COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The outgoing head of Ohio’s troubled teachers retirement system said that she is leaving the fund in strong fiscal condition, despite the turmoil at the top that her successor will inherit.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Acting Executive Director and CFO Lynn Hoover said that the $94 billion State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio’s returns over the short term, middle term and long term remain within the top 10% of peer funds around the country.
“We’ve delivered,” said Hoover, whose senior investment staff has seen reduced performance bonuses as part of recent tensions. She retires Sunday after 31 years at STRS, one of the nation’s oldest and largest public pension funds. Its more than 500,000 members include active and inactive public school teachers and retirees.
That doesn’t mean the next interim director, Aaron Hood, doesn’t have a big job ahead of him, she said.
The U.S. Army veteran and seasoned asset management professional came on board this month and will help the board lead a nationwide search for a new permanent director to replace Bill Neville, who was let go in September after being placed on leave amid misconduct allegations. Hood also must fill Hoover’s role as chief financial officer, hire for a vacancy coming in March for a chief investment officer and find a new head of internal audit.
The top priority “is to get those filled and to get highly capable people in here that can continue this great legacy,” Hoover said.
The staff departures come amid years of tension that boiled over this spring. Would-be reformers on the STRS board took aim at the fund’s internal operations and investment decisions after retirees were angered when the previous board cut their cost-of-living adjustment and then eliminated it for five years to help stabilize the fund. Many have remained dissatisfied with the 3% adjustment they got in 2023 and the 1% adjustment they got in 2024.
In May, Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced that he had come into possession of an anonymous 14-page memo and other documents containing “disturbing allegations” about the STRS board and was handing them over to authorities.
Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost launched an investigation the next day into what he called the fund’s “susceptibility to a hostile takeover by private interests.” The probe is still ongoing, and lawmakers have since begun considering removing some elected members from the board.
Yost followed up the launch of his investigation with a lawsuit seeking to unseat two of the reform-minded board members. One of those members, Rudy Fichtenbaum, became board chair. The other, Wade Steen, has since left the board. Yost also filed a lawsuit against two other former board members in October, alleging they participated in a “civil conspiracy” that prevented him from uncovering the fund’s defects.
