Wisconsin Coalition of Annuitants

August 19, 2024, Minutes

www.wicoa.org

Meeting called to order by the Chair Diane Wilcenski at 9:32a.m.

DIRECTORS & ALTERNATES PRESENT: Willie Backes, AFSCME24; Robert Beglinger, AFT-R; Barbara Bird, DOT; Jean Grosklaus, West Allis Retirees; Brian Holmes, Epsilon Sigma Phi; Rick Klemme, Epsilon Sigma Phi; Allen Knop, WEAC-Retired; Dick Kratz, WI Retired Corrections Personnel; Kathy Kreul, WFT/AFT Retirees; Jack Lawton, ACE; John Maydak, West Allis Retirees; Dee Pettack, SAA; Robert Schaefer, WI Assoc of Retired Conservationists and State Engineering Association; Sari Simer, Roger Springman, WFT/AFT Retirees; Jeanne Stangl, Dodge County Area REA; Jim Thiel, Association of Career Employees; Diane Wilcenski, WREA; Rick Wojciak, DNR; Christopher Wren, Wisconsin State Attorneys Association; and wicoa.org

DIRECTORS & ALTERNATES NOT PRESENT: James Blank, Bay Lakes United Educators-R; Dave Bosanko, Retired Professional Fire Fighters of WI; Robert Brooks, Central Wisconsin Center Retirees; Ed Frank, WI Assoc of Retired Conservationists; Paul Haubrich, UW Milwaukee Retiree’s Assoc.; Bruce Johnson, SWIB Retiree; Tara Leithold, Kettle Moraine Retirees; Lucrecia Mattson, UW-Eau Claire Emeritus; Laurie Mayberry, UWRA President; Fred Nepple, OCI; Jim Palmer, WI Professional Police Association Retired; Elaine Reiter, Kettle Moraine Retired; Tom Speranza, Retired Professional Fire Fighters of WI; Joe Strohl, Retired Professional Fire Fighters of WI; and Clara Welch, Beloit Area REA

DIRECTORS & ALTERNATES EXCUSED; Sandy Drew, SWIB Retiree;

Roll Call: Taken by Rick

Approval of the June Minutes: Minutes approved as printed.

Guest: Chris Preisler, Senior Communications Specialist, SWIB

Performance final returns as of June 30, 2024 Returns on a Five-year Basis

Core 4.87% Benchmark 3.98% Core 7.82% Benchmark 7.11%

Variable 11.69% Benchmark 11.31% Variable 11.62% Benchmark 11.73%

Assets Under Management

Core Fund 126.4B Variable Fund 10.6B for a total of 137.B in retirement fund assets

Portfolio Performance

Public Equities were at 11.2%. Private Equity Debt was at 4.0%. Real Estate was at –3.5%

Chris encouraged us to listen to the latest podcast episode featuring Todd Mattina, SWIB Head Economist and Asset and Risk Allocation Chief Investment Officer. Todd gives his insight on what we have seen so far this year and what we may expect for the rest of 2024.

Robert Scott is the new trustee to the SWIB Board. He replaces Kristi Palmer. He will be the local government representative on the board. Rick is currently the Director of Finance and Administration for the City of Brookfield. He has held that position since 1999. Rick is a certified public accountant, public finance officer, and government financial manager. He brings a lot of experience to the SWIB Board.

Next SWIB Board Meeting will be held September 10th and 11th, 2024. Agenda can be found online at https://www.swib.state.wi.us/meetings.

Several SWIB staff members have taken some positions on some boards that is giving SWIB some global recognition. Anne Marie Fink, SWIB’s Private Markets Funds Alpha Chief Investment Officer has been appointed Co-Chair on the Alternative Investment Associations Global Investment Board. Chris Eckerman, a SWIB Senior Portfolio Manager, was appointed to Institutional Limited Partners Association Board. Hilary Holstein, SWIB Senior Portfolio Manager, was named to the CFA Society of Madison’s Board.

SWIB has also received some recognition recently.

