He also says municipal leaders are struggling with fast rising
pension and health care costs, a shrinking property tax base and declining state aid.
Even when districts do try to achieve this balance, some costs
like pensions and health care can actually increase, becoming more concentrated and dependent on the funding of students who remain.
As CMD reported in August 2013, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal had spun off part of their operations in West Virginia in order to avoid «legacy liabilities» owed to retired workers: «a fancy word for the earned retirement
pensions and health care obligations of the men and women who toiled in underground mines for decades building Peabody's wealth.
Q. Would you please describe the steps being taken to address the
increasing pension and health care costs the district must budget for so that it will not have to continue to cut teaching positions and increase class sizes each year for the foreseeable future?
That's the amount of future liabilities owed by NYSUT to the union's staff members, primarily
for pension and health care costs, according to a report recently filed by the union.
Republicans, however, argue the legislature is within its rights to change laws, particularly after the current contract with the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition
on pensions and health care benefits expires in 2022.
Municipalities have complained of fiscal stress due to stagnant tax bases and aid (Cuomo's budget holds municipal aid money flat) as well as rising expenses driven
by pensions and health care.
The buyout gives us another opportunity to remind voters that part - time county legislators, if they remain in office long enough, get a
state pension and health care benefits on top of their generous pay.
Such analysis is especially important, given the impact of an ageing population on economic growth, and government revenues and spending, especially for
public pensions and health care.
Trump can put a little more money into the pockets of coal executives, the ones trying to
escape pension and health care obligations to retirees even as they hoover up bonuses.
He successfully organized New York City subway workers in the 1930s, and then secured contracts for them that — for the first time — granted them weekends off,
pensions and health care coverage.
For most of the past decade,
surging pension and health care costs have forced school leaders to make hard choices between cutting programs or asking voters to approve local tax increases.
But next year's overall budget of $ 298.8 million represents an increase of $ 700,000, or 0.23 percent, largely because of rising
pension and health care expenses, she said.
Baynes calls Detriot's bankruptcy filing «a cautionary tale» for both the state and local governments, adding the similarities for upstate cities include the shrinking tax base and increased public service costs combined with built - in
pension and health care spending.
The last item has the eternal ire of education groups, who say it will unfairly hurt school, and point to mandated cost - drivers such as
pensions and health care placed on schools.
Many other municipalities, finding their budgets strained by
soaring pension and health care costs, are resorting to layoffs and service cuts to balance their budgets — or to try to bring unions back to the bargaining table.
But
fat pension and health care benefits make perfect sense to union leaders — especially when the union runs the health care insurance plan, as is the case in Milwaukee.
The Center on Reinventing Public Education has a new report out this week that makes clear that the financial challenges facing such districts arise from irresponsible labor contracts, failure to reduce semi-fixed costs in response to enrollment loss, and rigid and
unsustainable pension and health care commitments.
This trend coincided roughly with a teacher hiring boom here in the United States, meaning these changes happened despite districts» employing more teachers, and it's likely to continue as states and districts continue to feel the pressure from
unfunded pension and health care promises, which totaled $ 1.38 trillion at last count.
You can judge for yourself, but I'd like to think that Randi and I managed to have a serious but civil debate about whether teachers are under attack,
teacher pensions and health care, the new unionism, teacher evaluation, teacher pay, and the rest.
In the US teachers unions have
negotiated pension and health care benefits considerably better than the average benefits available to graduates working in private industry (where fixed benefit pensions hardly exist any more).
Gov. Scott Walker's announcement Friday to curtail union bargaining and
require pension and health care contributions from public employees upped the ante in a debate over K - 12 education funding.
Consistently, bankruptcy courts have paid out CEO bonuses while allowing companies to
ditch pension and health care obligations, and there's every reason to expect this could happen for Arch as well.
A new opportunity has arisen for a Maintenance Engineer to work the night shift, where you will be earning a salary of # 30,000 to # 35,000 per annum, plus excellent benefits that
includes pension and health care.
Silver wants to exclude from a cap some government costs — such
as pension and health care costs — meaning town governments and school districts would only apply the tax limit to other parts of their budgets, like payroll or equipment, according to Brian Sampson, of Unshackle Upstate, a group that supports the tax cap.
On the cost of pensions: Astorino said Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner is right when she says the biggest uncontrolled costs in local government are in
employee pensions and health care.
When Arbetter explained what she was asking about — mandated spending being items
like pension and health care costs — Serino said greater Medicaid costs should be assumed by the state from the county level.
The city's budget comes due in the summer, but Miner already has said the city will run out of money in the next few years — even without the tax cap — because of sharply
rising pension and health care costs.
Here, in a nutshell, is the fiscal challenge for Syracuse: Since Miner took office, the cost
of pensions and health care for city employees has increased by $ 22 million a year.
Twenty - seven percent of state funding LAUSD receives goes to paying
pension and health care costs before factoring in teacher salaries, school supplies and textbooks.