A former Sanitation Department honcho is pulling in an astonishing $285,047-a-year pension — more than twice what he was making on the job, according to newly released data.
And that’s just one of dozens of huge pension payouts revealed in records published Tuesday by the Empire Center for Public Policy — data that lay bare the city’s insanely generous pension system, the government watchdog said.
“Pensions like these are unheard of in the private sector — and deserve the close scrutiny of taxpayers,” said Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Empire Center.
“The long list of six-figure pensioners in the New York City Employees’ Retirement System shows just how great a burden the city has placed on its finances,” Hoefer added.
Eugene Egan, the garbage-hauling agency’s longtime director of labor relations, was earning $128,189 a year when he retired in 2015, public records show.
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But because the 86-year-old Bronx man started working for the department before July 1973, he was enrolled in the city’s most lavish pension plan — known as Tier 1 — and was able to continue growing his retirement pot throughout a lengthy career.
Asked about his lifetime golden handshake on Tuesday, the golden oldie became defensive and called the figures “fake news.”
“You’ll go ahead and say I’m ripping off the city ’cause I got a pension,” Egan said at the door of his two-story home in the Bronx, saying he didn’t want to look “like a bum.”
“The fact is that I worked almost 60 years for it,” he added.
While he was still working for the Sanitation Department, Egan didn’t like other workers at the agency knowing how long he’d been there, a department insider who worked with him told the Post — but said he was known as a good and knowledgeable guy.
The source said Egan kicked in his own contributions over the years to help fatten his final pension check.
Egan wouldn’t break down the details of his sweet Tier 1 deal, which is no longer available to today’s city workers. The average Department of Sanitation pension is $49,405, according to the Empire Center.
“You retire. That’s it,” he snapped, before shutting the door on a Post reporter, instructing him to “get an honest job.”
There are only 853 active Tier 1 members left in Gotham, according to the Comptroller’s Office.
But the eye-popping pensions still show the city should move toward defined contribution systems like 401(k) plans instead of such unsustainable schemes, according to Citizens Budget Commission vice president Maria Doulis.
“This is sweet for the retirees. A little bitter for the taxpayers,” Doulis said.
“Pension costs are now a $10 billion expense in the city budget,” she added.
Despite the fact that taxpayers are footing the bill, the Empire Center had to fight in court for years to get unredacted records from the New York City Employees’ Retirement System — which manages the pensions of more than 135,000 retirees.
The figures released on the center’s SeeThroughNY online database show payments of $3.8 billion in 2016.
This report previously appeared at NYPost.com
Fine with me. I hope they triple in number. Libs have been promoting extraordinary bene’s for civil ‘servants’ for a generation to keep them voting dummocratic. Now pay the bill.
He figured out how the system works, conformed to it to make it work to his advantage, and came out the winner because he did.
I imagine most posters here want to do the same thing within whatever system they are functioning.
You can argue all you want about whether this retirement system should be or not -if I read the article right, it no longer is, but that has nothing to do with those smart enough to take advantage of it while it is there.
It is really no different than millionaires drawing their SS checks… the reasoning is exactly the same. They paid into the plan and now they the benefit.
Move along.
Maggie – if you do not shine a light down the outhouse hole, the world will not be able to see the shit and the cockroaches.
This crap needs to stop and unless it is exposed it will not.
And your comment re millionaires drawing SS in comparison to this is absurd. When they get more back each year than their highest salary, let us know. And a light needs to be shone on that, too. Everyone on SS is a problem, not just “millionaires”.
I never learned how to properly use the sarcasm tag, but I was speaking somewhat tongue in cheek.
Of course, shit like this needs to stop. As a matter of fact, how about those retired presidents pensions, medical care and security teams. Anybody think anyone needs the country to pay for their transportation and a security detail?
My bad. It is 4 am here. Sarcasm does not compute this time of nite.
El Coyote, I am the recipient of the closest thing you know who from the land down under comes to admitting he was mistaken.
Not that I’m stupid enough to point it out.
llpoh… is alright. I sometimes do not use my words as well as I could. EC calls me moran for good reason and pops in from time to time to correct me. Not that he knows what he thinks he knows.
Maggie, as a high income earner, I paid a lot of money into FICA. If I could have invested that money , I would have made much more money than what I get from SS. Also I would have the principle.
FICA is based on EARNED income. All us millionaires that collect SS, have earned it through payroll deductions.
What’s even worst – the Feds and the state (here in MN) tax our SS, even though we initially paid tax on our FICA contributions.
Dutchman… EGAD… I need to learn my lesson about flyby comments.
You are, of course, right. Earned it, entitled to it and it is yours.
However, they tell me that one day soon the fund will be paying out so much more than it is taking in that the benefits will be cut. I think most of us plan to apply for our SS dollars as soon as we can get it, hoping to recoup at least some of the monies our Congress Critters have frittered away.
that the benefits will be cut
Don’t worry they won’t cut our benefits – they will cut the benefits to the Millennials. Maybe even increase the wage tax, and raise their retirement age – that’s how the system works.
NYC, New England, Yankees, Liberals, Democrats…need I say any more.
Could this be one of the reasons These cities are going bankrupt??I just wonder how much long this can go on without collapsing the system.
It’ll go on till the economy takes a negative turn, which has happened many times in the past and which is guaranteed to happen again, and the ability to keep the payments up is interrupted for a significant period of time.
That might happen this year, or might happen 50 years from now, but it will happen eventually.
Does a “common person” really need over $20,000 a month to live? Just asking, John
I imagine it depends on how you live.
$20,000 a month may be enough for some, or too much for others, but not enough for still others.
Who should be the one that decides this?
Why is it any of your concern whether someone “needs” $20,000 / month to live? Hell, noone needs more than food, shelter and basics, however if they earned more, through their own work, I have no problem with someone spending $100,000 a month to live.
I really have no problem with this guy getting what he has gotten. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. The GAME is the problem, and the VOTERS in these places are completely ignorant as to math, and believe all of the liars in congress and local state houses that our “poor” civil servants don’t have enough. When they asked for the upteenth “voter approved bond increase”, they could have checked the NO box. The problem is ultimately coming home to roost. The same asshats that vote for better living for the civil servants, now complain when one of them is living better? You know, there is a cure for that – move the fuck out of New York. You don’t “need” to live there and continue paying his fat pension. What is the difference between New York and Detroit? Detroit ran out of producers willing to pay for the stupid promises previous generations of voters obligated them to. We’ll see how guys like this can draw that when the producers stop showing up to produce….
Hmm,greed or envy?
Back in the eighties a wise consultant said that a dentist would not earn more than a garbage man until he/she reached an age of over 55 if they worked hard. This computation included the factor of the dentist not working for 8 years, income from the ‘cost of education’ invested instead of spent and steady advancement of the garbage man with pay raises and pension contributions.
Between divorces and bad luck (choices), I only made real money the last 5 years. If I had worked another 5 years I could have been in the league of Eugene.
That bitch doesn’t have shit on the Cajun Cops making 240K a year writing tickets . You’d think that someone in accounting would have said…Fuck this cop made 140K in overtime….Bitch must a have a cape .
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/crime_police/article_0f1518fc-c568-11e7-b79d-d7e067e04249.html