Diane Gordon, the Brooklyn assembly woman convicted Tuesday of bribe- taking, must be wondering why she’s facing 10 years in the slammer – while Speaker Shelly Silver, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and their respective henchmen are not.
It’s a good question.
After all, what lawmakers did this week in barring the use of student test scores in teacher tenure decisions was every bit as much a commercial transaction – a bribe deal – as what Gordon had planned.
Lawmakers OK’d the new rule, which handcuffs school districts and virtually guarantees even lousy teachers lifetime job security, for one reason only: The teachers unions paid them – outright – to do so, by shipping them boatloads of “campaign donations” over the decades.
Schoolkids? Never on the radar.
Indeed, no one even bothered to argue that the bill would help students. The sole question was whether the legislators would stay bought.
And the answer was easy: Yep.
Gordon, for her part, had sought a house in exchange for helping a developer win the right to build on city land. But she never actually got the house.
Lawmakers, by contrast, sought, received and have long since spent millions of dollars from teachers unions – in exchange for legislation like the bill passed this week.
And there’s a whole lot more where that came from, now that they’ve fulfilled their end of the bargain on tenure.
Sure, union “contributions” to individual lawmakers and their parties are perfectly legal.
The teachers handed out nearly $2 million in campaign bribes in ’06 alone, the National Institute on Money in State Politics reports, and at least another million last year, says the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Education groups also spent a whopping $13.2 million on lobbyists last year, including nearly $3 million from the state and city teachers unions, a state report yesterday said. (The firm run by Silver’s ex-aide, Patricia Lynch, took home the second-highest amount of total lobbying money, some $6.7 million.)
But lawmakers owe their jobs to this cash; the notion that legislators don’t personally benefit from it is ridiculous.
Let’s be clear: It’s not the donations we abhor; it’s the abuse of power.
The quid pro quo.
Unions aren’t at fault; lawmakers are.
Again, teachers may claim the law was needed to protect them from being denied tenure unfairly. We’d disagree – but not even teachers can argue that there was anything in this bill for kids.
Now, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and districts across the state will be forced to retain unfit teachers.
Who, exactly, does that benefit?
Answer: Unfit, but dues-paying, unionized teachers.
Sadly, a rookie governor, David Paterson, went along – ostensibly to facilitate a broader budget deal. (Lawmakers were too cowardly to consider the bill on its merits, in the light of day.)
But Silver, Bruno and their minions are the real bribe-receivers here.
How do they sleep at night?