Cuomo Urges Broad Limits to N.Y. Public Pensions

Source: The New York Times

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, joining a parade of officials from around the country who are seeking to rein in spending by limiting public employees’ pensions, proposed Wednesday to broadly limit retirement benefits for new city and state workers in New York.

Wading into one of the most controversial and challenging issues facing state and municipal governments, Mr. Cuomo said New York State and New York City simply could no longer afford to offer new employees the generous benefits their predecessors received.

“The numbers speak for themselves — the pension system as we know it is unsustainable,” the governor said in a statement. “This bill institutes common-sense reforms to bring government benefits more in line with the private sector while still serving our employees and protecting our retirees.”

Mr. Cuomo’s proposal escalates a battle between the first-term Democrat and a major Democratic Party constituency, public-sector labor unions. Unions have been fighting against pension changes around the nation, and in New York they have sparred with Mr. Cuomo over layoffs during contract negotiations, which continue.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/nyregion/cuomo-proposes-tough-limits-on-pensions.html

The Democratic candidate for governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, has been receiving campaign contributions from a surprising source, state campaign finance records show: Julia and David Koch, the businessman-philanthropist caricatured in a recent New Yorker piece (see our commentary here) as a corporate polluter who has secretly poured tens of millions of dollars into anti-Obama causes.

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/09/david-koch-funds-andrew-cuomo

Cuomo did serve as Asst. Secy. of the Dept. of Housing/Urban Development under the DLC-friendly president Clinton. And of course as a millionaire Cuomo would have a soft spot for corporations and big business and therefore be on the Koch/Wall Street bankroll list.

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Hope he goes in the next primary

Only benefits that give a respectful quality of life through old age till death. And that were paid into a system that worked before the criminals took over. If you want to fix the system, follow the money, it goes to the rich, corporations and their politicians. I've had just about enough of this bullshit!:puke:

Because NYS has been creating new retirement tiers for decades.

governor over this, what do the numbers show? Are his claims false and do you have the numbers to support you or do the numbers support his claim that its not sustainable? After all opinions arent what really matter but rather the numbers are all that matter.

As far as public employee benefits and pensions, they're not making people rich, but the fact is that if you're a state employee you are definitely going to be more comfortable than most people, particularly in the rural parts of the state. What attracts a lot more ire is abuse of the system in the form of pension padding. State pensions are usually based on the last 1-3 years of work, so people will go in and work excessive amounts of overtime at the end in order to drive up their pensions. This is particularly common in the NY State Police, where stories about people pumping up their annual pensions by 50-90% over what they would be otherwise are not at all uncommon.

My current State Senator was, until he got elected, mostly retired on $77,000 a year and a free state car, due to the combination of a pension from 10 years in the State Police, and a "job" working a few hours a month for the state parole board. (Which was worth $27k a year and a state car.)

Now the fact of the matter is that this wouldn't matter so much if it weren't for the fact that NYS government has gotten kind of labyrinthine. A couple years ago the NY Times estimated that New York State has established over 640 public authorities, quasi-governmental organizations with a relatively blank check, most of which do not have any substantial oversight. We don't even really know how many are still active, and how many have "died out." This leads to a lot of unnecessary things still going on, like maintenance for the 1980 Olympics facilities at Lake Placid, while at the same time we're trying to find money to keep state parks open on Memorial Day.

And of course, the problem is that everybody in state government has always wanted a quick fix, which in recent years has usually been to play shell games with the money. And nobody is particularly interested in making hard decisions for a long term fix. The public employee unions scream bloody murder about the state downsizing any of it's employees, and louder still over proposed salary cuts or reductions in benefits. The legislature refuses to let go of their personal projects, many of which end up lining their pockets either directly or indirectly. The downstate legislators only care about making sure downstate gets most of the good stuff, and the upstate legislators only care about bleating about how evil the downstaters are, and how all those welfare cheats are stealing our hard earned money, while still showing up with their $40,000 checks for local fire departments.

Cuomo MAY be interested in actually fixing things, but by the same token, he's also interested in being President some day. That may not square with getting deep down into the muck of fixing NYS government.

"mostly retired on $77,000 a year and a free state car, due to the combination of a pension from 10 years in the State Police, and a "job" working a few hours a month for the state parole board. (Which was worth $27k a year and a state car.)"

Looked it up again, and discovered he was actually making $144,000 a year, including $42,600 off his pension and $101,400 plus car off his parole board gig.