Judges on strike? Only in New York!
The Post’s Bruce Golding reported Sunday that state judges are waging a “rule-book slowdown” in hopes of winning a pay raise.
Sounds wacky. And it’s thoroughly to be deplored as an egregious abuse of the state law prohibiting job actions by public employees. (Wink, wink.)
The judges have a legit gripe: Lawmakers haven’t hiked their pay since ’99. So they’re targeting legislators’ private law firms – bowing out of cases involving any practice that employs a lawmaker.
Some 77 percent of cases involving Weitz & Luxenberg – the firm that employs Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver (who is most to blame for blocking the raise) – are languishing.
And that’s just shocking.
No, not the slowdown.
But the fact that the Assembly speaker – or any lawmaker – can double up as a private lawyer.
Silver, wearing his lawmaker hat, can (and does) single-handedly throttle tort-law reform that would cost Silver, wearing his tort-lawyer hat, very big bucks. And that’s a scandal.
Scores of lawmakers have long served two masters: voters and their private law firms. State law deems senators and assemblymen to be part-timers (though they can, with perks, earn up to $110,000 a year) – and allows them “outside” jobs.
That sets up inevitable conflicts – as with Silver and Weitz & Luxenberg.
Lawmakers shape laws to favor lawyers – i.e., by making it lucrative for New Yorkers to sue each other. The huge cost is passed on to consumers and taxpayers.
Call it the Shelly Silver Tax – for no one’s in a better position than the speaker to help the New York bar (at the expense of the New York voter).
Now he and his conflicted colleagues are feeling some heat from judges – who, however understandably, are abusing their offices.
Yes, the irony is thick.
But the onus is on Silver, et al.