ALBANY (TNS) — In 2021, soon after Kathy Hochul became the governor, the group representing former employees of an Upstate hospital sent her a letter.
It explained the plight of St. Clare’s Hospital pensioners, telling Hochul how their pension fund collapsed in 2018, leaving 1,100 former employees of the shuttered Schenectady hospital with reduced retirement benefits — or no pension at all.
“We know you have a tremendous amount on your plate,” said the letter, which was also signed by state Sen. James Tedisco, a Republican, and Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara, a Democrat. “We respectfully ask you to please set aside a few minutes in the near future to meet with us and the leader of the St. Clare’s Pensioners Recovery Alliance.”
Four years later, that meeting has not happened, despite additional requests.
“She has always refused to speak with me,” said Mary Hartshorne, a former St. Clare’s employee who chairs the pensioners’ alliance. “I’d like her to look at the problem, to listen to what we have to say and to open her heart to us.”
New York is a big state, obviously, and many people need help. Nobody would expect the governor to meet with every person with a problem.
But the St. Clare’s pensioners are not a small group. They are a significant number of Hochul’s constituents.
And they are people — nurses, social workers, technicians and more — who did important work for their community and have been left hanging through no fault of their own. They deserve a few minutes of the governor’s time, especially since the state is significantly to blame for their situation.
It was a state commission, after all, designed to root out inefficiencies in the health care system that ordered St. Clare’s closed and pressed for the assets and real estate of St. Clare’s to be given away without enough consideration for the employees.
At the time, the pension fund was widely known to be underfunded, and the state, in fairness, did provide $28 million to help cover the shortfall. But that amount wasn’t nearly enough, and in hindsight, it isn’t particularly surprising that an employer-funded pension could fall apart when the employer disappeared.
David Catalfamo, a senior official in the administration of former Gov. George Pataki, which established the commission responsible for the closure of St. Clare’s, told me the state should have given greater weight to the pension fund as it analyzed the costs and benefits of shuttering St. Clare’s.
Catalfamo argues that the state has an obligation to the pensioners that must be fulfilled. He’s right.
There is, of course, a lawsuit filed on behalf of the pensioners by Attorney General Letitia James and the AARP Foundation. It seeks $73.7 million in damages and blames the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany for the pension fund’s demise.
The lawsuit claims that St. Clare’s Corp., a Catholic hospital, was essentially controlled by the church.
Attorneys for the diocese, meanwhile, say that while St. Clare’s was affiliated with the church, it was always a separate entity. They note that the diocese never financially supported the hospital or its pension fund, and warn that, if successful, the lawsuit could set a dangerous precedent for religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals.
Last week, a judge ruled that the case can head to trial. But even if James wins, the victory will be complicated by the diocese’s move to file for bankruptcy protection following sexual abuse claims made during the window opened by the state’s Child Victims Act. It isn’t clear the pensioners will be helped much, which makes the need for a state role clear.
If you don’t think taxpayers should rescue private pensions, fine. But please remember that the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021 provided $83 billion to bail out union pensions nationally. Just a smidgen of that money would have made the St. Clare’s pension fund whole, but its workers, who weren’t unionized, didn’t get a dime. They were ignored.
How could that be? Why wasn’t someone who could influence the Biden administration — like, say, a Democratic New York governor — looking out for the St. Clare’s employees? Hello? Anybody? Hello?
Hochul spokesman Anthony Hogrebe noted that while the governor hasn’t met with the pensioners, members of the administration have.
“Given the number of requests we receive for meetings with the governor, we frequently offer meetings with relevant staff to ensure issues and requests can be heard quickly,” Hogrebe said in an email. “We are aware of their request as well as the recent court ruling and discussions are ongoing.”
That isn’t enough. The pensioners need an advocate in the governor’s office.
Why won’t Hochul meet with them? I suspect the reason is obvious.
If the governor meets with the pensioners and hears their stories, she’ll feel obligated to help. If she doesn’t, she can continue to ignore their plight.
