April 4, 2023 - Executive Director Update: Executive Director Selection Process

The ATRS Board met yesterday, April 3, 2023, and took the necessary first steps towards finding a new executive director for ATRS. As part of those first steps, the ATRS Board appointed current Deputy Director, Rod Graves, as the system’s Interim Executive Director. The appointment will be effective from the day following the current Executive Director, Clint Rhoden’s, last day of employment until the day before the new executive director’s first day of employment.

Other actions taken by the ATRS Board during yesterday’s meeting include the adoption and approval of the executive director selection process timeline, the executive director vacancy announcement, the intent to fill request, and the posting locations and posting dates for the vacancy announcement. 

Once approved by the Office of Personnel Management, the vacancy announcement will be posted on the Arkansas Careers website (http://arcareers.arkansas.gov) and ATRS website. The vacancy announcement will also be published in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.  

Please continue to look for future updates on the executive director selection process.

Kind regards,

ATRS Staff

March 17, 2023 - Executive Director Update: Legislative Session, Week 10

The 94th General Assembly - Joint Public Retirement & Social Security Committee (JRC)

The JRC meeting has been canceled for next week. The next JRC meeting will be held on Monday, March 27, 2023 at 8:30 a.m. in Room A of the MAC Building.

The legislative package of bills sponsored by the ATRS Board is now officially Arkansas law.

The bills in the ATRS Legislative Package do NOT reduce any benefits for any ATRS member or beneficiary. Visit the Legislation page on the ATRS  website for a summary.

HB1307 - Concerning Environmental, Social Justice, or Governance (ESG) scored investments

This bill directs the creation of a list of financial service providers that use non-financial factors such as environmental, social justice, or governance (ESG) to discriminate against some Arkansas industries such as those based on fossil fuels, firearms, and ammunition. Once a financial service provider is on this list, Arkansas public entities may have to divest any holdings they might have with them. I understand that Arkansas should send a political message to financial service providers that it is unacceptable to discriminate against certain industries that are important to the Arkansas economy. I agree that financial service providers should not be allowed to refuse services based purely on political ideology. These financial service providers should be making their decisions based solely on financial factors. However, this bill may come at a cost to the Teacher Retirement System through the risk of potentially higher management fees due to restricted access to competitive financial services.

In order to maximize returns, the ATRS Board has taken a “disregard ESG” stance. They have instructed the investment consultants to not use factors related to environmental, social justice, and corporate governance (ESG) as the basis for any investment recommendation. The ATRS Board follows current Arkansas law to make investments following the “prudent investor” rule, the requirement for diversification, and to make investments based solely on a risk/reward analysis as a fiduciary to the members of ATRS.

The Arkansas retirement systems have been working with the bill sponsors for the past weeks to get the bill amended to reduce the fiscal impact on the retirement systems. For instance, the bill sponsors narrowed the scope of the bill to only apply to directly held investments of the retirement systems. This change was designed to minimize the expected financial impact. The potential impact on direct investments remains a consideration. While I am appreciative of the sponsors for the amendment designed to minimize the impact of the bill for retirement systems, I have the duty to continue to point out that some aspects of this bill could still impact ATRS.

This bill will probably be on the House floor, Monday, March 27th, for concurrence with the amendments made on the Senate end. The political winds are in favor for this bill to become law. If it does, it will present a small obstacle for achieving the maximum rate of return on ATRS investments. However, ATRS has very talented professional investment advisors that are used to working through obstacles to keep the ATRS investment returns strong.

Reminders

As a reminder, the Joint Retirement Committee (JRC) meeting will be video streamed over the Internet each Monday morning during the session. Just visit the Arkansas Legislative Meetings and Events web page on Monday at 9:00 a.m. Look for the item “PUBLIC RETIREMENT & SOCIAL SECURITY PROGRAMS-JOINT” and click on the “VIDEO” icon. The agenda for the meeting will be posted here at least 18 hours before the start of the meeting.

ATRS will try to keep its members informed about the bills that impact ATRS, its members and employers. For more information regarding the ATRS Bill Package and Bills that may impact ATRS visit the Legislation page on our website.

Stay in Touch with ATRS and View YOUR Account Information

The ATRS website allows members to have direct access to their account information and sign up to receive our executive director updates. Member account information can be accessed 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. Executive director updates are emailed periodically throughout the year to help keep members up-to-date on issues from retirement, to legislative updates that may affect ATRS, and any other time when information needs to be shared.

Join over 30,000 ATRS members who have registered for account access and updates by visiting us at: www.artrs.gov/registration. There you can join the mailing list for executive director updates and register to gain access to your member information.

ATRS is always striving to keep its members, employers, beneficiaries, government officials, and the public informed. It is always a great pleasure for ATRS to learn of more ways to provide information to ATRS members. If you have any suggestions on how we can improve our communication you may e-mail them to info@artrs.gov for consideration.

As always, ATRS and its board are committed to providing a system that is member friendly and transparent. Remember that ATRS is here to serve you.

Kind regards,

Clint Rhoden
Executive Director, ATRS
Office: 501-588-4367
Mobile: 501-291-1623
clintr@artrs.gov