Wisconsin Coalition of Annuitants  

June 15, 2026 Minutes

www.wicoa.org

Meeting called to order by Chair Diane Wilcenski at 9:31AM

DIRECTORS & ALTERNATES PRESENT:  Fluffy Aerts,  WI AFSCME Retirees Chapter 32;  Robert Beglinger, AFT-R; James Blank, Bay Lakes United Educators-R Sandy Drew, SWIB Retiree; Paul Haubrich, UW Milwaukee Retiree’s Assoc.; Scott Hildebrand, UWRA President; Brian Holmes, Epsilon Sigma Phi;  Bruce Johnson, SWIB Retirees; Rick Klemme, Epsilon Sigma Phi;  Allen Knop, WEAC-Retired; Dick Kratz, WI Retired Corrections Personnel; Kathy Kreul, WFT/AFT Retirees;  Jack Lawton, ACE; Diane Liebert, AFSCME Subchapter 52: John Maydak, West Allis Retirees;  Fred Nepple, OCI; Kevin Niemi, President Elect, UWRA; Elaine Reiter, Kettle Moraine Retired; 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;

DIRECTORS & ALTERNATES EXCUSED; Robert Schaefer, WI Assoc of Retired Conservationists and State Engineering Association.

GUESTS; Tarna Hunter, Chris Preisler, Sari Simer

Roll Call: Taken by Rick

Approval of the April Minutes:   

Minutes approved as printed with one correction being in Tarna’s presentation, bullet three that should read ETF request for Independent Auditor of Internal Office which followed Best Practices was vetoed by Governor Evers.

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

· Tarna began her presentation discussing updates of the modernization efforts that have been done by ETF. With the Insurance Administration System, ETF is proceeding with a limited implementation of DOA. This was successfully launched on May 1st and had a data conversion success rate of over 99.5%. 79,000 members and their dependents along with 568,000 individual benefit elections were processed.

· An all-employer launch is scheduled for July 1st, 2026. This will be for the remaining local employers and will contain the full range of “My Insurance” benefits.

· ETF has been working on this for five years. They will now spend the next 12 months after the July 1st launch stabilizing the system and making some improvements on it. There is already a plan in place for this.

· Tarna then spoke on what has been happening with the Pension Administration System. ETF has been working on contract negotiations with Heywood. DOA finished their review of the contract and approved it. ETF is expecting that the contract will be signed in the near future. ETF is excited to launch the start of the Pension Administration Project probably in early September. ETF will spend the first 12 months, on what they call a discovery stage, and that's really looking at and documenting all of ETF processes and everything that they need to build out in the new pension administration system. This will probably be a five-to-seven-year project.

· You may have seen the press release announcing John Voelker’s retirement. He is stepping down in July after more than 12 years at ETF. His last day is July 24th.

· The ETF Board appointed Deputy Secretary Diana Felsmann to be the next ETF Secretary, effective July 26, 2026. Before she was Deputy Secretary, she was Chief Legal Counsel, so she has a lot of experience at ETF, and generally with employer benefits, as she was in the private sector and was an attorney for employer benefits.

· Tarna is hoping to schedule a time for her to meet us at a WICOA meeting.

Upcoming Board Meetings

· The ETF Board will meet on Thursday, June 13, 2026. Michelle Baxter who is the Director of the Office of Enterprise Initiatives, is going to provide an update on the Insurance Administration System project and the implementation of that.

Additionally, Renee Walk, who is the Director of ETF’s Office of Strategic Health Policy, is going to be providing a presentation on the Group Health Insurance Program.

· After these two speakers, the board will be considering the annual evaluations for the Wisconsin Sick Leave Credit Program as well as approving contribution rates. They are also going to be doing the annual valuation contribution rates for the active lives, so it's just active employees, and setting the contribution rates. The contribution rates went up by, 0.1%, so they pretty much stayed the same as did the Wisconsin Sick Leave Credit Program.

· ETF sent their artificial intelligence use plan to the Department of Administration for their approval. It was approved. ETF is one of the few state agencies that have been approved. They now can send out some use pilot cases to start testing out possibilities of AI that can help be more efficient.

Guest: Chris Preisler, Senior Communications Specialist, SWIB

Performance final returns as April 30,2026                            Returns on a Five-year Basis

Core 3.80% Benchmark 3.55%                                               Core 6.61% Benchmark 5.96%

Variable 7.04% Benchmark 7.08%                                         Variable 11.1 % Benchmark 11.16%

Assets Under Management

Core Fund $145.7B Variable Fund $ 13.3B for a total of $159B in retirement fund assets

Sneak Peak of Preliminary returns as of June 12,2026     Returns on a Five-year Basis

Core 5.38%                                                                

Variable 11.01%

SWIB is dealing with the usual stuff. The economy has been somewhat resilient despite some of the uncertainty that they are seeing. The Dow was up 500 points due to the talk of a peace deal with Iran. There will not be any trading on Juneteenth as it is a holiday. We should also keep our eyes on the IPO (Initial Public Offering) of Space X

The Board of Trustees will meet this Tuesday and Wednesday(June 16th and 17th) at Madison Yards Offices. They will review the performance report from Q1. There will be a report on private market strategy and the market outlook. The board and the agendas and the meeting materials are available on the SWIB website. The Board will also be accepting the annual report. Once that report is accepted, it will be posted on the SWIB website.

