Paterson vetoes bill on police/fire pension benefits
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- June
- 3
  Gov. David Paterson announced this afternoon that he vetoed a bill that would provide tier II pension benefits to all new police officers and firefighters, which would provide them with the same level of benefits as existing officers and firefighters. Without the legislation, which has been extended regularly since 1981, they would receive a lower level of benefits upon entering service.Â
  The governor said he wants the Senate and Assembly to pass legislation that would put in place a new and less costly tier of pension benefits for public employees. Putting a tier V in place would save at least $48 billion over the next 30 years for local governments and the state, according to Paterson.
  “We need to change Albany’s culture of ‘business as usual.” Nothing says ‘business as usual’ like a temporary fix that lasts 28 years,” he said in a statement. “Instead of a rubber stamp on a temporary fix, we need to move forward with real reform to the pension system.”
  Under Paterson’s proposal, state and local governments would have the option to opt into a less costly pension plan for police officers and firefighters. The minimum retirement age would be 50, and the minimum number of years of service required to collect a pension would go from 20 to 25. It would set up a new, mandatory pension tier for civilian employees that would reinstate employee contributions after 10 years of service, raise the minimum retirement age from 55 to 62, and restrict the use of overtime in pension calculations.
  New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called Paterson’s decision “gutsy.”
  “The city and state have been buried by exponential growth in pension costs and we need reform now, before those costs bankrupt the city and state,” he said in a statement.
  The state pension system lost 26 percent of its value in the last fiscal year, which will lead to higher costs for the state and municipalities.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 12:56 pm by Cara Matthews.
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