Pete Paterson . Chair of the Tier Equity Committee sent the below email to all members of the Commitee requesting information for the hearing Pete and I will be testifying at in Albany on October 10.
I am also asking all of you for your input as well. So any information you can send me to justify the problems you are having with recruitment and retention
will be appreciated. This backup evidence will help us with our Tier Equity issues. Please email me any information you have so I can include it in our testimony.
In Unity,
Peter D. Meringolo
Chairman
Below is the email from Pete Paterson to the Tier Equity Committee, which you should send to all Directors and Legislative DIrectors ...
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The New York State Senate Civil Service and Pensions Committee is conducting hearings this month regarding the outstanding issues the municipalities and unions are facing with respect to Pensions and Recruitment & Retention, which are directly related to our Tier Equity issue. This is a good chance to put on record all the problems we have been discussing about the newer tiers.
Chairman Meringolo immediately filed a request for NYSPEC to testify on behalf of all our member units, and that request has been granted.
What do we need from you? This is a great venue to provide evidence of why we need to equalize the pension tiers in all the New York State pension systems. While we face an uphill battle of additional costs to each individual system with any legislative win, we have an opportunity to provide backup evidence to support such changes and why it is of vital importance for the municipalities as well.
Now, more than ever, we need statistics on recruitment difficulties, changes in hiring practices, retention issues, and any other evidence of negative hiring issues that your unit is facing since the newer tiers have been in effect. Some examples may be a reduction of applicants seeking employment in your unit, drastically changing hiring processes to address lower recruitment turnouts, etc.
Please forward to me any statistics or any other information that we could use to support our testimony. We need it no later than the close of business this coming Friday, October 6th,2023. I know this is short notice, but we can get this done.
Thank you all for taking the time and effort for this important endeavor.
Respectfully,
Pete Paterson
