Should public employees be treated substantially better than everyone else?
Though he doesn’t explicitly say so, that’s the gist of state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s ferocious attack on Gov. Cuomo’s pension-reform plan.
Which explains why the public-employee unions have fallen into lockstep in praising DiNapoli’s “courage” against “the millionaires and lobbyists who want to take away the hope of a secure retirement” from government employees.
It’s a crock, of course; Cuomo’s pension-reform proposal does no such thing.
Which is why the governor himself last week blasted DiNapoli’s position as “100 percent wrong” and “indefensible,” saying it “argues the position of the labor unions at the expense of the taxpayer.”
Taxpayers have long been burdened by unreasonably generous public pension plans. But because the state Constitution prohibits the diminishment of benefits, reform is possible only by creating new pension schemes — or “tiers.”
Hence Tier 6, now under discussion.
It provides another option for newly hired public employees by including the choice of a 401k plan or a traditional — but less generous — defined-benefit pension.
Significantly, the new pensions would eliminate or reduce some of the age-old pension-sweetening shenanigans — like overtime padding to bolster pay in a worker’s final years on the job.
DiNapoli’s protestations notwithstanding, New York is second only to Alaska in having the nation’s most crushing pension burden. And it’s getting worse — quickly.
Indeed, the Citizens Budget Commission has endorsed Cuomo’s proposal, noting that state workers make just 11 percent of pension contributions while taxpayers foot the remaining 89 percent.
Can you say, “unsustainable”?
Only the unions, who put their members’ interests over those of all taxpayers, and those who carry the unions’ water can argue otherwise.
Cuomo insists a new pension tier could save the state $113 billion over the next 30 years. Yet DiNapoli calls his pension-reform plan “unacceptable” and “extreme.”
As the pro-business group Unshackle Upstate points out, “90 percent of the population of New York does not have a guaranteed retirement option” — i.e., a traditional pension.
So why should government employees enjoy 100 percent coverage — at taxpayers’ expense?
No fair.