Ohio State Teachers Retirement System, Columbus, voted for a 1% cost-of-living adjustment for the fiscal year beginning July 1, spokesman Daniel H. Minnich confirmed in an email.
The $88.2 billion pension fund's board approved the COLA at its May 18 meeting.
STRS' board had previously approved a 3% COLA for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, after five consecutive years of no COLAs, a circumstance that has embroiled the pension fund in an ongoing controversy.
Before 2012, STRS had an automatic annual COLA of 3%, but funding problems exacerbated by the Great Recession prompted legislation giving the pension fund's board the power to assign a COLA annually. Between 2012 and 2017, retirees received a 2% COLA each year, and in 2017 the board voted to eliminate the COLA entirely.
Those actions have prompted outrage from Ohio teacher advocacy organization Ohio Retirement for Teachers Association, which in 2021 filed a still-pending class-action lawsuit for the retirement system to release unredacted reports related to the pension fund's alternative investments. The association has also alleged investments have underperformed, an allegation countered by STRS executives, who have cited audited net investment returns that have well exceeded benchmarks.
Mr. Minnich said in a separate email the system has calculated that without the 2012 plan design changes the pension plan's funding ratio as of June 30 would have been 49.6%, down from 57.6% 10 years earlier.
Instead, the funding ratio was 78.9% as of June 30, he added.