Anne Marie Fink was named one of Pension & Investments’ Influential Women in Institutional Investing. SWIB senior portfolio manager Chase Nicholson has been selected for a pair of industry awards, Institutional Investor’s 2024 Rising Stars, and Chief Investment Officer’s Class

of 2024 NextGens. SWIB’s Funds Alpha Team was nominated for an Institutional Investor Allocators Choice Award for best hedge fund portfolio.

A question was asked concerning a report that SWIB invested around $160B in Crypto and is the largest institutional investor in cryptocurrency. Chris Preisler reported that SWIB invested in bitcoin through publicly traded Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). SWIB is not investing directly in Bitcoin, but instead investing in the ETF and that fund invests Bitcoin. The investment is part of a broader investment strategy that makes up less than 1/10th of 1% of the Core Fund.

GUEST: Tarna Hunter, Director of Budget and Management, ETF 

As of August 17, ETF is in the process of recruiting 14 positions and has 7 vacant positions. There have been several changes in leadership. Patty Epstein was hired as the new Chief Benefits Officer (Matt Stohr’s replacement). The position administers the Division of Benefits Administration, which manages retirement benefits and employer services. Before coming to ETF, Patty was the Deputy Secretary for the Department of Financial Institutions. She is going to be the program sponsor for the Pension System Administration project. A new director for ETF’s Office of Talent Management (Human Resources) was named. Travis Dillon was hired for this position. Travis worked for the Department of Administration and the Department of Transportation before coming to ETF. Eileen Mallow, who was the Director of Strategic Health Policy retired after more than 40 years working at ETF.

Renee Walk was hired as the new Strategic Health Policy Director. Brian Stamm the deputy director recently resigned to take a job at UW.

The Insurance Administration System Project is expected to go live the summer of 2025. Presently, both employer and member testing is happening.

The Pension Administration System Project has started. ETF is consulting with Linea to help with the procurement and oversight of the relationship and implementation with the vendor ETF selects. Currently ETF is doing a search and selection process. This consulting company will also help ETF with cost estimates for the biennial budget request. The plan is to present the budget to the ETF Board in September and ask for their support. One of the requests in the budget will be funding for the Pension Administration System. ETF will present the budget request memo to WICOA in October and ask for our support.

ETF Meetings

Deferred Compensation Board meeting – September 12

Retirement Board- September 19

Group Insurance Board – November 13

The Group Insurance Board met last week. They had robust discussions related to coverage of obesity drugs. They have received lots of correspondence concerning coverage of these type of drugs. The Board asked for information concerning costs and considerations on ways they could cover these drugs. They also requested more information on bariatric surgery coverage.

The Board also met with the Chief Information Security Officer and discussed health insurance contracts and IT security requirements. Discussion was centered on what vendors need to do to comply with the contracts.

Correspondence:

An email was received questioning how ETF and the State of Wisconsin deal with Medicare practices that seem inconsistent with the Group Health Insurance Program. An example mentioned was that Accountable Care Organizations are allowing doctor offices and clinics to enroll Medicare patients without their knowledge or consent into outside programs like Medicare Advantage. Tarna responded that ETF doesn’t contract with doctors or clinics and has no control over what they do. Medicare regulations supersede State Law and medical contracts.

Concerns regarding ACO practices need to be shared with your senators and congressmen as ACO is a Federal Government entity.

Jack Lawton shared that years ago ACO was receiving very bad press. Currently the webpage that Medicare has on ACOs is very reassuring that the fears are unfounded.

Old Business:

Rick Wojciak gave a power point review of our 2024 Annual Conference. For our first session on May 22, there were 57 members who viewed the conference on Zoom. After the conference, 31 (54.9%) completed the survey. On May 23, 53 members viewed the conference and 22 (41.5%) completed the survey. Most people stayed for the entire presentation.

When asked if this was their first time attending, 76.9% said No and 23.1% said Yes.

100% stated that they would attend another Annual Conference. 43.1% favored Zoom, 2% favored in person and 54.9% chose either format.

Directors made up 25% of attendance on both days.

People liked having the webinar put online at our website.

