Tag: Albany

In Sunday's paper. Referring to Illinois, which should hit the wall earlier than average, “We’re within a few years of having some of the pension funds run out of money…Funding for the schools is going to be cut radically. Funding for Medicaid. As these things all mount up, there’s going to be a lot of outrage…paying public pensions straight out of general revenue would be ruinous. In Illinois’s case, it would consume about half the state’s cash every year, bringing other vital state services to a standstill.” Of course it isn't just the pensions. It's the federal, state and local debts. It's the infratructure that hasn't been maintained. It's the lower pay and benefits younger generations receive, in both the public and private sectors, and will continue to receive when they get older — and face possible deprivation to pay for the prior generations than spent decades in leisure on borrowed money.

The benefit of foresight is that I'm already started moving beyond outrage to resignation.

Perhaps you are wondering why the state budget would cut municipal aid to New York City to zero, while cutting municipal aid to other areas, including those more affluent than New York City, by very little. It is because need in this state isn’t measured by the need for public services and benefits, which are irrelevant to the rich and a hassle for the political/union complex, which has privileged access to them, to provide to others. What matters is who gets jobs, and who gets sinecures pretending to be jobs. So local government employment in NYC, which was already down sharply since 1990, fell another 13,400 in the year to May according to data released yesterday by the New York State Department of Labor. Local government employment in the rest of the state, which had been up by 130,000 over 20 year, edged down just 3,400 — but public school employment in the rest of the state increased by 3,900. I guess they’ll have to slash New York City’s share of state school aid again, as in the previous two recessions.

Don’t New York City’s public employee unions have any clout? Sure they do, particularly since most of the best paid live outside the city. Far from wanting to keep their jobs, however, most don’t want to work at all. They want to retire early, at 55 instead of 62 for NYC teachers, after 25 years of work rather than 30. Thus you had the biggest fraud of the week, the UFT joining a protest cuts in schools. Guess what — NYC public school spending is going up, but more and more of the money is going to the retired, as a result of the 25/55 pension the UFT managed to grab. Protesting? They should be celebrating the money they will get for providing less and less in return.

From the New York Times: "For decades, New York State’s divorce system has been built on a foundation of winks and falsehoods. If you wanted to split quickly, you and your spouse had to give one of the limited number of allowable reasons — including adultery, cruelty, imprisonment or abandonment — so there was a tendency to pick one out of a hat." So there is no divorce except for a few causes even if both members of a couple agree, right? The title of the article certainly says so.

From deep in the article, near the very bottom: "New York law has long allowed people who agree to a divorce to get one if they both sign a separation agreement and live apart for a year. A new provision could do away with the need for the agreement." That's what the change is. There is no need to lie if both parties agree — and no need to consider the interests of the children either — under current law.  The difference is just one spouse could end a marriage unilaterally, and quickly. And that is not what is being presented — even by the New York Times.

Since I don't have any personal experience of it, it has been eye opening to hear, on a few occasions, the views of those whose parents divorced when the were children. It hurt, a great deal. Some are desperate to get married and create the family they were denied. Others have no interest in forming a family.

Under current New York State law, two parents can divorce if it is in their mutual interest and they can agree on the terms, regardless of any concern about the children. Under a new reform just passed by the State Senate, either party will be able to demand a divorce whenever they believe that breaking up the family could provide a better deal (sexual, financial, fun and enjoyment of life). The premise is that if a couple would otherwise make home life so terrible anyway, including the lives of any children, there is “no fault.” The bill is here. Read it over, and show me where in the bill there is any provision concerning itself with the interests and needs of any children. Or any provision that instructs the courts that regardless of whether the children would be worse off if the marriage continued or ended, the parents had failed as such, and thus had a greater obligation going forward to put the children first to offset that damage.

This is the kind of news you slip out on a Friday, so it will be in Saturday’s paper and read by few. The powers that be in Albany have agreed that local governments in the rest of the state, whose pension contributions are a fraction of those required of New York City, can choose not to make them, and borrow their required contributions from the pension funds instead. Allegedly they will have to pay back that money with interest later – at 4.5 to 5.5 percent interest rate even though the state legislature has asserted by law that pension assets earn 8 percent per year (which is why they can pass one pension enhancement after another and say no one has to pay for them), even though they don’t. But there is a 99.8 percent chance that a few years from now, when localities in the rest of the state are faced with an even more devastating increase in pension costs as a result of this borrowing, they will insist on a state bailout. A bailout with state taxes collected in part in New York City. Which means that New York City residents will help pay for their pension costs, even as our public services are destroyed by our own.

“This, in my opinion, is the public issue of this decade,” according to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as quoted by Bloomberg News. “Things that used to be sacred cows, that used to be the third rail, no longer are. They’ve been replaced by the unaffordability, absolute unaffordability.” He is referring to public employee pensions and retirement benefits, and I agree, unfortunately, that it will be the issue of the decade, and the morality of it will vary from place to place.

In some places, such as New Jersey, public employees have contributed a great deal to their own pensions, and it is the employer (former taxpayers) who didn't put in the required amount, to get more spending with less in taxes. In California and some other states, the public retirees do not get Social Security. Even in those places, however, the unions are guilty for cutting deals with the politicians to get undeserved, retroactive pension enhancements and collectively engaging in schemes to inflate pension payments relative to pay earned on the job. At the other extreme, with public service recipients and taxpayers nearly blameless, is New York City. And everywhere, Generation Greed has the same solution — solve the issue of the decade, caused by older generations making themselves better off at the expense of the future, by making younger generations worse off while avoiding politically difficult conflict by not asking those older generations to give anything back.

Just got word from a reporter that the answer is probably thankfully no. But in any event, having one early retirement decision after another does not save money. It increases costs while deferring them. There can be a debate about the impact of this incentive on this years budget. But there is no debate about the effect on this year’s budget of past incentives.

"The budget may be stalled, parks may be closed but public employees might soon be able to take early retirement" according to the Albany Times-Union. "The 55/25 bill would allow state workers as well as local public employees to retire at age 55 after 25 years of service without penalty…The measured passed in the Assembly Monday and may be reviewed in a key Senate."

So they cut the number of people on the job, services are gutted, and rather than have to deal with the consequences, Generation Greed gets to ride off to Florida. 'Supporters are confident the bill will pass in the Senate, too, especially considering that it's a potential cost-saver." Like all the other pension deals? Then how come taxes are rising while services are being gutted –to pay for the soaring cost of those retired?

It’s been four years since I first started posting on this site, and I might as well continue the tradition with another retrospective. First, I’d like to thank Ben and Gur for providing me with a website to post essays on the public policy non-decisions no one wants to talk about, with the capacity to attach spreadsheets with the facts no one wants to see. Creating such a site was beyond my capability, and I appreciate their free web hosting and technical support.

Writing on this blog has been, in a sense, my final howl against the moon in frustration with the generations in power for selling out the future of my state and community, to hide from everyone else the cost of enormous resources transferred to those working the system. The recession, as recessions do, has just started to reveal to everyone else what has happened. Four years ago, in another election year for Governor, I posted a series of data analyses showing how New York State, and different parts of New York State, compared with other states and the national average, with essays that identified problems with state and local government and the state in general, and made a series of proposals. This year I’ll probably continue to post data as it become available, in case there is anyone out there who is interested in the actual facts, but I don’t think I’ll talk much about what should happen next. Because between then and now I’ve learned something: things are so rotten to the core that nothing will change prior to a collapse. Consider it my New York City education.