RH Jones: A letter to Ann Hanning and all retired teachers

From RH Jones, May 13, 2012 
Subject: Re: Hey, Ann Hanning, meet your counterpart for OPERS retirees, Bill Winegarner.......he doesn't sound like you!

To Ann Hanning and all retired teachers:

Everyone please read John's message below [follow link above]. It appears to me that Director Ann Hanning, is on the employee payroll of our STRS rather then our ORTA. Is this because our ORTA board also represents the STRS position rather than ours? If the ORTA board would speak for us, Ann Hanning would have to follow their orders that STRS should not cut the COLA (33-!/3 %). Do they not know that our COLA is a law that cannot be changed "after the fact"? Therefore, is it no wonder ORTA has only 30,000 members? They used to have 38,000. Perhaps retired teachers should try to join PERI, rather than ORTA. Yes, our modest simply calculated 3% non-compounding COLA is as the Public Employee Retirees, Inc. says: "for current retirees, no change". It is not the retired teachers fault that the STRS officials failed to meet the amortized 30-year goal. The Concerned Ohio Retired Educators (CORE) let the STRS board know a couple years ago that the 88/35 retirement formula would have a tremendous negative effect on the amortization. Hopefully, at the STRS Columbus headquarters meeting next Tuesday, May 15, at 1:00 pm, the STRS Board will unanimously vote not to reduce the COLA, nor our HC/Rx, or cut anything else for retired teachers. The HC/Rx cuts that retired teachers have already experienced is enough cuttings into the retired teacher pension.

As a proud American/Ohioan, I have faith in our democracy strongly overcoming all financial problems so long as we the people provide a proper funding for the public school education of our young citizens. The people, our public teacher employer, needs to properly fund a proper pension so as to attract the best college trained educators to teach our children. Since today is Mothers Day, I think all mothers, and their children, would concur with that.

RHJones, CORE member