Council Gets the Answer It Wanted
The new (union-demanded) report finds that DROP doesn’t cost that much after all. Also, there’s gambling in this casino
Couldn’t Have Seen This Coming. A few months after City Council kicked the DROP can down the road—by demanding a second study of the program’s cost after the first one concluded that the program cost the city’s beleaguered pension fund about $26 million a year (though others have argued that the real cost is much, much higher) and the municipal unions pitched a hissy fit—it’s back, and this time, the new study says the program has only deprived the pension of about $100 million over the last decade, or $10 million a year. Next step: The unions will probably try to come up with a fix that lowers the program’s price tag—or, at least, superficially appears to do so—and Council will declare everything solved. Progress! [Heard in the Hall]
