Assembly Democrats have introduced eight bills to sweeten pensions, the Citizens Budget Commission pointed out yesterday. Here’s a nice CBC chart summarizing those measures. By far the costliest, sponsored by Assemblymen Peter Abbate and William Colton of Brooklyn, would boost the salary “multiplier” used to calculate pensions for employees with more than 30 years service. Read More
Public pension funds in New York and across the country are continuing to rely on overly optimistic assumptions about their future investment gains, as detailed in a major New York Times story yesterday. Read More
Opponents of Governor Cuomo’s 2 percent property tax cap were able to stick one major exclusion into the legislation before it passed in 2011: a provision excluding a portion of local government and school employee pensions from the total allowable “levy limit” in years when taxpayer-funded employer contributions rise by more than two percentage points of salaries. Read More
The Cuomo administration reportedly is talking with labor leaders about tapping public and private pension funds to help pay for state infrastructure projects, including a multi-billion-dollar replacement for the Tappan Zee Bridge... Read More
In its look-back today on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s second legislative session, The New York Times quotes the governor as saying he had “front-loaded” the legislative calendar... Read More
Nicole Gelinas has a must-read op-ed in the New York Post raising questions about Governor Cuomo’s plan to rely on public-private partnerships (PPPs) to finance infrastructure and economic development projects in New York. Read More
New York’s highest state court has ruled that a broad “no layoff” clause in a public-sector labor contract cannot necessarily be used to prevent job eliminations by a government employer. Read More
Is Wall Street roaring back — as a revenue-generating force for New York’s insatiable state and city governments, that is? You might get that impression from glancing at today’s press release from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli... Read More