By Associated Press
Oklahoma City, OK – Board to discuss teachers' retirement credit issue
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) The state Board of Education could decide what to do about its required contribution this year to the Oklahoma Teachers' Retirement System.
The agenda for the board's meeting Thursday indicates it could take action on Attorney General Drew Edmondson's formal opinion that it has a statutory obligation to transfer money into the system.
In July, the board asked the Legislature to appropriate $35 million to cover the cost of the contribution. A spokesman for then-Senate President Pro Tem Glenn Coffee said then the money had been appropriated but that the Department of Education had chosen to spend the money elsewhere.
Lawmakers cut the department's budget this year and did not make any specific line-item appropriations.
The head of the retirement system asked Edmondson to weigh in on the issue.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.