There is a new podcast out. It deals with private credit. Private credit has been grabbing some of the headlines, which hasn’t always been the best. There are a lot of questions about risk and liquidity when the economy hits a rough patch. Private credit is one of the fastest growing markets. Beth Holzburger and Lynn Mong, both Senior Portfolio Managers, will discuss how SWIB approaches private credit, and how it's part of the Core Fund's long-term diversified strategy.

Sandy Drew had a question for Chris concerning if SWIB has set limits on what external investors can do with AI. She also asked if any limits are set on how much can be invested. Chris said that there are no limits that he is aware of. Sandy followed up asking if there were any limits on the internal portfolio managers in terms of investing in AI. Chris replied that there was none that he knew of but would go back and double-check.

Correspondence: None

Old Business: 2026 Annual WICOA Conference

Rick presented a slide show to give us information on the Annual WICOA Conference which was held on May 13^th and 14^th, 2026. Rick sent the conference announcement to 250 people.

For the conference on 5/13/2026

124 people signed up, 100 participated, for 75% attendance

For the conference on 5/14/2026

137 people signed up, 110 participated, for 80% attendance

Rick was very pleased with the attendance turn out. He felt that it was very impressive.

54 people completed the survey on Day 1.

48 people completed the survey on Day 2.

There were 71 people who attended the conference for the first time.

107 people attended a conference before.

122 people were part of a retired public employees’ organization. 62 people were not.

105 people were represented in WICOA  16 were not represented.

100% of the attendees said that they would attend another conference.

When asked if they would             Prefer to attend online -113

                                                 Prefer to attend in-person -9

                                                  Either way is okay - 53

When asked what topics they would like to hear more about (they could check more than one topic), the results were:

147 showed interest in Medicare, Medicaid

132 showed interest in Economic Trends

117 showed interest in Health Care

78 showed interest in Caregiving.

One comment asked that we be aware of the older generation (Hearing and Vision Problems)

Someone thought that the running transcript was very helpful.

Another person suggested a five minute bathroom break between sessions.

A reminder that the conference presentations are available on You Tube.

New Business:

Diane asked Tarna and Chris to check their calendars to find a date that they could accept their Blair Testin Award.

Diane asked us to start thinking about dates and speakers for next year’s conference.

She reminded us to keep our eyes out for issues that we need to watch for.

The prediction for Social Security for 2032 is for a $515 cut per month. There is a group called The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that you may want to check out. Diane read that the GOP has stated that next year is the target year for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cuts,

Sandy Drew suggested that we add caregiving to our list.

Diane kept the list of items that we wanted to watch for. Please let her know if you know of other issues that you want to add.

Rochelle Klaskin is scheduled to attend our next WICOA meeting. Please send your questions that you would like her to address to Diane.

Chris and Diane discussed having Rochelle attend more often to speak to us. Please let Chris or Diane know if you have questions, ideas for topics, concerns, etc. This will let us get to know about issues on a more personal level.

Treasurer Report:

Income/Expense  4/21/26-6/15/26

ASSETS

            Savings Account                                                                                             5.00

            Checking Account - beginning balance                                                      6992.74

                        Income                                                                                                              150.00

                        Expenses                                                                                            448.65

            Checking Account Balance as of 1/12/26                                                                    6694.09  

TOTAL ASSESTS                                                                                                 6699.09    

                                    -------------------------------------------------------

Three Organizations NOT PAID as of today’s meeting -please submit payment asap to WICOA, Kathy Kreul-Treasurer, PO Box 303, Highland, WI  53543

1)    Wisconsin Professional Police Association Retired – owes for 2026 and needs to return their Organization Contact information sheet.

2)    Wisconsin Retired Corrections Personnel - owes for 2026 and needs to return their Organization Contact information sheet.

3)    Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance- owes for 2025 and 2026.    Contact information has been confirmed. 

These organizations need to return their Organization Contact Information sheet to confirm their contacts/information:

1)    University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Retiree’s Association

2)    Wisconsin Association of Retired Conservationists

Next Meeting: 

July 20th, 2026 at 9:30 AM via Zoom

Meeting adjourned at 10:13AM

Respectfully submitted,

Jeanne Stangl         

WICOA Secretary.