The conclusion of testimony against two board members of the State Teachers Retirement System, Wade Steen and Rudy Fichtenbaum, leads us to believe that the case is full of holes and should not have been brought in the first place.

“When I think of STRS, I think of the beneficiaries, the teachers,” Steen testified Friday. “The rest of us are all support staff, whether we’re board, whether we’re investment staff, whether we’re helping process claims — whatever we do, we’re support staff to the teachers.”

A few years back, it was the Governor himself who was found to have violated the law in how he replaced one pension board member with another—egregiously skirting Ohio law in the way he did so. Well, just hours ago, a Court confirmed yet another egregious law violation.

Was it legal to add an amendment to Ohio’s biennial operating budget bill, Ohio House Bill 69, when essentially no legislators were even aware that it was in Ohio House Bill 69?

The Governor’s signing into law HB 69, containing the Adam Bird amendment, left unchallenged, would change the composition of the STRS Pension Board from seven elected pension members and four political appointees to three elected pension members and eight political appointees.  This is unacceptable.

This change risks politicizing the STRS board. Retirement security should never be treated as a partisan issue. Decisions about teachers’ pensions should be guided by sound financial stewardship and the long-term well-being of retirees — not by shifting political winds. Appointees chosen by politicians risk undermining confidence in the board and eroding the trust educators must have in their retirement system.

So in their rush to avoid the wrath of the teachers and retirees whose rights they have been hell-bent on violating, these lawless politicians ran roughshod over the bare minimum requirements of the Ohio’s Constitution.

The members of the three largest education unions have filed a lawsuit in Franklin County Common Pleas Court challenging a provision in the most recent state budget bill that reduces the number of elected representatives to the 11-member state board and replaces them with more appointed members.

In today’s information economy, education is the key to Ohio’s future. Attracting and retaining the best and brightest to become teachers is in the interest of every Ohioan. This can only be accomplished if those who choose to become teachers know they can enjoy a dignified retirement. If other states can afford to have their employers pay their fair share of their teachers’ pensions, Ohio can too.