Findings from TUA’s pension project on New York State are featured in this article at TimesUnion.com.
ALBANY — A fiscally conservative advocacy group from the Midwest arrived in Albany to propose an intriguing math experiment: If retired public employees maxed out their pensions by retiring early at age 55 and living to the ripe old age of 85, who would get the biggest hypothetical payout?
Philip W. Wood, a retired SUNY vice chancellor for capital facilities, leads the pack in this latest iteration of the ongoing debate over public pension costs. According to Taxpayers United of America, Wood’s $186,295 annual pension would be worth about $6.9 million over 30 years. The sum assumes that he retired at age 55 and lived to be 85 years old.
It would put him at the top of the group’s list of 100 top state pensioners.
While Wood’s potential payout sounds like a lot, it pales in comparison to the nearly $11.9 million estimated pension payout for James Hunderfund, the retired school superintendent in Commack, Suffolk County. Hunderfund, who collects $316,245 annually from the teachers retirement system, has been cited before as a poster child for the excesses of New York’s public sector pensions.
Taxpayers United isn’t saying Philip and Hunderfund will collect $6.9 million and $11.9 million worth of pension checks, although their current annual payments are real. The payout is an estimate based on an actuarial model, a prediction of how much money 30 years’ worth of pension benefits would be for these individuals.
The analysis also includes the 1.5 percent annual escalator in many public pensions. Not every public employee leaves their job at age 55, nor do they all live to be 85 — factors that would reduce the final payout, in many cases significantly.
But Taxpayers United Vice President Christina Tobin said the figures illustrate how costly some public sector pensions can be.
Less than a week after lawmakers approved Gov. Andrew Cuomo‘s Tier VI pension plan, which reduces costs for future public employees, this Illinois-based group was in Albany warning that the changes were inadequate and that New York, like other states, will have great difficulty meeting its pension obligations in future years.
“This pension reform doesn’t go far enough,” said Rae Ann McNeilly, the group’s director of outreach.
“If we don’t have (pension) reform, the checks will stop coming,” said Tobin.
This is the organization’s first foray into New York. The group was created in 1976 by Christina Tobin’s father, longtime anti-tax activist Jim Tobin, who in 2002 ran for Illinois lieutenant governor on the Libertarian line. The group has a long history of tangling with the public sector in that state: Last year, it went to court in an unsuccessful effort to block a near-doubling of tolls on Illinois highways.
Now, sparked by national concern over future public pension costs and aided by the ease of getting payroll data online, the group wants to expand to other states. Tobin and McNeilly are currently traveling through Pennsylvania and New York recruiting new members. Eventually, they want volunteers in all 50 states to help work on a website that would list public payroll data across the country.
The move comes as spending watchdogs have posted public payrolls online in several states, sparking debate over the salaries and pension costs that come with public sector jobs.
McNeilly said the actual annual pensions listed in their report came from the website of the New York-based Empire Center, another fiscally conservative group, which in turn are based on records at the state Comptroller’s Office.
Unions are seething over the creation of Tier VI, which they say was linked — in typical Capitol fashion — to an unrelated deal on gerrymandered legislative districts and other items.
The leader of a think tank critical of Tier VI noted that Taxpayers United’s project appears to be little more than a math exercise that focuses on the highest earners.
“This doesn’t tell you anything about the overall affordability of the system,” said Frank Mauro, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, which contends that rising pension costs borne by taxpayers are the result of the 2008 Wall Street meltdown that depleted the state’s pension funds.
Mauro said the group is “trying to use an egregious example to do things that hurt middle-income workers.”
Wood, who could not be reached, is listed as leaving state service in December 2010. SUNY spokesman David Henahan noted that Wood worked for 40 years in public service, starting with a job at the Rensselaer County nursing home at age 16. He also started in the old Tier I plan, which was eventually phased out due to the cost.
Wood was appointed general manager of the State University Construction Fund in 2003 and took on additional responsibilities as SUNY vice chancellor for capital facilities in 2007, Henahan said in a statement.
TUA’s defeat of 7 tax-increasing referenda was mentioned at the end of the following article by the Daily Herald.
