>New York City Officials Reach Agreement On Pension Reform
By: Bobby Cuza
City officials were joined by municipal union leaders Thursday afternoon to announce an agreement on a new pension system that will consolidate funds under a unified board in hopes of producing higher returns and lowering costs to the city. NY1’s Bobby Cuza filed the following report.
Right now, the pensions for city employees reside in five different pension funds, each with their own separate board overseeing investment decisions, with 58 trustees in all. It’s a system critics say is inefficient, duplicative and outdated.
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“Right now, if we want to make an investment, it’s like turning the Queen Mary around in the Hudson River. By the time you do it, you may be going in the wrong direction,” said Stephen Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association.
On Thursday, labor leaders joined the mayor and city comptroller to announce a new way of doing business: All five funds will be overseen by a single unified board, which will hire a new chief investment officer, independent of any one elected official, to manage the money. The aim is to produce higher returns and, in turn, lower costs to the city.
“The extra investment dollars that pension funds earn free up city taxpayer dollars that can instead go for police and fire protection and for teachers’ salaries or to pay for all the other essential city services,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
https://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/149725/city-officials-reach-agreement-on-pension-reform