Tag: Retiree Health Care

Budget deficits papered over with borrowed money and fiscal gimmicks. Unaffordable union contracts. Pension contributions “amortized” into the future. Retiree health benefits promised but unfunded. Corruption probes and whiffs of scandal. Accountability blurred, responsibility shirked, and hard decisions avoided again and again. That litany could describe any number of old, declining American cities—including a few that, like Detroit, actually went broke. But the same dysfunction exists in affluent corners of New York’s archetypal suburb: Long Island Read More

The Republican-controlled state Senate Civil Service and Pension Committee today approved a bill (S.3320) that would lock-in tens of billions of dollars in unfunded healthcare liabilities for state and local government retirees. Read More

While the news media and public were distracted by the questions swirling around the future leadership of the Senate Republican majority, the Senate this week moved a bill that would lock in tens of billions of dollars of unfunded lifetime health insurance coverage health coverage for police and firefighters. Read More

City workers who qualify for pensions are also eligible for lifetime health insurance coverage — a retirement benefit that has almost disappeared in the private sector. The estimated value of retiree health benefits promised to current and future city government pensioners is now roughly $90 billion, tipping the city’s overall financial balance sheet well into the red. Read More

Empire Center President E.J. McMahon appeared on "The John Gambling Show" to discuss legislation that would have tied the hands of state and local officials and prevented them from reducing the taxpayers' $250 billion unfunded liability for public-sector retiree benefits. Read More

Skyrocketing public-pension obligations have generated concern across the country, especially in the wake of high-profile bankruptcies of Detroit and Stockton, Calif. In New York, an even larger burden looms in the form of lifetime health-insurance coverage promised to state and local government employees. Yet at least one house of the Legislature is considering a bill that would effectively prevent any effort to reduce this unaffordable debt. Read More