March 23, 2009
Police overtime under fire
Soaring police overtime costs--leading to soaring pension costs--are examined in news stories in Yonkers, Rochester, New York City and Buffalo, where the head of the city's financial control board called on the state Legislature to exclude overtime from pension calculations.
State and local government pensions are based on salary plus overtime of an employee's final year or years of employee. The Buffalo News reports: "You have people working 25 to 30 years and making one salary for 25 to 30 years with little overtime. Then, all of a sudden, they are retiring, and people are using overtime to pump up their pensions...and their pensions are in excess of what they are earning," said Paul J. Kolkmeyer, chairman of the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority. (For recent Buffalo News stories on how firefighters pump up their pensions with overtime, see here and here. Earlier stories on police, here and here.) Governor David Paterson is attempting to address pension "spiking" with a bill that would exclude overtime from pension calculations for future state and local employees, but the measure would not apply to cops and firefighters. "I don't know why they would make that change and not include police and fire," Kolkmeyer said of the governor's proposal. "That is absurd. They are the two unions abusing the system, and everybody knows it. They are the untouchables. Unless someone addresses this, the issue will not be resolved." It's not that Paterson is unaware of the problem--at least in one municipality. At the request of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, he has proposed excluding overtime when calculating the pensions of future New York City cops and firefighters.
In related stories: - In Yonkers, a pension sweetener granted nine years ago bases pension payments on the highest wages of a single year rather than the average of three years, the Journal News reports. (A change in the state law permitted localities to make the change).
"A move into a more generous pension system was hard to defend when times were good. It's harder to defend now," said E.J. McMahon, executive director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy. "These decisions have long-term consequences impossible to reverse when you run into bad times."
In Rochester, despite efforts of the city to control overtime by hiring new cops, the Democrat & Chronicle reports: At least four officers on the 754-person force each worked more than 1,100 hours of overtime last year--the equivalent of more than 27 extra weeks of work for each officer. (snip) Officers last year logged a total of 228,000 hours in overtime and paid compensatory time, the equivalent of about 110 full-time jobs.
Retired New York City cops told the New York Post that it is not unreasonable to require new police recruits to work at least 25 years and reach age 50 before retiring with pensions worth half their salary--as Bloomberg has proposed.
Overtime at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey totaled $50 million in 2008. The Post reports a sergeant at LaGuardia Airport collected $154,495 in overtime on top of his base salary of $103,760. A canine handler at LaGuardia collected $122,007 in OT in addition to a $86,467 salary.
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