New York (State). Governor's Committee on the State Employees' Retirement System.

In December 1965, Governor Nelson Rockefeller appointed the Committee on the State Employees' Retirement System to review, report, and make recommendations concerning the System. Since it was established in 1921, additional legislation and the changing nature of the System eventually resulted in inadequacies and inequities which the Committee was charged to address.

Governor Rockefeller requested the Committee to: develop one simple uniform, adequate, and equitable noncontributory system; simplify and eliminate duplication of benefits; evaluate the impact of elimination of employee contributions; and determine under what conditions and terms (e.g. voluntary or mandatory) the program should be made available to localities participating in the Retirement System. Specifically, the Governor asked the Committee to investigate issues such as benefits (e.g. disability retirement; death benefits; plans for policemen, firemen, and others; vesting; etc.), financing, investment programs, management, and planning.

The Committee's research team carried out a number of studies of these issues by reviewing New York's retirement system; other states' systems and their constitutional, statutory, and judicial restrictions; projected costs of benefits and provisions; and the effects of such benefits and provisions on future state employees.

The Committee determined that a new retirement plan was needed. They completed an early draft of such a plan by late 1966 and held a public hearing on the matter on February 16, 1967 to get additional outside opinions.

In its final report to the Governor in 1969, the Committee made a number of recommendations, including: a new retirement plan for future state employees, including guaranteed benefits and provisions and protection against inflation; establishment of a permanent advisory commission on state retirement systems; and legal constraints on negotiation of retirement plans and benefits to safeguard these benefits from being lost in collective bargaining agreements authorized under the new (1967) Taylor Law.