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A top aide to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared the other day that Mayor Bloomberg is “not the dictator anymore.” Though spoken by someone who’s obviously never tripped over a Gotham bike lane, the comment contains more than a nugget of truth.
The latest evidence of Bloomberg’s waning power is Gov. Cuomo’s breakthrough deal with the state’s largest labor union, the Civil Service Employees Association. The three-year wage freeze, furloughs and increased health-care contributions mean savings of $1.6 billion for taxpayers and go far beyond anything Bloomberg ever achieved with city unions.
It is so dramatic that an analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission says the city could save $5.5 billion over the next four years simply by copying the deal with its unions. Put another way, each day the city fails to get similar terms is another day Bloomberg’s largess is breaking the bank.
Equally telling, Christie, a Republican, and Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy, a Democrat, both struck new labor deals that contain similar givebacks from unions in their states.
The upshot is that, three years into the recession and tepid recovery, the city remains the regional laggard in slowing the rise of labor costs. Bloomberg often talks about curbing those unsustainable burdens but has made almost no progress. The explosion of costs on his watch is a major threat to New York’s future and his legacy.
That sorry record is not likely to change unless Cuomo comes to his rescue by negotiating pension reforms that cover city and state workers. Cuomo and the mayor are not pals and already are scuffling over several issues, so the fact that the mayor needs a political bailout from him is a sign of Bloomberg’s diminished standing.
“Mike has lost his leverage over the unions,” said one Bloomy backer. “His only hope is that he gets saved by Andrew in a new pension deal.”
The mayor has conceded he needs help, urging Cuomo to include the city in any pension reforms he pushes through the Legislature. He said recently that pensions are, “at least for the city, the No. 1 thing” and are “so much more important than another contract.” He noted the annual city pension cost will soon hit $8.5 billion, up from $1.5 billion in his first year.
Cuomo agreed to go to bat for the city, but state labor leaders, fresh off the concessions they made in the new civil-service pact, have signaled that they are done giving, even though a new tier of lower pension benefits would affect only future workers. Bloomberg has zero hope of getting any pension changes through Albany without Cuomo’s help.
However, Bloomberg should get another chance with city workers to replicate the terms on wages and health contributions that Cuomo got with state workers. Contracts with city unions, which mostly included raises of 4 percent a year for four years, with no concessions, already have expired or will by next year.
But first, Bloomy will have to fix City Hall. He fired his deputy mayor for operations, Stephen Goldsmith, and there is grumbling from businesses and community groups that the lines of authority and decision-making are tangled.
It’s widely accepted that the mayor’s attention is wandering, and nobody else has the clout to speak in his absence. The mayor reportedly has rejected the idea of a strong chief of staff to manage the daily agenda.
Even if he does manage to refocus his attention, there is no guarantee the unions will play ball with him. With the mayoral election in 2013, and potential successors desperate for union support, labor leaders could decide they’d do even better with a new mayor of their choosing.
In that case, the door to reform is closed and Bloomberg’s labor legacy is complete. It’s not a pretty picture.
Grade-A dunces at the helm
The system is to blame and besides, it’s no big deal. That is the gist of the woeful excuse by educrats for why they didn’t fire a Bronx principal found guilty of changing hundreds of students’ grades. The changes slightly boosted her school’s graduation rates, and helped earn her a $25,000 bonus.
More than two years after they got a raft of allegations of misconduct by Janet Saraceno at Lehman HS, education investigators delivered their report on, naturally, a summer Friday afternoon. That’s usually a sign of embarrassment, and in this case it certainly should be.
The report is sloppy and vague on key questions. And incredibly, Chancellor Dennis Walcott agreed that Saraceno could remain a principal if she left Lehman and gave up $25,000 of her salary.
Probers found she changed the grades of 342 students. It concluded she was guilty only of “poor judgment” in raising the grades of 312 who had run afoul of school rules on returning books. They found that 30 others who failed their classes still got promoted, in violation of city policy, after they passed Regents exams.
After all that, they made a deal with Saraceno that does not require her to leave city schools. Walcott’s reasoning is perplexing for someone who recently promised that “falsifying information will not be tolerated.”
He soft-pedaled Saraceno’s actions, saying she merely “misapplied our grading policies,” and claimed she was “honest” about admitting it when confronted. “Therefore, I concluded that termination was not warranted in this case and her skills as a literacy coach should be utilized,” he said in a statement.
So cheaters do win. There’s a lesson for the kiddies.
Pro-‘O’ crowd out to $ea
A new poll finds that, unsurprisingly, 71 percent dis approve of Oba ma’s economic policies. What is surprising is that 26 percent approve. They must live on Martha’s Vineyard.
Joe’s ‘terror’ble denial
In his testy exchange with two Tea Party members in Iowa last week, President Obama denied that Vice President Joe Biden used the word “terrorists” to describe conservative groups. But now Politico, which broke the initial story, has detailed its reporting in ways that convincingly paint the veep as guilty of the charge.
For one thing, Politico reports that “the vice president’s office has not asked for a correction or retraction,” which would be standard in such an important matter. It also says it had five sources inside the Democratic caucus meeting who heard Biden make the remark.
According to Politico’s recounting, a reporter contacted Biden’s office after talking to the sources and came away “confident” the story was accurate. Hours later, after the story appeared online, Biden’s office issued a non-denial denial, saying “The word [terrorist] was used by several members of Congress. The vice president does not believe it’s an appropriate term in political discourse.”
This is not a typical Biden gaffe that can be laughed off. The vice president of the United States has outrageously compared American citizens to violent enemies of our nation for daring to exercise their democratic rights to dissent.
An honorable man would admit it and apologize. Until he does, the words directed at Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954 apply to Joe Biden today: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”