BY MICHAEL J. LANDI

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah and a Happy New Year. We hope 2012 will be a prosperous and healthy New Year for everyone.

If you attended our December 2011 meeting, you heard our attorney speak on the ongoing problem of our members being charged with a variety of Policy/Rules violations. I strongly suggest that you read NYCT’s Policy Instruction Manual or go on line and get copies. Follow it to the letter. If you don’t understand a policy, text either Human Resources/Labor Relations or the Legal Department for clarification. Don’t leave yourself open for discipline. 

I want to say thank you to Arthur Mahler for being guest speaker at our December meeting. Art brought everyone up to date on changes for retirement cash out, 401/457 accounts.

As a reminder, Last year Acting Vice President Human Resources Richard Gorman issued a memo dated July 18, 2011 on the “Vacation Buy-Back Program.” This is an important memo and is a must read. Please keep in mind “any vacation time that exceeds current vacation bank limits as of April 30, 2012 will be lost.”  

There is a plan by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and New York City Comptroller John C. Liu to merge all of the pension systems into one. This move would place the NYPD, FDNY, Board of Education, Teachers and NYCERS into what Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Liu call “Pension Investment Reform NYC.” As you may know, NYCERS is the largest of the five plans with the most money in reserve and covers most of New York City’s Civil Service employees in NYCT, Department of Sanitation, Department of Transportation, Department of Correction and Department of Parks. Does this change mean if the other systems or the City can’t cover their obligations the excess NYCERS monies will be utilized? One can only wonder! There are also some reports that two people who may be hired to oversee this program are from the company that allegedly lost billions of dollars under John Corzine at MF Global.

Now that we are in a new year, will you be at risk of identity thief? Here are a few ways to avoid this problem-use Passwords and Pin numbers that are hard to crack, have a personal firewall along with updated security software, don’t use someone else’s computer to check on your brokerage accounts, use encrypted software to secure your wireless connection, never answer e-mails requesting personal information and always read your statements and report any unapproved transactions. 

During the year many of our members experience a change of address. If you don’t notify us promptly we lose you as a member for mailing purposes. You also lose if you retire and move out of state. If we can’t locate you, you will not be eligible for our yearly pocket calendar, receive notices of our meetings, and your children or grand children will not be eligible for our scholarship award. Please, notify us when changing your address and employment status.

When you received your 2012 Pocked Diary, you also received a new membership card with a “Bar Code” on the reversed side. This bar code is to be scanned when attending our meetings instead of signing an attendance sheet as we do now. So please have your membership card available for the March meeting and all future meetings.

This year’s Dinner Dance will be held on Friday, November Second, at Riccardo’s By The Bridge. Look for more information in future issues of this newsletter. We hope to see all of our members there in support of our organization.

Quote of the day- “One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors.”  Plato