From the NY Post:THE city is within sight of a scary tipping point. Within a few years, it could be spending more on pensions and health benefits than on the salaries of its workers.
That was the stark warning issued last week by Budget Director Mark Page at a packed City Hall hearing.
"With increases in benefits over time and the decline in the value of funds held by the city's pension systems, we are moving further into a period when the city and its taxpayers will be paying more for employee benefits than for direct employee salaries," he declared.
33 comments:
Never saw that coming.
Political equivalent of, 'Person Jumps off of 30 story Building, Finds Out the Ground Hurts.'
Typical of NYC politicians - mortgage the City's future to the unions to get elected, so the next gang of pols can figure out how to pay for it. But now the bill has come due sooner than expected.
And this moron "Titan of Commerce" wants another four years to complete the demolition?
This Titan can tax and spend from sun to sun, but the Commissar's destruction is never done!
We should just hire Mexicans to patrol the streets and put out fires....they work for next to nothing.
....And the good ol' NYPD is doing their share"
http://gothamist.com/2009/03/12/nypd_paid_35_million_to_settle_laws.php
$102 million. The "finest" had a banner year crackin' oue skulls..
It is no accident that the NYPD is the single largest liability.
I see that Bill Thompson agrees that agencies should have these costs deducted from their budgets...he is beginning to look like someone I could vote for as Mayor.
These union pension and health benefit giveaways have been going on for decades. A major overhaul is needed, but who will be tough enough to take that on politically?
Never saw that coming.
...
Typical of NYC politicians - mortgage the City's future to the unions to get elected, so the next gang of pols can figure out how to pay for it. But now the bill has come due sooner than expected.
Your response was as predictable as the content of the article. Yeah, let's all blame the "politicians" when a system has unbelievable inertia.
Do you think ANY mayor is going to live one day after he tells the NYPD or FD they're cutting pensions for *heroes*?
Anonymous said:
"Your response was as predictable as the content of the article. Yeah, let's all blame the "politicians" when a system has unbelievable inertia."
Slop, slurp. Spoken like a true porker pol with his snout in the trough.
Who the hell is to blame? The pope? The newsstand dealer? The cab driver?
The politician is the one who wants the job to end this slurping. It's the politician who fails to deliver.
There is no good reason that public employees should have such better benefits than private sector ones. Who has a pension anymore besides public sector workers? No one. Who gets to retire at 50? It's absurd. And in order to keep paying out what they are legally obligated to, to retiress, they pay new hires and current workers less. It is very much mismanaged on all fronts.
Ummmm, these so-called pensions come from a state fund which the cops and firemen contribute to themselves. Their pensions are essentially their own money with the accumulated interest.
Ummmm, these so-called pensions come from a state fund which the cops and firemen contribute to themselves. Their pensions are essentially their own money with the accumulated interest.
-----------------------------
Why let the facts get in the way of some very ignorant rants?
The pensions come from taxpayers. How do you think that fund gets money? Just from city workers paying in? Of course not. Taxpayers are paying for city union workers to get early retirements with pay and free health benefits for the rest of their lives. It is disgraceful and it is the fault of the unions, who manipulate the politics, and of the politicians to weak to take them on.
-A Bigger Taxpayer
Is this really shocking. Unions are ruining America. See what they have done to the auto industry. Paying people not to work, etc. I know police go on early retirment at 50 and collect full benefits while working a new job.
Prior posters are right - this is a disgrace right up there with the AIG bonuses.
The city nor any company cannot pay pensions that surpass the workers regular salary as they do now. With the fact that a worker can retire with a pension, after twenty years that is one half of his last year total salary, which includes his inflated overtime this will,in most cases equal the person's normal yearly salary. And on top of that they can contribute to a 401 fund that they can elect a fixed investment that right now is set at 8 and 1/4 %. I wish I knew of an investment that will guarantee me that much and this cannot go below 7%. Oh by the way this is set by the state legislature.
All this happens after only 20 years of service. So if you start work with the police at 21 when you are 41 you can walk away and take another job in a government agency and retire from that after 20 so now you are 61 with two pensions and you can pick up your Social Scurity at 62. If you do everything right you can be looking at 120,000 to 150,000 dollars not bad considering most white collar workers will have about 45,000 total after working the same amount of time if they don't grt fire before they can retire.
All of these pensions are given if you are healthy.If you can prove that you are hurt by your job you get 100% tax free pension. Talk about winning the lottery.
In the past 3 years, in Bloomberg's effort to never pay another penny of overtime for city workers, he overhired RIDICULOUSLY. The Fire Dept has almost 1,000 bodies more than it needs. Did someone put a gun to FD & PD's heads and say "hire this many"? No they did not. Bloomberg's own plan backfired and now he has to find a scapegoat so he doesn't look like an ass during election year.. hence the articles in the finest birdcage liner in NYC.. the NY POST. Might as well be the enquirer.
Years and years ago before I was "excessed" as a NYC HS teacher (in the late '70's "Ford to City Drop Dead" days. Remember?), UFT President Al Shanker used to BRAG that NYC teachers had great teeth. Why? Because the City of New York paid all their dental bills. I kid you not.
Does this perk still exist?
Boo. Hoo.
City workers get decent benefits.
Give me a freakin' break! It's the least the city can provide considering the conditions and abuse we endure, not to mention the paltry pay in comparison with the suburbs.
You should be more outraged at the "masters of the universe" giving themselves millions in bonuses while practically running their companies into the ground.
Italian Girl waste is waste no matter what form it is in. It could be corporate bailouts or excessive pensions. Tell me why after working 20 years a person should be paid *not* to work on the taxpayers dime? Can you retire at the age of 40? only with the unions doe this make sense.
