Gov. Paterson today presents his package to plug New York’s gaping budget deficit – but the unions and special interests that run the Legislature have already made plain precisely how they view his efforts.
That is, with condescending contempt.
This much became clear Monday, when leaders of three of the state’s most powerful public-employee unions turned up their noses at the prospect of renegotiating their contracts to help close a gap that’s up to $1.5 billion this year alone – and slated to hit $12.5 billion next year.
Their answer: What’s in it for us?
So maybe the governor’s answer should be: “Here’s what’s in it for you if you don’t help out – layoffs!”
Big-time.
Albany’s 200,000-odd employees will make an average of nearly $86,000 each this year, counting irrevocable pensions and ever-expanding benefits – a figure that’s set to rise to $92,000 by 2010.
The total take: $17.5 billion, or nearly 15 percent of the entire state budget.
And the state’s army of teachers – paid largely through Albany’s more than $20 billion in school aid – do just as well.
Meanwhile, New York City – which generates a hugely disproportionate share of Albany’s income – is expected to lose fully 165,000 jobs in the next two years. That’s 5 percent of the city’s private-sector workforce.
Thus the private sector bleeds while the public sector feeds.
Where’s the fairness?
Paterson has worked hard to present an affable image since taking office in March, sometimes succeeding too well.
Certainly he has given no one reason to take him seriously – one result being that when he asks union leaders for help, they sneer at him.
That won’t change until Paterson changes it.
He needs to make it crystal-clear that union refusal to bear a fair share of the fiscal pain will result in public-sector job losses at least commensurate to those in the private sector – say, 5 percent of the total state workforce.
That’s 10,000 jobs, for starters.
And he can do it with the simple stroke of a pen.
Radical?
So is the crisis.