My letter to a retired STRS stakeholder: my overview of the situation at STRS

September 1, 2023

Hi (xxxxx) --

I'm happy to hear from (xxxxx) of your interest in returning Wade Steen to his rightful place on the STRS Board. Wade has been a very strong advocate for retired and active teachers, and his removal from the Board has been very upsetting. Judging from the way his dismissal was handled, it is obvious it was a political stunt to keep reform-minded individuals off the STRS Board. We were getting too close, in the eyes of our adversaries, to gaining a majority on the Board in order to bring about badly needed reform. Some of us have been fighting for this for decades. 

Who are our adversaries? Many politicians, clear up to the governor. We have had no help from the ORSC (Ohio Retirement Study Council, made up of legislators); by law they are supposed to audit STRS every ten years, but it took sixteen years and pressure from teachers to finally bring it about; also the House Pensions Committee, which is a fairly new group, but so far has done nothing to help us. The chairman of that committee, Bob Young, was just this week removed from that position after being arrested twice since July for charges stemming from domestic violence, assault and violation of a protection order. He is not in jail, but is required to wear an "ankle bracelet" (a GPS monitor) at all times. He is also facing possible expulsion from the Ohio House of Representatives, which would be only the second such expulsion in 150 years, the first being Larry Householder's expulsion (former Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives). https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/politics/ohio-politics/ohio-rep-bob-young-removed-from-leadership-role-after-second-arrest 

Another major adversary has been OEA (yes, OEA!) which, for many years, has dominated the STRS Board and contributed to its corruption until our Facebook group, Ohio STRS Member Only Forum ("MOF" for short) came along. The group was founded in 2017 and is dedicated to restoring our COLA and reforming our pension system. Its membership currently numbers over 35,000 active and retired teachers. It has only been in the last few Board elections that we have had the ability, with our numbers, to gradually replace the OEA members of the STRS Board with reform-minded active and retired teachers.

In last spring's election we unseated three incumbents, all OEA "clones", replacing them with individuals dedicated to ending the corruption that is rampant at STRS. We still have two more to unseat, which will take the next two elections to accomplish, when their four year terms end and they are up for reelection. With the seating (official today, 09/01/2023) of our newest elected reform-minded Board member, Pat (Patrick) Davidson, and the anticipated return of Wade Steen to his seat on the Board, we will finally have a majority of six votes on the STRS Board.

I'm glad you contacted the governor about restoring Wade Steen to his rightful seat on the STRS Board, though I doubt if you will get very far with that effort since Governor DeWine is not our friend since he replaced Wade with a non-reform Board member, Brent Bishop. If you wish to help Wade in his lawsuit to regain his seat, you can do it through ORTA (Ohio Retirement for Teachers Assn., formerly Ohio Retired Teachers Assn.), whose executive director, Robin Rayfield (a retired teacher himself) is a bulldog of an advocate for all teachers, retired and active. ORTA has started a Defense Fund that will help Wade with his legal expenses. Go to this page on ORTA's website: https://www.orta.org/defense-fund if you would like to contribute to the fund.

If you are a member of Facebook, you can join MOF, and we would certainly welcome you. Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/OhioSTRSMemberOnlyForum/. You can find a lot of information on that site that will enlighten you to a lot that has been going on at STRS for many years. You can also find a lot of information on my blog (https://kathiebracy.blogspot.com/), which I started 18 years ago as a virtual repository of STRS history clear back to 2003, when the STRS Board unceremoniously dropped spousal subsidy for group healthcare, suddenly making the lives of thousands of retirees extremely difficult because of the high cost of private health insurance for their spouses. 

If you are not a member of Facebook, there is another group you can join, STRS Ohio Watchdogs  {https://www.facebook.com/groups/485740805463320). It is a public group that anyone can join. If you are not a member of ORTA, I would strongly encourage you to consider joining that group, too, as ORTA is the only group, other than MOF, that strongly advocates for all teachers, retired and active.

 As a retired member of STRS, you are no doubt experiencing the difficult effects of inflation due to the loss of our COLA in 2017, which is drastically affecting our buying power, especially that of those who retired many years ago on very low pensions. This has been the topic of many speeches made by teachers at the monthly STRS Board meetings, but largely falling on the deaf ears of the non-reform-minded Board members and the entire senior staff of STRS. If you haven't been aware of the highly inflated salaries and bonuses handed out to them (your money), you will soon learn as you investigate what has been going on all these years at the pension system we so blindly trusted with our money, and which many teachers still do, since the only "information" they receive is what STRS and OEA put out. 

I would encourage you to attend STRS Board meetings, if you can, to see what's going on. Most Board meetings occur on the third Thursday of the month (except July and January; I just checked their calendar, and it looks like they have now dropped November!). https://www.strsoh.org/aboutus/board/calendar.html STRS is working very hard to refute our findings, to the point of hiring a second communications officer within the past year, at a salary of $195,000 (our money, of course). STRS has a greatly inflated staff of over 500 employees, compared with the much smaller staffs of other pension systems around the country; plus a huge, palatial, central office on Broad Street in Columbus ("the Taj" to us), costing us millions every year in maintenance costs. All of this is only the tip of an iceberg that has been steadily growing for many years, and of which thousands of teachers are still unaware because of our inability to reach all of them. 

Thank you for your interest in what's going on at our illustrious "Cadillac of Pension Systems" (their words for many years). I hope you will become involved as we continue our steadily growing quest to bring badly needed reform to STRS. We will get there eventually; it's only a matter of time.

Kathie Bracy