Notes to the New Executive Director

With the new executive director starting after Labor Day, I thought I would share a few ideas from a former executive director.

1. Unlike NYSLERS, NYCERS has an independent administrative budget. This gives you tremendous resources to effectively run NYCERS. I recommend that you carefully read the enabling legislation which created the budgeting authority. See Chapter 593 of the Laws of 1996.

2. Even in the context of the state’s civil service laws, you have a great deal of flexibility in dealing with executive personnel decisions. There is a clear need to make radical changes in senior staff at NYCERS.

3. The budgeting law also provides you (via annual Board approval) with broad authority to enter directly into contracts for goods and services. You will quickly realize how helpful this is but it is a very sharp knife. Be careful.

4. The Board of Trustees is a direct descendent of the old Board of Estimate with three major unions thrown into the mix. It escaped the Supreme Court one person – one vote decision but not the permanent war between the Mayor and the Comptroller.

5. I recommend that you read my postings to get a detailed view of the organization that you are taking control of. You may not agree with everything I write but you will get concrete statements of facts. You will also find that the previous executive director left no paper trail of her decisions and actions while she was in charge of the agency.

6. The NYCERS web site needs a significant expansion of its content both with respect to general benefit information and detailed member/retiree historical data that NYCERS has in its massive computer files.

7. Current production reports are a sham and service levels are atrocious given the amount of money appropriated in the agency’s budget.

8. While the NYC Law Department is NYCERS’s statutory legal counsel, your personal expertise with NY pension law puts you in a strong position to insure members and retirees are treated correctly. In the last twelve years, NYCERS executive staff has taken a great deal of incorrect and mean spirited actions against members and retirees. I have written extensively about this in my NYCERS blog.

9. Personal plug: I run a successful pension and IT consulting firm and would be very interested in providing services to my old agency.