What would the reaction be if the state ran out of money to pay the pensions of retired teachers?

I guarantee the public would be furious.

That’s not going to happen, at least anytime soon in Oklahoma.

According to a report by State Treasurer Ken Miller, the $32,900,000,000.00 (that’s $32.9 billion) in the state’s public pension funds got a return of 9.5 percent in the fiscal year that ended in June.

That is better than 86 percent of all public pensions.

Four of the seven funds have had positive returns for nine years in a row and the other three had growth in eight out of nine years.

The Oklahoma Teachers Retirement System is the largest of the seven with $16,500,000,000.00 in the bank and it grew at a rate of 10 percent last year.

The next largest is the Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System, which has a value of $9,700,000,000.00 and grew by 8.3 percent.

The Oklahoma Firefighters Pension and Retirement System outperformed the rest with a growth rate of 11.7 percent. It has $2,700,000,000.00 in reserve.

The Oklahoma Police Pension and Retirement System has $2,500,000,000.00 and grew at a rate of 8.7 percent in fiscal year 2017/18. The Oklahoma Law Enforcement Pension System has about $994,000,000.00 and went up 9 percent.

The Uniform Retirement System and the Oklahoma Wildlife and Conservation Retirement Plan are smaller but they both grew by over 11 percent.

You get the idea.

Even though Oklahoma’s state revenue bounces up and down, lawmakers have managed to not only fund retirement accounts but to make them grow.

It wasn’t always that way.

In Oklahoma’s first 100 years, Democrats ran state government. In order to keep pay low for teachers, firefighters, policemen and other government workers, they promised health insurance and a generous pension plan.

You could be a teacher with low pay but you were set when you retired.

One thing the Democrats didn’t do was fund those retirement accounts. Instead, they used that money to grow government and they “kicked the can down the road.”

When Republicans took control of the Oklahoma House a few years ago and then captured the Senate, the lawmakers were astounded and dismayed at how underfunded the retirement accounts were.

Fifteen years ago, if every teacher that was eligible for retirement retired, the system would have been drained dry.

So, Republican leaders, like former Sen. Mike Mazzei of Tulsa, met with education officials and representatives of the teachers’ union. They explained the situation and how it was critical to get more money into those retirement accounts. In private meetings, the union agreed that millions had to be put into retirement to make it solvent.

The Republicans wanted to raise teacher salaries 10 years ago but they had to postpone those plans because Democrats had failed to fund the retirement plans.

Since then, Republicans have successfully put hundreds of millions of dollars into those accounts and secured teacher retirement checks. This is particularly important as the Baby Boom generation retires from teaching in public schools.

Partial credit for the growth in these funds should go to President Trump and his economic policies, which have made the Stock Market soar, reduced unemployment (particularly among minorities) and strengthened the dollar.

Even though all of this is true, fiscally conservative Republicans get all of the blame for low teacher salaries. That is so misleading

It is true that during the 2018 legislative session, a host of Republican lawmakers turned their backs on the GOP state platform and voted for the largest tax increase in Oklahoma history.

They panicked because the liberal news media every day painted a picture of poorly paid teachers fleeing to Texas. They aired reports of union bosses crying about pay and how teachers spend their own money on supplies.

The big TV stations and the liberal daily newspaper de-emphasize the true culprits for low teacher pay – local school boards and top-heavy administrative salaries. The Tulsa School Board decides how much classroom teachers make – not the State Legislature. And those salaries come from a budget concocted by administrators led by a superintendent who will make almost 10 times an average teacher salary this year.

Republicans almost unanimously voted for teacher pay increases this year. Most voted for the tax increase while others refused to raise taxes because the money for the raises was already available. And based on a year of record-breaking state revenue, the ones who voted against the tax hike were correct.

The State of Oklahoma promised teachers and other employees money for retirement. Thanks to Republican leadership, the money to pay for that is still there.

That is something to consider if you plan to vote for a Democrat on November 6. When a Democrat candidate knocks on your door, ask him or her if the state retirement fund should have been a priority.