Linda Meinelt to ORSC: Please investigate the STRS board election and hold them accountable

From Linda Meinelt, May 24, 2013

To all members of the ORSC,

I would like to see you investigate the election which just completed for 2 retiree seats at STRS. Dennis Leone lost by very few votes, and many, many retirees feel it was due to deliberate language on the ballot making the voters feel as if they had to vote for 2 individuals instead of just Dennis.

Why was the language changed from the prior retiree election, who was responsible for that and why won't STRS higher-ups respond to questions other than to say it was, in their opinion, a legitimate election?

STRS is not listening to retirees, and they are making decisions on health premium increases, using a prescription plan with, in many cases, copays higher than obtaining the drug locally,  COLA suspensions and reduction, etc. which affect the retiree, but do nothing to make STRS accountable including rewarding huge bonuses when their stock value increases are not showing the increase of the market we are in now.

Please investigate and hold them accountable.

Linda Meinelt 

Retiree, Columbus, OH

What is ALEC all about?

From John Curry, May 23, 2013

An investigative journalist from the poverty struck state of Mississippi uncovers ALEC's soft underbelly in an exposé that shows how this lobby practices its legal bribery to hundreds of statehouse legislators in all 50 states. In short, this is legalized influence buying! John

http://djournal.com/bookmark/22681361-BILL-MINOR-Big-lobbyists-thrive-in-secretive-group

Big lobbyists thrive in secretive group

by Bill Minor

Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

With all the hullabaloo about the IRS clamping down on federal tax exemptions for Tea Party and kindred organizations, public attention has been diverted from a bigger threat: groups that are fronts for corporate giants who secretly warp state governments to suit their interests.

Several weeks ago the Mississippi mouthpiece for the American Legislative Exchange Council, otherwise ALEC, blasted me for writing critically about ALEC. Such an innocent-sounding outfit must not be dangerous, huh? We’ll see.

Steve Seale, identified as chairman of an ALEC advisory council, also happens to be the highest-paid lobbyist who prowls legislative halls at Mississippi’s state house. He wrote that I was “misguided,” in characterizing ALEC, plus some other less-flattering potshots, for not understanding ALEC is just a good old American “think tank” that is growing ideas to make the country better.

A think tank it is, all right, but its thinking is just a mirror image of some of the nation’s biggest corporate bullies such as the billionaire industrialists David and Robert Koch who are not concerned about what everyday people think. You remember how Mitt Romney got a big horse laugh when he said “corporations are people.”

What sets ALEC apart from other lobby outfits is that it operates like a shadow state government, each year convening a mock legislature as a vehicle for its corporate members to inject their own “model” bills into the actual agenda of numerous legislatures. Dozens of state lawmakers are hauled, expenses-paid to some resort where a pack of corporate lobbyists and some corporate bigwigs gave them a several day brainwashing as they are wined and dined, even furnished free cigars by Reynolds American and the Cigar Association of America. (The Cigar Association of America? Is Smokey the Bear their official mascot?)

Recently, a PBS special report, “United States of ALEC” produced by noted journalist Bill Moyers dug into secretive inner operations of ALEC and revealed some stunning findings of how the corporate culture manipulates state governments. Moyers showed that ALEC feeds 1,000 of its own “model” bills to state lawmakers and some 200 are enacted by a number of states. ALEC’s bills range from making it harder for Americans to vote, restricting restitution to workers killed or injured while working for corporations, blocking climate change agreements and even, as was discovered in coverage of the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, ALEC’s behind the scenes role in the “stand your ground” law.

In Moyers’ report, a Wisconsin legislator, Rep. Mark Pocan, deliberately joined ALEC in order to attend an ALEC session in New Orleans, met by a pack of corporate lobbyists at the convention hotel. Some corporate CEOs were also on hand to educate legislators. (Is this the democratic “exchange” of information Seale talks about?) Pocan says lawmakers were wined and dined for several days before being sent home with their packet of “model” bills. How many Mississippi legislators have been sopping up ALEC’s largesse is not clear, but some even list ALEC in their biography.

