“Governor David A. Paterson today signed into law pension reform legislation that will provide more than $35 billion in long-term savings to New York taxpayers over the next thirty years.” So cutting the pay of future public employees is described as a reform. But enriching the pay, after the past, of past and current public employees was also described as a reform. As most people use the word, one of these was in fact a robbery.
So what does reform mean in Albany? Adjusting the standard of living and quality of life of different groups of people, particularly different generations of people, to more accurately reflect the fact that some people matter and some people don’t?