Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Ohio’s four largest public pension systems, which control $200 billion on behalf of 1.9 million workers and retirees, are paying more than $407,000 a year for outside lobbyists to make their cases with state lawmakers and federal officials, public records show.
Since October 2015, Ohio Public Employees Retirement System has paid $400,000 to Republican lobbyist Neil Clark and his firm Grant Street Consultants. Clark is an independent lobbyist whose client list includes payday lenders, gambling interests and beer and wine distributors.
OPERS, which has $94 billion in assets, put Clark on a monthly retainer of $10,000 in October 2015 and later reduced it to $7,500 a month beginning in November 2016.
“We have a good staff, don’t get me wrong. I’m very happy with our staff but you know lobbyists sometimes they can open doors that you can’t always. They represent a different kind of opportunity for us,” said OPERS Executive Director Karen Carraher.
Since its independent lobbyist on federal matters, James Miller, retired in late 2016, OPERS has handled federal issues with in-house staff. Miller’s contract had been for $67,000 a year. Additionally, OPERS reduced its in-house lobby staff by one.
“Philosophically, I don’t understand why you’d feel the need to go retain outside lobbying resources when you have a full complement of lobbyists in-house,” said Geoff Hetrick of Public Employee Retirees Inc., which represents retirees in OPERS. “It just seems a bit redundant, if not expensive, to be retaining outside lobbying help.”
Ohio’s second largest pension fund, State Teachers Retirement System, has had a contract since November 2014 with Republican lobbyist Leah Pappas Porner. She is an independent lobbyist for health care companies, lenders, utilities and a charter school company and others.
Initially, STRS paid $5,000 per month but the retainer fee increased to $6,000 per month in July 2018. The system has paid Porner some $261,000 over the past four years to handle both state and federal government relations.
