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The push by New York’s public employee unions to slap taxpayers with over $100 billion in new pension debt may finally be colliding with reality.
Speaking at a budget-focused press conference in Albany Thursday, Gov. Kathy Hochul acknowledged that granting even part of labor’s demands — for full pensions at age 55, lower employee contributions and bigger benefits — would be “a big hit” for taxpayers.
The changes being demanded behind closed doors, Hochul said, would add $1.5 billion per year to state and local taxpayer costs.
Instead, she said, she’s negotiating “much more scaled-down” changes to the rules about what public employees — including teachers, whose unions have been the primary driver of this year’s push — pay into, and get from, the pension system.
The governor, like most Albany pols, has been exceedingly deferential to the state’s public employee unions.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Ken Girardin is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute