Excerpt from the Cleveland Plain Dealer
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has launched an investigation over activities of the state teacher’s pension board, and whether he should remove them for breaching fiduciary duty.
Yost is specifically looking at concerns that the board has been susceptible “to a hostile takeover by private interests,” he said in a statement Thursday.
Yost didn’t name any names of the private interests or the board members that could potentially be removed. But he referenced a state law that grants him the authority to seek a civil action against state pension board members who breach their fiduciary duty and that could result in their removal.
The $94 billion State Teachers Retirement System board has been in turmoil for years. Most recently, the Ohio 10th District Court of Appeals ruled that Wade Steen, a member of the board who Gov. Mike DeWine had ousted a year ago, should be reinstated.
Steen, along with several new board members, were considering big changes to the management of the pension. Many retirees had turned against the board after receiving no yearly cost-of-living raise between 2017 and 2022, which they said caused hardship because their pensions were based off their modest salaries in the classroom. No other state pension had as similarly severe austerity measures.
But DeWine, who had removed Steen last year from the board, announced late Wednesday afternoon that he had forwarded over a dozen documents to Yost and other state officials, including one that said Steen and some other board members appeared to have been influenced by leaders of a relatively new company with no pension investment experience. Such a “hostile takeover by private interests” was referenced in an unsigned memo that was part of those documents.
