Another day, another Albany scandal.
But three cheers to the New York Times for putting one of the latest on Page One last Friday.
The Times told the tale of Jonathan Schwartz, trusted actuary and author of the official fiscal impact statement for a new bill – instigated New York City’s powerful municipal-union District Council 37 – that would substantially lower the retirement age for thousands of city employees.
The bill is strongly opposed by Mayor Bloomberg because, he says, it would cost the city some $200 million a year.
Oddly, Schwartz’s analysis pegs its cost at exactly zero.
That’s some disparity.
This explains it: It seems that Schwartz – far from the noninvolved technocrat one would expect for this sort of analysis – is on the payroll of DC 37, among numerous other labor interests.
Not that anyone, save for the Times’ reporting, would ever know this: His analysis is presented in the bill as if it were an official government estimate; it’s enough to satisfy a state law requiring all such bills to come with a fiscal-impact statement – and he’s done it hundreds of times in the past.
Albany, in other words, routinely farms out its own responsibility to watch the public purse to the very special interests intent on snatching it.
Indeed, the only true surprise is just how open everyone’s being about it.
“It’s their bill,” said Assemblyman Peter Abbate (D-Bklyn), the retirement plan’s supposed sponsor. “[District Council 37] drew up the bill; they went with Jonathan Schwartz . . . We assume he comes up with the real number.”
Not that Schwartz is under any such illusions:
“I got a little bit carried away in my formulation,” he told the Times, fully admitting to fudging the bill’s numbers to hide untold millions in public cost.
“It’s a step above voodoo,” Schwartz acknowledged.
But hey: “The Legislature knows full well I’m being paid by the unions. If they choose not to disclose that, that’s on them, not me.”
Wow.
All of this, no wonder, has incurred Bloomberg’s fully justified anger:
“You know, for all of the dysfunction and the outrage at ways they waste our money in Washington, at least they have independent budget numbers that are arrived at by experts,” he said Friday.
“In this case it is just thoroughly corrupt,” says the mayor.
Indeed it is.
Now that it’s out in the open though, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is feigning shock.
“I have determined that the Assembly cannot have confidence in any of the fiscal notes [authored by Schwartz],” says the speaker.
Well, of course not.
But that certainly won’t stop Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno from passing his bills anyway, you can count on that.
They lay supine before their true masters: not the hardworking people of the state of New York, who have little hope of early retirement for themselves, but rather those corrupt – and corrupting – public-employee unions.
It’s utterly contemptible, but it’s business as usual for Albany.