Retiring CIO
NYCERS is in the process of hiring a new CIO with a salary range of $220,000 - $260,000. At the October 2026 NYCERS Board of Trustees meeting, the executive director announced that the current CIO was retiring. The person had worked for NYCERS since 2020.
The NYCERS executive director, Liz Reyes, will be the person making the decision on the new hire.
IT Problems at NYCERS
There is, however, an ongoing crisis with NYCERS’s IT projects, in particular, the Legacy Replacement Project (LRP). Since FY-2015 Reyes has been responsible for the LRP along with many other IT screw ups over the years.
As of the March 2026 board meeting, NYCERS staff has stopped providing the monthly report on the LRP to the trustees. At the February 2026 board meeting the trustees formally appointed Reyes as the new executive director.
Any new CIO will be faced with dealing with the mess caused by the person who just hired him/her. The details of NYCERS failures are clearly presented in my online postings. So, anyone on the outside can quickly get a picture of problems inside of NYCERS.
Control of the LRP
A highly competent and professional person could possibly fix this mess, but it would require him/her to take control of all IT functions within the agency.
This would create a severe problem for the executive director. The new CIO would have to identify the mistakes made in the LRP and all the other associated projects and then determine how to fix them. This would expose the executive director’s incompetence.
Because of this, it is clear to me that Reyes would not allow any new CIO to take control of the LRP. This in turn will create an obstacle for any serious person coming in from the outside. Of course, a clown could take the job.
It is most likely that Reyes will pick someone from in-house who she can control and limit his/her authority.
The Trustees
The trustees are definitely aware of the LRP problems, but I have no idea what they are planning to do about them.
I have to assume that Mamdani and Levine, who have reps on the Board of Trustees, have not been briefed on the budget chaos at NYCERS. The city is desperate for money, and this agency is bleeding money right under their noses.
