Tom Curtis to voters in the STRS Board election: STRS: US AGAINST THEM – THIS IS A MUST READ DURING THIS ELECTION TIME – THEN PLEASE VOTE

In my opinion by Tom Curtis

Us, being the benefit recipients (BRs), inactive, active and retired.

Them, being STRS staff and the elected OEA-dominated Board members.

I am sure most of you understand that the purpose of the STRS retirement system, founded in 1920, is a defined benefit plan designed to help preserve BRs' financial future and that of future retirees. The defined benefit plan is funded by active teachers (14%), employers (14%) and investment gains of our contributing funds. Because of this, our pension provides us with a monthly check until our death and possibly our spouse, or other dependent, if we chose to set it up that way at retirement.

Unknown to the vast majority of the 490,000-plus benefit recipients, our retirement funds have been under attack for over 30 years, due to mismanagement and flagrant misspending by the STRS staff and Board members. This has been proven by retirees for the past 20-plus years and continues today. Retiree Bob Buerkle has been attempting to bring about change since the 1990s, when Herb Dyer was the STRS executive director. It was during Dyer’s tenure that the mismanagement and misspending of our funds began.

The STRS Board has been dominated by OEA-supported members for over 30 years: the same OEA union that the vast majority of Ohio’s teachers have supported year after year through their union dues. Yes, this is the same OEA that we all loved, and that we trusted to be the watchdogs of our retirement fund; the OEA that was given the highest respect by its union-paying members, because it bargained for teacher benefits. However, as many unions in the USA have done, OEA has overstepped its bounds and allowed all of the misspending and mismanagement to become business as usual and to continue yet today at STRS.

This Board must be changed. It can only be changed by voting these OEA people off of the Board and electing people who will use critical thinking skills to question what is being presented to the Board. The STRS staff and Board members manipulate numbers in a manner that is not favorable to their members. The fact that the Board tells us that our 86-billion dollar pension system can supposedly no longer provide us with a simple COLA is unacceptable. The numbers just don’t compute. If this true, then the management and misspending is far greater than any of us BRs realized.

Unfortunately for BRs, the OEA has had both the money and power to retain nearly every Board seat, both active and retired, seemingly forever. Few candidates unsupported by the OEA for the last 30-plus years have been able to get elected to those seats because of the megabucks and the influence of OEA.

Until 1999, our retirement fund was able to provide BRs with a guaranteed pension and other promised retirement benefits. We were promised a 100% subsidized health care plan for BRs and their dependent spouse and/or dependent children. In 2004, STRS removed all of the subsidy for spouses and dependent children and reduced the BRs' subsidy 25%. That left BRs to pay 100% of the cost of HC for their spouse and dependent children and 25% more for their own coverage. Health care is crucial to retirees and their families. Retirement without health care is not retirement!

Many of us retirees have been trying to bring about change in our STRS, due to their flagrant mismanagement and misspending, with minimal help from the more than 100,000 retirees, most of whom had little or no way of hearing about what was really going on with our pension system.

The STRS newsletters have told us for years that STRS was financially sound and there were no funding problems. That was and is not true. STRS tries to placate us with all of the awards they receive for outstanding management and transparency of the pension system. Really? Please keep in mind that these awards are given based upon the numbers and information that STRS staff present to those sources that present these awards. Who pays for this? BRs don’t want to continually read about the awards, we want to hear about the return of our simple COLA.

It is futile to think that change is going to come about if the people, processes and procedures involved continue to be the same: business as usual, with a Board dominated by the OEA-elected members. I reiterate: thinking things will change is futile if the elected players do not change. You cannot get better results if you keep using the same old ways of doing business for 30 years. Many benefit recipients say they want change in our retirement system. Change cannot happen when there is a status quo of the players year after year, again those being OEA-supported Board members.

The STRS system is valued at 86 billion dollars today, possibly the greatest valuation in the history of STRS, yet the Board tells us the system cannot pay retirees the simple COLA we received for many years until 2017, when it was taken away by the Board for what the Board called an undermined period of time.

I ask all voting STRS members to vote for the non-OEA-supported candidates now and in future elections. The OEA-dominated STRS Board has consistently failed us concerning its fiscal responsibility to BRs.

I support and ask you to vote for retiree candidates Rudy Fichtenbaum and Elizabeth Jones and active member candidate Benjamin Pfeiffer.

Thomas Curtis, Retired BR and strong advocate for change since 2002.