RH Jones: Common sense & restraint

From RH Jones, September 13, 2010

To all members who have a stake in the Ohio public pensions:

Please, everyone, try your best to avoid controversial statements in public over the next couple of months. Use your best common sense and restraint, for never in the history of the STRS, OPERS and SERS have we had an election so critical to the health of our retirement systems. It is absolutely critical that you vote for candidates that are friendly to public employees, particularly public education and its retired teachers.

The GOP’s candidate for governor, John Kasich, has already shown to be hurtful to Ohio’s public pensions. As recently reported in the Columbus Dispatch, The Bloomberg Businessweek and the Associated Press, Kasich made $432,000 as the hired “dealmaker” by the Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers. As you probably know, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, costing STRS, OPERS, and SERS a total of $480 million.

Also, it is common knowledge that he has repeatedly mentioned that he will try do away with the Ohio income tax. Without the income tax, all kinds of Ohio public services will be severely reduced or abolished. The consequences for Ohio’s citizens will be disastrous.

Since Ohio politicians, and those whom are employed by the STRS, OPERS, and SERS also pay into, and plan on retiring with their earned Defined Benefit (DB) from OPERS, a GOP vote will be very much against their own best interests. The surprising thing to me, in spite of knowing this -- perhaps it is the snobbish appeal -- many of them and us, will foolishly vote for those who would be so inconsiderate as to put all public employees into the hands of a private enterprises’ Defined Contribution (DC) plan. In the DC plan, there would be a dramatic increase in chances for private individuals to exploit the OH pension systems for their own personal gain -- there are multitudes of negatives of which have already been previously exposed and are too numerous to include in this e-mail message. Most notable, perhaps, is that not having new employees paying into the DBs will severely curtail the investment and operations pools. Therefore, some of the employees no longer needed at the STRS, OPERS and SERS, will have their jobs terminated. However, all the system’s retirees would be grandfathered, but there could never again be “catch up” increases for inflation. The HC/Rx would soon expire. Future retirees would not have the security of a DB, which is now guaranteed by law.

It is impossible to run government like private industry; after all, with over 200 years of success, to do otherwise is to put our state in jeopardy.

The statements not quoted are of my own opinion,

RHJones, an Ohio citizen and retired teacher