State and local government employees in New York collect taxpayer-guaranteed pension benefits that are far more generous than those available to most private-sector workers. The calculator below shows just how generous those benefits can be.
The cost of public pensions has blown through the roof, with financial consequences that will affect generations of New Yorkers to come. And it’s not just pensions: state and local governments have promised over $250 billion in post-retirement health care — but set aside no money to pay for it.
To learn more about the problem:
- Read the Empire Center report, “New York’s Exploding Pension Costs.”
- Search the pension database of more than 3.7 million records for over 650,000 retired state and local government employees at SeeThroughNY.net.
- Read “Iceberg Ahead, ” the Empire Center’s study of unfunded government retiree healthcare obligations.
- Join our email list and keep up to date with the latest on this and other Empire Center reports and projects.
- E.J. McMahon sounded the alarm about the Empire Center’s findings on YNN’s Capital Tonight and with Joe Spector of Gannett News Service.
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"Readers will recall that the Empire Center is the think tank that spent months trying to pry Covid data out of Mr. Cuomo’s government, which offered a series of unbelievable excuses for its refusal to disclose...five months after it sued the government, and one week after a state court ruled that the Cuomo administration had violated the law and ordered it to come clean—Team Cuomo finally started coughing up some of the records." -Wall Street Journal, February 19, 2021
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