COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio retired teachers' pension fund has hired a former pensions expert from North Carolina as its new executive director.
Steven Toole, the previous head of the North Carolina Retirement Systems (RSD), will take over starting in mid-July.
He grew up outside Columbus and went to OSU, according to a records request I filed for his candidate materials.
"My experience extends to working closely with boards and stakeholders to ensure transparency, accountability, and integrity — values central to STRS Ohio’s guiding principles," Toole wrote in a letter to a recruiter.
Currently, he works as a senior product manager at Principal, a retirement and investment company. He also gets some income from Home Depot, according to an ethics filing I obtained.
While working at RSD, he managed a $100 billion pension system and $11.8 billion in defined contribution assets, serving approximately 1 million public employees, according to his candidate documents.
He worked as the executive director of RSD from 2011 to 2019, when he was fired, the records request shows.
According to Toole, in an email he sent to recruiter Dan Cummings, he stated that there were "no performance issues at all," and he didn't receive an explanation from the state treasurer as to why he was being removed.
Cummings told a board member that the former NC Treasurer Dale Folwell replaced Toole when he came into office, emails show. The candidate document shows that he was replaced with Folwell's "hand-chosen successor."
However, Toole was replaced two years into the treasurer's term. Once this was brought up by a board member, according to emails I obtained, the new STRS head suggested that the reason may be related to the treasurer's "cost-cutting platform."
I have been in communication with NC's treasurer's office to get more clarity. I am waiting on records.
Following being let go from RSD, Toole then worked for Prudential Retirement. This was later bought out by another company, and his job was "eliminated," according to the documents.
He worked in retirement benefits for nearly three decades at Nationwide Insurance before joining the North Carolina team, the documents show.
A close vote
His hiring comes after a year of controversy, during which the STRS board chair and one of the former board members were accused of participating in a $65 billion corruption scheme. The chair, Rudy Fichtenbaum, denies all allegations, and some retired educators are accusing the Statehouse Republicans of trying to stop transparency.
"The high scrutiny and media attention surrounding STRS Ohio over the past eighteen months do not give me pause — rather, I see it as an opportunity to step into a leadership role, bring clarity, and strengthen trust among members, legislators, and stakeholders," Toole wrote in his candidate document.
There are mainly two defined factions of the STRS population: "reformers" and those who want to keep the "status quo."
In short, reformers want to switch to index funding, while "status quo" individuals want to keep actively managing the funds. Recent elections have allowed the reform-minded members to have a majority of the board.
Fichtenbaum and all of the reformers on the board voted in support of Toole, while each of the status quo members, including appointees, voted against him.
The vote ended up being 6-5.
The current acting ED, Aaron Hood, was also given his notice at the meeting.
I have covered all different angles of this story, including ones focusing on the educators and their lack of COLA, how lawmakers are responding, and investigations into archived meetings, conflicts of interest, and resignations. For a recap, click here.
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