April 2, 2012

Thousands of public employees across New York State rushed to sign up for pensions over the last several weeks, seeking to lock in generous retirement benefits before cuts approved by the State Legislature took effect on Sunday.

At the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, for example, more than 12,000 workers applied last week to enroll in the pension system — more than 40 times the typical weekly number of applicants. And the New York City Board of Education Retirement System received nearly 9,000 applications over the last two weeks, after enrolling only 122 new members in all of February.

“It’s just common-sense economics here,” said Stephen Madarasz, a spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association, the state’s largest union of public workers. “You’re looking at an enormous difference in benefits.”

Lawmakers approved the changes last month, requiring most employees who joined the pension system beginning on April 1 to contribute more to their pensions while reducing how much money they are promised when they retire.

Public-employee unions, which had unsuccessfully fought to dissuade the Legislature from reducing pension benefits, campaigned using social media and traditional forms of outreach to persuade workers to sign up before the benefits dropped. The New York State United Teachers asked local union leaders to alert their members.

The Public Employees Federation sent an e-mail alert to thousands of workers and posted on its Facebook page. And District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal employees’ union, used lunchtime meetings with its members, as well as Facebook, Twitter, public access television and a variety of media appearances to reach its members.

Many city and state workers are automatically enrolled in a pension system, but others, including some with part-time jobs, choose whether to sign up. Some have not done so because participating in the system requires making a regular employee contribution to the pension fund. “We encouraged them to get in now so that they wouldn’t have to work longer, receive less,” said Lillian Roberts, the executive director of District Council 37.

But Edmund J. McMahon, senior fellow at the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a conservative research group, suggested that the flood of applications was driven partly by hype and fear, rather than by a rational assessment of what he described as incremental changes to public employee pension plans. The unions, he said, “are talking about it as if it’s the difference between having a pension or no pension, which is ridiculous.”

New York is among dozens of states that have sought to reduce pension benefits to workers as the economy has slowed the growth of tax revenues and the size of pension-fund assets. State and local governments nationwide say they are struggling to pay retirement benefits promised to employees.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, joined forces with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and local government officials from around the state to urge the Legislature to reduce pension benefits, arguing that the existing system had become unaffordable. The reductions do not affect employees who enrolled in the pension plan before Sunday.

The Teachers’ Retirement System of the City of New York, for example, saw a spike in applications from workers like teachers’ aides, who, unlike teachers, are not automatically enrolled in the system. Matthew Laskowski, a public information officer for the system, said it had received close to 5,000 applications since the pension legislation was passed.

Pension system officials still have to check applications to make sure the employees are eligible, but both sides of the pension issue said the surge in applications demonstrated that the recent changes to the pension system were significant.

“The numbers speak for themselves in terms of the response,” said Mario Cilento, the president of the New York State A.F.L.-C.I.O., which opposed the pension cuts. He said workers across the state recognized, and wanted to avoid, a “drastic reduction of benefits.”

The largest surge in pension enrollments came in New York City, because the last time the Legislature reduced pension benefits, in 2009, it largely excluded city employees. That meant that for city workers, the gap between the pension for those who enrolled by Saturday, and those who enrolled Sunday or after, was particularly large.

Final data on pension enrollments were not available on Monday, but officials in the city and in Albany said all signs pointed to a sharp increase.

The city’s Board of Education Retirement System kept its office open longer on weekdays and opened the past two Saturdays to accommodate the influx of pension applicants. And the city’s Employees’ Retirement System also opened on Saturday, a first, said Karen Mazza, the system’s general counsel, and accepted faxed applications until 11:59 p.m.

Outside of New York City, 4,075 public employees signed up to join the state pension system from March 1 to March 29, according to the state comptroller’s office. That was nearly triple the 1,399 people who registered in March 2011.

The New York State Teachers’ Retirement System also saw an uptick; a spokesman estimated that the system recorded more than 1,500 new enrollments last month, compared with 1,035 in March 2011.

A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo’s budget office said the spike in pension enrollments would not have a measurable impact on the state’s pension system. The bulk of the projected savings from the pension changes are expected over the long term — $82 billion over 30 years for the state and local governments, according to the Cuomo administration. But only $1.2 billion is expected to be saved over the next five years.

Budget experts were divided on whether the deluge of last-minute applications would have much of an impact on New York City’s finances.

“No question it’s going to take some bite out of projected savings,” said Doug Turetsky, the chief of staff for the city’s Independent Budget Office. But he said it was too soon to tell what the ultimate cost would be, because some of those who signed up recently may not end up working for the city long enough to receive a pension.

Carol Kellermann, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, said she did not expect the rush of applications to have significant budget implications for the city, in part because the affected employees are mostly lower-paid.

“It’s school aides — it’s not police and firemen or teachers, who have the higher salaries and the bigger pensions,” she said.