Dan MacDonald to STRS Board: you can try to shut observers up and place blame elsewhere, but until actives' and retirees’ benefits are restored, you will hear from us.

From Dan MacDonald

May 25, 2024 

HOSTILE TAKEOVER? REALLY? 

Mr. Chair and members of the Board, good morning. I am Dan MacDonald, an STRS retiree with 38 plus years of service. I am also the Executive Director of Local 279R, Northeast Ohio AFT retirees. 

Hostile takeover. Really? STRS, of course, will take no ownership. STRS needs two people disqualified, an appointee and an elected Board member. The Board will have to appoint the elected seat. I’ve attended most of these Board meetings since 2014. Each meeting brings up concerns that I address in Public Participation at the following meeting. My own Local 279R Board passed a motion to speak at each meeting until COLA is permanently restored. I suppose our local is as villainous as ORTA is being characterized. By the way, did STRS ever contemplate that the original governor’s appointment would rightfully show up at a Board meeting? Then the swearing in fiasco, are G. Brent Bishop, and Brian Perera also the current holders of the governor’s appointed seat? 

Will the Board allow the Parliamentarian to explain how a Board meeting can be adjourned by an Attorney General representative who is here, like me, as an observer? I respect the Chair, but someone prompted him to focus on Routine Matters and a fast, wrongly declared adjournment. Thanks to the so-called reformers, Robert’s Rules are now part of policy and not “guidelines.” Remember when legal would point out Robert’s Rules of Order were not part of STRS policy?

“No bad news” STRS Ohio is fully functioning behind a smoke screen with Attorney General Yost, the Ohio Ethics Commission, the Ohio Retirement Study Council, Auditor Faber, Treasurer Sprague, Secretary of State La Rose, and “relevant” members of the Ohio General Assembly to make sure a Board will always approve merit pay raises and investment incentives and whatever the gerrymandered government officials in Ohio desire, probably money flowing to Wall Street. Actives and retirees continue to pay the price for more costly and diminished pensions. 

As always, you can try to shut observers up and place blame elsewhere, but until actives and retirees’ benefits are restored, you will hear from us. By the way, I am happy that Aon is gone now that they presented more limits to, or even the elimination of, public participation, and their expensive fiasco in Pennsylvania was revealed. Once again P.T. Barnum said it best: “You can fool all of the people some of the time, you can fool some the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”