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The foremost duty of an elected official, especially a fiscal watchdog, is to protect the collective interests of constituents — that is, all constituents, not just those who’ll help him politically.
But tell that to city Comptroller John Liu, Big Labor’s Manchurian candidate. Hardly a week goes by, it seems, without Liu throwing the unions a bone, generally at taxpayer expense.
As comptroller, Lui’s primary responsibilities are to watch over taxpayer funds, help minimize outlays and see that the city gets the most bang for its buck. Instead, he views his gig as a chance to promote his personal political agenda and enrich his union pals in the hopes, it seems, of locking up their support for a move to higher office — perhaps a 2013 mayoral bid.
Competition for labor’s backing for such a bid might be fierce: In 2009, labor’s political organ, the Working Families Party, endorsed several possible 2013 mayoral wannabes, including City Council Speaker Chris Quinn, ex-Comptroller Bill Thompson, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. (Like Liu, de Blasio has worked overtime to appease labor.)
In any case, Liu is intent on establishing an unmatched record of pro-union activism — even if his office’s mission, in large part, is to resist attempts by unions and other special interests to siphon cash from the city.
A city comptroller “wears several fiduciary hats,” says Harrison “Jay” Goldin, who held the job from 1974 to 1989 — longer than anyone else in city history. But “inherent in the nature of elective office, especially executive office, is that the official is a fiduciary.”
The City Charter specifically calls for the comptroller to make “recommendations, comments and criticisms . . . as he or she may deem advisable in the public interest.” By “public interest,” it surely doesn’t mean “whatever best suits organized labor.”
Yes, arguably, there is one exception: The comptroller is required to ensure that contractors who work for the city pay employees the “prevailing wage,” which he determines. But that doesn’t mean Liu gets to hand labor a blank check, drawn on taxpayers’ accounts.
Yet, at the behest of the unions that represent movers, Liu last year set an outrageous “prevailing wage” for firms hired by the city: $39 an hour — twice what the feds pay and three times the rate for private businesses.
In March, Supreme Court Justice Alice Schlesinger ruled that such a wage tilted ridiculously toward the unions and that it could lead to “absurd results.” But for Liu, it was just one of a rapidly growing list of favors for his would-be Big Labor backers.
Liu’s union suck-up actually began before he was elected, when he paraded around his tale of having toiled away in a sweatshop at the tender age of 7. His parents and family friends denied the yarn, but once in office, it didn’t take long for him to prove where his loyalties lie:
* Last year, his representative on a city panel joined in blasting a study by independent economists on pro-union “living wage” legislation — even before the study began. The legislation would force employers at city-assisted developments to pay a minimum of $10 an hour, plus benefits.
Liu, no doubt, knew the report would confirm the obvious: Above-market wages kill jobs. Sure enough, when the economists’ preliminary study last month said precisely that, he called it “distorted.”
* In March, Liu put out a preposterous — now roundly refuted — report claiming that city workers are paid less than their private-sector peers. Foreshadowing a major attempt to head off pension reform, Liu said his “findings about municipal salaries are an important foundation for any discussion about public-employee pensions.”
* In the following months, Liu issued not one, but two reports dismissing the need for pension reform. The first pooh-poohed “widespread notions that overly generous benefits played the leading role in the escalation” of city-pension costs. The second, released this month, argued — ludicrously — that outlays for retirements will soon drop, thanks to “significant reforms already implemented in recent years [that] will drive down costs.”
Last Friday, Mayor Bloomberg dismissed both reports as “campaign speeches” that “have to be separated from reality.”
“Let’s assume [Liu] was right and [pensions] didn’t keep growing,” the mayor said. “It would still be a disaster” — given that costs have ballooned from to $8.4 billion a year, from $1.1 billion a decade ago.
* Liu has also bashed Wal-Mart, which the unions want permanently banned from New York, and tried to use the muscle of the city’s pension funds — which he oversees and which invest in Wal-Mart — to force the company to squeeze suppliers to offer better working conditions. (Never mind his fiduciary duty to maximize pension-fund returns — which are dependent, in part, on the profits of companies in which the funds invest.)
* And he decided, with no apparent official justification, to step into a labor dispute last month between Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn and unionized health-care workers, insisting the managers resign.
* The one favor, though, that really takes the cake: his attempt this month — reportedly, at the behest of the police union — to dictate what a potential police-pension-fund investment manager could say publicly. Never mind his City Charter obligations, what about the First Amendment to the US Constitution?
If Liu does nothing else for Big Labor, he’ll still have an impressive record of union activism with which to seek its endorsement.
As for his record on behalf of taxpayers — that’s a different story.