John Damschroder: Our reporting confirmed

https://www.thenews-messenger.com/story/news/2021/06/08/damschroder-our-reporting-confirmed/7584606002/ 

Damschroder: Our reporting confirmed

By John Damschroder, Columnist Fremont News - Messenger

June 8, 2021

Since 2016 I have been reporting facts in the state pension financial documents that contradict former Governor John Kasich’s campaign calculated claim that Ohio pensions are “rock solid.” The State Teachers Retirement System-STRS defended Kasich’s premise, asserting in the News Messenger that CEM Benchmarking data shows them as a low cost, high performance, value adding pension system.

Now comes Edward Siedle, the former SEC lawyer turned whistleblowing crusader, to say STRS is misleading citizens through the selective use of limited CEM data. The Ohio Retired Teachers Association-ORTA forensic audit, a limited, high impact, inspection of STRS, produced a finding that fully disclosed CEM data shows the $279 million in fees STRS reports are actually at least $463.6 million.

 Moreover, CEM published reports bemoan the fact that clients like STRS are unaware at least half their true costs. The Siedle Report concludes STRS is paying nearly $1 billion a year and that those undisclosed fees cause STRS to massively underperform what a simple, cheap, transparent, liquid and safe index fund would produce. Siedle calculates STRS overpayment for underperformance costs the fund $2.5 million every trading day, far more than the $890,000 a trading day it would take to fully fund the cost of living adjustment for retired teachers.

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