October 8, 2009

Ohio's five public pension systems

Ohio Public Employee Retirement System (OPERS)
State Teachers Retirement System (STRS)
School Employees Retirement System (SERS)
Ohio Police & Fire Pension System (OP&F), and
Ohio Highway Patrol Retirement System (HPRS)

were directed by the Ohio Retirement Study Council (ORSC) to prepare proposals by September 9 for improving the adequacy of their pension funding. Those proposals are complete, and are now under review by ORSC.

The more than 1,500,000 people in the pension systems naturally want to know how their pension benefits will change. Such a change will ultimately require action by our legislators in the Ohio House and Ohio Senate. ORSC is expected to prepare draft legislation for consideration by the legislature.

Present status: no legislation has yet been drafted, and it is not expected during the month of October.

ORSC advises that they will announce their recommendations by way of their officially scheduled meetings. This month's meeting took place on October 14, 2009. ORSC representatives did not expect draft legislation to be ready at that time, and information received from ORSC staff indicates that study of options is still under way. ORSC presented further information (a matrix) describing the various systems' proposals which were officially unveiled at the September meeting.

A representative believes it's possible ORSC will propose statutory language before the end of the year, but stated that the process could go into 2010.

There are two more regular meetings for ORSC in 2009: November 18 and December 9.

While it is anybody's guess how long it will be before legislation is proposed, our perception is that ORSC is not trying to be secretive about their process. The report of their September 9, 2009 meeting, released on their website that same day, included descriptions of all five systems' proposals, which themselves can all be seen on the ORSC site. ORSC has also prepared their own three-page summary of all five systems' proposals, which can be found at http://www.orsc.org/uploadpdf/Summary_30Year_Plans.pdf.

While no definitive action appears to have come out of the October 14 meeting, none was expected. On the other hand, ORSC has released its Investment Performance Review for the period ending June 30, 2006. Once I have reviewed any information available from that meeting, I will provide an update.

Ken Robinson