Amid STRS board changes, watchdog group raises concerns

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – A retirees’ watchdog group said Ohio politicians are trying to block transparency at the State Teachers Retirement System by silencing the voice of teachers and replacing educators on the STRS board with political appointees.

There have been several years of chaos at the massive pension system, with retired teachers denied cost-of-living increases and the Ohio attorney general filing a civil complaint against two board members.

Much of the power struggle can be traced to a 2020 investment proposal from a private investment entity known as QED. For the first time, one of the founders of QED, JD Tremmel, goes on the record.

Tremmel co-founded the private investment group. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said QED then teamed up with some STRS board members as part of an attempted hostile takeover of the $96 billion pension fund. However, Tremmel said they didn’t want to “take over” STRS – they wanted to save it from politicians and poor investments.

“I would say it's not about me or QED or anything of that sort,” Tremmel said. “It's about the teachers.”

Tremmel knows that Ohio’s retired teachers have gone years without promised annual cost-of-living increases, and he believes it’s because their pension fund underperforms the market.

“And they deserve better than this,” he said. “I mean, they deserve to have what they were promised, and under the current format, unless the taxpayers of the state of Ohio bail them out with $15 million a day, it's not going to happen.”

Tremmel believes the STRS pension is poorly invested and not sustainable.

“They're underperforming by the amount of their fees and trading costs, plus a little bit in the alternatives,” he said. “I mean, it's difficult to be uniquely stupid somehow. It's difficult to be uniquely smart.”

As part of a proposal made by QED in 2020, instead of having the internal STRS investment staff control the billions in retirement funds, transfer some of the pension money to better-performing index funds.

When asked, Tremmel admitted that part of the motivation behind QED’s involvement was to make money for the firm.

“Most certainly there’s an economic component of it,” he said. “The, the discussions we had had with board members, we weren't going to receive any fixed fees, which is simply a percentage of the profits above an index.”

So QED would get paid when the investments performed better than the market. Tremmel said that last year, in the hands of the STRS staff, the pension fund performed nearly $1 billion below what it could have made through a passive index fund.

In 2020, QED was pushing the index fund proposal through then-board member Wade Steen and current board president Dr. Rudy Fichtenbaum. Steen and Fichtenbaum are the targets of Yost’s civil lawsuit, which claims they were working with QED for a hostile takeover of the fund. Tremmel admits communication with Steen, even texting during board meetings, which he admits was unusual.

“I’m not sure if it’s inappropriate,” he said. “I mean, I think from a fiduciary standpoint, they should rely upon people they believe who have an expertise in a subject matter. To the extent that we help educate board members about the issues, it STRS and, you know, encourage them to ask certain questions to gain more information. 

“I mean, we're not going to apologize for that,” Tremmel added. “We think that's the ethical thing to do.”

New STRS CEO Stephen Toole had repeatedly turned down NBC4 interview requests, including not responding to a detailed list of questions due to pending litigation. However, STRS did release the following statement:

“STRS Ohio respects the legislature's decision to restructure the retirement board. We are committed to working with state lawmakers to ensure a smooth implementation while upholding our mission to provide Ohio's public educators a foundation for their financial security.”

For more of Tremmel’s interview, watch The Spectrum this Sunday at 10 a.m. on NBC4.