Hey, Gov. Hochul — how about not betraying NY – Latest News
As state price range negotiations enter the ultimate lap, Gov. Kathy Hochul is belatedly saying that public-employee unions shouldn’t get all their completely outrageous pension-giveaway calls for. Yay?
The unions call it “Fix Tier 6,” but it surely quantities to undoing the Tier 6 reforms handed over a decade in the past — granting retroactive advantages to workers who took their jobs realizing what the pension plan was — at a price of $100 billion to future state and native taxpayers.
The current advantages beat virtually something within the personal sector; why decrease the retirement age from 62 to 55?
Why remove the (small) quantity that staff need to pay in towards their pensions?
Team Hochul pegs the total price of the union want checklist at $1.5 billion a 12 months, whereas her counteroffer (akin to a retirement age of 60) would solely slam taxpayers for $500 million yearly.
Oops: We guess the unions ought to’ve simply requested for $5 billion, then she’d have supplied “just” $2 billion.
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Mind you, regardless of the unions get now, they’ll merely be attempting for more subsequent 12 months: The solely strategy to keep away from them rolling back the reform fully is to by no means give an inch.
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This is why New York needed to do a “Tier 6”: Over the final half-century, the unions have eviscerated the Tier 2, 3, 4 and 5 reforms: They by no means relent, and finally Albany palms out the sweet.
Indeed, this limitless cycle of scams exhibits why the Empire State ought to transfer all public pensions from Nineteenth-century “defined benefit” plans to trendy, 401(okay)-style “defined contribution” ones — which is all that almost all taxpayers have.
That needs to be Hochul’s counter-offer, not a scheme to “only” partially betray the people of New York.
