The soaring cost of New York State’s public pension systems can be permanently controlled by shifting to the sort of employer-subsidized individual retirement plans now popular in the private sector, according to an updated study of the state’s pension structure by the Empire Center for Public Policy.
The study — “Defusing New York’s Pension Bomb: A Fair Approach for Workers and Taxpayers” — documents a $5.6 billion increase in tax-funded contributions to the retirement funds for public workers over the past five years.
“The pension problem is not simply a function of the 2000-03 stock-market slump or Albany’s increases in pension benefits six years ago — although both helped precipitate the latest crisis,” the study says. “The real cause is the fundamental design of the pension system itself, which obscures costs and wreaks havoc on long-term financial planning.”