ALEC’s tax-free grip on state legislatures for several years has been a major concern to Common Cause, the longtime citizens’ lobby which concentrates on open government and free press issues. Last year, Common Cause’s national office filed with the IRS a whistle-blower complaint charging ALEC with violating its tax exemption as a charity under 501(c)(3) and was spending millions to lobby state legislatures. With the filing, Common Cause filed thousands of pages of documents it had obtained that included talking points, “issue alerts,” and expense-paid invitations to legislators to attend gatherings where state laws are discussed.

Top officials of Common Cause said “ALEC is a corporate lobby front group masquerading as a public charity.” While the wealthy Koch brothers have been most prominently identified as ALEC backers, others have included Walmart, Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Pfizer and several huge companies. In recent months as ALEC’s true mission has become known, some of its big backers have pulled out.

At least we should be grateful to Steve Seale for coming out of the closet as ALEC’s spokesman. Hope this piece doesn’t get him fired, since ALEC hates exposure.

Syndicated columnist BILL MINOR has covered Mississippi politics since 1947. Contact him through Ed Inman at edinman@earthlink.net. 

Thank you, Reverend Thomas, for explaining why the 50 Chicago public schools are REALLY gone...no, it wasn't a tornado....but it might as well have been one!

From John Curry, May 23, 2013

"Unlike the teachers in Moore, Chicago teachers’ schools are not gone because of some capricious act of nature.  They are gone because of decades of very deliberate decisions by public officials, corporate interests and ordinary citizens that have eviscerated the neighborhoods of Chicago, displacing people with the demolition of public housing, gutting communities with foreclosures and the elimination of jobs.  The schools are gone because they have been replaced by charter schools, the darlings of politically well-connected school reformers making a profit on tax money while public officials eliminate the inconvenience of teachers unions.  The schools are gone because poor African Americans and Hispanics in Chicago are disenfranchised by school governance that is appointed by the mayor with limited accountability to the communities.  The schools are gone because public funding in this country remains tied to real estate taxes that benefit wealthy suburbs at the expense of the urban core.  The schools are gone because years of school reforms imposed from the latest outside savior have left front line teachers abused and demoralized.  And the schools are gone because white flight that began decades ago has left the cities brown and black and poor."

"Who makes decisions about public schools today?  The president who attended the prestigious Punahou private school in Hawaii and who sends his daughters to the University of Chicago Laboratory School and the Sidwell Friends School in Washington.  The secretary of education who attended the same Lab School in Chicago.  An appointed school board whose membership until recently included billionaire Penny Pritzker, now the appointee to be secretary of commerce.  She attended the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, where 415 girls in grades six to twelve enjoy the attention of 70 full and part time faculty members.  In Chicago that school would be deemed “underutilized.”  And where do the mayor’s kids go to school?  No threats from school closings for them.  They, too, are at the University of Chicago Lab School.  These powerful gurus of public school reform didn’t go to public schools and don’t send their children to public schools.  They benefited from the growing educational apartheid in this country and they participate in it today."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/23/the-rev-john-thomas-no-act-of-god-caused-chicago-schools-closings/

The Rev. John Thomas: No act of God caused Chicago schools closings

By Valerie Strauss, Updated: May 23, 2013

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/files/2013/05/john_thomas.jpg

Chicago officials are going ahead with the largest mass closing of public schools in the country’s history despite polls showing that a majority of city residents oppose it and looming questions about the rationale offered for the action.

The final decision was made Wednesday by the Chicago Board of Education, which decided to close 49 elementary schools and one high school program because, the board said, they are underutilized (though critics argue that point).

Here is an eloquent piece on the closings, by the Rev. John Thomas, the former general minister and president of the United Church of Christ, who is now a professor and administrator at the Chicago Theological Seminary. This appeared on his blog.

