November 12, 2008
Mayors: Compulsory arbitration drives up taxes
The Conference of Mayors kicks off a new web site aimed at persuading Albany of "the dangers of shifting state taxes and costs onto local governments and property taxpayers."
This week's "Mandate of the Week" focuses on compulsory arbitration. Under the Taylor Law, if a municipality reaches an impasse with police or firefighter unions, an outside arbitration panel of three members imposes a binding settlement. The web site notes:
As one might expect, an unelected panel of non-residents of a community are not going to be sensitive to the financial capacity of local taxpayers when it issues compulsory arbitration awards. As a result, the binding arbitration system in New York leads to contracts that are more expensive for taxpayers than they would otherwise be without such a system. NYCOM says compulsory arbitration "ideally, should be repealed". Short of that, it proposes three changes to the law:
- To make arbitrators more sensitive to municipal budgets, the law should put "substantive weight" on a municipalities' "ability to pay" an award without " without cutting services or raising property taxes.
- Prohibit the unions from raising non-compensation issues in arbitration.
- Require final offer arbitration, which would limit the arbitration panel to making its award based on the most recent bargaining table demands of a union and municipality.
Some practitioners who are familiar with both types of compulsory arbitration contend that the "final offer" requirement forces a convergence of bargaining demands, as opposed to what is currently used in New York. The compulsory arbitration law should be amended to require that the arbitration panel select the final offer of one of the parties on each issue before it.
To view the Stop the Tax Shift web site, see here.
For the Empire Center's report on the Taylor Law, see here.
« Previous |
Main
| Next »
|
