Battle lines have been drawn on public pension reform in New York and some of the fiercest public employee union attacks are focusing on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to let future government employees choose between a traditional pension and a defined-contribution retirement savings plan. Read More
Labor unions in New York are mounting a fierce effort to derail Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s Tier VI pension reform plan, portraying it as an attack on the middle class. Read More
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo says he's willing to be a "veritable Gumby" of flexibility in negotiating the terms of public pension reform, as long as a new pension plan reduces costs by a large enough amount. Read More
Opponents of the proposed Tier 6 pension reform like to point out that the average annual benefit paid by the state pension system in 2011 was $19,151 — “not a big amount for someone whose [sic] gave a lifetime of service,” as the Public Employees Federation (PEF) puts it in a letter and blast fax to state legislators. Read More
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is insisting that Gov. Cuomo “negotiate” his plans to reform New York’s outdated pension systems with the public-employee unions — which misses the biggest point of reform. Read More
With two weeks left in the state fiscal year, Albany's annual budget adoption process has been overshadowed by the once-a-decade imperative of reapportionment. Read More
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's hype machine went into overdrive late last week after the Legislature passed a scaled-back version of his Tier 6 pension reform plan. Read More
Soon after he was elected governor 16 months ago, Andrew Cuomo made a point of publicly touring a state juvenile-detention center in the Mohawk Valley, west of Albany. Read More