The final version of the Public Protection and General Government budget bill contains a new provision, originating in the legislative version of the proposal, that will allow the education commissioner to waive the $30,000 public employment earnings limitation for any retired police officer employed as a “school resource officer.” Read More
This just in: Governor Cuomo’s 2012-13 Executive Budget has been posted online, and it does, indeed, include a 401(1)k-style defined-contribution (DC) retirement plan option. Read More
The New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS) closed its most recent fiscal year with a return of just 5.96 percent — well below the 7.5 percent target rate used to discount its long-term liabilities. Read More
An alert reader has provided the answer to a question posed on this blog yesterday: how or where did the state’s largest public employee union come up with its estimate that Governor Cuomo’s proposed Tier 6 pension plan will “reduce benefits” by 40 percent? Read More
The Empire Center for New York State Policy, a government watchdog group, is seeking to overturn mid-level appeals court rulings that blocked the release of information about how much money individual public employees were receiving from their taxpayer-funded pension funds. Read More
The Empire Center for Public Policy has been in a legal battle for years with several public pension systems after lower courts ruled starting in 2011 that the names of pensioners do not need to be made public. Read More
Tax-funded employer contributions to New York’s state and local government pension funds are about to rise sharply. What will be the impact on budgets, taxes and public services? Are New York’s public pensions adequately funded? What can be done to curb pension expenses while fairly balancing the interests of taxpayers and employees? The presentation of a new Empire Center report answers these questions -- culminating in a keynote from a Utah state lawmaker who has been a national leader in state pension reform. Read More
This event explores the Empire Center's paper, "Optimal Option," focused on the popular Optional Retirement Plan offered for the past 48 years by the State University of New York (SUNY) and the City University of New York (CUNY), including accounts administered through the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association and College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF). Read More