Recap of the NYCERS Administrative Budget for FY-2026

By the Numbers

On June 12, 2025, the NYCERS trustess adopted the FY-2026 admin budget.

• The budget dropped from $166.0M to $165.8M.
  • Salaries increased from $53.7M to $55.9M.
  • Friinge increased from $16.5M to $17.7M.
  • OTPS decreased from $95.96M to $92.3M

NYCERS has officially stated that the Legacy Replacement Project (LRP) is "anticpated" to be completed by December 2030. That is a four and half year delay on a project that started in 2015. In addition there is yet no detail plan how this project will be completed by this date.

Highlights of the Other Than Personnel Services (OTPS) Expenses

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Category	FY-2025	FY-2026
General expense	$15.64M	$18.15M
Security	$915K	$915K
Busines Recovery	$3.10M	$3.65M
Mainframe	$1.51M	$1.76M
Non-Maineframe	$19.91M	$24.71M
LRP and Upgrades	$54.82M	$43.12M

Highlights of the OTPS Budget

In light of the fiasco with LRP project I want to point that the Accenture line item was reduced this year from $18.7M (2025) to $10.8M (2026). As background for this contract which began in FY-2021, the following amounts have been budgeted to Accenture for the LRP contract:

• FY-2021: $826K
• FY-2022: $19.32 million
• FY-2023: $23.06 million
• FY-2024: $23.19 million
• FY-2025: $18.7 million
• FY-2026: $10.8 million

In addition to the amounts paid to Accenture, NYCERS (in conjunction with the Accenture's work) contracted with Penfax for an off the shelf piece of software that Accenture is customizinge for NYCERS. The amounts budgeted for Penfax are:

• FY-2021: $3.06 million
• FY-2022: $3.18 million
• FY-2023: $3.59 million
• FY-2024: $3.99 million
• FY-2025: $4.19 million + $200,000 dev. licenses
• FY-2026: $3.99 million + $200,000 dev. licenses

Just for laughs NYCERS increased its budget for

• contract COBOL programmers from $2.0 million to $3.26 million.
• the Garnter contract from $1.76 million to $2.64 million

NYCERS has maintained or decreased its budget for the following major LRP items:

• QA Vendor from $1.37 million to $1.37 million
• QA Testers from $2.90 million to $2.90 million
• Data Analysts from $2.09 million to $2.09 million
• Project Managers from $3.26 million to $2.44 million
• Business Analysts from $2.76 million to $1.74 million
• Risk Consultant from $700,000 to $700,000

There was also a significant reduction in the contingency item in the LRP project:

• from $9.14 million to $5.50 million

This is a strange item to have in the budget since the Board has the authority to modify the budget during the year if needed. Because of this item, the OTPS did not really decrease by $3.6B in 2026 but is almost the same as in 2025.

The Salesforce/Accenture Application

Prior to the LRP contract Accenture installed a customized Salesforce CRM application at NYCERS.
The current budgeted cost for that application was $5.78 million in FY-2025 and is $7.38 million in FY-2026.

I can not get my mind around this total insanity. Just paying the bills for all this garbage would kill you.