Why don't you try being a police officer in Brownsville, Brooklyn for even a day and see if you could last 30 or 40 years? Working in many areas of the city is HORRIBLE. Period. Until you've walked in our shoes, you can't say anything. Unions exist to protect employees from abuse or at least that's what it used to be.
And you need not worry. As far as the teachers are concerned, there is no union. The UFT is dead.
I don't think the cops in the 104th pct. should get anything. They don't do anything so they should get nothing. In maspeth we call the cops of the 104th pct. lesbians because they don't do dick.
pigs and other gov parasites don't deserve pensions from the tax payer, instead they should get their pensions from the people that bought them out to screw over the tax payer
It's sad that people see the lack of benefits in the private sector as an overabundance of benefits in the public sector. Maybe private companies should take a cue from the city and start giving a shit about all of their employees, not just those at the top.
If you put 20 to 30 years of your life into a tough job, you don't deserve to live paycheck-to-paycheck and to not have insurance. Complain all you want about the cost and cry socialism, but I don't see anyone volunteering to dispose of his own trash, put out his own fires, and lock up criminals by himself.
Don't worry folks. Most cops and firemen don't live more than 10 years past retirement anyway. So you ungrateful bastards win teice; you get twenty years of protection, and you get back all the uncollected pension $$$$ from the dead civil servants you have such disdain for. Oh wait, sorry, you don't get that $$$$, the city and your boy Bloomberg keep it!
Divide and conquer. Keep playing into Bloomberg's hands! Allow Bloomberg and his cronies to set you against one another. No wonder they are able to plow over this city and this borough with so little resistance!
"It's sad that people see the lack of benefits in the private sector as an overabundance of benefits in the public sector. Maybe private companies should take a cue from the city and start giving a shit about all of their employees, not just those at the top.
If you put 20 to 30 years of your life into a tough job, you don't deserve to live paycheck-to-paycheck and to not have insurance. Complain all you want about the cost and cry socialism, but I don't see anyone volunteering to dispose of his own trash, put out his own fires, and lock up criminals by himself."
What a cute sentiment. See how well the public sector would do if it didnt have the private sector's teet to nurse off of. There is such a naivete amongst government workers. In the private sector there is success and failure. In the public sector there is enhanced mediocrity.
It's amusing how things change.When i stared in civil service(pd),people i knew were making 2-3 times more than me.Some were downright condescending.I worked weekends holidays nights,etc.I spent a lot of nights away from my family while you slept in your bed all suggly and safe. My dedication to the city cost me my marriage.I was stabbed once and was in 2 shootings.I took a lot of scumbags off the street,and i loved doing it. i can't rememember how many times i was hurt.Now the shoe is on the other foot and everyone with their overzealous(greedy) investing is screwed.I have a good pension and i deserve it.Don't be jealous,it's civil service. Take the test and see if you can hack it for twenty years................i don't think so
Unions aren't around to protect workers. Ever since the Taylor Laws were passed, unions really aren't needed for that. Unions are around to milk the system and benefit the union leaders.
I don't know about you, but the private sector has been voraciously sucking my taxpaying teat as of late. Your sentiment is just as cute as mine.
Unions and those that belong to them are scum. They rip off hard working Americans daily. Their creed is screw them as long as I get mine.
"I don't know about you, but the private sector has been voraciously sucking my taxpaying teat as of late. Your sentiment is just as cute as mine."
The difference is that the public sector has been at the teat for the past 200 years.
Sure. Tax breaks and convenient loopholes for companies are recent inventions. It's symbiotic: government leeches off companies and companies leech off government. Don't pretend it only goes one way. The biggest recipients of welfare are (and have always been) corporations.
It's a race to the bottom as you nitwits criticize workers who dare to insist on decent working conditions and benefits. Toil away at Wal-Mart and other first world hell holes and then bitch about civil servants who get, dare I say it, less than they deserve for serving the public. You sanctimonious assholes probably waved flags about our fallen heroes on 9/ll when 343 civil servants+ were rubbed out of existence. The firefighters, heros, as Ghouliani proclaimed them, worked for YEARS without a contract after the mass murder at the WTC. What hypocrisy.
You're all bent out of shape over the government living up to its collective bargaining agreements, but you'll take a pass on the private sector rape of our economy. A well deserved pension for a cop versus a multi million dollar "bonus" for some lunkhead who works for AIG. Where are your priorities?
"Taxpayers": why do you think you shouldn't pay cops, teacher, firefighers and other public servants? Don't we have families to support, bills to pay, and TAXES TO PAY??? Should we do this on a volunteer basis? Better, should these essential services be privatized. Look at the Bush administration fiascos in privatizing our military.
The fact remains that corporations are the number one tax avoiding leech on each and every one of us. Redirect your anger and demand that they pay their fair share of taxes and stop getting so self righteously pissed at a $20K pension for a former civil servant.
Corporations pay tremendous amounts in taxes. Stop making things up. Civil servants should get paid to work, not to retire in their early-40s and live off taxpayer money the rest of their lives.
Agreed let call a spade a spade. There is no difference between the guy at AIG acceptin a bonus and some paper pushing buracrat retire at 40 an claiming a full pension. And also lets stop all the hero talk. the average cop/firefighter sits on his ass 99% of the time. For this they should be rewarded with early retirement. When was the last time a cop was there when you needed them? Last night I could get them to come out to get rid of some kids hanging out on my block. Hero my ass.
I repeat unions and those that belong to them are scum.
Post a Comment