Despite a tender economy, a healthy majority of voters in Libertyville and Kildeer felt paying more out of pocket would be worth the investment in terms of better roads.
And though nearly an even split, voters in Fox Lake Elementary District 114 decided to forego an action that would have saved them $166 in property taxes.
Those involved with all three questions on Tuesday’s ballot say the approvals showed more voters than not thought they were getting their money’s worth.
Drivers in Libertyville and Kildeer will see the most tangible results, as proceeds from property tax and sales tax hikes, respectively, will be used for road repairs and improvements beginning with the 2013 construction season.
“I’d like to think we did a good job of educating the public about what was needed and what would be done. People understand,” Libertyville Mayor Terry Weppler said.
Sixty percent of voters approved a property tax increase of about $34 a year for four years to a total of $136 per year thereafter. The proceeds will allow the village to borrow $20 million to repair 30 miles — about a third of its streets — in the next several years.
Information provided to residents ahead of the vote showed Libertyville with among the lowest village tax rates in the area and outlined other steps that had been taken to curb costs.
“We showed residents we were responsible with the property tax dollars,” Weppler said. “That helped.”
The village immediately will begin refining the repair list. Water and sewer work associated with the road repairs will cost another $7 million to $8 million. Whether that will be funded through a separate bond issue or an increase in rates is to be determined.
In Kildeer, 57 percent of voters agreed to allow the village to raise its portion of the sales tax to 1.5 percent from 1 percent to generate an estimated $500,000 a year in extra revenue for roads and associated work, such as right of way maintenance.
Village Administrator Michael Talbett said the amount spent on road repairs each year has dropped from $700,000 to $150,000.
The village met with homeowner associations and provided information to all residents regarding plans for the funds.
“That seemed to be favorably received and explained to people what was going on,” he said.
Because there would be a tangible result that out-of-towners who shop in Kildeer also will be paying helped sell the question, he added.
“Maintaining your roads is important to the overall perception of the community,” and that translates to home values, Talbett said.
The support was much closer in District 114, where the vote was 611 to 608 to extend a previously approved tax to allow class sizes and programs to continue operating normally. A “no” vote would have resulted in a $166 annual savings for the owner of a $200,000 home.
“We are very aware of the economic conditions that exist in the world and that people are having a tough time,” said Superintendent John Donnellan. “So their support on this referendum shows us that we are heading in the right direction and being as fiscally conservative as we can.”
He added District 114 ranks as the 25th lowest elementary school tax rate in Lake County, yet its test scores are above average.
Did the three approvals buck a trend?
The Taxpayer’s Federation of Illinois deals with tax policy and does not get into individual referendum questions. But legislative director Scott Selinger said, in general, continued economic uncertainty and voter displeasure with government spending policies make such questions a tough sell.
“You better have a good sales pitch,” he said.
Chicago-based Taxpayers United of America on Wednesday said the organized opposition of members and supporters helped defeat home rule questions in six suburbs and a school district property tax increase request.
“No one called us to ask for help,” the group’s president, Jim Tobin, said of the Libertyville or Kildeer ballot questions.
Findings from TUA’s pension project on New York State are featured in this article at Metro New York.
A report released Thursday by the group Taxpayers United of America accuses state government employees of getting way too much in their retirement pensions. One schoolteacher on Long Island, for example, could stand to collect nearly $12 million in retirement, the group alleges.
Another retired State University of New York employee has an annual pension of $186,295, and another state employee’s annual pension is $173,651, according to data obtained by the group.
In the city, a former New York City family court employee receives a pension of $119,731.
The group said the numbers are absurdly high compared to $36,000, the average personal income of state private sector workers.
“Many government retirees make more in pension payments than the private sector taxpayers make in salaries,” lamented the group’s vice president, Christina Tobin.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo supported a new pension plan, passed by the Legislature earlier this month, that would decrease benefits for future government employees.
In remarks supporting Cuomo’s plan last month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that in 2002, pension costs for that year alone were $1.5 billion. Now, they are more than $8 billion each year, he said. “Pension costs are spiraling out of control,” he said.
But cutting pensions is not popular — New York City public workers protested in Zuccotti Park against pension cuts earlier this month.
