More than 1,000 retired New York State school teachers and administrators are entitled to annual pensions of more than $100,000, according to pension data posted today on www.SeeThroughNY.net, the government transparency website. The new database from the New York State Teachers Retirement System (NYSTRS) includes name, benefit rate, retirement date and last known employer when available, for 134,796 people collecting pensions in 2009. Read More
New York’s latest stab at pension reform, which created a new “tier” of slightly reduced benefits, was an enormous missed opportunity. While the plan shaved away a few of the most costly sweeteners added to pension benefits since the early 1990s, it preserved the basic defined benefit plan structure. This is the core of the problem: a huge and growing financial risk for current and future taxpayers. Read More
A searchable database of pension benefits for 203,474 retired New York City government employees was posted today on SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s government transparency website. Read More
New York state and local governments’ liabilities for retiree health coverage run to the hundreds of billions of dollars -- a burden that’s only now coming into full view. Read More
Taxpayer-funded employer contributions to public pensions in New York State will rise by billions of dollars in the next few years, threatening to divert scarce resources from other essential public services in the midst of a fiscal crisis, according to a report issued today by the Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More
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. Use the articles and other resources available at New York's Pension Bomb to learn about the heavy costs of public pensions. Read More
Public pension costs in New York are mushrooming—just when taxpayers can least afford it. Over the next five years, tax-funded annual contributions to the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS) will more than quadruple, while contributions to the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS) will more than double, according to estimates presented in this report. Read More
In November 2003, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research issued a report describing New York state’s public-pension system as “a ticking fiscal time bomb. Read More