Relates to a service retirement application and option election on behalf of Santiago Francisco Mayol

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Andrew Gounardes says this is needed

This bill would allow the family of Santiago Francisco Mayol, a district supervisor who devoted his career to bettering New York City public schools, to file a retirement application on his behalf as if he had retired on the date of his death. 1 Despite having taken several steps to prepare for his golden years, including planning for post-retirement healthcare benefits, using up remaining vacation time, giving official notice of his retirement, and conducting an exit interview at the NYC Department of Education, Santiago was robbed of an opportunity to offi- cially log on to his NYC Teachers Retirement System (NYC TRS) portal and file for retirement before he passed away from a sudden and unexpected heart attack on September 21st, 2024. This means that Santiago's benefi- ciaries, including his wife Aileen Colon and two daughters Taylor and Madison, are entitled to only an ordinary death benefit, which is a lump sum payment worth three times final average salary (FAS) rather than the value of the full pension that Santiago had contributed to for over three decades. 2 Santiago's tragic situation, while not unique, is becoming increasingly rare. This is because the legislature recently took action to allow public retirement systems to honor pension applications even if a service retirement had not yet been fully processed by the date of the member's death, so long as the member had begun the process of filing before the death. In-service deaths that occur as a result of a job-re- lated accident or illness, meanwhile, result in an ongoing annuity of at least 50% of the employee's FAS to a surviving spouse or other depen- dents, 3 and members who are granted the opportunity to officially file for retirement before they pass can elect a pension distribution option that will pay their beneficiaries up to 100% of the retirement allowance that the retiree themself received after they pass.4 It is therefore only retirees like Santiago, who are victims of sudden, unforeseen trag- edy, that remain caught in this gap. Had Santiago had five minutes notice and an Internet connection, his family would have access to Santiago's full pension today. Compounding matters, for accidental deaths while in service which can be too sudden to allow an employee to log in to a retirement portal and click "file," public employees are offered a variety of supplemental insurance policies. Despite the fact that Santiago chose the highest level of life insurance on offer, employees are offered no policy that covers sudden deaths by natural causes, denying the Santiago family another means of potential income that Santiago had been contributing to for the entirety of his career in the form of insurance premiums he had paid. Santiago had an internet connection, but he didn't have two minutes' warning. And his family did not commit unprovable fraud by logging in after his death to file for retirement, as the current system strongly incentivizes families to do. As a result, his wife Aileen is only enti- tled to the ordinary death benefit rather than the full pension Sandy had earned. And the extra insurance he paid for for 32 years included a provision denying coverage for natural deaths. No just law should create a situation in which a civil servant can do everything right as Santiago did, and by virtue of lacking only a few minutes time and a bandwidth connection, leave their family bereft of the financial cushion they had otherwise been building for them over decades. While policymak- ers contemplate how to close this last remaining loophole in our pension death benefits system, having previously remedied this situation for in-service job-related deaths, employees who file for retirement but pass away before their application can be processed, and post-retirement deaths, this bill seeks to rectify this particular instance of injustice by allowing Aileen Colon to receive the full pension benefits she right- fully deserves, providing this grieving family relief

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.