NY Pension Costs Could Explode

The state’s fiscal problems go much deeper than the roughly 10 billion dollar deficit facing lawmakers and Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo next year.

A new report out Tuesday suggests taxpayers will be forced to pony up billions of dollars in the coming years to keep the ever-growing state pension system afloat.

Stephanie Miner is the Democratic Mayor of Syracuse and Republican Rob Astorino is the Westchester County Executive. Liz Benjamin was also joined by EJ McMahon, the Director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

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This entry was posted by Mike Whittemore on December 7, 2010 at 9:00 pm, and is filed under Video - Interviews. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Smith

If you want to talk history, then let us talk about public employee wages and benefits in the big picture.

In the good old days, public employees got a great pension and mediocre wages. The theory was work long and dilligently, but live modestly, and you would have a comfortable retirement when you couldn’t work.

But this wasn’t good enough.No siree…that would involve delayed gratification and workers decided they could not accept delayed gratification anymore, they needed it all and now. So wages rose steadily at a rate above inflation for many years until wages were pretty good, job stability was unmatched by the private sector and pensions were golden.

So why not defined contribution plans like the 401k in the private sector? Because the 401k is an abject failure. Most people draw them down before they retire, those that do retire with a 401k often draw them down faster than their life expenctancy and generally the aging population is growing poorer.

No, the way smarter move would be to reduce wages and municipalities should be give the power to do just that.
Allterkocker

It would work if there was a very limited amount and reasons for allowing early withdrawel. And direct deposit in the retirement account.
Reality Needs a Chance

Smith, I see your willing to share your opinions here but they are all unsubstantiated. Civil Servents, (public employees) do not receive equal salaries, have never received salary increases exceeding inflation and for many received several contracts with 0% increases as well as being subjected to lag payrolls. Please explain why you and the media feel this is really an issue or how this sudden revelation of increasing costs (comensurate to increasing salaries) is a surprise. Tell me how when these increases are pale in comparison to the Millions of dollars in social giveaways Mr. Patterson and governos prior for years have shelled out to their favorites at the cost of all taxpayers.
carpet bagger

You in fact are wrong. Our teachers receive salary increases in excess of inflation more than half the time.
And … when you’re talking “millions of dollars” — I wish it was only millions of dollars we are talking about. It’s close to a BILLION yearly and that’s just for retired teachers.
carpet bagger

Oh, and the “sudden revelation” is a surprise because the market tanked obviously and now tax payers have to make up the short fall in the pension system.

It’s insult to injury. People watch their own retirement savings dwindle as they’re paying more to make sure public retirees feel no pain.

NY Pension Costs Could Explode

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