A much-ballyhooed plan to overhaul the city’s pension system is withering on the vine as key unions are pushing their own proposal, which would maintain their power over the massive fund.
Five unions representing city law-enforcement officials have devised their own plan to tweak the current pension system in response to a proposal by Mayor Bloomberg and Comptroller John Liu, who want to put the pension fund in the hands of an independent manager.
The alternate plan shows the unions are distancing themselves from the embattled comptroller — one of their key allies — as he continues to grapple with a federal investigation into his campaign fund-raising.
The unions’ new plan — authored by the Detectives and Captains endowment associations, Sergeants and Lieutenants benevolent associations and Uniformed Fire Officers Association — maintains the influence of the five pension boards in making investment decisions.
The Bloomberg-Liu proposal, which needs state approval, would have forced the individual boards to surrender that power to an independent authority known as the Pension Investment Board.