An explosive audit from City Comptroller Brad Lander recommends dissolving a fund that helps finance city employees health benefits, concluding that it is billions of dollars in the red after being tapped for years by municipal unions and mayors in labor bargaining.
Declaring the fund “insolvent,” Lander’s auditors determined that the Health Insurance Stabilization Fund owes the city $3.1 billion, not counting obligations that have yet to be tallied for fiscal years 2024 and 2025.
The city’s Office of Labor Relations and the Municipal Labor Committee, the consortium of 102 public sector unions, “did not take adequate steps to improve the Fund’s position,” Lander wrote in an introduction to the report, released Tuesday. The fund is paid for by taxpayers and jointly managed by the city and the MLC…