May 12, 2008
"Pander alert"
When courting voters, legislators promise to eliminate unfunded mandates and reduce property tax. So how can they explain a bill that's greased for passage, one that would make it virtually impossible for the state and local governments to contain the soaring costs of health insurance for retired public employees?
Answer: The unions made them do it.
In an op-ed in today's New York Post, the Empire Center's E.J. McMahon writes state and local governments face new accounting rules that will require them to calculate their future liability for providing health insurance for retired public employees.
Public-employee unions are anxious to lock in these benefits before those big numbers start to sink in - and now they've settled on a new strategy for pulling it off.
The unions' legislative tool is a seemingly innocuous measure of the sort known in Albany as a "study bill"--window dressing for a provision that's designed to hinder future efforts by state and local governments to rein in skyrocketing retiree health costs.
Sponsored by Assemblyman Peter Abbate, D-Brooklyn, and Senator Hugh Farley, R-Schenectady, the bill
creates a taskforce to study retiree health insurance protection. Its 12 members must include at least five labor-friendly votes: three union
representatives and Abbate and Farley themselves. The only required "management" members are the state comptroller and Civil Service president.
The bill, amended last week, calls for a moratorium, until June 30, 2009, preventing the state and local governments from pursuing any cost-saving changes in retiree health insurance. A similar "temporary"moratorium for school districts was enacted in 1994 and has been renewed annually.
Newsday issues a "Pander Alert".
School system employees already have their retirement health benefits frozen in place, which is one reason school lawyers want to be included in that retirement system. Now civil servants are saying, "Me, too." Let's not allow "me too"thinking to yoke our grandchildren to untenable costs.
"What will Dave do? asks the New York Post, noting multibillion-dollar state and local budget gaps,which urges a gubernatorial veto.
No wonder pro-labor forces are pinning their hopes to this bill: They want union members held harmless even when it becomes obvious that their lush benefits - relative to the average taxpayer's package - aren't even close to affordable.
Speaking of rich benefits for public employees, see: Newsday's story;on another double-dipping school official; a Times Union article on legislators efforts to sweeten the pension of a politically connected employee; and a New York Times report on Mayor Bloomberg's objections to union retirement bills.
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