Tim Myers: A response to a teacher who dared to ask his OEA rep about non-OEA-endorsed STRS Board candidate Jim Stoll

From Tim Myers, April 8, 2010
Subject: FW: STRS campaign email response

______Thanks for your email.

However, you are being intentionally misled about the incentive program. NO INCENTIVES have been paid since September 2008. The board suspended the Incentive program well over a year ago. Even the incentives that were earned LAST fiscal year, prior to the suspension, have not been paid either. They will not be paid until a number of fiscal benchmarks are met, including the assets of the System reaching 60 billion dollars.

There have been NO incentives earned or paid out since the suspension was instituted. You may also be interested in knowing that last year the board voted to freeze all staff salaries, instituted a hiring freeze, instituted a longer employee work day, AND we cut 11 million dollars out of our budget for the current fiscal year. At our last meeting in March, we also voted to again freeze our staff salaries for a second year. In total it will be 2 1/2 years without a staff salary increase.

As you can see, spending at STRS is not the problem. We actually have been very good stewards of your money! The factors that have led to the proposed changes have nothing to do with spending, it is an income problem. You can not blame proposed cuts to pension benefits on “rampant spending.” The collapse in the world economy resulted in a loss of tens of billions of dollars. No pension system was immune. Eliminating the entire budget for STRS would account for 0.3% of this amount. Taking the position that no changes to benefits need to be made fails to recognize the scope of the problem. Blaming proposed changes on spending or mismanagement is disingenuous at best.

Please distribute this email to anyone in your district who may have gotten the misleading email.

Again thanks for your letter to the STRS board.

Tim Myers, Vice Chair
STRS Ohio [Board]

From Tim Myers, April 8, 2010
Subject: STRS campaign email response

Attached is an electronic copy of part of the STRS report for tonight's NCOEA meeting. It is an email that I have put together in response to some misinformation that is being emailed to local associations from an administrator who is running for the STRS Board Active seat.

Please distribute to your members if your local gets the email. The administrator in question is NOT endorsed by OEA.

Thanks
Tim Myers
Thanks for your email.