A former State Teachers Retirement System board member relentlessly advocated for a firm looking to do business with the pension fund, even after the pension staff rejected the firm, according to new records filed by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

Ten months ago, Yost sued to remove two members of the State Teachers’ Retirement System board, based largely on a memo from an anonymous whistleblower.

In a court filing this week, Yost and his team put more details into the public record and said they found a “shocking” level of covert coordination and communication with a firm looking to do business with the pension fund.

Wade Steen, a now former board member who is one of the targets of Yost’s lawsuit, sought to get at least part of the lawsuit dismissed.

Yost responded with a 16-page memo that accuses Steen of prioritizing secrets over transparency, failing to preserve records, failing to disclose his ties with QED, which sought to do business with STRS, and relentlessly advocating for QED’s proposal.

Steen served on the STRS board as an appointee of Gov. Mike DeWine. In May 2023, DeWine removed Steen and appointed a replacement.

Steen sued to get his seat back and a non-profit organization, Ohio Retirement for Teachers Association, paid the legal bills for Steen and STRS Board Chairman Rudy Fichtenbaum. That arrangement may conflict with state ethics laws.

Ohio Ethics Commission Director Paul Nick said he could not comment on ongoing investigations.

Steen won reinstatement but his term expired in September 2024.

The lawsuit against Steen and Fichtenbaum alleges that they violated their fiduciary duty to the pension system by working behind the scenes for QED, a relatively new investment firm.

Steen and Fichtenbaum have said they were searching for ways to cut pension fund costs and boost investment returns, to benefit retirees and teachers.

In early 2020, QED, formed by former state treasurer officials Seth Metcalf and J.D. Tremmel, pitched STRS board members and staff to partner on an investment opportunity. The strategy called for earmarking up to $65 billion, which could generate a $4 billion return.

In May 2020, STRS managers rejected the deal, in part because QED lacked a track record. In February 2021, the pension fund’s outside consultant, Cliffwater, also rejected the proposal.

The next month, QED told STRS that it no longer wanted to do business with the pension fund. But Steen and Fichtenbaum kept working with QED to advance the proposal, according to Yost. In November 2021, the duo made a presentation to fellow board members on QED’s proposal.

QED aligned with the Ohio Retirement for Teachers Association to help elect new board members who might be more open to the new strategy.

Steen has said in court filings that since he’s already off the STRS board, the lawsuit to remove him is moot. He has said he wants STRS to cut expenses and find investment opportunities that would yield higher returns. STRS staff stymied his efforts to get information to help improve the system.

Last year, Fichtenbaum declined to comment on the lawsuit but said in an online statement: “I have done nothing wrong and will continue to fight for the interests of STRS members.”

What evidence did Yost uncover?

Once STRS Chief Investment Officer Matt Worley rejected the QED pitch, Steen began challenging STRS’s returns, calculations and other data, according to the lawsuit.

At the same time, Steen communicated regularly with Metcalf and Tremmel via texts, personal email accounts and Signal, a private chat system that automatically erases messages. After STRS staff told QED no, these messages were exchanged:

• Sept. 3, 2020: Metcalf tells Steen it’s best to use personal email addresses, not the STRS email accounts.
• Sept. 20, 2020: Metcalf sends the QED business plan to Steen’s personal email.
• Oct. 14 and Nov. 23, 2020: Metcalf ghostwrites emails for Steen.
• Oct. 15, 2020: Metcalf sends Steen instructions during a pension board meeting.
• Nov.13, 2020: Steen asks Metcalf for a list of questions or issues he could raise in the following week.
• Nov. 19, 2020: Metcalf noted he’d email motions for a board member to read at the meeting.
• Dec. 16, 2020: Metcalf sends a memo to Steen’s personal email.
• Jan. 8, 2021: Steen asks Metcalf for input on changing STRS board policies.
• Aug. 16, 2021: Tremmel provides info to Steen and Fichtenbaum for an STRS staff meeting.
• Aug. 15, 2022: Metcalf tells Steen he sent him time-sensitive message via Signal.
• Sept. 6, 2022: Steen seeks to coordinate a consistent message with Metcalf and Tremmel.
• Oct. 19, 2022: Metcalf and Steen talk about exchanging messages and documents via Signal.

While Steen is no longer on the board, Yost wants to permanently block him from returning.

What’s happening at STRS?

The Ohio Retirement for Teachers Association and its allies on the board are pushing for several changes. They want to reinstate regular cost of living adjustments for retirees, cut down on administrative expenses and staff bonuses, dial back on higher-risk investments such as private equity funds, and increase transparency.

The board is made up of five teachers and two retired teachers elected by system members, three investment experts appointed by the governor, state treasurer, Ohio General Assembly and the director of the Department of Education and Workforce.

