Bob Buerkle, retired Cincinnati teacher, addressed the STRS Ohio Board during Public Participation on March 19, 2025. Here's what he said.
If you retired between August 1, 2013, one month after STRS Pension Reform went into effect, and June 1, 2014, you were the first new retirees to be told you would not receive a COLA for the first five years of your retirement. As it turned out, you missed them for nine straight years, then received two COLAs, only to have your COLA stopped again for the 10th time in this year.
How has that affected their finances to date and into the future? Well, so far, the average retiree from this group, who began with a $50,000 pension and $1,000 COLA, has lost $55,000 to date, which is 110% more than their original pension amount. These retirees are also now $10,000 behind in their pension base, which should now be up to $64,000, not the annual $54,000 they are now receiving. So, even if STRS restored and paid their 2% COLA for the next 25 years of their life, they will lose another $250,000. This is why, for the last thirteen years, I have been saying that the average retiree will lose $300,00 or more in their lifetime due to their "Pension Reform" COLA losses.
How did I know this was going to happen? When I first saw the STRS explanation of Senate Bill 342, I began thinking of a way to explain it to others. I thought of bowling pins, the head pin for year #1, then the two pins in the second row for year #2, three pins in row #3, four in row #4; so I thought this was easy to understand, missing the value of 10 pins (or COLAs) in four years, 15 in five years, 55 in ten years, and so on. That was the genesis of my COLA Tree.
Now we have something much better and it's available to anybody, thanks to Trina kay Prufer, one of our finest and brightest STRS Retirees. Just type the words "STRS COLA Loss Calculator" into your browser and you will find a fantastic program to compute your losses in 3 easy steps, over any period of time of not receiving a COLA.
Almost none of our Retirees, or our Actives, or our Board Members, or the Legislators knew the total devastation this would cause our members in the future; but the big four STRS Management team knew, and the STRS Actuaries knew. They knew exactly how this would play out, even before they went running to the Legislature with the changes they wanted. Every one of them is now gone, fired, retired, whatever, leaving us and you reform Board members to clean up the mess caused by their trickery, lies and deceit.
The big four STRS Management Team had another possible solution, similar to the solution that STRS now seeks with the legislature; a way to raise Employer Contributions. But wait, this solution has been part of the Ohio Revised Code for decades. Found in 3307.14(E), here it is:
(E) The "guarantee fund" is the fund from which interest is transferred and credited on the amounts in the funds described in divisions (A), (B), (C), and (D) of this section, and is a contingent fund from which the special requirements of said funds may be paid by transfer from this fund. All income derived from the investment of funds by the state teachers retirement board as trustee under section 3307.15 of the Revised Code, together with all gifts and bequests, or the income therefrom, shall be paid into this fund.
Any deficit occurring in any other fund that will not be covered by payments to that fund, as otherwise provided in this chapter, shall be paid by transfers of amounts from the guarantee fund to such fund or funds. Should the amount in the guarantee fund be insufficient at any time to meet the amounts payable therefrom, the amount of such deficiency, with regular interest, shall be paid by an additional employer rate of contribution as determined by the actuary and shall be approved by the board, and the amount of such additional employer contribution shall be credited to the guarantee fund.
The STRS Management Team changed the retirement rules for actives and punished the retirees retroactively, years and decades after they retired, because they didn't have the intestinal fortitude to do the right thing. Instead, without mandating the implementation of 3307.14(E), or providing any Grandfathering, they chose the easy button; they went after the low-hanging fruit, our retirees and currently active teachers.
STRS Ohio Board member Rudy Fichtenbaum, and former Board member Wade Steen, are incurring legal fees, defending themselves against the lawsuit brought against them by A.G. Dave Yost. ORTA will use donations from the Pension Defense Fund to help them, if needed, pay their legal expenses. They have volunteered their time to support Ohio's teachers. Now it's time for us to show our support for them! Make a donation today to the ORTA Pension Defense Fund