Posted on 12/12/2010 3:16:52 PM PST by Hojczyk
Want to know the single biggest reason why New York City is thinking about laying off thousands of teachers, jacking up parking meter fees and scaling back fire protection?
The answer boils down to one word: pensions.
The public pension time bomb that fiscal watchdogs and this page have warned about for years is now exploding - and ripping huge holes in government budgets across the state.
No municipality will sustain more damage than New York City, which next year faces a mind-boggling pension tab of $8.35 billion - a 19% increase in one year - at a time when Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council are forced to hack away at practically every other expenditure.
And the devastating drain will keep getting worse unless Albany lawmakers finally stand up to the public employee unions, dump the current retirement system and replace it with something taxpayers can afford.
Until that day, the city faces agonizing tradeoffs.
Take, for example, the Fire Department's boneheaded plan to charge drivers as much as $490 for responding to accident scenes. Is it any wonder, when the FDNY spends more on pensions and other fringe benefits than it does on salaries?
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
Rubber, meet road.
Kinda makes ya feel all warm and fuzzy dosen't it /s
yah...California has the 8th largest economy in the world, and yet 80% of every dime they spend is on salaries, benefits, and pensions.
These public employee unions will bring all of the States down eventually.
NO. It’s not the unions, they’re just doing what they do. It will be the spineless politicians AND the ignorant voters. This can be stopped...but it goes on...
NO. It’s not the unions, they’re just doing what they do. It will be the spineless politicians AND the ignorant voters. This can be stopped...but it goes on...
>> dump the current retirement system and replace it with something taxpayers can afford.
Like what? Social security? Do you really want 67 year old firefighters responding to your burning home?
Soylent green.
The biggest voting block in the State of Oregon is current and former public employee union members. They are hardly ignorant voters, and they vote in politicians who take care of the Unions. That makes both groups culpable.
What is the solution?
NY needs to file bankruptcy and negotiate new pension agreements. In no case should they get a bailout.
Politicians have underfunded the pensions for many years in most cases. They diverted the money to pet projects to get reelected.
Public sector unions should be eliminated. Politicians need the union endorsements to win election at the local, state and federal levels. The unions can turn out the vote. Then the unions negotiate across the table from the very people they just elected. Talk about conflict of interest. Of course, now some 75 year old retired building inspector is everybody’s villain. This is a gross simplification of the problem. It is a systemic problem: BAN PUBLIC UNIONS, then elected oficials might be able to be more responsive to the common good. At least a little more anyway.
We can work that out. No structure fires for elderly firefighters...only dumpsters, grass or turkey fryers.
No, I'd expect that any raising of retirement age would lead to pragmatic shifting of the work and filling jobs. 67 yo's might more likely be the administrators, supervisors and fire chiefs. Although they become less agile, they have points that become significant strengths: judgment and experience. With early retirements today, those strengths are lost.
Letting them go down is the key to the whole mess. Let ALL of these states and municipalities go bankrupt - it's the only way to get shed of the ridicouls "commitments" they've made with the money of productive people..
Get your freakin' hands out of my wallet, it's my money, not yours.
We have laws that make new construction very fire safe.
The majority of fire fighter responses are no longer fire related.
They can easily be replaced by EMS.
This is the big Union lie about fire fighters.
Fire Fighters are paid for a hazardous job which no longer has meaning. Pay them for what they do not what they say they might do.
Is this really true. You have a citation
These public employee unions will bring all of the States down eventually.
Game on. Deny them taxes and let it all collapse and be sorted out via bankruptcy. My wishes are irrelevant. Only bankruptcy can bring some rationality to this situation.
I think that are right on track. We want to be able to discard an employee as soon as he becomes less effective than a new one. No one wants to hire a middle-aged person in an entry-level job anymore. No one wants to pay pensions. I guess we should all be happy when Obama’s Death Panels kick in so we can purge America of the workers that are in the discard pile. That will cure our unemployment problem. We could also use the “Logan’s Run” solution to keep our work force young and healthy with good hair.
The procedure “To file Bankruptcy” should be taken off the books. It does not solve any initial problem of how you got to being bankrupted. It allows debt to be freshly started all over again! It’s a cheaters way out..I don’t like it.
>>67 yo’s might more likely be the administrators, supervisors and fire chiefs.
Those jobs are filled these days with recent college grads and diversity hires. What do white male firefighters do when they can’t carry 100 pounds up a ladder in full gear?
Not my state. We will review other alternatives.
