Donna Seaman's speech to STRS Board, September 17, 2009

Hello, my name is Donna Seaman, I am a 2002 retiree. My views are my own and do not reflect that of any organization.

Today or tomorrow you will be voting on awarding performance based incentives to investment staff for 7/12 of the 2008-09 fiscal year. Please consider carefully how much further you will reduce trust, respect and morale of STRS members who have been pleading with you for a very long time to completely abolish, once and for all, bonuses for that department.

Now you plan to call these bonus payments by another name: delayed and reduced payment of the bonuses! Calling it by another name does not change the fact that these bonuses should not be paid at all and should be absolutely eliminated!

Mr. Nehf always refers to investment personnel as the best and brightest, a phrase that has become totally disgusting to me. We recently learned that among the devastating losses in all five Ohio public pension systems, STRS’s losses exceeded all others! In my judgment, STRS’s best and brightest are obviously the best at losing money! But we are still reminded that the board is saving money by having its own investment personnel on staff.

It is totally out of line and appalling that this board is still discussing this issue. We’ve all seen the breakdown of investment staff salaries, most of which are far higher than Ohio’s governor’s salary. There is absolutely no justification for paying bonuses on top of these salaries at any time, but especially in the light of their huge losses. I request, once again, that you do NOT grant performance based incentives, in any form whatsoever, ever again.

Although one of your board members was quoted that she loves us, I ask that you please do not love us so much. We can’t take much more of your loving decisions which devastate and anger us and destroy whatever is left of the board’s credibility and respect.

Instead, I ask that you “love” the STRS employees! Show the STRS staff some of the severe cutbacks that you have shown retirees. In fact I suggest you direct Mr. Nehf to totally eliminate all the best and brightest investment staff, at a savings to STRS of $19.5 million each year. Eliminating this entire department, with love of course, and distributing those funds among the 140,000 retirees as a 13th check of about $135.71, would begin to make amends to retirees for all the cuts we have suffered in the past few years.

Board members, do the right thing, and abolish all incentives, now and in the future. Thank you.