Empire Center’s Tim Hoefer Discusses FOIL Lawsuit

Check YOUR property tax bill – when “earnings on the investments” run short, who pays the shortfall?  John Q, & Mary Taxpayer!  The day of the fixed annuity has to replaced by a contributions percentage – if not, the state will only have to declare BANKRUPTCY – that should result in these “FIXED ANNUITIES” being void.

If Hoefer was rated for his “100% taxpayer funded” comment by a place
like Politifact, he’d get a “Liar, Liar Pants on Fire!” rating. He may
be correct in making this statement about specific pensions (like the
NYPDs pension fund), but to make a blanket statement like this about all pensions is
patently false.

The fact is that pension funds are mainly funded by the investment gains
of the fund – in the case of the NYSLRS, more than 80% of the funding
comes from investment gains.  Employee contributions also pay for a not
insignificant amount of them.  The taxpayers foot about 10% – 15%
depending on how the investments make out – even today.  Go back a few
years when employer contribution rates were hovering around zero, and
the taxpayers contributed basically nothing.  People like Hoefer and his
cohort McMahon tend to forget this because it doesn’t fit in with the
narrow minded narrative they are trying to sell.  That Liz doesn’t
counter with this information is typical of the Albany press – attacking
government employees in any way, shape, or form drives web traffic and
TV ratings for them, so they tend to softball people like Hoefer and
McMahon.

I do not disagree that the Empire Center, or anyone else for that
matter, has a right to gain some information on pensioners – within
reason.  For example, an unreasonable request would be to ask for the
pensioners address or social security number – which to my knowledge
these right wing crackpots HAVE asked for in the past, only to be
denied.  However, in order to limit their purposeful twisting of the
information, they should be REQUIRED to not only list the annual pension
payment amount, but the actual cost to taxpayers via their
contributions to the employees pension while they were working, because
doing so would prevent them from the lying and bloviating they do about
how taxpayers pay “100%” of these pensions.  Make them tell the WHOLE
story, not only the parts they WANT to tell.

The bottom line:  take anything said by wonks at a big-business funded
right wing thing tank with a grain of salt.  Especially when that think
tank has a few hypocritical wonks there that were themselves long term
government employees who are recipients of said pensions – which they
generally refuse to admit or disclose (I’m talking to you, EJ).  If
these hypocrites were so concerned about the taxpayers, they’d publicly
refuse their pension benefits since they all make very nice salaries
already (multiple hundreds of thousands), as can be seen in the Empire
Centers own disclosure filed annually with the IRS.  Essentially, they
get paid very well to lie or stretch the truth.