The following appeared on Monday, April 29, 2024, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:

After announcing a $237 billion budget deal had been reached with the state Legislature’s radical leftists, Gov. Kathy Hochul made this statement: “Each of us came to the table with really strongly held beliefs, but in the interest of our state, we pulled it together to deliver in a really collaborative way. And I will say we don’t always see that here.”

What a lot of baloney.

The only interests accommodated were those of the Public Employee Unions.

As for spending, the budget has grown by an astonishing 35% since the 2019 pre-COVID $175 billion spending plan. The state’s structural budget is now projected to be north of $16 billion.

Hochul has permitted spending to grow at an unsustainable rate despite an anemic economy that grew by only 0.7% last year—vs. 2.5% nationally — and declining revenue from the biggest source of taxes: Wall Street.

Financial services tax revenues have declined due to 5,000 industry jobs moving to low-tax states and bonus payouts dropping from $42.7 billion in 2020 to $33.8 billion in 2023.

But the scary economic trends didn’t matter to Albany power brokers. As Nicole Gelinas, of the Manhattan Institute, quipped, Albany has been “obviously preparing their next round of milking, while the cow is already part way out of the barn door.”

The budget also sticks it to New York City’s taxpayers.

Mayor Eric Adams’ request that Albany pick up half the tab of the projected $12 billion in migrant costs was rejected. The budget throws him a measly bone—$2.4 billion to house, feed, and clothe over 180,000 migrants.

With commercial property and Wall Street taxes falling out of bed, the city will probably have to cut essential services to cover the costs of onerous “Sanctuary City” laws.

Albany also surrendered to NYC’s United Federation of Teachers.

While Mayor Adams’ control of NYC’s public schools has been extended for two years, his authority has been severely curtailed.

The Board of Regents—which is controlled by the state Legislature—will now run the city’s Panel for Education, not the mayor. (The panel is empowered to approve or reject union contracts.)

There’s more.

Even though the city’s school enrollment has declined by 200,000, to protect UFT jobs the Legislature has directed the city to spend an additional $1.9 billion annually to procure more classroom space and to hire more teachers to accommodate the mandated smaller class size.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who convinced the Legislature in 2002 to establish mayoral control of schools, had this reaction to Albany’s actions: “It’s a shameless betrayal of the city’s nearly 1 million students that will undermine the progress the city’s schools have made and harm the next generation, leaving them without the skills they need to succeed in future careers—and leaving too many trapped in poverty and tempted by crime.”

Hochul’s budget plan to cut education aid statewide due to declining school enrollment got nowhere.

After the UFT balked, the governor not only stripped the proposal out of the budget but agreed to additional school spending. (Long Island school aid will increase by over $200 million.)

Reacting to the education budget, Ken Girardin, of the Empire Center for Public Policy noted, “The decision to keep filling empty classrooms with state money reflects lawmakers’ commitment to pouring cash instead of scrutiny into the system that’s spending more than any other state….”

Another costly item buried in the budget is the pension giveaway to the public employee unions.

The “Tier 6” reform—championed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2012—that shored up the pension system and included benefit changes that would save state and municipal governments $113 billion over 30 years, was emasculated.

“There is no justifying this giveaway, which will cost over $4 billion,” the Empire Center has noted. “It is a heist from current and future taxpayers that will push property taxes higher and diminish public services. New York employees already get more generous benefits (on top of collecting Social Security) than any private sector group.”

The budget abuses and giveaways I have described are only the tip of the fiscal iceberg.

More on Gov. Hochul’s egregious tax and spend budget in my next column.

The following appeared on Monday, April 1, 2024, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:

Buried deep in the state Legislature’s budget is a frightening proposal that if signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul would increase the pensions cost for state and municipal employers to the tune of $4 billion.

To understand the impact of the Legislature’s sleight of hand ploy, a walk down memory lane will be helpful.

At the turn of the century, combined annual taxpayer contributions to the state’s defined benefit pension system was $1 billion. By 2010, that figure grew to a staggering $10 billion. (In recent years the cost has been about $16 billion annually.)

To address the ticking pension “time bomb,” Gov. David Paterson persuaded the Legislature to support a modest modified pension plan known as “Tier 5” that covers employees hired on or after Jan. 1, 2010.

While the Tier 5 benefit would cost less, there was a major flaw: New York City employees were not included in the plan.

After taking office in 2011, Gov. Andrew Cuomo realized that the Paterson initiative was not enough to shore up the pension system.

So, in 2021 Cuomo proposed “Tier 6” to further contain defined benefit pension costs.  That bold reform was projected to save state and municipal governments $113 billion over 30 years.

Tier 6 benefit changes included:

• An increase in the minimum full benefit retirement age from 62 to 63.
• Higher employee contribution rates, ranging from 3% to 6%, for those earning $75,000 or more.
• An adjustment in the final average salary calculation to cover five instead of three consecutive highest paid years, effectively reducing the base in most cases.
• A $15,000 cap, indexed to inflation, on pensionable overtime, which was unlimited for pre-2010 hires.

In addition, unlike Tier 5, it included New York City police and firemen hired after April 2012.

On the 10^th anniversary of the Paterson–Cuomo reforms, the Empire Center for Public Policy released a report in December 2021 titled “Tiering Up: The Unfunded Business of Public Pension Reform in New York,” prepared by E.J. McMahon.

In his report, McMahon wrote “The Tier 5 and Tier 6 changes combined are saving New York state and local governments outside New York City more than $1 billion this year, reducing total employer contributions by about 15% compared to what would have been billed to cover workers under previous plans.”

This is all well and good; nevertheless New York’s public pension system plans are very generous. Benefits are in the range of 50% to 75% of final average salaries. On Long Island, for example, several retired school district superintendents are receiving north of $200,000 a year. And don’t forget recipients are exempt from paying New York State and municipal income taxes on their annual benefit.

That’s not all. “State and local employees in New York,” McMahon pointed out, “also belong to the federal Social Security system supported by combined employer and employee payroll taxes whose benefits can raise their annual post-retirement incomes to more than 100% of pre-retirement earnings.”

Not a bad deal.

But the public employee unions are never satisfied.  Hence, in an election year, they are using their clout to pressure legislators to sweeten the pension pot for members who have been employed since 2012.

On March 26, the New York Post reported “state lawmakers are set to make it easier for teachers, cops and other state workers to pad their pensions—and leave taxpayers footing the nearly $4 billon bill….”

Under Tier 6, a retiree’s final benefit is based on average salary over the last five years on the job.

Under the new legislation, the final average salary will be based on the last three years of service.

Empire Center analyst Ken Girardin has written that the new rule “would retroactively increase the pensions for a small group of people who have retired in the past two years and raise the future pensions for roughly half of New York’s public-sector workforce.”

This is an outrageous tax burden to place on civilian taxpayers, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet and do not have a guaranteed defined benefit pension plan.

Contact your state legislators and tell them this expensive and unfair sop to the unions must be rejected.

The New York Conservative Party, of which I am a member, should deny its nomination to any Republican who supports the pension giveaway.