{"id":203185,"date":"2026-04-20T11:31:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/203185\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T11:31:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:31:07","slug":"pension-funds-belong-to-taxpayers-not-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/203185\/","title":{"rendered":"Pension funds belong to taxpayers \u2014 not YOU"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York\u2019s city comptrollers are supposed to safeguard taxpayer dollars, but many have treated the city pension funds they oversee as their own play money \u2014 and Mark Levine is no<\/a> different.<\/p>\n

Thursday, Levine announced that he\u2019ll skim $4 billion in pension-fund cash to boost \u201caffordable housing,\u201d in response to a \u201cworsening housing crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huh? New York pols have bemoaned the housing crisis for nearly a century \u2014 which makes it more the status quo than a \u201ccrisis.\u201d <\/p>\n

Yes, the city does need more housing, but that\u2019s largely because lefty pols (like Levine) have pushed policies<\/a> that stifle development and erode the housing stock.<\/p>\n

Equally problematic is when comptrollers tap pension-fund cash for their own pet causes.<\/p>\n

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

That money, remember, is supposed to be invested to fund payouts of public employees\u2019 pensions.<\/p>\n

Those payments are guaranteed by taxpayers, so when the funds\u2019 value falls short, Joe and Jane New Yorker have to make up the difference.<\/p>\n

And when comptrollers invest pension funds in the cause du jour<\/a>, they risk sacrificing returns \u2014 leaving taxpayers on the hook. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a major breach of their fiduciary duty.<\/p>\n

If Levine\u2019s \u201caffordable housing\u201d investment is truly a good financial investment, then his announcement is a charade: It has nothing to do with boosting affordable housing.<\/p>\n

If, however, he\u2019s aiming to expand housing, despite lower expected pension-fund returns, then he\u2019s hurting the funds at the public\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n

He can\u2019t have it both ways.<\/p>\n

Note, too, that Gov. Kathy Hochul & Co. \u00a0are poised to pass<\/a> pension-plan \u201cfixes\u201d (lowering the retirement age, for instance) as a suck-up to the unions.<\/p>\n

That\u2019ll only make the taxpayers\u2019 bill even higher \u2014 to the tune of $328 million <\/a>a year in Gotham alone; all the more reason to safeguard pension-fund cash.<\/p>\n

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In any event, it\u2019s not the job of a comptroller, the city\u2019s financial manager, to decide which social investments to make; that\u2019s a political, not financial, decision.<\/p>\n

Levine isn\u2019t the first comptroller to overstep, of course; his immediate predecessor, Brad Lander, sold off<\/a> Israel bonds because he despises the Jewish state\u2019s elected leaders. <\/p>\n

We get it: Eyeing higher office, comptrollers look to pander for future support.<\/p>\n

But again, their job is to minimize taxpayer costs by maximizing returns, not divert funds to bolster their personal popularity.<\/p>\n

If Levine doesn\u2019t get that, he shouldn\u2019t be comptroller, let alone ever hold any higher office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York\u2019s city comptrollers are supposed to safeguard taxpayer dollars, but many have treated the city pension funds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[433,8069,29533,10447,304,2907,60,426,9,56,63,65,64,299,240,1577,985],"class_list":{"0":"post-203185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-affordable-housing","9":"tag-brad-lander","10":"tag-city-employees","11":"tag-comptroller","12":"tag-editorial","13":"tag-housing","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-kathy-hochul","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-nyc-headlines","20":"tag-nyc-news","21":"tag-opinion","22":"tag-pensions","23":"tag-retirement","24":"tag-taxpayers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203185","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=203185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}