By KEITH GRANT
The city will have to pay more than $2.7 million to the retirement system by next December, up from about $1.1 million this year. A year ago, the city's commitment was just $200,000.
The huge pay spikes are the result of stock market losses over the past few years, which have depleted the state system by $33 billion. The job of making up the losses has fallen to local municipalities across the state, all of which are seeing massive increases. Pension payments in Glen Cove, the Village of Hempstead and Westbury are all increasing by about 150 percent, while Garden City and Rockville Centre are seeing increases of more than 200 percent.
"It's an absolutely tremendous burden," said Long Beach City Manager Harold Porr III. "It's money for pension costs instead of for playgrounds, road projects or keeping in the taxpayers' wallets.
"It's killing every local government across the state," he added.
In Long Beach, taxpayers see about a 1 percent tax increase for every $200,000 paid out, according to Porr. The increased pension payments could, by themselves, bring about a 10 percent tax increase next year, Porr said.
The total amount paid by local municipalities into the pension system since 2002 has spiked from $168 million to $1.1 billion. Edward Farrell, executive director of the New York State Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officials, said his organization has proposed several steps to the state Legislature and comptroller that could ease the pain to local governments. One would allow local governments to set up reserve funds for the pension costs, while another would allow them to use money from other existing reserves, which is not currently allowed.
Farrell argued that the state does not need to recoup the entire $30 billion-plus lost in the stock market all at once. The pension system, he noted, still has more than $100 billion in assets. The loss, he said, could be spread over four or five years and not affect the retirement system.
Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg (D-Long Beach) said the pension costs present "an awesome burden to localities." He could not predict what, if anything, the Legislature would do, but he did say meetings were planned in the coming weeks with various state leaders, and the issue would be high on those agendas.
As for previous fears that Long Beach also faced a $500,000 budget deficit for the current fiscal year, Porr said auditors were in the process of reviewing the city's finances with Long Beach's new comptroller, Alice Schilukraut, who replaced longtime city comptroller Michael Barlotta earlier this month.
Porr attributed the possible deficit to significant retirement packages owed to many longtime city workers, particularly in the police department, where, Porr said, retirement packages average $300,000. Such steep payments are due largely to the city's obligation to pay for compensated absences that were negotiated into contracts years ago.
The city manager said that officials would soon have an approximation of the current deficit, and added that steps have been taken in recent contracts to control such payouts in the future.
