Another Time Bomb

Pension costs aren’t the only time bomb set to blow up the city’s budget in the years ahead. Anewreport shows retiree health-care outlays are also on track to explode.

The report, released Wednesday by the Citizens Budget Commission, notes that Gotham is now on the hook for “Other Post-Employment Benefits” (mostly health care) for current and future retired government workers to the tune of $95 billion.

That figure is now growing by $5 billion a year — and it will mushroom to $10 billion a year by 2027, bringing total liabilities to a mind-blowing $175 billion. By 2037, the city will face a whopping $322 bil

lion nut that soars by supersonic $29 billion-a-year leaps.

City-employee pensions now face $65 billion to $142 billion in unfunded liabilities, depending on how you calculate it, but at least some money gets put aside to pay those future costs.

Not so the other retiree benefits: Future taxpayers will have to cough up all the cash.

As it is, City Hall this year will spend 3.5 percent of its budget ($2.7 billion) on retirees’ OPEB benefits. In 10 years, the figure hits 4.6 percent ($5.1 billion); by 2037, it’s 6.4 percent ($10.4 billion).

Translation: less money for schools, hospitals, parks, cops . . . Or higher taxes.

It’s nuts. New York’s unfunded liability for perworker health care is higher than in every other big city in America — three times Los Angeles’ and 7 ¹/2 times Chicago’s.

There’s little secret why: The benefits offered here are simply way more costly.

A2013 CBC study, for example, looked at healthcare packages offered by six other large cities, New York state and the US government — and found that none paid 100 percent of the cost of individual and family coverage, as well as Medicare Part B premiums, as New York City does.

Other benefits, too, are less generous elsewhere — especially as cities have moved to trim costs.

Yes, Mayor de Blasio once promised to cut the city’s health-care outlays, but the savings were supposed to offset fat pay hikes he’d agreed to, defeating the purpose. Worse, the “cuts” turned out to be mere accounting tricks. So New Yorkers are still left holding the bag.

Can the OPEB bleeding be stopped? Sure — theoretically: CBC suggests “significantly” less generous packages more in line with what other cities and states offer and “more substantial and systematic” payments to a retirement trust fund.

That makes sense. But it might take a full-blown budget explosion for City Hall to take such steps.