As New York budget talks near a close, Hochul is pushing back on union demands tied to Tier 6 pension changes with major long-term costs.
As state budget negotiations enter the final lap, Gov.. Kathy Hochul is belatedly saying that public-employee unions shouldn’t get all their utterly outrageous pension-giveaway demands.. Yay?. The unions call it “Fix Tier 6,” but it amounts to undoing the Tier 6 reforms passed over a decade ago — granting retroactive benefits to employees who took their jobs knowing what the pension plan was — at a cost of $100 billion to future state and local
taxpayers.. The existing benefits beat almost anything in the private sector; why lower the retirement age from 62 to 55?. Why eliminate the (small) amount that workers need to pay in toward their pensions?. Team Hochul pegs the full cost of the union wish list at $1.5 billion a year, while her counteroffer (such as a retirement age of 60) would only slam taxpayers for $500 million annually.. Oops: We guess the unions should’ve just
asked for $5 billion, then she’d have offered “just” $2 billion.. Mind you, whatever the unions get now, they’ll simply be trying for more next year: The only way to avoid them rolling back the reform completely is to never give an inch.. This is why New York had to do a “Tier 6”: Over the last half-century, the unions have eviscerated the Tier 2, 3, 4 and 5 reforms: They never relent, and eventually
Albany hands out the candy.. Indeed, this endless cycle of scams shows why the Empire State should move all public pensions from 19th-century “defined benefit” plans to modern, 401(k)-style “defined contribution” ones — which is all that most taxpayers have.. That should be Hochul’s counter-offer, not a scheme to “only” partially betray the people of New York.
New York budget, pension reform, Tier 6, public employee unions, Kathy Hochul, defined benefit vs defined contribution, taxpayer costs