Tom Curtis: Letter to Ann Hanning

From Tom Curtis, March 29, 2010

To: Ann Hanning, Executive Director of ORTA
From: Thomas Curtis, Life member of ORTA
Date: 3.29.10

Dear Ann Hanning,

Kindly remove my name from your membership list immediately.

I no longer desire to be a life member of ORTA. You have chosen to use my name, address and phone number information in a manner that I do not approve of. I do not want anyone calling me about some kind of insurance or anything else you and your board have decided is good for us.

What I have always desired from ORTA are an executive director and board that stood up for the people that it represents, against the greedy management at the STRS and OEA. The last executive director to do that was Joe Endry, but when he left that position and became an STRS board member, the OEA neutered him: he voted YES on all of the abuses that Herb Dyer and the OEA majority held board voted through for 3 consecutive years, until Dr. Dennis Leone came on the scene and said that is enough.

Did ORTA back Dennis Leone? Absolutely not! That was a travesty for all STRS stakeholders, as the greed and misspending continued and ORTA continued to sit on its hands. I still have not figured out what ORTA does for retired educators, but supply a forum for luncheons.

Ann, I have never witnessed or heard that you have ever stood up and spoken to the STRS board on behalf of retirees. Instead, you simply sit on your hands and join in with the OEA people and say nothing. You are paid a considerable amount of money to represent us and yet you do nothing to stop the bleeding.

I retired in 1998 and paid to become a life member of ORTA, thinking ORTA was an advocate and stood up for retiree benefits. Since that time I have seen nothing but a loss of the benefits I was promised at retirement, so I must ask you, just what has ORTA done for me? Very little from where I stand. Over one-third of my pension has gone for out-of-pocket HC expenses since 2004, when the only pension system in the State of Ohio stripped away any subsidy for spouses. That is disgraceful and should weigh heavily on all of the various administrative people’s backs.

Retirees have all of the leadership people of the OEA/OFT/ORTA and the STRS to hold responsible for failing to find a dedicated flow of income for the HCSF that was established in 1974. That fund is projected to go bankrupt in 2018, if those figures can be trusted. This is going to be a travesty for so many retirees.

Instead of using retirees’ money to find alternative types of insurance that will probably be as worthless as our current HCSF, why doesn’t ORTA get a backbone and stand up to the very organizations that have placed us in this quagmire? Oh, that’s right, ORTA is not confrontational. That is why you didn’t back Dennis Leone, right? Why any retiree joins ORTA today must only be for the social aspect, because you have never been an advocate for change in my opinion.

Regards,
Tom Curtis

P.S. I hope this letter encourages others to follow in my footsteps, because ORTA has not been an advocate for retirees' benefits and curbing expenses at the STRS, since I retired in 1998.