Friday, October 12, 2012

Dick Ingram, TRS Executive Director (from Bob Lyons, TRS Trustee)


 …Dan Montgomery, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, emailed a statement to the media calling on Dick Ingram to resign as executive director TRS. The statement was also posted on the IFT website… We received no advance communication about this statement, and we have started to receive media questions asking for a response. Here is that response:

Director Ingram has no plans to resign. The TRS Board of Trustees meets on October 26 and will have an opportunity to consider the IFT’s statement. Director Ingram understands full well that questions about the long-term financial health of TRS leads to anxiety and concern among our members. These issues unavoidably create difficult questions about the future and hard discussions about solutions. For the sake of our members, we cannot shy away from these discussions.

Everyone at TRS is focused on our fiduciary duty to stabilize the System’s finances going forward so that we can fulfill the retirement promises made to all 362,000 of our members. The Trustees recognized last spring that the financial problems faced by state government today could lead to insolvency at TRS in the next few decades unless the situation is corrected. The Board called on the General Assembly to act now to protect our members’ retirements without violating the Illinois Constitution’s pension protection clause.

--Bob Lyons, TRS Trustee


The Illinois Federation of Teachers Calls on the Teachers Retirement System Director to Resign: http://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-illinois-federation-of-teachers.html

TRS Executive Director Dick Ingram explains comments on pensions, COLA: http://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2012/10/executive-director-dick-ingram-explains.html

“Once again we have a problem” with TRS Executive Director Dick Ingram: http://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2012/10/once-again-we-have-problem-with-trs.html
 

2 comments:

  1. Glen, do you have any inkling about whether Bob Lyons has an opinion about whether the COLA reduction would be a violation of the pension clause? He may have been clear on this before; I don't know. The language in this statement makes me think there's a green light from the Board on this issue. Everyone I know has a great deal of respect for Bob Lyons--- it would be good to know if he has a position individually or if the Board has a position collectively.

    I honestly don't know. If they're talking about not violating the Constitution, I think they need to clarify what they would regard as a violation. In fact, now that I've read the statement a number of times, I fail to see anything but a Board-issued green light on the COLA reduction, not just the discussion of it. It's either Constitutional in someone's opinion or it isn't.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tim,
    I cannot speak for Bob Lyons; however, these two posts might be helpful:

    http://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2012/03/cola-cost-of-living-adjustment-is-it.html

    http://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2012/08/costofliving-adjustments-cola-from.html

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.