Congress in the new secession will create a legal mechanism for states to go bankrupt. This will make it possible for them to restructure their debt. We aren’t gonna have a situation where we close schools, open prisons, and shut down everything else so public employee pensioners can play golf 5 days a week. Not gonna happen.
the unions aren’t bringing the states down. they are bringing down the working citizens that are expected to work longer and longer so they can pay more and more tax so the union members can relax in over compensated jobs and lavish early retirements. you have to wonder if the suckers will ever wake up.
Spoken like a true government worker or pensioner. There are a lot of creative ideas to fix the problem. Such as let them retire after 25 years and start collecting retirement pay at a normal retirement age, such as 65.
If these people in the fire departments can't live with a dramatically reduced wages and slashed retirement pensions, then they should go get jobs that pays more.
They're choking the tax payers off...Enough!
What I want is them not retiring at 45 with lavish taxpayer funded packages
Here in central Indiana, they work a 24 hour shift every third day.
Almost all of them have second jobs and make serious income on the combination.
Yup!...”The Land of Milk and Honey”
The problem is gonna be when they come for our milk and honey...They've squandered theirs...
I want to buy a place out there for 10 cents on the dollar....It will come back over time........ NO BAILOUTS!
>> Pay them for what they do not what they say they might do.
You mean that if a crew of firefighters prevents a $200,000 structure from being destroyed, they get 10% of the value, or if they prevent your heart attack from killing you while you go to the hospital, they get 10% of your life insurance and 10% of all your future earnings? They could be like privateers. Arrr!
When I worked in process controls on power plants, I prevented several unit trips would have cost the company over a million dollars each. The second time I prevented a trip, I had paid my salary for my entire career (if I had stayed in that job for a lifetime). Paying employees for what they do and not what they can do is cost-effective for low-skilled employees, but when you get to the critical and/or high-skilled employees, it could really cost you a lot.
Yes it is true. Go look it up.
Tell them to go to Walmart and apply for a job, like non-government employee white males do in the private sector that can no longer do their usual physical work...
Government pensions are gang raping the American private sector..
Enough
You are so right.
You are intentionally being way too literal. The poster was talking about pay for hazardous duty.
Why not tell us how you would fix the problem, rather than just pick fights? Sounds to me like you are for continuing the ponzi scheme of pensions that will bankrupt the country. I guess you want us to go the way of Greece - without us having anyone to bail us out.
If the FF cannot make it on 15 bucks an hour or so, and pay their for their own stinking retirements, then they need to go get better, higher paying jobs...
Odds are robots and other technology will eventually do a lot of the grunt firefighting work.
NY City tax payers are making millionaires out of NYC cops via these lucrative pensions and disability pension fraud.
NY City will pay out $1 million to each retired NYC cop within a few years of retirement. Often, the money is tax free due to 80% of the work force retiring on ‘disability’ in their last year of work.
If you completely eliminated the NYPD and just tallied up the economic losses for 1 year, I wonder if it would come out to the $8 billion needed yearly for pensions?
Not even close.
Warm and fuzzy until the fed steps in and bails these blue centers out with tax dollars. Then I start to feel like I need to puke.
Well that’s the problem with places like California.
I could applaud as their newly elected Dem leaders take them over the precipice of bankruptcy, but I know they’re gonna get a national taxpayer bailout.
Don’t even get me stated about bankruptcy. I cam the President of our HOA. High end condos..and I can’t tell you how many deadbeats file bankruptcy, and one they file, we cannot say BOO to them. They can come here, use the facilities and not pay a dime. It’s like spitting in our faces. It’s theft and there’s nothing we can do.
NY City will pay out $1 million to each retired NYC cop within a few years of retirement.
Beware of government employees, be they firefighter, cops or government paper pushers, that try to convince everyone how important they and their jobs are...
Plain and simple, they're *all* overpaid, with lottery style retirement pensions which we can no longer afford....
They are killing America....
I think paying the union employees for the work they do is great. Lets start by not paying for the 25-50% drop out rates some places in New York has. Screw the Unions.
I know a guy who retired from the police force in his 40’s...gets a pension..became a County Supervisor..gets a salary from that and then when he retires will get a pension and STILL be young enough to get another job. It’s absurd. It has to change.
“Soylent green.”
Now damn, that is funny. :)
How about eliminating that $12,000 Christmas present (aka: Variable Supplement) that retirees of the NYPD, FDNY and a few other select groups receive each and every December?
A defined contribution plan, instead of a defined benefit plan.
the unions couldn't care less about the taxpayers or where the money would come from to pay for their extortion, so... i now couldn't care less it their pensions go unpaid
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