The Governor's Proposed Budget

    Governor Cuomo's budget presents a mixed bag. It contains  laudable achievements in reducing one shots and fiscal sleights of hand, and takes courageous steps in addressing a long standing educational issue.   However, it fails to control runaway union costs, and the practice of imposing unfunded mandates.  It also doesn't provide a desperately needed measure to revive the upstate economy, by ignoring hydrofracking.  

          

      The Governor notably demands that the powerful teachers' lobby accept some responsibility for the pitiful condition of our public schools, and pushes for new standards of performance.  The unacceptable fact that NY spends more per pupil than any other state, but gets generally dismal results in return, has been intentionally overlooked for far too long by governors, state senators and assembly members bowing to the activist teachers' union in return for contributions and votes.

     Clearly, the state government cannot resolve its systematic budgetary dilemmas until the elaborate political giveaway to public sector unions, the Tribrough Amendment, is repealed.  That is the law which requires both Albany and all local governments to retain for their employees contractual perks including automatic "step" increases even after the expiration of union contracts.  By failing to address this, county officials throughout the state will continue to be caught between a rock and a hard place.  They must comply with unyielding union demands, adhere to unfunded mandates, and meet expenses under the long-overdue property tax cap. New York State's Conference of Mayors, school district leaders and others are urging that Triborough be repealed.

             

     Putting public sector union costs on a realistic and fair basis is the right course of action.  However, the Triborough Amendment prevents this. The Manhattan Institute's recently released report, "Triborough Trouble," condemns the costs of this three decade old law.  Guaranteed pay hikes for state government employees alone due to Triborough cost $140 million a year.  That figure doesn't include the numerous other county and local union costs. For example, Increases for NYC teachers total $150 million, and adds $93 million to school budgets statewide. Those numbers represent only a fraction of the problem. As the report further notes, Triborough makes it almost impossible to fruitfully negotiate reasonable, common sense updates to new contracts.

      For far too long, state elected officials have failed to confront runaway union costs out of fear of losing campaign contributions.   It's time for that to change.