A message from PEF Retirees President Ray Ferraro
Time to push for COLA increase
There are 283,000 retirees in the state Employees Retirement System (ERS), including most retired municipal and city workers, police officers and fire fighters. The Teachers Retirement System (TRS) has about 100,000 retirees.
A few of them have put forth COLA proposals that have some points of disagreement.
The Retired Public Employees Association and Retired Teachers Association (RPEA/RTA) proposal states that a retiree must have been retired at least five years; the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) proposal wants the COLA to start at age 55 with no five-year wait. The RPEA/RTA proposal and the NYSUT proposal are both based on the use of Consumer Price Index computations, which would work out to about a 4 percent increase for someone who retired in 1990. The two groups also disagree on the cap point from which the COLA would be computed.
RPEA/RTA's cap is $17,500, while the NYSUT proposal sets the cap at $25,000.
These points of difference must be resolved so that we can move ahead in a united fashion to accomplish the goal of a reasonable, automatic and permanent COLA.
I sincerely believe that the Office of the State Comptroller would find the five-year wait and the $17,000 cap acceptable and affordable.
Nearly 35 percent of New York state retirees receive less than $5,000 per year, and 58.3 percent receive less than $10,000. The median pension for public retirees is $7,862.
Chapter
Meetings
· Albany meets at noon March 6 at PEF headquarters.
· Long Island meets at noon March 29 at the PEF Region
12 office.
· New York City meets at 1 p.m. April 1 at the PEF
Region 10-11 office.