PENSION REFORM, THE CUOMO WAY

ALBANY 1/17/12 — A pension reform plan that is to be included in the budget proposal Gov. Cuomo will unveil Tuesday would cover all incoming city workers — a key priority for Mayor Bloomberg, the Daily News has learned. Under Cuomo’s initiative, all new state and city workers, including police and firefighters, would have to choose between enrolling in a 401(K) plan or getting pension benefits that are less generous than those
currently offered, sources say.

Another Tier?

The plan would increase the minimum retirement age and the number of years before someone can qualify for a pension. It would also hike worker contributions and make it more difficult to boost pension benefits through the use of excessive overtime. Cuomo’s concept would save the city and state tens of billions of dollars over the next three decades, the sources said. Last year, Cuomo introduced a pension reform plan late in the legislative session that did not include city workers, but it was rebuffed by the Legislature. Despite the governor’s sky-high favorability rating — 73% in a Siena College poll out Monday — sources said adding the plan to the budget would maximize his leverage. “Remember the politics here,” Cuomo said Monday, without tipping his hand to his plan. “It’s hard to reform a pension system. It affects many public employees, very powerful public employee unions, and politically it’s difficult to get the Legislature to do this.” The public worker unions have said they will vehemently oppose any pension changes, arguing they have already given ground. The move comes two years after the state created a less generous pension tier, and a year after the unions accepted concession-laden contracts. Meanwhile, the governor’s proposal for a $132 billion budget would cut total spending by $200 million, a source said. The state operations portion of the budget, which does not include federal funds, would grow by just under Cuomo’s self-imposed 2% cap. His blueprint closes a $2 billion deficit and hikes education and health care spending by 4% without raising broad-based taxes and fees. He’ll seek to merge various state agencies while cutting the funding of others up to 2.5%, sources said. And sources said he will use his budget to call for the creation of a state health care exchange to comply
    with federal health law.