Cathy Steinhauser's words of advice to the STRS board: Please continue to make smart decisions for the good of this pension and its pensioners.

Cathy Steinhauser's speech to STRS board

March 19, 2025

Cathy Steinhauser – 35 yrs., satellite teacher of Family & Consumer Sciences through Pickaway/Ross CTC for Circleville City Schools.

Being employed by STRS and being chosen/voted in to be an STRS Board member comes with great responsibility. One of those, which is highest above all, is to be a responsible fiduciary. We pensioners take your job very seriously and have high expectations if this pension is to recover in the shortest amount of time possible.

Here are some actions that the Board should do for STRS pensioners that have been requested for many years:

1. Require a budget that operates within a more fiscally responsible and fiduciary manner and pass it. When anyone who experiences hardships in bill paying etc., they most logically cut back on other expenses to live within their means. STRS needs to do this too even if it means cutting staff, watering your own plants, staff attending to their own office mess…in short, monies paid out is increasing yearly while monies collected remains same.

2. Operate the cafeteria so that it makes money to be self sufficient because it shows a deficit of approx. $200,000/yr. You could rent it to an entrepreneur who can run it independently of STRS. State Highway Patrol has accomplished this in their building. Or you could close it and either brown bag it or call Uber Eats for delivery.

3. Sell the STRS building and/or rent out office space to other businesses like OPERS and SERS located on E. Town St.

4. A smaller building would require a smaller staff. Share in the sacrifice w/pensioners as was mentioned last month in a presentation.

5. Restore a much needed COLA to retirees. To us pensioners, your investment strategy has a lot to be desired. Private equity investing is a red flag that real experts in the field would warn against. If you’re tired of hearing this complaint, you need to get the legislators to change the rules because it was a dumb idea to ever have this approved years ago!

6. We now have Senate Bill 69, sponsored by Senator Mark Romanchuk, former chair of the ORSC. The ORSC was established in 1968 to consolidate local police and fire pension funds. It now oversees 4 more pensions. ORSC has 9 ORC mandate duties, one of which is to conduct a fiduciary performance audit of each system at least once every ten years. In 2016 that didn’t happen so who is ORSC accountable to? Where was ORSC when our COLA was taken away in 2017?? With legislation comes great concern for STRS pensioners. ORSC needs to do the right thing with fiduciary responsibility and not mess this up.

Please continue to make smart decisions for the good of this pension and its pensioners.

Bob Buerkle exposes the egregious damage done to the STRS pension system and all of its stakeholders by the STRS "big four" management team and STRS actuaries, yet hidden from ALL OF US for YEARS!

Bob Buerkle's Speech to STRS Board

March 19, 2025