Two plus two equals five… years off teachers’ retirements.
New York teachers’ retirement age could be lowered to 58 years old as part of a $500 million sweetheart deal that powerful unions are pushing Gov. Kathy Hochul to accept, insiders revealed.
The stunning proposal arose during the seemingly endless state budget talks, in which Hochul has engaged in tit-for-tat rounds of offers and counteroffers over public pensions.
New York state teachers unions are pushing Gov. Kathy Hochul to accept a deal that could lower the retirement age of the state’s public educators to 58 years old. Stephen Yang for NY Post A coalition of unions pitched lowering the retirement ages of Tier VI public workers hired after 2012, specifically carving out teachers with 58-year-old retirement age, insiders said. All other Tier VI employees, including public health care workers and cops, would have their retirement lowered to 60 years old.
Hochul on Monday defended proposals to lower retirement ages.
“We’re having a real shortage here, so I have to address that number one,” she claimed to The Post, regurgitating the unions’ line of a alleged recruitment and retention “crisis.”
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“Number two, as you know, there was a very, very expensive, ambitious plan put forth and this has been scaled back dramatically.”
Sources cautioned Wednesday that the deal – which began as $1.5 billion ask from the unions that would’ve reduced all public workers’ retirement ages to 55 after 30 years years of service – was still not yet fully baked.
“The details literally are being still worked out and we’ll make sure you get them when they’re done,” Hochul said.
