For all Mayor de Blasio’s soak-the-rich populism, at least one of his picks qualifies for the so-called “1 Percent”: Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina. How fitting she comes by her wealth via the public dime.
As The Post’s Susan Edelman reported Sunday, Farina — who retired from the city school system after a 40-year career — will collect both a salary of $212,614 and her city pension of $208,596 a year. She’ll also receive a car and driver.
That puts her total package at more than $421,210, some 85 percent higher than what the mayor himself will be paid.
The real crime here is that there’s nothing illegal about the arrangement. Her salary is equal to what her predecessor, Dennis Walcott, received, and the pension was racked up over four decades.
Still, it’s one fat pension. Ordinary New Yorkers in the private sector — the people who pay Farina’s salary and retirement — don’t get pensions nearly as generous as their counterparts who work for the city.
Farina’s package should remind us the retirement packages for New York City workers are unsustainable. At the police and fire departments, for example, the cost of pensions and other benefits now outstrips salaries. For all city workers, the cost of retirement is expected to be 78 cents for every dollar spent on salaries for 2013; a decade ago, it was just 34 cents.
New York is on a trajectory to fiscal disaster if it does not address these rising costs, which are also crowding out the city’s ability to provide services.
The issue isn’t whether Carmen Farina deserves that much money but whether anyone on the public payroll does.