Trina Kay Prufer: STRS - A Pretend Retirement System

From Trina Kay Prufer

September 7, 2023

STRS - A Pretend Retirement System

Let's count the ways…

The Town Hall meetings are phony because attendees are restricted to those receiving an invitation; they are NOT open to those retirees who would like to ask important questions. They are being held for propaganda purposes, NOT for the benefit of membership.

The videos are phony because those in charge of production select for retirees who have other sources of income.

The monthly meetings are controlled through an agenda that wastes precious time on useless self-congratulatory reports, mostly on how well the investment team is doing.

The bonus system is phony because it rewards investment personnel for meeting their own benchmarks… They ALWAYS meet their benchmarks, draining millions from the fund.

The ORSC reports are phony because they rationalize outrageous expenses by telling membership they are needed to employ the best and the brightest. Those expenses include: expensive art work, subsidized lunches, subsidized childcare, tuition reimbursements and other perks not seen anywhere else in the PUBLIC pension world. There is absolutely no oversight of the abuses and mismanagement.

For retirees, the defined-benefit plan document was phony, because the payout, without the guaranteed 3% annual cola, shortchanges the lifetime benefit by up to half, over a 20 -30 year period.

In fact, none of this is normal. A retirement system is designed to give back more than what employees could save on their own because of pooled contributions and professional management. We receive just the opposite.… No inflation protection, actives pay in 14%, with a normal cost of 11%, and a management team that assumes we are totally ignorant of all the ways we are being scammed, deceived and manipulated. Those who reap the benefits are STRS employees, politicians and Wall Street. Can it even be called a retirement system? Perhaps that‘s the biggest lie of all.