Bad dirty d!

[Swimmy]

Our view: Public pension system rigged for insiders

The state is examining 62 governmental entities where this practice appears to be pronounced, including Utica and Herkimer.

What about New Hartford's shenanigans?! Or Whitesboro's?! Lest we forget the hundreds of thousands Jerry Green took away with his town attorney's fees reviewing FOIL requests. Or Whitesboro hiring their retired superintendent at full salary as an interim superintendent.

Where is the outrage? Where is the leadership? Where is the call for change? All of that should be emanating from Utica and from Herkimer, not from Albany.

I do recall the lack of reporting of the outrage concerning Carol Fairbrother's $72,000 buyout to hush her up on the town's finances. I believe the story was ignored altogether, or the fact that a Notice of Claim was filed against that payout.

I think there was also backlash at several officials who called for change, including tanoury. Where was your support then?

[dgriffin]

Oh, for gosh sakes. This has been going on since I was a little kid! And probably before. If the state wanted to do something about it, it has had at least 50 to 100 years to make changes. The practice started when government salaries were far less than pay in most industries. So an advantage to working for the government was a higher pension, especially through the practice of granting overtime to older workers, justified with the specious reason that they were more experienced and were giving better service, and then calculating a pension based on the highest five years or last five years (or whatever the formula is now.)

None of the reasons are pertinent today, especially in view of the huge taxes we pay, but government seems unwilling to take on the unions to enact a very easy solution, and that is to simply compute pensions in some other manner, e.g., a lifetime average instead of a 5 year average or whatever the current practice that results in such high retirement checks. (Teachers don't get overtime, but Tier 1 members can get up to 80% of their last year's salary upon retiring, plus yearly increases.)

There is not a scintilla of evidence that would lead me to believe the outcome of this investigation will be substantially different than prior attempts. THAT's the answer to the OD's question of why Albany brought this issue to the front before the localities acted. A local politician would make lots of enemies (look at all the government workers around here) and zero headway against this problem. Bureaucrats in Albany have nothing to lose and much publicity to gain by claiming ownership of the issue. And besides, this could be nothing more than a shot across the bow prior to the commencement of union contract negotiations.