Excerpt from the Fremont News Messenger
By John Damschroder, Columnist
Oh how I wish Ohio state government received the same level of scrutiny as Ohio State football. Then the media would be ablaze with condemnation for the Ohio Retirement Study Council.
The ORSC simply shrugged off a multi-million dollar question, unaware it exists, as two of the three elected officials who bothered to show up, Senators Jay Hottinger and Hearcel Craig, failed to read the long-awaited Aon Hewitt fiduciary audit of the Ohio Public Retirement System and the chairman, Senator Kirk Schuring, uncritically accepted the report presentation as a glowing endorsement for OPERS.
Aon’s presentation noted that OPERS pays higher investment management fees than peer group public pension funds and recommended a study of the issue, creating a lucrative business development opportunity for one of the many consultants filling a hearing room and overflow room in the Statehouse on Nov. 14.
But you had to read the 155-page report to understand that OPERS pays 1.12 percent more than the average for public pension funds. You would then need to cross reference the OPERS Comprehensive Annual Financial Report to see that there is $13,419,880,096 subjected to this high fee. When you do the math, you see that the ORSC accepted a report that OPERS pays $150,302,657.07 more in fees on hedge funds than average.
On private equity, OPERS pays just over ¾ percent more than average on $9,619,253,716 which transfers an extra $73,106,328 from Ohio retirees to the outside fund managers running these investments for OPERS. The Ohio Retirement Study Council literally accepted a document telling them OPERS paid $223,408,925.24 more than would typically be paid by a state pension system without discussion or even comment.
Ho-Hum, a pension system seeking legislation to freeze cost-of-living benefits is hemorrhaging expense money, just another day at the Statehouse.
