Following his conviction on federal corruption charges, former Senator Dean Skelos apparently will qualify for a public pension of up to $95,590 a year.
The former majority’s leader’s pension for his 32 years in the Legislature alone would be $76,230, according to the Empire Center’s calculator. However, according to the state Comptroller’s Office, Skelos actually became a member of the New York State and Local Retirement System on June 29, 1973, two days before Tier 1 of the pension system was closed to new members. At the time, he still would have been a student at Fordham Law School, from which he obtained his degree in 1975.
Skelos has tallied up 41 years of service credit, the comptroller’s office said. His onlinebiographies don’t list any government jobs held prior to his election to the state Assembly in 1980, or during his 1983-84 stint out of office. However, the longtime Rockville Centre GOP activist would have had to work in state or local government almost continuously since 1973 in order to have accrued the additional nine years of service credit on top of his legislative tenure.
Skelos also apparently belongs to a class of Tier 1 members qualified for “Article 19” pensions capped at 79 percent of final average salary. This would equate to a maximum benefit of $95,590 a year, based on a final average salary of $121,000.
Former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who had roughly the same pension status as Skelos, apparently will qualify for the same maximum benefit based on the same final average salary.
Governor Hochul and state lawmakers this year approved a costly giveaway for public employee unions that retroactively hiked pension benefits. Now the bill is arriving. Read More
DiNapoli announced today that he's approved a recommendation by the State Retirement System Actuary to reduce, from 6.8 percent to 5.9 percent, the assumed rate of return (RoR) on investments by the $268 billion Common Retirement Fund, which underwrites the New York State and Local Employee Retirement System (NYSLERS) and Police and Fire Retirement System (PFRS), of which the comptroller is the sole trustee. Read More
There are several (dozens? hundreds?) of unanswered questions as the fallout from Andrew Cuomo's resignation earlier today continues. Among those are questions related to his pension, some of which can be answered, sort of.
Read More
The New York State Teachers' Retirement System (NYSTRS) will reduce its pension contribution rates for a third consecutive year in 2017-18, even though the pension fund's investment returns came in well below its target rate in fiscal 2016. Read More
The Empire State's largest public pension plan still has not fully recovered from the financial crisis and Great Recession of 2008-09, a new report from the state comptroller's office confirms. Read More
Taxpayer-funded pension contributions in New York City will need to increase by a total of $732 million between fiscal years 2018 and 2020 due to the pension funds' paltry investment earnings in the recently concluded 2016 fiscal year, City Comptroller Scott Stringer has just disclosed. Read More
Still betting far too heavily on the stock market, New York State's main state and local government pension fund lost money in the first half of its current fiscal year. Read More