By John Thomas

Two articles in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune provided a revealing, if unintended reminder of the injustices lying at the heart of America’s public schools. At New Trier High School in one of the wealthier suburbs of Chicago, students will have iPads for their course work by the fall of 2014.  The district will pay about 40% of the costs, leaving families to come up with the remaining $350 in purchase or leasing options.  School officials justify this by touting the educational benefits and by pointing out that this will allow the school to phase out some of its 1200 laptops.  One page away is an article about the school board of the City of Chicago which voted yesterday afternoon to close 50 public elementary schools.  In thousands of districts like New Trier, students are getting iPads; in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and many other places, students are getting moving orders and teachers are losing jobs.

Later on in the same paper The Tribune revealed its editorial bias, offering Mayor Rahm Emanuel space to justify the closings, devoting its editorial to a cynical and shameful attack on Chicago teachers.  Praising the “heroic” teachers who saved lives in Moore, Oklahoma, The Tribune called on teachers in Chicago to abandon their protest against the massive school closings and become “heroes” by obediently implementing the policies of the Chicago Public School Board and its leader, the mayor.  Excuse me!  Chicago Public School teachers are already heroes.  They don’t need the condescension of The Tribune.  And they don’t need to be unjustly demeaned as less worthy than teachers in Moore.  Today they need our gratitude for speaking the truth about the nature and impact of these school closings.

Unlike the teachers in Moore, Chicago teachers’ schools are not gone because of some capricious act of nature.  They are gone because of decades of very deliberate decisions by public officials, corporate interests and ordinary citizens that have eviscerated the neighborhoods of Chicago, displacing people with the demolition of public housing, gutting communities with foreclosures and the elimination of jobs.  The schools are gone because they have been replaced by charter schools, the darlings of politically well-connected school reformers making a profit on tax money while public officials eliminate the inconvenience of teachers unions.  The schools are gone because poor African Americans and Hispanics in Chicago are disenfranchised by school governance that is appointed by the mayor with limited accountability to the communities.  The schools are gone because public funding in this country remains tied to real estate taxes that benefit wealthy suburbs at the expense of the urban core.  The schools are gone because years of school reforms imposed from the latest outside savior have left front line teachers abused and demoralized.  And the schools are gone because white flight that began decades ago has left the cities brown and black and poor.

Who makes decisions about public schools today?  The president who attended the prestigious Punahou private school in Hawaii and who sends his daughters to the University of Chicago Laboratory School and the Sidwell Friends School in Washington.  The secretary of education who attended the same Lab School in Chicago.  An appointed school board whose membership until recently included billionaire Penny Pritzker, now the appointee to be secretary of commerce.  She attended the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, where 415 girls in grades six to twelve enjoy the attention of 70 full and part time faculty members.  In Chicago that school would be deemed “underutilized.”  And where do the mayor’s kids go to school?  No threats from school closings for them.  They, too, are at the University of Chicago Lab School.  These powerful gurus of public school reform didn’t go to public schools and don’t send their children to public schools.  They benefited from the growing educational apartheid in this country and they participate in it today.

I don’t suggest that these policy makers sat down and said, “Let’s close the schools of poor Black and Hispanic kids in Chicago and make sure that New Trier kids have iPads.”  But here are the facts:  The schools closed today in Chicago are 88% black, 10 % Hispanic, and 94% low income.  And next year the kids in New Trier will all have new iPads.  Almost 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education our schools are more and more separate, and more and more unequal.

Please don’t tell me that this is a complex issue, that there are no good solutions, that anguished appointed school board members merely did what they had to do given the economic circumstances.  I’ve read the reports.  I’ve seen the studies.  I’ve talked to experts.  I can tell you what the real story is about charter school performance.  I think I have made a pretty good effort to understand what’s going on.  Whatever the specifics, this is about race and poverty and antipathy to unions and political influence and public indifference (how telling that for a time yesterday morning while the Board was deliberating on its closure vote, the lead online story for The Tribune was Bear’s football hero Brian Urlacher’s retirement announcement).

