Teacher Retirement System (TRS) of Texas Executive Director, Brian Guthrie, presented his comments to the TRS Board of Trustees virtually today, the final day of the board's fall meeting.

Since the last board meeting, representatives form Texas' largest public trust fund have participated in the National Council on Teacher Retirement (NCTR) annual trustee workshop and the National Association of State Retirement Administrators (NASRA) annual conference. Both events were held virtually. Later this fall TRS will attend the NCTR annual meeting.

Conferences are not the only thing at TRS that has transitioned to a virtual format. To ensure the safety of its staff, retirees, and active members nearing retirement (the last two cohorts both falling into higher risk age brackets), TRS has been closed to the public and its employees have been working on a largely remote basis. Guthrie anticipates more employees and contractors physically returning to work in October and the agency opening to the public in January 2021. Guthrie reported that TRS members have been largely complimentary or at least understanding of the service they were receiving in the virtual environment. Additionally, TRS has implemented policies, such as virtual huddles, to counter the sense of disconnection that extended exposure to a remote environment can cause.

After briefing the board on these more internal issues, Guthrie turned to updates on the agency's recent and upcoming interactions with the legislature.

TRS staff has been submitting a number of interim documents in response to legislative committee requests for information, which has been the primary method used by committees to collect public and agency comments in lieu of holding public interim hearings this year. So far TRS has presented comments to the House Pensions, Investments, and Financial Services Committee, the House Appropriations Committee, and the House Insurance Committee, and TRS will be submitting comments soon to the Select Committee on Statewide Health Care Costs. TRS is going through the sunset review process currently, and the agency will also likely participate in a Sunset Advisory Commission hearing in October. The postponed sunset hearing had originally been scheduled for April of this year.

In addition to requests for information, TRS is preparing to submit its biannual legislative appropriations request (LAR) to the Governor's office on September 25. In working with key legislative and gubernatorial staff, the agency was instructed to include in its base budget request the planned increase in state contribution rates passed as a part of Senate Bill 12 from 2019. This is very good news as it signals the legislature's intent to fund the $544 million increase in state contributions into the retiree trust fund.

The LAR also covers the TRS administrative budget. At 7.8%, the increase to the agency's administrative budget is the smallest requested increase in the past decade. Unlike most other state functions that pay for administrative budgets out of either agency fees or state general revenue (tax dollars), TRS administrative costs are covered by the pension trust fund and make up less than 0.2% of the total pension trust fund balance. TRS will seek one exceptional item, a funding request outside of the base budget. That item is to seek blanket authority to cover costs associated with implementing sunset recommendations and bills related to those recommendations next year. One of the sunset commission recommendations relates to improved customer service, and if approved, this rider could allow TRS to hire more staff to handle increased call volume and decrease its on-hold times.

Video of the full TRS meeting and related board materials can be found here. The final TRS board meeting of 2020 is scheduled for December 9-11, 2020.