The culprits that are looting the pensions of public school teachers, firefighters, police, as well as private sector workers, are on Wall Street. The Wall Street casinos charging high fees for gambling in risky hedge funds and other speculative investments, outrageous investment-industry conflicts of interest, and outright violations of the law.

RVK stated that one reason the research paper was flawed is that Mendenhall and Sutter implied STRS staff were overstating their returns to drive up investment staff compensation, but they failed to show that STRS investment staff salaries were higher than OPERS salaries. STRS investment staff salaries are significantly higher than OPERS investment staff salaries.

At the meeting on Thursday, the Council will review reports from the ORSC, which looked into the 'Retirement at Risk' document, as well as reports from consultants Pension Trustee Advisors (PTA) C and RVK. ORTA has reviewed these materials but still has questions that we hope the meeting will answer. None of the consultants' reports tried to reconcile the STRS numbers or explain why their stated (self-reported) numbers are so significantly off from their actuarial numbers.

The next attorney general must take a proactive approach to these boards and the Ohio Retirement Study Council. Years of turmoil need to end. For nearly a decade, STRS pensioners didn’t receive a cost-of-living adjustment — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Who gets rich from the state’s pension funds, public subsidies and electric grid, and who has the power to make them show their books? How do the leading candidates for Senate and Governor feel about divestment from Epstein linked Apollo in Ohio taxpayer funded pensions?

The public does not need access to every so-called portfolio-company trade secret. It does need enough information to determine whether the people entrusted with public retirement money are protecting the public—or merely signing what Wall Street puts in front of them.

If you’re a participant in a state pension, there’s a full-length documentary about public pensions that state officials and their Wall Street allies do not want you to see. At its center, the film asks a simple but urgent question: Who is protecting the retirement savings of public workers when those charged with oversight cannot obtain the information necessary to fulfill their fiduciary duties?

Many states have underfunded pensions, which has led some states to cut pension benefits and others to raise taxes on the public. The documentary attributes this in part to the move into alternative investments, citing their high fees and returns that don’t meet benchmarks.

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Recently Allen Mendenhall & Dan Sutter published an article “Retirement at Risk: The Political Economy of Public Pension Governance” in the Journal of New Finance comparing STRS’s and OPERS’s reported returns and returns calculated using audited data. What follows is my review of the Mendenhall and Sutter article as it pertains to STRS.

"A preliminary injunction is hereby ISSUED, and it is ORDERED as follows that: Defendants (and those acting in concert with them) are preliminarily enjoined to HALT any implementation, enforcement, or any other action taken pursuant to, or in furtherance of, the amendments to R.C. 3307.05 and 3307.11 contained in H.B. 96." - Judge Carl A. Aveni, Franklin County Court of Common Pleas

As a massive pension fund hovering around $90 billion to $104 billion in assets during this period, even seemingly tiny basis-point underperformances translate into hundreds of millions of dollars.

This year the PBI faces continued controversy associated with the ‘Retirement at Risk’ paper. This paper alleges the returns to determine PBI are less than the verified or audited figures. STRS members want to know that the STRS staff are earning their bonus payments. Two actions would help to instill confidence in STRS.

Let me give you an example: the STRS actuary states there is $1.3 billion available for bonuses; a 2% COLA costs $ 0.8 billion, and the Board doesn’t provide a 2% COLA. How does ORTA explain that to our members?

"I have already reached out to both of the authors, and so I am going to be working on that issue, and I want either or both to communicate with Mr. Bernard and Retirement Study Council staff so that they can explain the methodology that allowed for that computation in the one column of Table 1. We've got to have Mr. Bernard, our staff, be able to reproduce those results." - Rep. Adam Bird, Chair, ORSC

"Retirement at Risk" lends academic support to concerns ORTA has raised for several years about STRS transparency, investment-return reporting and performance bonuses. It credits the ORTA-commissioned Benchmark investigation as part of the chain of events that brought these governance questions to the attention of state auditors and policymakers.

I recently scrolled through all of our blog posts since 2020 to see which one has received the most views. This one, posted on March 19, 2025, has received 7,034 views!

Toledo Blade cartoonist Kirk Walters lampoons STRS Ohio.

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The article lends academic support to concerns ORTA has raised for several years about STRS transparency, investment-return reporting and performance bonuses. It credits the ORTA-commissioned Benchmark investigation as part of the chain of events that brought these governance questions to the attention of state auditors and policymakers.