The Working File

This is just about right, but doesn’t go far enough. Lawhawk points out that the so-called austerity budget proposed by Governor Patterson actually increases spending over the previous year. Lawhawk also notes that if Patterson had simply proposed the same budget used 2 year ago, he would have saved $7 billion. I remember New York 2 years ago. It was not a wasteland. It was not bereft of government benefits, services, or intrusions. It was, in fact, a heavily taxed state even then.
Lawhawk also links to a NY Times article that notes that Patterson’s budget proposes a change in pension benefits for new hires. That’s a good start, no matter how much opposition it generates and how unlikely it might be to succeed. But again, it does not go far enough. It doesn’t aim to reduce pension benefits for existing workers.
Doing so would require amending the New York State constitution. As noted in another NY Times article:

The value of city pensions is protected under the State Constitution, a trust between employer and worker; once employees enter the system, their benefits cannot be reduced.

But they can be raised, and often are.  Just earlier this year, the NY Sun reported that NY teachers were given a gift by state republicans by actually allowing them to retire 5 years earlier than they already can:

The bill passed by the Legislature on Wednesday would allow city teachers hired after 1973 to retire with full benefits at age 55 if they have accumulated at least 25 years of service. Under the current arrangement, teachers must log 30 years to earn a full pension, which is not subject to state or local taxes.

Work 25 years, and have a guaranteed income stream, and free healthcare, for life.  Plus, I believe, the life of your spouse should the ex-worker die first.  Does anyone realize how much this costs?  This is the equivalent to having several millions of dollars in assets.  This is extreme wealth, more than most business owners or professional workers have.  Few such people are in a position to retire when they are 55.  Indeed, the main reason they cannot is taxes.  Taxes that are used to pay for the overly generous retirements of government workers.  The only people in this country who can retire in their mid-50s are government workers and Big 3 Auto employees,  and I’m damn tired of having the government take away my money to pay these leeches and give them a more generous retirement than I can save for and provide for myself and my family.

It is time to amend the New York State Constitution so that previously promised benefits to government workers can be rescinded when the state or local governments cannot afford them.  I know doing so will be hard, and might likely be impossible.  It is very unlikely that it will happen.  Yet it will certainly never happen while as long as nobody even suggests it.  Even E. J. McMahon of the Manhattan Institute only suggests cutting pension benefits for new hires.  The McMahon article provides a comprehensive summary of the ridiculously generous benefits provided to state workers, who are now the most powerful force in state government, and effectively hire their own bosses and set their own salary and benefits, with no regard for taxpayers in the private sector.  The notion that generous benefits and pensions are needed to make up for low wages is a relic.  These people are overpaid, underworked, and face no job insecurity or monetary losses when the economy goes south.

Look at Patterson’s budget.  It raises state spending,  It raises state taxes and fees in 137 different ways, meant to take $4 billion from state residents. Roger Kimball asks why aren’t people rioting in the streets?  Our savings have been more than decimated this year, thousands have been laid off, and the state proposes to take $4 billion more from us than it did last year?  Where the bloody hell does it think we are hiding it?  Why can’t the state, and government workers get laid off, or have their pension savings and benefits cut just like happened to everyone else?

Until somebody says, “Let’s amend the state constitution to  allow reductions in employee salary and benefits,” we are relegated to tinkering on the edges.  Even if making such a proposal merely creates a better bargaining position so that benefits for new hires can be cut more easily, it is worthwhile.  I know amending the constitution would be hard on any issue, and the opposition that lawmakers would face on this issue would be overwhelming.

I’ve been quietly harping on this issue for years, doing so only in conversation when the opportunity arises.  It is time to go more public, and to be more vocal.  Instapundit has, in recent months, made this an issue that he has discussed repeatedly.  My hero is the mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders, who recently said, “We don’t exist to fund employee pensions.” We need politicians with similar courage in New York, and sadly, have none that I can see.