The board oversees about $95 billion invested on behalf of 500,000 teachers and retirees.

Board members aren’t compensated, and they have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of the system. State law allows the attorney general to bring a civil case to remove public pension board members if they violate that duty.

The attorney general is the legal counsel for the pension systems.

Laura Bischoff is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – In the NTSB report following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last year, the NTSB identified other bridges around the country that need evaluating to ensure another situation doesn’t occur.

The NTSB wanted to specify that these bridges will need to be evaluated in order to determine precisely what improvements are made, and that they won’t tell drivers to actively avoid them.

The four Northeast Ohio bridges that were listed are all ODOT controlled:

• I-490 Bridge in Cleveland
• Main Avenue Bridge in Cleveland
• Detroit Avenue Bridge on the Lakewood, Rocky River border
• Carnegie Avenue Bridge in Cleveland

All of the bridges were built prior to 1991, which is prior to the safety guidance currently used by the NTSB was implemented.

The NTSB says the need for these bridges to be analyzed is the risk they could pose if struck by a larger cargo-like vessel.

“These bridge owners need to be looking at recent vessel traffic. Things have changed over time. Vessels have gotten bigger and heavier,” NTSB Director Jennifer Homendy said, “At one point in time in the 1950’s we had vessels that had just 800 containers on them now we’re talking 24,000 containers. So they have to look at specific measures”.

Copyright 2025 WOIO. All rights reserved.

CLEVELAND — Alabama coach Nate Oats was listening Thursday as his star point guard Mark Sears was talking about spending his first two years at Ohio University. It brought Oats back to his own time when he was head coach at the University at Buffalo.

For Oats specifically, he thought about his successes playing inside Rocket Arena, where his Crimson Tide team will open the NCAA tournament against Robert Morris Friday. However, he was reminded about Sears’ own Cleveland successes.

“After you brought it up, I looked on my phone,” Oats said Thursday. “Mark is 4-1 here in Cleveland, so he’s got an 80% winning percentage here. It’s pretty good. I thought I was good, where I’m 9-1, but he’s right there with me. So between the two of us, we’ve won a few games down here in the arena we’re going to play in.”

Sears hasn’t just won a lot of games in Cleveland. Long before he was an All-America point guard in the Southeastern Conference, he was learning the ropes of college basketball in Southeastern Ohio while playing from 2020-22 at Ohio.

“When I was at Ohio, I spent a lot of time developing, and they did a great job helping me be the player I am today,” Sears said Thursday. “Just like you said, I have some experience coming to Cleveland because we’ve been the past two times. One of those times, we had won it all here and the other time we fell short. OU, I love it. That’s a part of me.”

The 6-foot-1, 195-pound Sears was raised in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, but spent an extra season in prep school at Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia. From there, he ended up in Athens, where he appeared in 59 games over two seasons, with 40 starts, including all 35 in his last year with the Bobcats.

In Sears’ first season at Ohio, he averaged 8.5 points in 19.6 minutes per game. The Bobcats won the MAC Tournament in Cleveland to qualify for a COVID-impacted NCAA tournament, where they upset No. 4-seeded Virginia in the first round before losing in the second round to Creighton.

The next season, Sears was a full-time starter averaging 19.7 points in 35.7 minutes over 35 games. The Bobcats, though, lost to Kent State in the MAC semifinals and did not return to the NCAA Tournament.

After that season, Sears went into the transfer portal, which took him directly back to his sweet home Alabama.

With the amount of work he puts in his game outside of practice on his own in the offseason, and when he came to Alabama, he didn’t even go home. He went straight from Athens right to Tuscaloosa because he wanted to get a head start. He just got himself an apartment for a month and just went to work.

Robert Morris coach Andrew Toole’s team is tasked with trying to slow the high-octane Crimson Tide offense that scores national-best 91.1 points a game. That offense starts with Sears, who’s averaging 18.7 points while looking for his second All-American recognition in as many seasons.

Toole, though, has some institutional knowledge himself of Sears from his Ohio days.

“We actually scrimmaged him his freshman year when he was at Ohio U, and we were like, man, this guy is pretty good,” Toole said. “Next year, obviously, he’s at Alabama. He’s just so capable at any time of making a deep perimeter 3. He puts so much pressure on your defense with his ability to get to the rim and get fouled.”

Sears returns to Cleveland a highly decorated basketball player. He plays for one of the top teams in the entire sport.

Yet, Sears is coming into his final NCAA tournament much like he did while he was toiling as a freshman at Ohio.

“Still having that chip on their shoulder to want to get back,” Sears said. “At the mid-major level, you have to win the tournament to go to the championship, and at the high-major level, you’ve still got to win games to get a good seeding. When you get in that tournament, you just want to have that competitiveness to make it farther than you did last year.”

Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