NYCERS is an Essential Service to its Members and Retirees

The following NYCERS members are essential workers:

• HHC hospital workers,
• Fire EMS workers,
• MTA subway and bus workers,
• correction officers,
• sanitation workers,
• DEP water and sewage workers,
• DOT highway/street/bridge/ferry workers,
• Police 911 & 311 workers,
• HA maintenance workers,
• TBTA line workers and
• countless others.

Besides getting out the monthly pension checks, NYCERS is required on a critical basis to process retirement applications, disability applications, and death benefit claims.

As of March 15, 2020, NYCERS has been AWOL.

The agency should have been on the front lines supporting the men and women who are risking their lives for people of New York City. The agency has 438 full-time employees and 27 part-timers along with 16 per-diem staff. If you take the time to look up the top salaries at NYCERS, there is no reason that NYCERS should not have committed administrators backing up the city workers out on the street.

These workers are dying and getting disabled. There are also many eligible workers at high risk because of other medical conditions who should be able to quickly and easily retire if their doctors are warning them to stay home.

NYCERS should open its customer service office a la Home Depot. Any member or beneficiary who has a retirement, disability or death claim should be able to directly meet with NYCERS staff and easily get follow up info.

At the very least members should be able file applications in person and receive filing receipts.

There should be at least 50 NYCERS staff on the call center phones every day. Voice messages should be avoided at all costs.

When you give damn, there is always a way.

The Transit Authority's New $22M Pension Liability

Recently, some genius at NYCERS decided to overturn a 20 year old legal interpretation of the death benefits payable to Tier 4 Transit Force members & retirees. The new interpretation creates a new annual benefit payout of approximately $22M.

The T.A. will have to pay the cost of this new benefit. On top of the on-going annual cost, the T.A. will also have to pay for the retroactive payment to the beneficiaries of every Tier 4 Transit retiree who retired after 1986 and has since died. I am sure Gary Dellaverson is thrilled but maybe, no one has given him the good news.

In 1986, the original interpretation was determined by my predecessor, Harold Herkommer, and the head of the pension division at the NYC Law Department, Jerry Dwyer. It was the correct decision. It appears in the NYCERS Tier 4 SPD (page 41) which was reviewed by the Law Department before it was published. But you better have a hard copy of that SPD because NYCERS has taken it off its web site.

A change of this magnitude should have been supported by an authoritative opinion from the Law Department and not by the fantasy of political operative at NYCERS.

Domestic Partners eligible for Accidental Death Benefits

In 2000 the NYS legislature expanded the list of eligible beneficiaries for benefits payable in the event of an accidental death of a member of the pension system. There are only a few accidental deaths that occur each year, usual less than five. There was, however, intense political pressure to provide this benefit to domestic partners, especially to members and their partners who were not eligible to marry.

An accidental death, as opposed to an ordinary death, is one which is caused by an "accident" on the job. The term "accident" has a legal definition.

For example, an event where a member dies on the job due to heart attack with no unusual circumstances, would not qualify as a accidental death. It would of course be considered an ordinary death for benefit purposes. If a sanitation worker is hit and killed by a car while collecting garbage, his/her beneficiaries, however, would be eligible for a accidental death benefit.

This change to the law was broadly written. It added a new final class of beneficiaries to the list of eligible accidental death beneficiaries. This class was defined as the group of beneficiaries chosen by the member to receive his/her ordinary death benefit. There are no restrictions on who a member may designate as his/her beneficiaries for the ordinary death benefit. For example, a member could designate everyone on his church bowling team.

The historical policy idea behind the accidental death benefit is to provide for the family of the deceased member, first the spouse, then the children, then the dependent parents, and now the domestic partners.

In accord with an old fashion sense of order, the spouse is the primary eligible beneficiary but only as long as he/she does not remarry. Upon remarriage the minor children (Tier 1&2: age 18 --Tier 4: age 25) become the eligible beneficiaries until they come of age. Then a surviving dependent father or mother of the deceased member becomes eligible. Interestingly spouses of deceased police officers, firefighters, and sanitation workers (Tier 1&2) may remarry without losing the accidental death benefit.

The wording in the new law, however, created a significant expansion of the benefit structure of the accidental death benefit. The operation of the list of eligible beneficiaries under the accidental death benefit is a cascading sequence of beneficiaries as the previous class becomes ineligible.

Now, when the proceeding beneficiary classes are exhausted, this new class of beneficiaries become eligible for this benefit. The class consists of the beneficiary or beneficiaries designated by the member to receive the benefit payable upon an non-accidental death of the member. These beneficiaries are now eligible for the accidental death benefit for the rest of their lives.

This change in the law makes any ordinary death beneficiary of any age eligible for the accidental death benefit, not just domestic partners. A members should factor this into his/her decision to designate beneficiaries for the ordinary death benefit. The member is now, in effect, able to also designate beneficiaries for his/her accidental death benefit.

This is a real change in the accidental death benefit. The payout window now expands from an average of 35 years to 70 years assuming that a member has designated his/her children as beneficiaries. It also makes spouses eligible for the benefit after remarriage, if the member had designated the spouse as a beneficiary. The spouse would continue to receive the benefit or again receive the benefit after the eligible children come of age. Of course the children, as ordinary death beneficiaries, could also become partial beneficiaries for the rest of their lives. Individual benefit payments would change as beneficiaries in this class die.