A couple of things about TRS Director Richard Ingram.

Today the IEA website functions as a spin doctor for TRS Director Richard Ingram.

Ingram, you recall, went rogue this week in an interview with Crain’s. He called for an end to cost of living adjustments (COLA) for TRS retirees.

TRS members were outraged. Ingram was hired by the TRS board of trustees to manage the system. He had no business, it is simply not his job, to make proposals to the legislature or to anyone else about how to solve the problems of the hugely underfunded system. The system is underfunded because the state has not met its constitutional responsibilities.

Earlier in the year Ingram got into hot water for doing the same thing.

A couple of things stand out about his statement published on the IEA website.

First of all, he declares he didn’t call for cutting COLAs. Ingram says, “Crain’s had no illusions that I was advocating for changes to the COLA or any other specific proposal for that matter, and they stated that in the article.”

The headline of the Crain’s article is: Head of teacher pension fund says state will need to cut COLAs.

I guess Crain’s had some illusion that Ingram had called for cutting COLAs.

Then Ingram says, “Senate Bill 1673 is now one roll call away from being sent to the governor’s desk for his action.”

Well, that’s just stupid. Every bill is just one roll call away from being sent to the governor’s desk for his action. The fact is that for the past two years every attempt to have that one roll call vote, to cut pension benefits, has failed due to massive political pressure from TRS annuitants and other public pension members. But, the guy who is supposed to manage our pension has spent those same two years doing everything he can to undercut the movement to defend the pension system that he is hired to manage.

Many members have called for action to be taken against Ingram by the TRS board of trustees when they meet on October 24th.

It is disheartening to see the IEA website being handed over to Richard Ingram for making lame excuses and telling lies.

IEA members should expect the President of our Association to be the most outraged on our behalf. Instead, in part because of her dual role as TRS trustee and IEA President, she is left to restate the labor coalition’s general position and then repeat without comment the nonsense that Ingram put out.

It is clear to me that Richard Ingram has found common ground with those who want to waste time and money by targeting retirement benefits and not addressing the funding problem. Ingram’s excuse that there is no bill to address a graduated income tax solution makes no more sense than his excuse that there we are only “a roll call away” from ending  COLAs.

After all, if the legislature had spent the last four years addressing fair funding instead of wasting time and money illegally going after benefits, we might very well be a roll call away from a funding bill.