History from FY-1996 to FY-2026

History of NYCERS Admin Budget 1996-2026

Fiscal Year	F/T Count	P/T Count	College Aides / Hourly	PS Budget	OTPS Budget	Fringe	Total	% Increase
2026	501	30	16	$55,860520	$92,309,697	$17,663,655	$165,833,872	-00.0013%
2025	501	30	16	$53,679,194	$95,900,865	$16,461,953	$166,042,012	00.05%
2024	501	30	16	$54,290,508	$98,040,138	$13,633,903	$165,964,549	13.37%
2023	485	30	16	$43,016,089	$90,436,500	$12,942,144	$146,394,733	7.92%
2022	483	30	16	$38,397,943	$85,531,063	$11,719,465	$135,648,471	37.94%
2021	474	27	16	$36,842,549	$50,210,145	$11,283,945	$98,336,639	7.10%
2020	438	27	16	$35,262,139	$45,862,557	$10,689,350	$91,814,046	4.97%
2019	428	5	30	$33,592,612	$43,532,302	$10,344,565	$87,469,479	39.44%
2018	415	5	30	$31,704,410	$21,832,718	$9,194,015	$62,731,143	3.55%
2017	401	5	30	$31,056,080	$20,916,796	$8,605,288	$60,578,164	4.81%
2016	392	5	30	$30,233,989	$19,407,619	$8,155,517	$57,797,125	4.70%
2015	392	5	30	$29,131,972	$18,154,572	$7,915,476	$55,202,020	3.68%
2014	383	5	30	$26,813,635	$18,761,240	$7,669,819	$53,244,694	2.18%
2013	380	5	20	$26,623,635	$17,951,822	$7,532,499	$52,107,956	1.93%
2012	372	12	0	$25,756,827	$18,781,428	$6,603,649	$51,122,139	1.14%
2011	372	12	0	$26,046,827	$18,492,228	$6,006,573	$50,545,628	2.76%
2010	372	12	0	$26,046,827	$17,777,228	$5,362,640	$49,186,695	1.88%
2009	371	13	0	$25,189,842	$18,208,861	$4,879,903	$48,278,606	6.22%
2008	371	13	0	$23,597,857	$17,259,313	$4,799,066	$45,656,236	10.80%
2007	364	13	0	$22,616,783	$14,258,471	$4,375,788	$41,251,042	5.73%
2006	342	13	0	$20,255,911	$14,683,855	$4,076,823	$39,016,589	1.01%
2005	342	13	0	$19,737,687	$14,851,355	$3,887,624	$38,476,666	***
2004	334	13	0					***
***								***
1996	154	0	30	$6,199,709	$2,573,715	na	$8,773,424	***

NYC - Exploding Costs for Employees Health Insurance

In the June 6th, 2025 issue of the Chief, the New York City announced the start of negotiations with EmblemHealth/UnitedHealthcare for a new health insurance plan for employees and non-Medicare retirees.

Warning: United Healthcare is being investigated by the federal government for Medicare/Medicaid fraud ae per a WSJ article May 15, 2025.

The City's current carrier is EmblemHealth/Anthem-Empire Blue Cross. The City will still be using EmblemHealth but has changed from Anthem to UnitedHealthcare for hospital coverage.

Current Cost Problems

It is clear from the chart below (based on NYC-OLR data) that the City has a serious cost inflation problem with the current EmblemHealth insurance coverage. It is, however, not clear whether this is an industry problem or is it a problem made worse by EmblemHealth's operations. In either case the City has an exploding cost problem.

Another scary piece of data is that it appears that Emblemhealth is almost totally dependent on the City for revenues.

EmblemHealth had reported premium revnue of:

• $8.33B in 2022 and
• $7.726B in 2023.

See report on page 6.

The City (plus HHC and Housing) paid EmblemHealth (GHI and HIP) $9,678M in FY-2024 as per OLR's reporting.

The primary problem with the NYC GHI-CBP health insurance plan for employees and non-Medicare retirees is increasing costs.

• In 2014 the City paid $3.416 billion in premiums for GHI-CBP and
  
• in 2024 that amount had increased to $7.927 billion.

That is an 113% increase over 11 years with a 13,000 decrease in employees and an increase of 5,000 in non-Medicare retirees.

Medicare vs EmblemHeath

In contrast to EmblemHealth, in 2015 Medicare spent $10,581 for both Part A plus Part B benefits per beneficiary and in 2023 Medicare spent $14,253 per beneficiary.

That is a 34.7% increase. (2024 Medicare Trustees Report – page 195).

As of the 2015 - 2023 period, the City’s total cost for GHI-CBP was $3.772 billion in 2015 and $6.861 billion in 2023.

That is an 81.9% increase.

In addition to lower cost increases, Medicare is a more effective plan than GHI-CBP and covers a higher risk population.

It would be very interesting if Medicare were able to administer the health claims for the City's employees and non-Medicare retirees and the City reimbursed Medicare.

The Participation Problem

There is also a secondary problem of a shrinking group of participating doctors and hospitals:

• In the NYC metro area
• In the rest of the USA.

I assume these issues are tied into the reimbursement schedules and operating problems between providers and Emblemhealth.

Over the last 11 years the City has obviously not been able to resolve this cost issue between the City and Emblemhealth and it is not clear how the City can resolve it now.