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ALBANY — New York state’s public pension funds are underfunded by a staggering $120 billion — and taxpayers will have to shell out an additional $8.5 billion a year by 2015 to keep them in the black, according to a report released yesterday.
The analysis by the business-backed Manhattan Institute estimated that taxpayers’ contributions to the state Teachers Retirement System could more than quadruple to $4.5 billion in 2015 from $900 million this year.
Similarly, the amount state and local governments will have to pay into the state’s main pension fund for other public employees would double to nearly $4 billion — even if most localities opt into a borrowing scheme approved this year by lawmakers to soften the blow.
The findings, the think tank says, show that the “fiscal time bomb” often cited by pension hawks may no longer be an abstract concern. “The bomb is now exploding and New York will be coping with the fallout for years to come,” the report’s authors say.
For suburban homeowners, the spike in retirement costs for teachers alone would equal an 18 percent increase in school property taxes — or about $1,000 annually for the average homeowner outside of the city, the report found.
The same homeowner would still have to pay hundreds of dollars more to cover higher retirement costs for other public employees.
The report focused largely on the state’s pension crisis, but New York City faces the same looming crisis and Mayor Bloomberg has repeatedly called for reining in retirement costs.
The analysis was released to coincide with a forum in Albany to call attention to the gathering pension crisis in advance of the upcoming battle over how to close the state’s estimated $9.6 billion deficit.
Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican, said that without reform, his county’s pension bill will rise to $163 million by 2015 — roughly a third of its current tax levy. He called the increase “the fiscal equivalent of the neutron bomb.”
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who oversees the state’s main $133 billion pension fund, defends his accounting practices and says the fund remains one of the best-funded in the nation.