By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Mayor Michael Bloomberg strongly endorsed a pension reform proposal unveiled by Gov. Andrew Cuomo Wednesday that would increase retirement ages and boost employee pension contributions, among other concessions.
"We have, for the last six months, been engaging with stakeholders in City and State government and our partners in municipal labor on a vital question we've been raising for years: how to protect both City services and the strength of our retirement funds over the long term. The Governor's bill will do just that," Bloomberg said in a statement.
The legislation would save the city $30 billion over the next 30 years, according to the mayor, and would "provide a secure retirement for municipal employees long into the future."
The proposal laid out by the governor, which closely resembles the contentious plan Bloomberg outlined in his State of the City address in January, would create a new pension tier that would increase the retirement age for most new employees to 65, end early retirement and significantly increase employee contributions to six percent of salary. (The current contribution amount ranges from around zero to 4.85 percent, depending on job and years of service.)
The plan, which would impact only new hires and not current employees or existing retirees, would also prevent employees from packing extensive overtime in their final years to boost their compensation by excluding time-and-a-half overtime from final average salary calculations.
"The numbers speak for themselves — the pension system as we know it is unsustainable," Cuomo said in a statement.
"This bill institutes common-sense reforms to bring government benefits more in line with the private sector while still serving our employees and protecting our retirees," he said.
Since 2001, the city's pension costs have increased from $1.1 billion to $8.4 billion, a number the mayor has long said cannot be sustained.
Union officials, meanwhile, slammed the plan.
"Congratulations to Governor Cuomo for another grandstand play for the attention of his millionaire friends at the expense of the real working people of New York," CSEA President Danny Donohue said in a statement.
"The governor's proposal for a Tier VI pension reform for public employees is more evidence of how out of touch he is with working people and the economic pressures they face every day,“ he said.
United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew also dismissed the plan as a distraction.
"At a time when the city and state are desperate for new revenues to prevent the loss of vital services to millions of New Yorkers, Governor Cuomo introduces a measure that will have no immediate fiscal impact," he said.
"Rather than considering a new pension tier, we should be working to solve our immediate budget problems, specifically by passing a renewal of the state's millionaires' tax."
