OPINION

SHELLEY SMITH: Teachers stand behind ATRS

I am a teacher. This is year 31 of a wonderful and extremely rewarding career.

I am very interested in how my retirement is going to look. While retirement plans in other states have floundered, failed, or been converted to skeletal plans that will run out of money in a few years, the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System (ATRS) has maintained a plan that is consistently in the top 1 percent of all plans in the country. It has been well-managed, and has investments that benefit the economy of Arkansas. It also has diversified investments nationally and globally.

It is the best benefit that teachers and school employees have to look forward to after their years of dedication to the children of Arkansas. Not only does ATRS have an 81-year history of providing this solid benefit, it also has a board and expert consultants who advise them as to best pathways for the future to keep it on solid ground.

Earlier this month I attended one day of the two-day meeting of the Joint Performance Review and Public Retirement and Social Security committees who met to study the retirement plans of public employees in Arkansas. Following presentations by the directors of the two largest public employee retirement funds (ATRS and APERS, the Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System), representatives from Bellwether Education Partners, an economics professor from the University of Arkansas, Reason Foundation, and Pew Charitable Trusts shared their selected data about retirement plans.

In his opening remarks the chair of the committee stated that nobody intends to merge the plans, to make any kind of changes, or to convert them to any form of 401(k). This has also been stated repeatedly in emails. He admonished some individuals and groups in the room for spreading fear and rumors that such things were being discussed. There was much indignation on his part that anyone would believe they were considering actions such as these.

For the remainder of the day the audience listened to the presenters who were introduced as experts in their fields, explaining in great detail why our plan is allegedly unsustainable and likely to fail in the future. They recommended a variety of drastic solutions, including 401(k)-style plans.

When asked which states had already implemented these recommended plans one presenter said Kansas and Kentucky were two of several, which is interesting since teachers in Kentucky walked out earlier this year because their retirement plan was gutted.

Pew and Reason Foundation are heavily funded by John Arnold, who is a former hedge fund manager with Enron. Evidently his life's work after making billions of dollars with Enron is to share the news that we should convert traditional retirement plans into something that saves employers money, and will save the world from terrible plans like ours.

I have questions about this, a lot of them. First of all, why are we listening to the philosophy of a former Enron employee? Second, why are billionaire philanthropists from other states interested in how we do public retirement in Arkansas? Third, if this joint committee is truly studying what is best for our retirement systems, then why are all the presenters peddling the same "solutions"? It's almost like there is an unseen agenda.

Are there no other professional opinions on how Arkansas should "stress test" the plans and address any potential issues in the future? Who invited these so-called experts to testify, and were they paid for their presentations? If they came here at their own expense, which is what was said, I'm interested to know why.

Why is the expertise of the ATRS and APERS boards insufficient to handle the business of the state's public retirees? Why were so many committee members not present at the meeting? Why were some committee members so obviously distracted and uninterested when voters in the audience (and watching the live-stream video) are clearly paying attention to how business is done at these meetings?

Finally, and most importantly, if it was stated and restated numerous times that there is no intent to change the retirement plans, then why spend two days listening to testimony from those who recommend doing exactly that? If one spends a little time researching these companies, it does not take long to determine that they most certainly do not appear to have employees' best interests at heart. Denial is a slippery thing. In order to be believable it has to be backed up with at least a sliver of evidence.

Teachers are an extremely diverse group. We come from all parts of the political spectrum, and we disagree on many topics; however, our retirement is not one of them. We love ATRS and will stand together to protect it from predators. We support the board and the director. We know which legislators support ATRS and we appreciate them. We are paying attention to what goes on at the Capitol, and we vote.

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Shelley Smith of Fox is a teacher in the Mountain View School District.

Editorial on 09/24/2018

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