More than a month after the state’s largest public-employee union flatly denied it was holding Gov. Cuomo’s so-called justice center for the mentally handicapped hostage, it continues to do just that.
In the process, the Civil Service Employees Association is putting its own — and some of its members’ — selfish financial interests ahead of New York’s most at-risk population.
Caught in the middle is one of Cuomo’s most important initiatives: the Justice Center for the Protection of People With Special Needs.
A law passed by the Legislature last month would create a new authority under which prosecutors and trained investigators can pursue charges of patient mistreatment in state-run and state-funded facilities for the mentally handicapped.
The aim is to crack down on years of abuse — much of it perpetuated by the CSEA’s insistence on fighting every allegation against one of its members.
That’s what unions do, of course. But the result is that even the worst abusers have wound up staying on the payroll.
Moreover, in a genuflection to the corrupt influence the unions have purchased in Albany, the legislation left it up to CSEA and the state to develop a schedule of penalties via collective bargaining.
But as Post State Editor Frederic U. Dicker first reported in May, CSEA refused to negotiate — unless 1,700 of its members each get a $3,000 cash bonus.
The bonus is given to CSEA members who drop out of the state’s costly health-insurance plan in favor of their spouse’s plan.
But the union wants it extended to married couples where both spouses are public employees — an arrangement that would cost taxpayers millions.
Following Dicker’s report, CSEA flatly denied any such linkage. And the union said it would reach an agreement before the end of the legislative session.
But that, it turns out, wasn’t even remotely true.
Not only was no agreement reached, CSEA refuses to even come to the table.
And the union’s demand could end up killing the much needed Justice Center.
Maybe CSEA President Danny Donohue needs to reassert his tough-guy bona fides after the shellacking he recently took in his run for the presidency of AFSCME.
But throwing to the wolves vulnerable people who need protection — just to put some unjustified cash in its members’ pockets — is a pretty slimy way to go about it. Par for the course, though.