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.
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