The Dispatch opines what Dennis has said many, many times

From John Curry, September 11, 2010

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2010/09/11/public-gets-back-seat.html

Editorial: Public gets back seat

State pension funds have no excuse for lavish travel budgets

September 11, 2010
Columbus Dispatch

The Columbus Dispatch If Ohio's public pension funds weren't sucking wind like so many other investment programs, and if they weren't asking hard-pressed taxpayers to spend even more to keep them afloat, perhaps no one would notice or care that the five funds spent a total of more than $1 million on employees' travel in a year's time.

But that waste still would be egregious.

Three nights in a $400-per-night hotel in New York for a $1,125-per-person conference on investing, for two pension-fund board members who aren't even financial experts? In an age when videoconferencing and webinar technology can put top-flight training and consultation into any conference room, that's an extravagance.

Yet it was deemed a reasonable expense by the Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund, which is asking taxpayers for a major increase in subsidies. Public-safety agencies - that is to say, taxpayers - already pay into the fund at the rate of 19.5 percent of salary for police and 24 percent for firefighters. Fund officials would like to see the public contribution grow to 25 percent for both groups over three years.

The State Teachers Retirement System, which wants taxpayers' contributions jacked up by 2020 to 16.5 percent from the current 14 percent, saw fit to send its managers all over the world for conferences: Japan, China, South Africa, England, Mexico, India and Malaysia, all in the year that ended July 1.

That's a year that followed one in which the pension funds lost between 23 percent and 31 percent of their value in the stock-market slide of 2008-09.

Investing and managing multibillion-dollar investment funds in a volatile environment certainly requires up-to-the-minute expertise, and those entrusted with public employees' dollars should receive frequent training updates. But professional development can be achieved more efficiently and much more cheaply by bringing experts in-house to speak, through distance-conference technology and in many other ways that don't involve sending employees to cushy confabs in desirable locales with expensive hotels, meals and travel. Sometimes these junkets have been coupled with private vacations.

Even in the private sector, such perks largely are a relic of a more-prosperous time, when success bred excess.

This extravagance never has been appropriate for the public sector. And in an era when public-pension funds have hemorrhaged value, retirees are facing significant increases in their health-insurance premiums and taxpayers are being asked to fork over bigger subsidies, this behavior is unjustified.

These same pensions have refused to disclose data on their funds for public analysis, even as they ask the public for more money.

Legislators should make clear that they expect the funds to be managed more transparently and prudently before they consider any increase in subsidies.

Commentary from Dennis Leone
September 11, 2010
"The STRS Board/Staff has shot itself in the foot, again, again, and again. They don’t want to listen, and oh how they pretend they know what is best. It is sickening. No wage freeze, no suspension of bonuses, no staff cuts, no reduction is staff benefits, no reductions in board member travel, -- all represent examples of the board and staff saying they knew what was best for the membership."
John –

Today’s Dispatch has a huge Dispatch editorial entitled “Public Takes a Back Seat.” It is a must-read article.

The proposed increase in the 14% employer contribution may be dead in the water now. The Dispatch suggests the very same thing I begged for over 6 years. The STRS Board/Staff has shot itself in the foot, again, again, and again. They don’t want to listen, and oh how they pretend they know what is best. It is sickening. No wage freeze, no suspension of bonuses, no staff cuts, no reduction is staff benefits, no reductions in board member travel, -- all represent examples of the board and staff saying they knew what was best for the membership.

Yes, many of these things did change, but only after much blood on the sidewalk, initial huge board/staff resistance, and fighting. I will never forget how – in my final board meeting -- Tim Myers made a motion, seconded by either Ramser or Meuser, to stop discussions completely on the bonus question for 2009. It failed, barely, by a 5-4 vote, with the active teachers on the board voting together as a block..….all attempting to stop any discussion of not providing bonuses that year due to huge losses in assets. Truly sad.

Dennis Leone