A bill offering thousands of additional city workers early retirement has been gaining support in the Legislature in recent weeks. New York City officials have protested, saying it would cost the city $200 million annually.

Not so, lawmakers countered. It won’t cost a cent, they said, pointing to the review of a highly credentialed actuary to prove it.

But what the legislators did not disclose, as they cited the expert analysis of the actuary, Jonathan Schwartz, was that Mr. Schwartz had not been paid by the state to conduct his analysis. His work was bankrolled by unions, including District Council 37, the umbrella group of municipal unions that drafted the early retirement bill, which is now moving through the Legislature.

Lawmakers have cited Mr. Schwartz’s analysis on hundreds of bills in recent years, with billions of dollars worth of potential costs. His projections were used to fulfill a legal requirement that every piece of legislation be accompanied by a “fiscal note” that examines its impact on spending. Mr. Schwartz’s consultant work for the unions was discovered during a review of Department of Labor documents by The New York Times this week.

Mr. Schwartz, a former city actuary, said that he routinely skewed his projections to favor the unions — he called his job “a step above voodoo” — and admitted that he had knowingly overreached on the pension bill by claiming that it cost nothing, either now or in future years. “I got a little bit carried away in my formulation,” he explained.

The Senate sponsor of the bill, Martin Golden, a Brooklyn Republican, said on Thursday that he had no idea Mr. Schwartz was a consultant for the unions. Assemblyman Peter J. Abbate Jr., a Brooklyn Democrat and the Assembly sponsor, said the bill was drafted by the union pushing the measure, and that it provided Mr. Schwartz’s analysis.

“It’s their bill,” Mr. Abbate said. “They drew up the bill; they went to Jonathan Schwartz,” he said, adding: “We assume he comes up with the real number. He was hired by them.”

Mr. Schwartz’s review, though, is presented in the legislation after an explanation of language changes, and appears as if it were a governmental analysis, rather than one financed by an interest group. It is the only analysis provided.

To critics of the Legislature, the reliance on Mr. Schwartz’s analyses is a startling example of unchecked coziness between lawmakers and labor and the willingness of many legislators to blindly carry bills handed to them by special interest groups.

On almost every bill involving New York City pension benefits in recent years, Mr. Schwartz has provided the analysis.

“I’m shocked the Legislature would use someone who works for the union,” said Blair Horner, the legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group. “This guy might be the best in the world at what he does, but at best there is a clear appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Actuaries are experts in the field of forecasting risk, life expectancies and the future pension liabilities of municipalities and other pension funds.

Mr. Schwartz, 70, who was an actuary for New York City until 1986, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that his connection to labor groups was well known. Asked which unions he serves as a consultant, he responded, “How many unions are there?” He then ticked off a list of his clients, including the United Federation of Teachers and unions representing firefighters, detectives, correction officers and bridge and tunnel officers.

He said: “The Legislature knows full well I’m being paid by the unions. If they choose not to disclose that, that’s on them, not me.”

He still called the city’s estimates that the early retirement bill would cost $200 million annually “off the wall,” saying that “at the very least, that’s high by a factor of four.” But even that would leave the city with tens of millions of dollars of additional annual expenses at a time of growing economic uncertainty.

The bill would offer workers a second chance to buy into an early retirement plan that had been offered in the mid-1990’s.

“What people call actuarial science is at least as much as an art as a science,” Mr. Schwartz said.

“Back in my days as city actuary, I would go to that part of the range that would make things look as expensive as possible,” he added. “As consultant for the unions, I go to the part of the range that makes things as cheap as possible, but I never knowingly go out of the range.”

Mr. Schwartz resigned from his city job in 1986 after admitting he had given false testimony in a deposition in a lawsuit brought by female employees who claimed that their pension payments were lower than those made to their male counterparts.

Farrell Sklerov, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, said, “It is an outrage that union-paid actuaries freely admit that they create artificially low fiscal impact statements in order to help push pension sweeteners through Albany, costing taxpayers millions upon millions of dollars.”

The executive director of District Council 37, Lillian Roberts, declined to be interviewed.

In a statement, she said, “As far as the cost is concerned, actuaries disagree.”

Last year, District Council 37 paid Mr. Schwartz more than $10,000, according to records from the Department of Labor reviewed by The New York Times.

John McArdle, a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, a Republican, said, “We use the city’s estimates before we make any decision.”

Dan Weiller, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, said, “The fiscal notes don’t determine whether the bill gets done.”

Both men said that bills received further financial review before approval and that in this particular case they would seek a so-called home rule message, which would require the City Council to approve the measure.

Source: NY Times