Rudy Fichtenbaum stood up for Ohio's teachers. Now it's our turn to stand up for him. Please donate to his GoFundMe campaign to help him pay his legal fees.

Nearly every year, the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) holds an election to fill one of our seven allotted seats on the Board; the other four seats are appointed. Dr. Rudy Fichtenbaum has twice won his election by landslide margins as STRS members moved toward selecting Board members intent on addressing the problems that led to drastic cuts in member benefits. Fellow Board members recognized Rudy’s skill set and voted him as their Board Chair. To date, Rudy has spent

And here is where the harm deepens: STRS also hid its consequences, even though it was bound by a fiduciary duty to forewarn.

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.