In a landmark case revolving around key provisions of New York’s Freedom of Information Law, the Empire Center is asking the state’s highest court to review lower-court rulings that would enable the New York City Police Pension Fund — and, potentially, the state’s other public pension systems, as well — to keep secret the names of retired employees receiving taxpayer-guaranteed pension benefits. Read More
Recent trends on Wall Street indicate that public pension funds with fiscal years ending June 30 probably missed their rate-of-return targets for 2012. I delve into one plan in particular — the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System — on the editorial blog at Newsday. Read More
Working added overtime to increase retirement benefits—i.e., pension padding or “spiking”—is an old tradition in the public sector, especially among police officers, firefighters and other employees working under contracts that provide them with ample overtime opportunities. Read More
As the clock ticks down towards Thursday’s adjournment of the state Legislature, Senate Republican leaders apparently are blocking a vote on a bill designed to ensure that the names of New York’s public pension recipients are (once again) unequivocally treated as public information. Read More
Unlike state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who says he’s still thinking it over, one upstate local official has already concluded that Governor Cuomo’s local government pension smoothingproposal would be a bad deal. Read More
In lieu of actual mandate relief, Governor Cuomo wants to make a seemingly irresistible offer to local governments. Read More
The agreed-upon Tier 6 bill restores much of the benefit reduction originally proposed by Governor Cuomo–especially for career employees. Read More
It’s an open-and-shut case: The public has a right to know which retired public employees are earning pensions and just how much they’re pocketing. Read More