Unshackle on mandate report: Where the beef, er, relief?

The pro-business group Unshackle Upstate was expecting so much more from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mandate relief team. Instead, the group has been left to express its disappointment with yesterday’s release, which in general offered incremental proposals to lessen the burden on local governments.

The group digs the team’s endorsement of a Tier VI pension package, but was let down by the failure to address the Taylor Law and the Triborough Amendment. Unshackle’s statement:

“The report put forth by the Mandate Relief Redesign Team (MRRT) has us asking one simple question: ‘Where’s the relief?’

When the MRRT was created, we had great expectations that our local governments and school districts would see the meaningful mandate relief that they so desperately need and have been seeking for years.

While we are pleased that the team has proposed a new Tier 6 that will save the state money in the future by increasing employee contributions and raising the minimum retirement age, Unshackle Upstate has suggested and continues to support a shift from the current defined benefit pension system to a defined contribution approach.

However, it remains to be seen if the MRRT proposals will achieve the necessary cost savings. Considering that the preliminary report fails to address core cost drivers like the Taylor Law and the Triborough Amendment – which our organization has identified as archaic mandates that significantly drive up labor costs – we believe that it will not.

Ultimately, the lack of specific proposals in the preliminary report further highlights the need to enact a 2-percent property tax cap. Until New York enacts such a cap, specific mandate relief proposals are unlikely to be advanced.

Unshackle Upstate calls on the MRRT to include these commonsense solutions in their future reports. Failure to do so will require rank and file legislators to take the necessary action to provide concrete mandate relief.”

  1. Bob says:

    The MRRT Report,
    Has produced this “Unshackle” retort:
    “We had hoped for an interlude
    That would produce indentured servitude
    But we’ll settle for a tort in court.”

  2. Martin says:

    Awww, Wall-Street backed Unshackle Upstate get their feelings hurt. Poor babies. Need a tissue?

  3. OutsideIn says:

    Yeah, if only we could get rid of actually having to fine companies that maim and kill enough to keep them from doing it or encourage them to invest enough in testing or safety to prevent it from happening. If we could cap it, then each company would know up front just how much it would cost them to keep polluting or building defective products or exposing their (non-unionized) workers to toxic chemicals… Oh, how liberal of me to doubt that every company in NYS is doing everything it can to prevent such things from happening, no matter the cost to their bottom line.

    Oh, and why can’t we get rid of those troublesome laws that keep employees whole during protracted contract negotiations? Can you imagine the nerve that they expect to keep their benefits while the State just refuses to show up and negotiate in good faith? They do that now to save money for 2 or 3 years. How long would they leave us without a contract if Triborough was gone?

    I’ll tell you what, how about you give us back the right to strike then? Or, maybe you would support mandatory arbitration by an independent body if there is no contract by April 1? Hmm, maybe I’m onto something- How about binding arbitration on the State Budget if you don’t get it passed on time? Talk about mandate relief for local government and districts- How much do you think is wasted every year in gap financing while they wait to see how much they are going to get in aid?

    How can people be stupid enough to believe this crap?

  4. Skipjack says:

    I was shocked to learn about the Taylor Law and the Triburough agreement. What incentive do the unions have to settle when they know they can just dig in and get the same deal as the last contract indefinately?

  5. b sarbane says:

    The Mandate “Relief” report is the first major mistake of the Cuomo Administration. It’s a dud because it accomplishes exactly nothing tangible to relieve local/county governments of the burdens of mandates. Look in the dictionary under “kick the can down the road” and there is the Mandate Relief Report.

  6. RedAvenger says:

    Earth to Unshackle Upstate, a few years ago the right was able to lash up fears about social security going broke by distorting numbers and tried to promote 401 Ks. The stock market crash in 2001 and the current recession have shown most people why defined benefit pensions are a better way to go than gambling on stocks. All the pension system needs to be solvent, as state ERA shows is judicial management and proper payments into the account by the employer. In fact, the retirement is a part of the employees compensation (deferred) and one reason why qualified workers are willing to accept the generally lower pay scale offered in public sector jobs. Now just because your GOP cohorts and a few of the old Democratic machine towns did some funny accounting with the books and didn’t pay in all they should to the retirement system doesn’t mean the systems broken. It’s nothing that a steep millionaire’s tax couldn’t fix over night! I’m with you guys on repealing the Taylor Act though, us state workers won’t get any respect until they have the ability to strike.

  7. OutsideIn says:

    Skipjack- You are being misled by the business groups. What gets continued without a new contract are the other terms of the expired contract, to protect the workers when the employer and union can’t come to terms. Contrary to the impression being deliberately put out there, there is no general pay increase when the new contract isn’t signed. This is called the base pay. What is continued are the previously negotiated step raises, which are incremental amounts given over 7 years (which used to be 5 years, but was negotiated up during a previous fiscal “crisis”, to bring new workers up to the full pay level for a grade. This is an incentive for new hires to continue to learn and improve. In other words, new workers receive less than what a fully experienced person in that grade is worth. And once you get to full pay for the grade, if there are no promotions to be had (the norm at the State level, anyways), the worker gets flat-lined for 5 years. Once that happens, the employee gets a flat increase of (I believe this is accurate)$1,500 or $2,500 as a token bump up in pay for sticking around, as long as they are rated satisfactory. Think of it as an annual bonus that equals, at most, $50/week gross, or $1.33 an hour raise for working for the State for at least 12 years in the same grade. Sound greedy to you?

    Finally, when a contract is signed, the increases in base pay you hear about (i.e. 14%) are the total increase over the 4 year contract life, or something like 3 or 4 percent each year. And, don’t forget, there have been numerous years where unionized workers had to settle for 0% increases. In general, the base pay increases are essentially cost of living increases that over time have not kept up with the CPI.

  8. Upstate State Worker says:

    Maybe it didn’t produce the savings they looked for, but I’m sure it kept a team of hand picked people getting $100k/year something tangible to do!

    You want savings? Give the union the right to fire their own with just cause! We don’t like those that are lazy in our ranks any more than the private industry does. The difference, it is darn near impossible to be rid of them as it is. It requires efforts that untrained managers just would rather not expend and refuse to expend.

  9. WNYPlanner says:

    @SkipJack…the incentive…Its called lay off.

  10. Phil says:

    Indeed, I have been very favorably disposed towards Andrew until now. Unfunded Mandates are crushing the School Districts. NY has more baloney mandates than any other state in the union. They keep bureaucrats employed and do nothing to improve anything.

    Our man Cuomo is proving to be an “empty suit”.

  11. UnCivilServant says:

    @Skipjack If you read the union contracts, they aren’t written in the form of “salary increase x% per year” it’s written in the form of “at date ABC, salary becomes X” so there is no change to account for inflation while the contract is in negotiation. The continuation terms apply to those elements which almost never change – level of health benefits and definition of disciplinary procedures.

RSS feed for comments on this post.