Side Note: The Board of Aging and Long-Term Care that we viewed in June was put online with permission and has had over 95 Views!

We contacted most people by email. We need to do a better job getting our information in the ETF newsletter early.

Suggestion- Have a break between speakers so people can stretch.

Subjects that participants would like to know more about are:

Medicare Medicare Advantage Programs

Social Security Issues Economic trends and effects

Core and Variable Differences Meeting the rising demands of healthcare

How to protect yourself from getting hacked

An interactive panel discussion on some hot topic

A HUGE SHOUT OUT to Rick for all the work he did to make the conference possible and for all his follow-up afterwards. Thank you, Rick!!!!!

New Business:

Planning for the 2023 Annual Conference needs to be started now. Bob stated that we need to make our decisions earlier in order to get the conference materials in the SWIB and ETF newsletters. Our goal is to have everything ready by November. Bob mentioned that Covid is still out there and questioned if we should even look at a hybrid presentation.

Possible places to meet for a hybrid meeting include:

Downtown Madison Library- issue with parking and parking costs

American Family on Highway 30 – free parking but small room

MATC -east side

Downtown Performing Arts Center-Madison

Verona PAC

Middleton PAC

Oakwood

Issues to consider:

Available parking and parking costs

Traffic congestion

Handicap Accessibility

Covid

Lunch- catered – enough space

Technology available

Perhaps adjust our meeting dates due to mailing of ETF and SWIB newsletters

Medicare Letter

Jack Lawton spoke on the letter that the Medicare Committee wrote. He hoped that everyone had read it and that we had noticed how complex Medicare and Medicare Advantage really are. The letter was generally critical of Medicare Advantage and pushed the idea of reforming both Medicare and Medicare Advantage and blending them together.

Medicare Advantage is more costly to the Federal Government. This causes traditional Medicare itself to be more in danger.

Medicare Advantage can hide profits. They offer lots of benefits that traditional Medicare doesn’t (direct cash, credit cards for food, gym memberships, etc. ) Many programs have a limited network. Prior approval is required, and at times can delay or deny care. Many people don’t realize that Medicare Advantage is a private company and how it affects Medicare.

Chris Wren put together a list of resources and bibliography to help Congressmen and their aides locate information on this issue. Roger Springman gave a shout out to Chris for all his hard work in compiling those lists. Thank you, Chris!

Roger Springman, also mentioned that he has hopes that a bipartisan group will check in to this issue to makes changes and propose legislation. He also wants the legislators to realize that the WICOA is standing with them on this issue.

The committee is trying to decide on who they should send this letter to. (All of the Wisconsin Delegation, Major Party Nominees)

Other suggestions were:

To structure the list of resources in some logical fashion and break it down into different areas.

Dee Pettack, suggested that we should wait until after the election so our letter doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. She also mentioned that we could turn our letter into a questionnaire and send it to the candidates. After the elections, Dee mentioned that our group could offer to meet with legislators to discuss the letter and offer our help as the experts that they could contact.

Diane mentioned that a copy of the letter will be sent to WREA members in one of their publications with the request to start calling their representatives about this issue.

A suggestion was made to make sure all of our partner groups get a copy of this letter and kind of provoke everyone to contact Congress and Representative about the importance of reforming both Medicare and Medicare Advantage.

A consensus vote was held to wait to send the letter after the elections.

A Press Release and Press conference was suggested. Both would be statewide. Channel 15 was mentioned.

The Medicare Committee will discuss how Chris should organize the sheets of resources.

A question was asked of Chris Preisler concerning the long delay in getting preliminary numbers from SWIB. We just got numbers concerning June and it is already mid-August. Previously numbers were released 5-7 days after the beginning of the month.

Treasurer Report:

The balance as of July 1, 2024, was $7895.88

The balance as of July 31, 2024, was $7365.74

Receipts $0.00 Expenses $530.14 (Zoom bill Jan-July 24)

Next Meeting:

September 16, 2024 at 9:30 AM via Zoom

Meeting adjourned at 11:07AM

Respectfully submitted,

Jeanne Stangl

WICOA Secretary.