OPERS Board chooses trustee
Desposito to represent non-teaching college and university employees
By Michael Pramik, Ohio Public Employees Retirement System
Dec. 21, 2017 – The OPERS Board of Trustees, at its December meeting, selected Randy Desposito to fill the vacant seat representing non-teaching college/university employees to serve the remainder of the existing term.
Desposito, a staff nurse at the University of Toledo’s Health Science campus, will serve on the Board through Dec. 31, 2018. The seat became vacant this year with the departure of Charles Latsa from the Board.
Desposito will be eligible to run for election during the regular election cycle for this seat in 2018. That will be one of four seats to be voted upon. The others are:
- State employees representative
- Municipal employees representative
- Retiree representative
The other retiree representative seat, which became open this year upon the death of trustee John Maurer, will be decided earlier in 2018 by a special election.
Michael Pramik
Michael Pramik is communication strategist for the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and editor of the PERSpective blog. As an experienced business journalist, he clarifies complex pension policies and helps members make smart choices to secure their retirement.
Dear PERSpective Editor and Blog Authors: First, I’m sure (and I hope) that Randy Desposito will do a fine job as a new Board Member. Next, I do have another reason for commenting. I have seen posts where many wonder why a particular post they previously submitted was deleted or never posted. I just read through your Comment Policy, and I can say that I have tried to post comments that fall within your comment guidelines — but they were never posted. My comments reflected a basic level of decorum and civility, comment was clear, concise and properly capitalized and punctuated. However, my comment or comments were never posted, and I suspect this may be due to the fact that it was in disagreement with an OPERS policy/procedure/change. Please allow negative comments to be posted. OPERS is a public entity, and it’s Blog should not be so very restrictive if a comment falls within your comment policy. I would like to see a true representation of bloggers’ comments — positive and negative.
Thank you very much for your consideration in posting this comment,
Cheryl
With no exemptions for 2018 and current w4’s and it4’s obsolete.
How are you going to figure and authorize federal and state withholding for retirees ?
Workers ?
Good question. Once we receive tax table changes from the IRS we will make those changes in your benefits and send you a Benefit Change Notice. We cannot estimate what those changes will be before that time.
When I hired on with the State I was told that my pension would be fully funded, and we would have full medical, dental & prescription-insurance coverage.
Well, I retired the end of Fed.,2002, had my health insurance provided for by OPERS for 1 year before I had to start paying for it. Now, supposedly on the hope they don’t run out of money, they’re giving us money to by our own insurance. But, that money is being reduced yearly, until there is none. How soon ‘til they cut out the pensions entirely?
Healthcare has never been a guaranteed benefit and can change at any time. That said, we know how important health care is and have made changes to help preserve the plan; even as health care costs continue to rise, we strive to provide access to comprehensive, competitive health care options for you and future generations.
Regarding monthly HRA deposits, in 2012, the OPERS Board of Trustees adopted a set of changes to the OPERS health care plan to increase the sustainability of the heath care fund. As you may know, those changes included a Health Reimbursement Arrangement to provide funds to OPERS Medicare Connector participants.
In order to make the transition to the new health care plan flow more smoothly, OPERS did two things: (1) furnish enrolled retirees with an additional $300 deposit to their HRA accounts once per year between 2016 and 2018, and (2) provide a higher allowance amount for the first three years to help ease the transition. Between 2016 and 2018, the monthly allowance amount was decreased each year until the final allowance amount was reached in 2018. The three year transition to reduce funding is complete.
At this point, the Board has not discussed anything further about making major changes to funding.
I am curious if the appointed position mentioned in this post was already set to run until the end of 2018.
Mr. Desposito is filling the remainder of an existing term.
Julie, OPERS