Gov. Kathy Hochul, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins all back changes to New York’s Tier 6 pension rules, and roughly a third of the lawmakers voting on those changes stand to benefit personally.
Out of 213 legislators across both the state Senate and Assembly, 74 belong to Tier 6, according to records The City obtained from the state comptroller’s office through a public records request. That includes 11 Republicans. The overlap between the lawmakers writing pension law and the workers who would gain from it has drawn fresh scrutiny as the reforms move toward inclusion in the final state budget.
Tier 6 was approved in 2012. It slashed retirement benefits for public employees hired after April of that year, raised the retirement age to 63 from 55 for teachers and from 62 for other civil servants, and extended the vesting period to 10 years. More than half of all New York public employees now fall under those rules, according to the state Comptroller’s office. The changes were meant to reduce long-term pension costs after the fiscal strain of the 2008 financial crisis, but public sector unions have fought them ever since.
The United Federation of Teachers has led the push to roll back the most significant provisions. The UFT wants to lower the retirement age for Tier 6 teachers back to 55 after 30 years of service, let workers count overtime earnings when calculating pension rates, and increase state contributions to the funds. The full package carries an estimated cost of $1.5 billion annually to taxpayers.
Hochul made her position clear at a UFT rally in Albany on March 8. “Instead of taking the average of five years, we’re taking the average of your three consecutive years,” she said. “We’re taking a shorter vesting period from 10 years down to five. And also, I’m fighting for a fairer pension plan because it’s essential that we continue recruiting people.”
The UFT’s Michael Mulgrew said the governor gets it. “Everybody knows,” Mulgrew said of the pressure the Tier 6 rules have put on public workforce recruitment. He added that budget negotiations have stalled, though not primarily over pension provisions. The bigger fights, according to multiple sources and news reports, involve Hochul’s push to weaken the state’s 2019 climate laws and a separate car insurance reform measure, both of which face opposition from members of her own party.
Worth pausing on that dynamic. The pension deal isn’t what’s holding up the budget. The pension deal may be the easiest part.
Several Tier 6 lawmakers told The City their priority is the civil servants they represent. They also said their own pension status has shaped their thinking on the policy. That’s a distinction without much practical difference when you’re casting a vote that affects your own retirement account.
Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas, a Queens Democrat, is among the Tier 6 members of the legislature. She wasn’t alone. The 74 Tier 6 lawmakers span both chambers and both parties, a fact that helps explain the bipartisan floor support the reforms have attracted even as leadership negotiations drag on.
The political math is not subtle. A third of the legislature has a direct financial stake in the outcome. The teachers, train operators and sanitation workers in Tier 6 have been the public face of the reform campaign, and their cause is legitimate on its merits. The 2012 rules did create a two-tiered workforce where newer employees carry a meaningfully worse deal than their colleagues hired before April of that year. Recruiting teachers and transit workers in a competitive labor market has gotten harder as a result, union officials say.
But the presence of 74 legislators in the same pension tier they’re voting to improve is the kind of alignment that would get flagged immediately if it involved, say, a real estate tax break and a developer-connected City Council member. Albany tends to absorb these things quietly.
The New York State Comptroller’s office tracks pension tier membership across state agencies and the legislature. That data, released through a public records request, is what put the number at 74. The figure covers current members of both the state Senate and the Assembly.
Budget negotiations are continuing in Albany. The pension reforms, the climate law revisions and the insurance overhaul are all tied to the same final agreement that Hochul, Heastie and Stewart-Cousins are still working to close.