Subject: Re Part-time Payroll Counts]

Tom,

STRS Ohio has attempted to provide you with records that included the information you requested, but I’m sorry that STRS Ohio does not maintain records in a form that is exactly responsive to your request. Tom, you might recall that under Ohio Public Records Law, a public office is not required to create new records to respond to a public records request, even if it is only a matter of compiling information from existing records. As I had earlier indicated, it would require hours of a programmer’s time to create a new report for you going back 18+ years, month by month.

I apologize that I cannot comply with your request. I reiterate again that STRS Ohio is working diligently during these difficult times to serve our members’ most important needs and I hope you can understand. I look forward to continuing to work with you in the future.

Sincerely,
Mike Nehf

I have followed with two more communications, to no avail. I indicated that I would file a complaint for the information I requested with the attorney general's office. He has been clear that he will not provide the information.

Mr. Morrmann, many other retirees and I feel that the management and board of the OSTRS is very unresponsive to making cut-backs and reducing budgets in these very difficult times. Recommendations for such by one board member, Dr. Dennis Leone, met with strong opposition in November 2008. However, by February most had finally agreed to the wage freeze and the stoppage of the PBI's until the end of the fiscal year on June 30th, 2009.

As you are probably aware, the OSTRS management and board not only approved raises from 6-15% and the continuation of PBI's last April, but then paid out $6 million in PBI's recently for 89 investment staff, at a time when the OSTRS had lost $30 billion dollars.

In my opinion, I have made a reasonable budgetary request of the OSTRS and feel that Mr. Nehf should be required to provide all of the information I requested.

I was told you are the specialist in this area and would respond to my complaint. I will thank you in advance for expediting my complaint in a timely fashion.

Thomas Curtis
OSTRS Stakeholder