I have no doubt that the Chicago school teachers will do as much to protect their children this September navigating new routes to schools across dangerous gang lines as the teachers in Moore did for their students when the tornado came earlier this week. They don’t need editorial writers to tell them to do that.  But when their students ask them why their school is gone, just as students in Moore are no doubt asking right now, Chicago teachers won’t have a changing and dangerous climate or the proverbial “act of God” to point to.  Their answers will be equally sad, but far more sinister.

John H. Thomas

RH Jones' speech to STRS board May 23, 2013

OhSTRS speech on common sense issues that OhSTRS should act on:

(1) Shorten STRS Ohio to become OhSTRS. For example, STRS California has already changed to CalSTRS.

(2) Seek Ohio income tax relief for retired teachers, especially those who have been retired at least 20 years.

(3) Encourage retired members to reside herein our home state.

(4) Rather than inaccurate phone surveys, seek more precise member input only by US mail.

(5) Retired teacher income, additional to the pension, is the business only of the retiree and the tax collectors. It is without reason or justification to publicize any percentage; to do so works against our OhSTRS.

(6) Being that sometimes ex-[STRS]employees, once they are retired and receiving an OPERS pension, work against long term OhSTRS interests; therefore, rather than employees to be paying into the OPERS, it is in the employees' and our best interests for them to pay into OhSTRS. We teachers will welcome them.

(7) Being that the number of contributing members (five) on the board is out of proportion with the two retired members, and the two superintendent representatives is out of proportion to their numbers of contributors, bring to the board a representation that is fair, proportionately, and has a better ratio.

(8) To insure that the public and politicians support our OhSTRS, a fair and proper representation of the retired teacher board voting system is an ethical necessity.

Lastly, the recent SERS board public relations Hawaii disaster brought on the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review (JCARR Committee). Beware, in all my retirement years, I have never heard of this controlling committee before. Vital to our OhSTRS long term survival, I do wish to advise and recommend to all of you to be very careful in crafting all your official reports, always rationalizing how best to promote a correct OhSTRS image.

Three minutes does not give me time enough to expound convincingly on my logic for all the above common sense issues.

Respectfully submitted by
Robert Hudson Jones,
An OhSTRS retired teacher

Mario Iacone to retirees: THANK YOU!

From Mario Iacone, May 22, 2013

THANK YOU for YOUR SUPPORT OF DENNIS LEONE!

Our grass roots campaign made it possible for Dennis to get 20,000 plus votes.  Dennis had no financial support, just word of mouth and our email chains.

The others that received 20,000 plus votes had tens of thousands of dollars supporting a mail and phone campaign for them.

I am sure that STRS and our legislators have become well aware of the support Dennis has among the retirees.

Such support will make it possible for him to have considerable impact in the days to come as he continues to fight for us as an outside source with tremendous support from the retirees!

I think our great effort to elect Dennis has delivered a message.

Now, we have to continue our efforts so that our message is not ignored.

Carol Janes: Messages to ORSC and STRS regarding the flawed 2013 STRS board election

Carol Janes to ORSC, May 20, 2013 

Subject: STRS election

To the Members of ORSC,

I would like the recent STRS election to be investigated.  Dennis Leone only lost by 700 and some votes and he had no money to campaign. Those of us who voted for him did so because he is a man of integrity and exposed corruption in STRS before. Due to unclear ballot language and instructions, some retirees unfortunately voted for two candidates, lessening Dr. Leone’s chances to win.

When I retired in 2002 I started to watch STRS very carefully through a group called CORE. Even though CORE has formally disbanded we are still watching...STRS and ORSC. I still do not understand why STRS was given control over changes in our benefits without legislative approval.  This bodes ill for retirees as all cuts made in the past are immediate to those who can least afford them and phased in for people currently working.

