While the Legislature struggles to reach final agreement on yet another budget that is sure to spend more than the state can afford, a bit of good news for New York taxpayers can be found on the last page of today’s report from Governors David Paterson’s Task Force on Public Retiree Health Insurance.

The task force said it was “unable to reach consensus” on whether to support legislation that would make it much more difficult for counties and municipalities to change health care benefits for their retired employees.  In other words, public employee unions were unable to turn the 16 - 13-member panel into a vehicle for gaining gubernatorial support of a bill that would effectively lock in tens of billions of dollars in unfunded retiree health care liabilities across the state.  The report also recommends creation of a “standing” (i.e., permanent) task force to continue studying the issue.

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An advocacy group for subway riders is blaming budget reductions for dirtier conditions on New York subway cars.

“It’s as clear as the grime on a subway car floor: MTA Transit cuts in cleaners has meant dirtier cars,” said Gene Russianoff, campaign attorney for the Straphangers Campaign. “And more cuts to come means more dirt for subway riders.”

This might be a good time to pay a little closer attention to what it costs to compensate those cleaners whose numbers the MTA is cutting.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) employed 3,451 city transit workers with the title “cleaner” in their title in 2009, according to payroll data posted recently at SeeThroughNY.  Within that group, 2,140 had the title “Cleaner (Transit-Labor Class),” which would include subway car cleaners.   Their average wage: $42,630 a year, and $21.36 an hour.

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E.J. and I had a podcast chat this morning to run through some of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)’s 2009 payroll data, released last week by the Empire Center’s seethroughny.net . (more…)

Many if not most New York City teachers will continue receiving automatic longevity pay increases despite Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s announcement today that he will “eliminate raises” for them in the next budget.

In fact, as illustrated in the following chart (provided by the mayor’s press office), city teachers are eligible for annual pay hikes — above and beyond any base pay increase — during nine of their first 10 consecutive years, and 14 of their first 22 consecutive years.  For example, quite apart from any base salary increase, a rookie teacher entering his or her second year is entitled to a longevity increase of 6.4 percent.  An eighth-year teacher receives an increase of 11.6 percent, and a teacher moving into his or her twentieth consecutive year receives an increase of 11.5 percent.  (Go here for more details on the city’s teacher pay schedule.)

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That’s the provocative title of a Working Paper newly posted on the website of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

The answer, in a word, is “yes.”

The co-authors of the paper, which focuses on strikes by nurses in New York between 1984 and 2004, are Jonathan Gruber and Samuel A. Kleiner.   Gruber is an MIT economist who was in the news recently as an advocate of President Obama’s health care plan.  Kleiner is a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon.

NBER papers require a paid subscription, except for journalists and some others.  But here is the summary:

Concerns over the impacts of hospital strikes on patient welfare led to substantial delay in the ability of hospitals to unionize. Once allowed, hospitals unionized rapidly and now represent one of the largest union sectors of the U.S. economy. Were the original fears of harmful hospital strikes realized as a result? In this paper we analyze the effects of nurses’ strikes in hospitals on patient outcomes. We utilize a unique dataset collected on nurses’ strikes over the 1984 to 2004 period in New York State, and match these strikes to a restricted use hospital discharge database which provides information on treatment intensity, patient mortality and hospital readmission. Controlling for hospital specific heterogeneity, patient demographics and disease severity, the results show that nurses’ strikes increase in-hospital mortality by 19.4% and 30-day readmission by 6.5% for patients admitted during a strike, with little change in patient demographics, disease severity or treatment intensity. This study provides some of the first analytical evidence on the effects of health care strikes on patients, and suggests that hospitals functioning during nurses’ strikes are doing so at a lower quality of patient care.

From the folks who brought you New York’s “millionaire tax,” it’s … another millionaire tax.  And a stock transfer tax.  And a 50 percent “Banker Bonu$ Tax.”

Is this a great state, or what?

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Employee compensation in the state and local government sector increased at twice the private-sector rate during the 12 months ending in December, according to national data released today by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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New York is running out of cash, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reported today.  The situation would be worse if Governor Paterson had not ordered delays in portions of some local aid payments, prompting the New York State United Teachers union to file a lawsuit against him.

But don’t worry–these guys will soon be bailing us out.

Or maybe not.

The Senate today also passed the so-called Public Authorities Reform Act previously approved by the Assembly and backed by Governor Paterson–complete with a form of super card-check for unions seeking to organize authority-sponsored hotel and convention center development projects.

The headline on the Senate’s Majority press release announcing the bill’s passage deserves a special niche in Albany’s jam-packed Pantheon of Preposterous Claims.

Buried in the so-called Tier V pension bill just passed by the state Legislature is an incredible set of special concessions to unionized school teachers in New York.  None of these changes were contained in Governor Paterson’s original “pension reform” proposal, which was a colossal missed opportunity to begin with.  The worst of the giveaways to teachers in the final bill–effectively locking in one of the fastest-growing, most difficult to control components of school district compensation costs–is not even mentioned in Paterson’s press release hailing the bill’s passage.

The teachers’ union had their way on three major items:

• While the minimum full-benefit retirement age after 30 years service was raised from 55 to 62 for all other civilian employees, it will set be at 57 for teachers.  In 2007-08, the median retirement age for New York State Teachers Retirement System (NYSTRS) members was 58.
• The Legislature promised to enact a three-month early retirement window for teachers who are 55 but have only 25 years of service.  Districts will greet this as a cost savings, but it also will shift a so-far uncalculated cost to an already stressed pension fund.
• Last but not least, the Tier V bill makes permanent a temporary law, annually renewed since 1994, barring school districts from “diminishing” health benefits for retired school district employees unless “a corresponding diminution of benefits or contributions” applies to active workers.  Since changes in benefits for current employees must be collectively bargained, the provision effectively gives unions a veto on the matter.  This provision of Tier V, described the Assembly’s press release on the bill as “mak[ing] permanent retiree health protections,” goes unmentioned in the Governor’s celebratory release.
  

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