{"id":200151,"date":"2026-04-17T00:17:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T00:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/200151\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T00:17:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T00:17:10","slug":"gov-hochul-ny-state-legislatures-disgusting-tier-6-self-dealing-will-worsen-the-affordability-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/200151\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Hochul, NY state legislature’s disgusting Tier 6 self-dealing will worsen the affordability crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looks like New York lawmakers are laser-forced on boosting \u201caffordability\u201d for themselves: A third of the Legislature stands to gain personally from the coming public-pension giveaway.<\/a><\/p>\n

Overall, more than half of New York\u2019s 780,000 public employees are in line for a windfall as Albany looks to roll back the 2012 pension reforms<\/a> that made retirement benefits less obscenely generous for anyone hired after 2012.<\/p>\n

Their benefits still beat most in the private sector, but public sector unions demand more, and the state\u2019s leaders are poised to burn an estimated $1.5 billion a year on these pension sweeteners.<\/a><\/p>\n

That includes about $330 million from the annual city budget, over half what Gov. Kathy Hochul guesses City Hall will pull in from her pied-a-terre tax.<\/p>\n

And the damage could be worse, up to $2 billion a year for the city alone, if the rollback is retroactive.<\/p>\n

The \u201creforms\u201d would also move the retirement age from 62 down to just 55 after 30 years of public employment, because \u2026 well, because the unions want it.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

State lawmakers already draw six-figure incomes for roughly 60 days of actual legislative work, but news site The City has identified<\/a> 74 state legislators eligible for this windfall, including 11 Republicans \u2014 who all, except for Assemblyman Michael Fitzpatrick of Suffolk County, support this taxpayer rip-off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During his 23 years in office, Fitzpatrick has pushed to shift all state workers away from the current defined-benefits pension system to a defined-contributions plan, similar to a 401(k).<\/p>\n

Since the unions push to roll back every reform that passes (that\u2019s why this one is \u201cTier 6\u201d), that\u2019s likely the only way to truly end the decades-long metastasis of public-employee pension benefits. <\/p>\n

The state Conference of Mayors, Association of Counties and Association of Towns warned Tier 6 rollback <\/a>\u201cwould force local governments to make impossible choices: cutting essential services, eliminating positions, or seeking property tax increases that local taxpayers cannot afford.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gov. Hochul and the Legislature\u2019s leaders plainly don\u2019t care: Boosting affordability for regular New Yorkers takes a backseat to the inside-Albany greed game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Looks like New York lawmakers are laser-forced on boosting \u201caffordability\u201d for themselves: A third of the Legislature stands…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4241,304,426,11538,9,11,10,49,51,50,299,240,7754,1577,13038],"class_list":{"0":"post-200151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-albany","9":"tag-editorial","10":"tag-kathy-hochul","11":"tag-legislature","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-new-york-state","16":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","17":"tag-new-york-state-news","18":"tag-opinion","19":"tag-pensions","20":"tag-property-taxes","21":"tag-retirement","22":"tag-teachers-union"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}