Public sector unions are pressing for improvements in retirement benefits that are already generous at a time when the state can least afford it. Plus: why many kids struggle to read and the rising tide threatening New Orleans.
Now is the time for belt-tightening in Albany. Spending was too high to begin with and then Trump started cutting federal aid to states. Instead, Gov. Kathy Hochul, with the apparent blessing of legislative leaders, is considering improvements to public employee pensions that would drive up costs for both state and local taxpayers.
Unions are seeking changes that would let people retire with a full pension at 55 instead of 63 and reduce their required contribution rates. Their plan has a $1.5 billion price tag, much of which would be borne by local governments to which the state is sending bailouts.
Hochul proposed moving the retirement age to 60 and reducing contribution rates by half a percentage point, according to three people familiar with her negotiations with legislators. That idea was rejected, two other people familiar with the talks said, and lawmakers are now trying to reach an agreement on pension sweeteners that will cost around $500 million.
Ridiculous, starting with retirement at 55. Public employees already enjoy pension benefits that are the envy of those retiring from the private sector. And if that’s not enough, there’s the pension-padding that goes on.
The Empire Center for Public Policy studied the impact of allowing employees with the New York State Police and the Suffolk County Police Department to rack up overtime in their final three years on the job, the period that pension benefits are based on.
Overtime boosted the sampled officers’ final three years of pay by an average of 28 percent at the state police and 34 percent in the Suffolk P.D. That, in turn, increased their annual pension payouts by the same ratios, approximately adding an extra $20,000 annually for state police retirees in the sample and $39,000 for Suffolk retirees in the sample – amounts they are entitled to receive, with cost-of-living adjustments, for the duration of their retirements.
A quarter of the sampled workers – 17 percent of the state police retirees and 43 percent of the Suffolk retirees – boosted their pensions enough to exceed their final base salaries.
If these averages are extrapolated, they indicate that spiking increases costs for the overall Police and Fire Retirement System by tens of millions of dollars annually for each new class of retirees – and hundreds of millions over the course of their retirement years.
This is happening across the state, including Buffalo. And who pays for this? You taxpayers, of course.
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New York spends more on education than just about any state in the nation. Reading scores are middle of the pack, however. New York Focus pinpoints a reason why: Many school districts are using the wrong curriculum to teach reading. They include districts here in Western New York, as Investigative Post reported two years ago:
Only 39 percent of third through fifth graders in Western New York’s 99 school districts scored at grade level on recent English Language Arts tests.
What’s more, 31 percent of students lack even basic reading and writing skills. In some districts, including Buffalo and Niagara Falls, that figure approaches or exceeds 50 percent.
The problems extend from the city to the countryside, urban neighborhoods to suburban cul de sacs.
An op-ed in The New York Times says that hospitals are the biggest contributor to soaring health care costs.
Writes Dr. Zack Copper, associate professor at Yale’s School of Public Health:
Hospital prices are the leading driver of the 320 percent increase in insurance premiums that Americans have experienced over the past 25 years. Since 2000, prices at hospitals have grown faster than prices in virtually any other sector of the economy. They have grown three times as fast as inflation and twice as fast as prescription drugs and doctor visits.
The reason hospital prices are so high: hospitals’ accumulation of market power, which brings them more bargaining heft when they negotiate prices with insurers. Since 2000, there have been more than 1,300 hospital mergers among the nation’s approximately 5,000 hospitals. When hospitals that were once competitors merge, prices go up, often by double-digit percentages, with no measurable improvement in patient outcomes. Even though we rely on competition to determine hospital prices, 21 percent of hospitals are effectively monopolies — they have no competitor within a 30-minute drive — and an additional 24 percent face only one competitor.
The Sabres and city and county officials are in no rush to negotiate a new lease on the downtown hockey arena, not until the Bills are settled into their new stadium in Orchard Park. Maybe that’s OK, but what’s not acceptable, according to Mayor Sean Ryan, would be the continued failure to use major sports venues as a catalyst for significant economic development. Ryan is talking about the arena and nearby baseball park of the Bisons. He’s right; there simply hasn’t been enough spin-off development.
In this week’s Doonesbury, Rascal is ready to go to war, but the plot keeps changing. What, there’s no plot?
Dale Shoemaker swears by Pablo Torre, a journalist/podcaster who just won the Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting. He’s a muckraker of a different ilk.
A new study says it’s time to start abandoning New Orleans due to rising waters.
Ongoing sea-level rise and the rampant erosion of wetlands in southern Louisiana will swallow up the New Orleans area within a few generations, with the new paper estimating the city “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century.”
I guess the Tragically Hip was correct: New Orleans Is Sinking.
posted 16 hours ago – May 11, 2026