Minutes for the December 9, 2010 CORE meeting

From Dave Parshall, December 15, 2010

The meeting began with a welcome by CORE President Dave Parshall and the introduction of several first time attendees. Two gentlemen and CORE supporters from Jefferson County were in attendance. It is a long drive to Columbus from Jefferson County so their effort was warmly received by the 30 plus members in attendance. Donna Thorpe and Ruby Fisher brought a guest to the meeting from Clinton county. Virgene Peterson taught for 50 years and has done substitute teaching for the past 18 years. WOW! We all were astonished by this woman and her drive.

Old Business: In the absence of CORE secretary Marie Fetters, who was away on family business, it was motioned and approved to suspend the reading of the October board minutes. It was also decided by default that Dave Parshall would do the December minutes.

Treasurer’s Report was given by our new CORE treasurer Carole DePaola. The CORE fund is secure and continues to grow. Carole is off to a great start.

Dave Parshall presented highlights of the November STRS board meeting. Once again, under Member Benefits, a lengthy and informative health care presentation was made by the STRS staff. The bottom line is that we are using principal in the fund to pay claims. It is still estimated that our health care fund will be gone by 2021. At that time we will have to start to pay the entire cost which they estimated at or around $2,900 a month. Parshall pointed out that as the ORC reads now STRS has to provide the coverage equal to Medicare and pay half the cost. There are 9,636 30 year teachers who are 65 or older and don’t qualify for or have Medicare Part A. We all may need the new healthcare bill state pools one day.

A discussion followed about the plan to help the retirees with $30,000 pensions and who were 30 year teachers with a straight pension. The STRS board voted to take no action at this time. I will revisit this with several board members and even ORTA after we are done with our lobbying efforts with the new legislature and whatever the new bill might be. But it is hard to see why freezing the 3 % COLA for the 30 and below retirees is called charity and the restoring of the COLA for future retirees back to 2% and the grandfathering of the unearned 88% enhancement that will cost us money for decades to come is not also charity.

New Business: A discussion was held about plans for lobbying the new state legislature. It was decided that out January meeting would end with a work session to come up with possible talking points etc. to give to our members to use during visits with house members. While the final points can’t be finalized until after we see what is in the real bill, we can begin to organize now. CORE members need to find a lobbying partner to visit house members when they are back in their home districts or here in Columbus. So please plan on attending this very important meeting in January. Dr. Alice Faryna will give us a power point presentation on meeting with and talking to members of the legislature during our January CORE meeting.

Debbie Silverstein presented a fine and informative presentation about HB 159, known as The Health Care For All Ohioans Act. This bill will save Ohio Taxpayers over $2.3. Our healthcare system is bankrupting our country. Debbie is a retired teacher and CORE member Alice Faryna are members of Single Payer Action Network of Ohio. You can learn more about this organization at http://www.spanohio.org/. After her presentation she asked for CORE to be one of the many groups lending their name and support for HB 159. It was agreed to ask the CORE board and officers to vote on this request. The voting is underway now.

The last item for discussion was a request by Parshall for permission to upgrade our CORE website with new officers and to remove other dated information. The motion was made, seconded and passed unanimously.

The meeting was adjourned at 2:10 pm. The next CORE meeting will be on January 13, 2011 at STRS-----HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Prepared and submitted by Dave Parshall