“Public pensions in New York City and State have had a cost-of-living adjustment feature since 2000, but it applies only to the first $18,000….The cost-of-living adjustment was the most expensive pension enhancement enacted in recent memory in New York, according to the Independent Budget Office. The cost has, once again, proved higher than expected.”
Expected by whom? In any event, that retroactive pension enhancement, neither worked not bargained for, was the means Carl McCall used to get the 2002 nomination for Governor over Andrew Cuomo, getting the support of the public employee unions. Not that the unions went all out in the general election to actually make McCall Governor. They had cut a deal with Pataki to sign the legislation, following the deal Pataki cut with Local 1199 and the Greater New York Hospital Association. Of course all this was a long time ago. Which is how things were planned, because we have not yet begun to suffer to pay for all of this.