Ohio

Ohio has four main public pension systems: the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS), the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio (STRS), the School Employees Retirement System (SERS), and the Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund (OP&F).

• The OPERS board represents state employees, local government employees, and employees of participating agencies; the board consists of 11 members: 1 Ex Officio (Director of the Department of Administrative Services); 1 appointed by the Governor; 1 appointed by the Treasurer; 1 appointed by the General Assembly; 7 elected by OPERS members.

• • OPERS discloses its proxy voting records on this website.
  • OPERS uses Glass Lewis for its proxy advisory services.
  • According to its 2023 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, OPERS’ general investment consultant is NEPC.

• The STRS board represents state public school teachers and consists of 11 members: 5 elected contributing teacher members; 2 elected retired teacher members; 1 investment expert appointed by the governor; 1 investment expert appointed jointly by the speaker of the House and the Senate president; 1 investment expert designated by the treasurer of state; the superintendent of public instruction or his designated investment expert.
  • According to its 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, STRS’ general investment consultants are Callan and Meketa.
• The SERS board represents public school employees and consists of 9 members: 4 elected employee members, 2 elected retiree members, and 3 appointed investment expert members; 1 investment expert is appointed by the governor, 1 investment expert is appointed by the treasurer of state, and 1 investment expert is appointed jointly by the speaker of the House and president of the Senate.
  • According to its 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, SERS’ general investment consultant is Wilshire.
• The OP&F board represents police and firefighters and consists of 9 members: 6 employee members elected by their respective member groups (2 representatives of police departments, 2 representatives of fire departments, 1 retired firefighter, 1 retired police officer); 3 statutory members with professional investment experience (1 appointed by the Governor, 1 appointed by the State Treasurer, 1 appointed jointly by the Senate President and the Speaker of the House).
  • According to an August 2023 Report, OP&F’s general investment consultant is Wilshire.

The “By Asset Manager” and “Asset Manager Voting” tables show the proxy voting records of the state’s asset managers who manage the pensions’ stock market portfolio through index, exchange-traded, or mutual funds. Since these are externally managed funds, the asset managers typically retain and exercise proxy voting privileges. This data is used to calculate the state’s pro-ESG and anti-ESG scores to see how the state leverages its externally managed funds in proxy voting.

The “State Voting” table shows STRS proxy voting records for directly owned securities through pension fund portfolios. The 1792 Exchange commends OPERS for publicly disclosing this information online for its pensioners. STRS data was obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request since Ohio does not publicly disclose this information to its pensioners. The 1792 Exchange encourages Ohio to publish its proxy voting records instead of keeping its pensioners in the dark about how the state votes on ESG issues with their money.

Both tables are important to show a comprehensive picture of the state’s proxy voting record.