Pressure on Hochul to Back Off on New Scheme to Cut NYC’s Pension Obligations
Municipal workers and retirees in opposition to a New York State budget amendment slashing NYC’s pension contributions are set to rally outside Governor Kathy Hochul’s Manhattan offices on Thursday, March 27.
By Joe Maniscalco
Municipal workers—both active and retired—are being urged to rally outside New York State Governor Kathy Hochul’s Third Avenue offices on Thursday, March 27, to protest a new money-saving scheme many fear could blow huge holes in their pensions.
“Originally introduced in 2023, this backdoor deal, backed by Mayor Eric Adams and the NYCERS Trustees, could lead to long-term underfunding and risk for tens of thousands of city workers and retirees,” Stronger Together Coalition for Secure Pensions organizer Evangeline Byars said in a statement this week.
Amendment #70043-04-5 of the state budget seeks to cut New York City’s pension contributions by $8.6 billion over the next decade—and then balloon that obligation again by $13.8 billion between 2033 and 2044.
Municipal Retirees—already bruised and battered by the City of New York and Municipal Labor Committee’s [MLC] ongoing campaign to strip them of their Traditional Medicare benefits in another cost-cutting scheme—are opposed to the budget amendment impacting NYCTRS, BERS and NYCERS pension plans.
Why, they wonder, is this amendment dated Feb. 20, 2025 being floated now? According to New York City Comptroller Brad Lander—who opposes the change—the pension system is about 85 percent funded and actually on track to be 100 percent fully funded.
Municipal retiree organizations, including the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees [NYCOPSR], Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations [COMRO], and UFT Retired Teachers Chapter, have already denounced the budget amendment.
“If it ain't broke, why fix it?” UFT Retired Teachers Chapter President Bennett Fischer told Work-Bites this week. “I don't understand what this thing is fixing. I gather that [Mayor Eric] Adams put it forward and I want to know what's in it for him—and I want to know what's the benefit of it for union members?”
What happens, retirees also wonder, if ten years down the line, the City of New York suddenly can’t come up with the balloon payments it will be obligated to pay?
“Where are they going to take that money from?” Fischer said. “Take it from education? They're going to take it from healthcare? Take it from social services—you know, who knows what?
COMRO’s resolution opposing the budget amendment reminds Governor Hochul that pension plans around the country “got into trouble when they failed to make appropriate pension contributions.”
The COMRO resolution also warns against an “unpredictable” economy—“especially as an impulsive President threatens huge tariffs and ignores the risks identified by most economists.”
“We Demand that Governor Hochul remove amendment #70043-04-5 from the budget immediately,” Byars added this week. “We will no longer support a Governor who listens to the establishment instead of her constituents. If she does not stand with us, we will vote her out.”
Speaking of Trump, it turns out that New York City pensions have $1.2 billion in Tesla holdings. On Wednesday, Gothamist reported on Council Member Justin Brannan’s new demand on the City of New York to fully divest from Elon Musk’s car company.
“I don't want to get hysterical about this really because nobody is borrowing money from the pension…no one that I know of is stealing money,” Fischer said. “It’s just a big, ‘Why?’ Why are we doing this?”
NYCOPSR President Marianne Pizzitola doesn’t know either—but she does hypothesize that it might have something to do with the 2014 and 2018 deals the heads of the MLC made to secure raises for DC37 and UFT in exchange for throwing all municipal retirees under the bus and forcing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan.
“I do believe that maybe [UFT President] Michael Mulgrew and [DC37 Executive Director] Henry Garrido tried to leverage pensions for all employees and retirees to pay back the city what they believe the city is owed,” she recently said on NYCOPSR’s YouTube channel.
A UFT spokesperson told Work-Bites the union opposes the budget amendment.
“To do this work, we have to have a trustworthy partner in city hall,” the spokesperson said in an email this week. “We don't have that at the moment and so do not support the budget amendment.”
So, what are they doing about it? According to Pizzitola, nothing.
“When we were on the phone with [the State Assembly] this afternoon they had told us that neither Michael Mulgrew or Henry Garrido or anyone from either of those two unions called them to tell them not to do the bill. You know why…because they didn’t want to tell you that they actually agreed to it,” Pizzitola says in a new video posted to the NYCOPSR YouTube channel Mar. 26.
Fischer doesn’t trust the Adams administration either.
“I just don't understand what his motives are,” he added. “I mean, the guy is in legal trouble. He’s in political trouble. He's had half of his administration quit on him. I just don't understand what his motives are. No one trusts them. I don't trust them, the UFT doesn't trust them. The PRS trustees don't trust them. I mean, even his friends, don't trust them.”
The 2025-2026 New York State budget now being hammered out— otherwise known as “The Big Ugly”—is supposed to be approved by April 1, but the State Senate is not yet on board with Amendment #70043-04-5.
“My hope is that this [appeal] will get out there to the legislators because I think that until a week or so ago, most of them were completely unaware that this was happening,” Fischer said. “And that's one of the problems, by the way, also that with municipal workers. That's the problem with anybody who's in any of these pension systems—until a couple of weeks ago, none of them knew it was happening.”
That feels awfully familiar to retirees who have spend the last four years fighting to retain the Medicare benefits they earned on the job.
"It is sort of reminiscent of what happened with healthcare, right? With the Medicare Advantage plan where they tried to slip it through before anyone even had knowledge it was going on,” Fischer said.
A Change.org petition urging Governor Hochul to remove Amendment #70043-04-5 from the state budget has over 6,000 signatories at the time of this writing.
Thursday’s rally outside Governor Hochul’s 633 Third Avenue offices in Manhattan is slated to kick off at 4 p.m.