Excerpt from the Associated Press
A battle is under way for the future of Ohio’s $94 billion teacher pension fund, as would-be reformers’ attempts to deliver long-promised benefits to retirees with the help of an aggressive investment firm touting an untested AI-driven trading strategy face intense scrutiny.
The eyes of Wall Street and the half-million members of the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio are on the state as the drama unfolds. A special meeting has been called for Thursday of a board nearly paralyzed by infighting whose executive director is on long-term leave over misconduct allegations he denies.
Years of tension at the fund came to a head on May 8, when Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced that he had come into possession of an anonymous 14-page memo and other documents containing “disturbing allegations” about the STRS board and was handing them over to authorities.
Republican Attorney General Dave Yost launched an investigation the next day into what he called the fund's “susceptibility to a hostile takeover by private interests.” He followed up with a lawsuit seeking to unseat two reform-minded board members — Wade Steen and Rudy Fichtenbaum — for backing a plan to turn over $65 billion, or roughly 70% of STRS assets, to a fledgling investment firm called QED. The outfit is co-run by two people, one a former deputy Ohio treasurer, out of a condo in suburban Columbus.
“This isn’t monopoly money; it’s hard-earned income that belongs to teachers,” Yost said in launching his probe. “There is a responsibility to act in their best interests.”
The Ohio Retirement for Teachers Association, a retiree watchdog group, says Steen and Fichtenbaum have been unfairly targeted. The group defends reformers' push for change as a fight against years of opaque management and greed.