Carol Janes 

Middlfield, OH

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Carol Janes to STRS board, May 20, 2013 

Subject: recent election

I am writing in regard to the current election to express my opinion of how this matter has been handled.  It has all been poorly done.  Dennis Leone received 20,000 some votes and would have won had not the ballot language been confusing for some retirees. Keep in mind there was no campaigning and Dr. Leone still got 20,000 votes...that means there are 20,000 of us out here riled up enough to keep very careful watch over STRS.

You may publish all kinds of nonsense about how happy everyone is with STRS...it also interests me that you believe 95% of us have a secondary income, therefore, it must not hurt much to have our COLA cut...No one has ever asked ME...either about my degree of satisfaction or about my income.  by the way as a single woman my income is just my pension.  Many of us retiring from rural schools have very little.  And we always paid our OWN retirement unlike some of the richer districts who could “pick it up”.

I was fairly happy until this last plan...in which my COLA (which I need) is gone for this year and then reduced to 2% but you somehow can justify dragging out the 35 yr 88% incentive...this rankles to say the least...

And then this election and how it has been handled. It is obvious that STRS does NOT want Dr. Leone on the Board..he might shake things up a bit...He is a watchdog and truly represents retirees' interests.

I am NOT going to forget about this or let it go. This will be a topic of discussion by retirees everywhere. I have people interested in this who have never expressed concern before.

It would be the honorable and right thing to hold the election again...but I don’t expect it.

ORSC will also be bombarded with letters.

Carol Janes

Middlefield, OH

Ernie Hall to ORSC: Do over!

From: Ernie Hall, May 19, 2013

To the Honorable Members of the Ohio Retirement Study Council:

The recent election for two retiree seats/members of the STRS Ohio has been condemned as flawed by many STRS members across Ohio.

You have been sent emails and letters regarding the inconsistent language on the 2013 Ballot. I believe more than 20,000 members are not satisfied with the election procedure.

As others have, I am asking the ORSC to conduct a complete review of the 2013 election and  to act on the findings and to publish the results to all STRS members.

STRS members feel the election should be held again, with the ballots providing clear, explicit and consistent language on all pages and for all directions.

If this is not done, STRS members will totally distrust the STRS Ohio Board and the STRS Ohio executive officers and particularly the 2013 election.

Already most STRS members feel that their concerns have not been heard or addressed regarding the 2013 election; that STRS Ohio Executive Staff and the STRS Board Members have either  "stonewalled" members and their concerns; or worse, deliberately changed the 2009 Ballot language to the inconsistent 2013 ballot language to ensure the direction of the election.

Again, please address STRS members' concerns.

Ernest L. Hall
Cincinnati, OH
STRS Retired Member

Nancy Hamant to the ORSC: This election needs to be done over

From Nancy Hamant, May 19, 2013

To the Honorable Members of the Ohio Retirement Study Council:

The recent election for two retiree seats/members of the STRS Ohio has been condemned as flawed by many STRS members across Ohio.

You have been sent emails and letters regarding the inconsistent language on the 2013 Ballot. I agree with all of the concerns forwarded to you.

As others have, I am asking the ORSC to conduct a complete review of the 2013 election and to act on the findings and to publish the results to all STRS members.

STRS members feel the election should be held again, with the ballots providing clear, explicit and consistent language on all pages and for all directions.

If this is not done, STRS members will totally distrust the STRS Ohio Board and the STRS Ohio executive officers and particularly the 2013 election.

Already most STRS members feel that their concerns have not been heard or addressed regarding the 2013 election; that STRS Ohio Executive Staff and the STRS Board Members have either "stonewalled" members and their concerns; or worse, deliberately changed the 2009 Ballot language to the inconsistent 2013 ballot language to ensure the direction of the election.

Again, please address STRS members' concerns.

Thank you, 

Nancy B. Hamant 

Maineville, OH STRS

Retiree Member