Ohio Retirement for Teachers Association

08/29/2026

ORTA Weekly Update - August 29, 2026

https://orta.org/so/9aQ1FYHjQ

08/22/2026

Weekly Update: August 22, 2026

08/21/2026

Robin Rayfield addressed the STRS Ohio Board on August 18, 2026.

This year the PBI faces continued controversy associated with the ‘Retirement at Risk’ paper. This paper alleges the returns to determine PBI are less than the verified or audited figures. STRS members want to know that the STRS staff are earning their bonus payments. Two actions would help to i...

08/15/2026

ORTA Weekly Update: August 15, 2026

This week’s update will address the Ohio Retirement Study Council (ORSC) meeting held August 13th.

A few of the items on the ORSC agenda included the Performance Bonus Incentives (PBI’s) of the School Employees Retirement System (SERS), the PBI’s of Ohio’s Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS), and the PBI’s of our pension system, STRS.

Towards the end of the meeting, the Chair of the ORSC, under new business, brought up the article titled “Retirement at Risk: The Political Economy of Public Pension Governance,” which appeared in the June 2026 Journal of New Finance and addressed the STRS PBI’s. This was mentioned in last week's update.

The article focuses on a recent 20-year period (2003-2022) and states that STRS reports two sets of financial numbers; one set is audited, and the other is not. The set that isn’t audited is used to award bonuses to investment staff. The article stated that the STRS staff overstated these numbers in 19 of the 20 years when compared to the audited returns.

The article additionally contrasted STRS with OPERS and noted that the OPERS staff overstated their unaudited numbers in only 8 of the 20 years. The implication is that STRS staff are misreporting to receive bonuses because, unlike OPERS, STRS staff numbers were off by over 9 billion dollars over a 20-year period if interest were factored in. Again, STRS did not lose this money; their calculations were just off by this amount.

During the “new business” portion of the ORSC meeting, Chairman Bird raised strong concerns about the Retirement at Risk report. At least three of the members of the ORSC receive their retirement pension checks from STRS, so they also commented, expressing deep concerns. Chairman Bird concluded his thoughts by sharing that the authors of the Retirement at Risk article were being contacted and promised everyone that the ORSC would get to the bottom of the significant discrepancies.

ORTA will not draw any conclusions until the facts are in; here are some observations from the meeting.

First observation: OPERS manages about $160 billion, while STRS manages about $100 billion; however, this year OPERS awarded only $5.4 million in PBIs. This is significantly less than what STRS awards.

Second observation: Chairman Bird currently has a Senior Research Associate at the ORSC trying to reconcile the numbers used in the research document with the STRS numbers. The associate stated that he could not do this due to insufficient information in the report. He also stated that he is not an expert in the investment field. My hope is that an outside, independent expert in the investment field is assigned the task.

As always, ORTA is looking out for your pension.

Dean Dennis, Chair
ORTA Executive Council

Read this update online at

This week’s update will address the Ohio Retirement Study Council (ORSC) meeting held August 13th. A few of the items on the ORSC agenda included the Performance Bonus Incentives (PBI’s) of the School Employees Retirement System (SERS), the PBI’s of Ohio’s Public Employees Retirement System ...

08/14/2026

https://www.orta.org/post/all-we-re-asking-for-is-15-minutes-of-your-time

"I have already reached out to both of the authors, and so I am going to be working on that issue, and I want either or both to communicate with Mr. Bernard and Retirement Study Council staff so that they can explain the methodology that allowed for that computation in the one column of Table 1. We'...

08/11/2026

Has someone you know been the victim of a scam?

Attend this free ORTA webinar on common scams, election-season fraud, and simple ways to protect your personal information.

Spot scam warning signs and protect your personal information.

08/08/2026

ORTA Weekly Update: August 8, 2026

This past week, the ORTA Executive Committee met. A few notable items were discussed beyond general housekeeping and operating expenses. Recently, Dr. Robin Rayfield, ED, and I had a Zoom meeting with the agent for the movie Pension Fight Club. This movie chronicles concerns about major public pensi...

08/01/2026

ORTA Weekly Update: August 1, 2026

For this week's update, we're doing something a little different. We'd like to share some of the new projects we've been working on. Chapter News & Events ORTA's county chapters play an important role in supporting Ohio's retired educators through pension advocacy, networking opportunities, member b...

07/28/2026

Have you, or someone you know, been the victim of a scam?

Scammers often rely on urgency to get quick reactions. If someone pressures you to act immediately, send money, click a suspicious link, or share personal information, that is a sign to slow down and verify. Join us and AMBA* for this free educational webinar on common scams, election-season fraud,....

07/25/2026

ORTA Weekly Update - July 25, 2026