Tom Curtis reports on the 3/11/22 meeting of the Stark County Retired Teachers Association; speaker Gary Russell of STRS not happy with the questions asked

Tom Curtis' report on the 3/11/22 meeting of the Stark County Retired Teachers Association

From Tom Curtis 

March 12, 2022

Yesterday was the Stark County Retired Teacher’s Association Meeting. There were roughly 70-80 people in attendance. The speaker was the STRS Deputy Executive Director of Member Benefits & Chief Benefit Officer, Mr. Gary Russell.

I arrived early and stood outside and handed out THE MESS AT STRS flyer to everyone coming in. A few strong OEA supporters refused to take one, but many thanked me for the information, especially as soon as they saw the words, THE MESS AT STRS. As more people went in with the flyer it apparently became noticeable to the officers inside. The SCRTA president came out and asked me to stop passing them out and told me I was being unprofessional for doing so and questioned where the information came from. He refused to take one. I asked him if he would talk with me after the meeting, but I did not stop handing them out.

When I went in and sat down to dinner, people that had come in through another entrance came to me and asked for the flyer. That was awesome! The dinner was good and I was also able to garner some email addresses, during dinner and after the meeting.

Carol Kinsey, SCRTA ORTA Representative and ORTA Board Member, gave her report and indicated that different from ever before, ORTA had interviewed each of the 6 candidates for the 3 Board positions to be elected this year. She said that ORTA had decided, though not unanimously, that ORTA was supporting active candidates Steven Foreman & Julie Sellers and retiree candidate Elizabeth Jones. It is fortunate that she gave their names quickly, because many people kept asking her to repeat them, which she did. Carol has always been a staunch OEA supporter and is running for a position on the OEA-R Board this year.

The SCRTA president and I talked after the meeting. I tried to explain to him that I am not the enemy and that the STRS membership has to come together to stop the bleeding at STRS, yet he did not think it was appropriate for me to hand the flyers out. I also placed 3 copies of the listing of bonuses on each table of 8 people. The president held the flyer up as he spoke to the group and indicated that had not come from SCRTA and he had no idea if the information was correct. Only a few of each flyer were left on the tables afterwards, yet many of the handouts that were placed on the tables by the Association were left to be thrown away.

In my opinion, bottom line, Gary presented the information above [see documents below] in an attempt to convince retirees that if we receive a one-time 2% COLA, we should not expect that we will receive another one. He made it clear that any retiree that was within the 5-year window of no COLA would not be receiving the 2% COLA, if given. He gave numerous reasons why we should consider ourselves lucky for receiving what we are receiving now. He justified all of the bonuses and high pay for employees, saying they would go elsewhere if not given what he called market pay. I asked him how many staff left in 2008 when the Board did not approve a bonus? He did not like that question at all and did not answer it.

He highly emphasized the fact that the actives were paying such a heavy cost just to pay for us retirees. He said that they were paying in 14%, but 3.9% of that was going to pay for retirees. As we already know, STRS/OEA are trying to drive a wedge between actives and retirees. Management and the Board allowed this situation to come about and now they are trying to blame it on us for living too long.

All in all, it was the same old rubbish the STRS/OEA management have put out since 2003, except many of the names and faces have changed. STRS/OEA people have never had anyone truly put their feet to the fire like we have now and they are panicking. I can only pray that we are successful in adding some non-OEA members to the Board and that criminal charges will be brought forth for many of the staff.

The meeting did not go well for Gary. He became very defensive and angry and lost his patience as many people asked questions, and he gave no real answers. He simply sidestepped most questions. Go figure! One guy for a brief period was yelling at him because of the answer he gave concerning paying bonuses. He called me out when asking him questions by saying that he was not going to argue with me because that is all I ever want to do. I guess when you are the only one in the room that has 20 years' experience of working for change at STRS, it gives an STRS executive reason to demean the messenger of information they do not want to deal with. It did not work for him. It made people angrier and many became hostile concerning his answers to their questions.

The SCRTA president finally rescued him by ending the questions and thanked him for coming. Gary packed up his stuff and walked out of there as fast as he could. He was having no more of it. Do you think he had a pleasant drive back to Columbus?

Keeping their feet to the fire,

Tom Curtis

Correction: Carol Kinsey is a member of SCRTA and is also a Northeast Ohio ORTA Regional Liaison. She is not a SCRTA ORTA Representative; nor is she running for the OEA-R board. I thought she was running for an OEA position and was attempting to provide her with some support. My apologies for the errors. TC