Gov. Cuomo put the cherry on top of a reasonably productive legislative session yesterday with the an nouncement of a five-year contract agreement with state government’s largest public-employee union.
The announcement came as detail work continued on rent regulation, a property-tax cap and regular tuition increases for the city and state universities; meanwhile, a same-sex marriage bill — also a Cuomo priority — was in the ether, but expected eventually to pass.
This comes after — and in some ways was driven by — passage of a budget that brought state government spending into tenuous equilibrium with revenues.
This is not small. Cuomo has earned a victory lap; he should take one.
But no one should confuse anything that has happened in Albany since Jan. 1 with truly transformative reform.
Albany’s pension and long-term health-care obligations remain unaffordable; no significant mandate relief for local governments was achieved and only time will tell whether the loophole-laden ethics-reform bill passed this year will threaten the state’s corrupt culture.
True, Cuomo’s deal with the 66,000-member Civil Service Employees Association includes union givebacks. If it’s ratified by the rank and file, there will be no pay hikes for three years, and all employees will be required to take nine days of unpaid furloughs over the first two years (with four of those days repaid at the end of the contract).
And members will be contributing more to cover health-insurance costs.
In return, the Cuomo administration would pledge no layoffs.
CSEA President Danny Donohue said he agreed to the concessions because “these are not ordinary times” — perhaps an admission that he finally has encountered a governor he can’t roll.
(One can only hope that the deal somehow inspires City Hall in its dealings with its own unions.)
Or perhaps it’s too soon to begin celebrating. After all, the leaders of Council 82, a security-officers union, reached a similar deal last month — only to have the rank-and-file overwhelmingly reject it.
Then again, if something like that were to happen, Cuomo would be free to make the 9,800 layoffs authorized in March in his first budget.
Bottom line: Unlike the lethargy and deal-making of the latter Pataki era, and the chaos and scandal of the Spitzer-Paterson term, New Yorkers this year got professionalism, competence and focus from the Executive Chamber.
What they most certainly did not get was transformation.
But Albany won’t be rebuilt in a day — nor in a single legislative session.