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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Smith who wrote (430827)	6/8/2011 7:58:59 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793963

Requiring public sector workers work until they are 65 is a big step in the right direction. Unless they can get them to switch over to 401(k) like the private sector. Cuomo Urges Broad Limits to N.Y. Public Pensions nytimes.com Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, joining a parade of officials from around the country who are seeking to rein in spending by limiting public employees’ pensions, proposed Wednesday to broadly limit retirement benefits for new city and state workers in New York. Wading into one of the most controversial and challenging issues facing state and municipal governments, Mr. Cuomo said New York State and New York City simply could no longer afford to offer new employees the generous benefits their predecessors received. “The numbers speak for themselves — the pension system as we know it is unsustainable,” the governor said in a statement. “This bill institutes common-sense reforms to bring government benefits more in line with the private sector while still serving our employees and protecting our retirees.” Mr. Cuomo’s proposal escalates a battle between the first-term Democrat and a major Democratic Party constituency, public-sector labor unions. Unions have been fighting against pension changes around the nation, and in New York they have sparred with Mr. Cuomo over layoffs during contract negotiations, which continue. “Congratulations to Governor Cuomo for another grandstand play for the attention of his millionaire friends at the expense of the real working people of New York,” Danny Donohue, president of the largest union of state workers, C.S.E.A., said in a statement. “Governor Cuomo’s proposal can only be viewed as an attack on working people to score some cheap political points.” And the president of the New York State Public Employees Federation, Kenneth Brynien, attacked the proposal as “draconian pension cuts that would inflict permanent damage on middle-class workers such as nurses, parole officers, bridge inspectors and cancer researchers for what is a transient problem.” “This is about politics and placating big-business special interests, plain and simple,” Mr. Brynien added. Under Mr. Cuomo’s proposal, pensions for new workers would still be enviable by the standards of the private sector, but a significant change would be made in worker retirement plans. He proposes to increase the retirement age to 65 from 62, and to require state workers to contribute 6 percent of their salaries to pensions. And in an effort to curb rampant padding of pensions by workers who step up their overtime in their final year of employment, Mr. Cuomo’s proposal would exclude overtime from pension calculations. The governor’s bill is seen as unlikely to pass in the final six days of the current legislative session, but his proposal could become part of the continuing contract negotiations with the two major public sector unions, and Mr. Cuomo could either call the Legislature back to Albany later this year or wait until January to make the changes law. Mr. Cuomo’s predecessor, David A. Paterson, won some pension concessions during his brief tenure as governor, but at the price of promising not to lay off any workers. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has frequently bemoaned the effect of high pension costs on New York City spending, said he was delighted, because Mr. Cuomo’s proposal included language that the city had requested. “We have, for the last six months, been engaging with stakeholders in city and state government and our partners in municipal labor on a vital question we’ve been raising for years: how to protect both city services and the strength of our retirement funds over the long term,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement. “The governor’s bill will do just that. “By making sensible pension reforms that won’t impact a single current employee or existing retiree, this legislation will create $30 billion in savings over the next 30 years for the city, which will ensure we can afford the services and work force that city residents depend on, and provide a secure retirement for municipal employees long into the future.” Legislators had subdued reactions to Mr. Cuomo’s proposal, which are very likely to be discussed over the summer. “Senator Skelos recognizes the need to address rising pension costs,” said Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Republican from Long Island. “We just received the governor’s bill and are reviewing it.” The office of the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, said he would not be available to comment; Mr. Silver, an Orthodox Jew, observes the holiday of Shavuot.