Tim Watson to the STRS Ohio Board 06/16/22: You exist because of your members. You work for us.

My name is Tim Watson and I’ve been an active STRS member for 14 years.

STRS board and administration, you have lost my trust and based on the most recent election …the trust of the majority of membership.

There are two major things you can do to regain that trust: significantly increase your level of transparency and cut costs.

Let’s start with an easy suggestion for increasing transparency.

In 2022, there is zero reason why we can’t have a video livestream of these board meetings and archive them for posterity. Not just informational slides with disembodied voices, and not just stored for a month or two. Your written board minutes and audio livestream are insufficient. It is embarrassing that this has not been done. A teenager with a cell phone and YouTube could do this. Imagine how much goodwill you will earn by showing and publicizing the work being done here rather than doing the bare minimum.

My second suggestion for regaining trust is self-explanatory.

When I spend too much money, guess what I have to do personally? Cut costs. When a school district overspends, guess what we have to do? Cut costs. This is the absolute worst time to increase budgets and spend unnecessarily. STRS board, you should reject any proposal that increases our operational costs unless it is offset by cuts in other areas. The administration believes that their active management of investments adds value when compared to a passive investment approach. I’m here to tell you that this flies in the face of decades of research comparing the two approaches. Calculations I’ve seen so far are not accounting for the overall drag and compounding negative effect of management fees on the overall portfolio. Who do you think your members believe?

Since my time is limited, I will give one example. The Nevada public employees pension investment staff has two employees to manage 54 billion dollars. Ohio STRS manages around 100 billion. How many investment staff do we have? I’m spitballing here, but I’m guessing more than 4. You know what I think we should do? CUT. COSTS.

Thanks to those board members who continue to fight for the people who matter in this entire conversation, the educators who continue to fund a pension at a cost of 14% of their salary, while that pension is worth less than that.

Finally, to the STRS administration and staff who may have forgotten. You exist because of your members. You work for us.