2 days ago
Despite campaign from teachers, DeWine leaves pension changes in budget
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Despite a weekend-long email and telephone campaign from Ohio teachers and retirees, Gov. Mike DeWine let stand an overhaul of the State Teachers Retirement System Board.
The governor did not veto a late-night amendment to the budget that changes the composition of the 11-member board. Now, there will be 15 members — the vast majority political appointees, with teacher representatives going from seven down to just three.
Teachers and retirees had been fighting for control of their pension, and now they say they are being silenced by politicians.
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But they are not willing to accept defeat.
It took years for teachers to vote on to the board a majority of so-called 'reformers,' who were demanding investment transparency and a return to cost of living increases that were promised but taken away.
Now, critics say the governor and state legislatures have taken action that will likely end up in the third branch of government — the courts.
'They built the pension through their hard work and their money,' said David Pepper, former Democratic party chair. 'And they live off the pension and how well it does for the rest of their lives. So having them have a majority stake in that board made sense.'
But at 1 a.m., Rep. Adam Bird (R-New Richmond) slid into the budget an amendment that even his fellow pension committee members did not see coming — the radical overhaul of the STRS board — with no hearings and no vote in either the House or Senate.
Pepper has an online story detailing what he calls the unlawful pension takeover.
'We're talking about a political system that is right now being featured in two HBO documentaries for how broken and corrupt, this and the corruption is from the political system,' Pepper said. 'It's the politicians in that Statehouse who are the ones who continue to get themselves in trouble for corruption.'
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Also online, a retiree watchdog group is setting their sights on Bird, saying that because he took them out of their pension, they want him out of office.
'You know, he's getting paid by a different group of people than I'm getting paid by,' said Robin Rayfield, executive director of ORTA. 'I work for teachers. He works for big money Wall Street.'
Bird has not returned any calls from NBC4, but has pointed to accusations that a current and former board member pushed an unstable investment scheme. In a message to NBC4 last week, he said:
'The ongoing turmoil has clarified the need for the General Assembly to rebalance the board composition.'
The retirees say the state investigation is a smoke screen for a power grab, with lawmakers taking control of the $90 billion pension away from the 500,000 people who paid for it. And they did it in the dead of night.
'If they had a hearing on this, on this exact proposal, you might have had protests at the Statehouse of thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands,' Pepper said. 'You would have had jam packed hearings with very credible opposition. Any by sneaking this through, they avoided what they knew would be a nightmare.'
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