2025 election for ERS Board of Trustees position: upcoming call for nominations
1-minute read
One of the three elected positions on the Employees Retirement System of Texas (ERS) Board of Trustees is up for election in 2025.
If you're contributing to the ERS Retirement Trust Fund as of Jan. 31, 2025, and employed by a Texas state agency that is not Health and Human Services (HHS), you're eligible to run for the ERS Board position currently held by Brian Barth of the Texas Department of Transportation. All ERS members—retirees, employees contributing to ERS Retirement as of Jan. 31, 2025, and non-contributing former employees who still have their ERS accounts—are eligible to nominate a candidate and vote in the election.
ERS will accept candidate nominations from March 3 through March 31 at 5 p.m. CT.
- Note: Because a Health and Human Services (HHS) employee and a retiree currently hold Board seats, retirees and HHS employees cannot run in the 2025 election. This includes return-to-work retirees, even if they’re getting active employee benefits. But, retirees and HHS employees are free to nominate candidates from other agencies, sign a petition in support of a candidate and vote in the election.
As a Texas state agency employee, you should participate in this important election. You have valuable health and retirement benefits offered through ERS, and the ERS Board of Trustees works to ensure those benefits remain competitive and reliable. The 2025 election is your chance to have a say in who represents you on the ERS Board.
Trustee duties and organization
ERS trustees make important decisions about your employee benefits such as:
- designing plans for your health care and pharmacy benefits;
- selecting third-party administrators of health insurance and other benefit programs;
- overseeing the ERS Retirement Trust Fund—which invests state, agency and member pension contributions; and
- managing the Texa$averSM 401(k) / 457 Program.
Barth, whose term is expiring Aug. 31, 2025, holds one of three seats elected by state agency employees and retirees. He was elected to the Board in 2019. The three other Board members are appointed, one each by the:
- governor,
- speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and
- chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court.
Both elected and appointed Board members serve staggered six-year terms. The terms of elected Board members expire on August 31 of each odd-numbered year. The terms of appointees expire on August 31 of each even-numbered year.
In 2025, state agency employees and retirees will elect one Texas state agency employee to serve as their advocate on the Board.
News About Your Benefits will have more information in the coming weeks about the nomination process. In the meantime, take a few minutes to learn more about the ERS Board, the current trustees and past meetings in the Board of Trustees section of the ERS website.