Gov. Paterson yesterday raised the stakes in New York’s public-em ployee pension debate by vetoing the extension of an overly generous law covering police and firefighter benefits.
The law, renewed every two years since 1981, gives newly hired cops and firefighters full retirement benefits after 20 years — a scheme closed to most other public employees for more than two decades.
The pension veto comes at a time when the city projects that it will soon be spending more on former employees than it does on current ones.
Thus are both Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg pushing hard for the creation of a new pension category, known as Tier 5, to cover all new public employees — so far, alas, to no good effect.
That’s because New York’s public-employee unions oppose reform, and the ever-supine Legislature toes that line.
Paterson’s veto — which came with no warning — challenges this status quo, and thus is to be applauded.
Sure, it may be overridden — but only if lawmakers are willing publicly to defend the indefensible.
Paterson’s own pension proposal contains new terms for cops and firefighters, including a minimum retirement age of 50, while increasing minimum service requirements for most individuals from 20 years to 25.
Bloomberg notes that such a shift would save the city $200 million next year — and $7 billion over the next 20.
The unions are the losers.
Thus has Paterson jammed a stick into a hornet’s nest. What happens next won’t be pretty, but we wish him the best.