Toledo Blade: STRS spin misleads; The STRS fund managers may beat other funds but they don’t beat the market.Misinformation and State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio management go together like bacon and eggs.

STRS spin misleads

The STRS fund managers may beat other funds but they don’t beat the market.

THE BLADE EDITORIAL BOARD

December 5, 2024

Misinformation and State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio management go together like bacon and eggs. Media interviews timed to the retirement of Acting Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer Lynn Hoover are the latest example.  (“Ohio’s teachers’ pension system called stable,” Sunday.)

Ms. Hoover points to performance superior to more than 9 out of 10 similar pension funds measured over short term, medium term, or long term to support the claim that STRS is strong.

STRS offers its teachers options to either let STRS’ investment managers invest their funds, or simply invest the funds in index funds, which are easily monitored by anyone. The index funds routinely outperform STRS’ well-compensated fund managers.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Head of Ohio's teacher pension fund to retire, describing fund as strong despite staff vacancies

The STRS fund managers may beat other funds but they don’t beat the market.

STRS claims it pays only 36/​100ths of 1 percent in fees, but scrutiny by a reform board member has revealed that the fund actually paid 84/​100ths of 1 percent in fees to fund managers last year.

That’s $466 million more paid to Wall Street than the $256 million expense shown in STRS’ annual financial report, on Ms. Hoover’s watch.

Ms. Hoover is leading the effort to make school districts increase pension payments by $500 million more each year.

State taxpayers are already revolting against school levies. Increasing the cost of pensions will make it even harder to pass school levies.

STRS needs to use index funds to increase fund performance and thereby eliminate most of the $629 million in fees it paid to Wall Street. That would avert the need for a pension fund increase from taxpayers.

In that same article, Ms. Hoover characterized the help she and other STRS brass provided the Minnesota teachers pension fund when their investment reports were challenged as “par for the course and normal protocol.”

In our view, Ms. Hoover’s assistance to the Minnesota pension fund was a desperate attempt to head off scrutiny into that state board’s payments to its investment managers.

Ms. Hoover was concerned that the Minnesota pension board’s “reputation as a trusted government agency” — and by extension, the STRS board’s — was in question.

As The Blade Editorial Board revealed when breaking these details, the Minnesota pension’s reported results are impossible to believe. The State Board of Investment, responsible for all Minnesota state pensions, claims investment expenses of 6/​100s of 1 percent on a portfolio mostly managed by Wall Street consultants.

Ms. Hoover knows from years of experience in Ohio how highly unlikely that official claim is and how vulnerable to scrutiny dubious expense claims make a public pension.

It was an insult to Ohio taxpayers for STRS’ leader, lawyer, and lobbyist to help Minnesota evade the investigation it so obviously warrants.

The damage done to trust in public pension confidence by STRS under Lynn Hoover wasn’t limited to Ohio.

 Read this article online here.