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.

As most of you know by now, Ohio House Bill 96, Ohio’s annual operating budget bill, contained a nefarious amendment designed to eliminate the voices of Ohio's teachers. The amendment reconfigured the State Teachers Retirement Board by reducing the number of elected teachers from 7 to 3, while increasing the appointed members from 4 to 8. Simply put, appointed bureaucrats would replace the majority of democratically elected members.

This targeted attack on educators follows a long campaign of misinformation, anonymous allegations, and politicized investigations against elected members of the STRS Board. The fact is that STRS members have engaged in widespread grassroots activism to elect effective board members who take their fiduciary responsibilities very seriously and have only started restoring benefits – providing cost of living adjustments to retirees and lowering the years of service requirement f

This May, the Court of Appeals of Ohio handed us a decisive victory in our longstanding battle for public access to investment documents related to over 100 investment firms managing tens of billions in more than 400 private funds for the ultra-secretive State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio.

The chairman of the State Teachers Retirement System board and a former member filed a lawsuit Thursday against Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost for allegedly refusing to provide them with legal representation in a previously filed lawsuit.

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