Governor Patterson has appointed a commission on MTA finances headed by former MTA head Richard Ravitch. The commission, according to the Daily News, includes state budget director Laura Anglin, city budget chief Mark Page, state AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes, Fordham University President Father Joseph McShane, Con Ed Chairman Kevin Burke and Mysore Nagaraja, former president of the MTA Capital Construction Co. The purpose of the commission is to absorb the blame for fare increases, service cuts, higher taxes on wages, property and jobs – but not retirement income — and the cancellation disguised as a “deferral” of long-promised and repeatedly borrowed for projects such as the Second Avenue Subway. The money will be used to allow transit workers to retire at age 50 with full pension, health care and other retirement benefits after working for just 20 years, rather than at age 55 after working for just 25 years. Once the cost of that benefit is admitted to, after first having being described as “free,” maintenance will be perpetually deferred, and the transit system allowed to deteriorate to the point of collapse, due to “circumstances beyond our control.”
No, that’s not what Governor Patterson said. No, that’s not what the commission will say. That probably isn’t what Mr. Ravitch and the commission members will intend. At this point, however, we have enough experience with the current generation of leadership, particularly at the state level, to predict the future. Our elected officials know that the New York Metropolitan area desperately needs a viable and improving transit system to support its economy. Just as they know that New Yorkers desperately want a Second Avenue Subway to relieve the awful overcrowding on the east side. And they know that city residents, who pay some of the nation’s highest taxes, desperately want viable schools. And at the federal level, this generation of politicians knows Americans desperately need universal affordable health care and a secure Social Security system to avoid poverty due to ill health and old age. So they add extra taxes and/or borrow money allegedly for those purposes, divert it to their friends, and leave the rest with nothing. Then they blame someone else, like a commission, an arbitrator, or the “unaccountable” MTA.
I don’t want to bore anyone who has read many of my prior posts, but in case someone reading this hasn’t let me reference a few examples of what I mean.
The Second Avenue Subway has been borrowed for three times — by the city in the 1950s, by the MTA soon after its creation in the 1960s, and once again in a state bond issue a few years ago. In each of the first two cases, “reasonable” people came to the “realistic” decision to use the money to maintain the current system instead, since that is more important. This is what we are being set up for a third time. What those “reasonable” people failed to point out is that the other money that should have been used to maintain the existing system had previously been diverted — tax dollars to tax breaks or roads, fares to richer pensions or fare cuts relative to the rate of inflation. One wonders if there was ever any intent to make any transit improvements at all.
More expensive for my generation and those after has been the Social Security reform of 1983 which “saved” Social Security. Pay higher (regressive) payroll taxes throughout your lives, and accept a higher retirement age than those who came before, we were told, and you can be assured that Social Security will be there for you when you retire. The extra money paid into Social Security as a result was loaned to the rest of the federal government, which now “owes” Social Security about $2 trillion. Where will the rest of the federal government get the money to pay Social Security back? One view is younger generations should have to pay much higher taxes, another is that benefits will have to be cut again. But doesn’t that mean people would pay twice for the same thing? What about all the extra money that was paid into Social Security over the past 205 years? Guess what: the generations now in charge have already spent it on themselves.
Most painfully for me personally, we are paying higher NYC taxes to fund a huge increase in public school spending — not only in New York City but elsewhere in New York State where spending was already sky high. Without the benefit of sky-high Wall Street tax revenues, what we have to pay to fund this spending increase is about to go up a lot more. Beginning with the first Annual Report on Social Indicators in 1990, which I was assigned to write when working at the NYC Department of City Planning, I had shown that NYC’s poor school system was matched by very low spending once the relative cost of living was accounted for, even though the city’s taxes were high. I supplied a great deal of data to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity Lawsuit, and others.
Now, however, we find that all the additional school spending that resulted from that effort will in the end go to even more extravagant spending in the rest of the state (to preserve the gap with the city as the city approached and surpassed the national average) and to allow NYC teachers to be paid without making any contribution to anyone else at age 55 rather than 62 (if they hadn’t done so, off the books, already). Once the real budgets that reflect economic reality arrive, funding for actual education will be cut back to the level those who matter find acceptable. We’ll end up paying more, but the city’s schools will never be allowed to improve. Was there ever any intent by those making the decision to do anything other than enrich the teacher’s pension, despite telling us the money was for other things? I doubt it. The pension is back to what they got in the 1970s, and when the recession hits where the school system will be sent back to the 1970s also.
We won’t even get to a decade of discussion about universal health care that lead up to a huge expansion of government health benefits for today’s elderly (the prescription drug benefit) who already received extensive benefits, paid for with borrowed money, even as the increasing number of taxpayers who got nothing continued to get nothing.
They keep making promises for the future, and taking in the present, as I described here. And now we will be told (after the election) that we have to sacrifice even more to prevent the MTA from collapsing and taking our economic future down with it. But given the experience of the past, I have reluctantly concluded that it is time to refuse to pay and accept the decline of public services and benefits. Not because I look forward to a future without them, especially since we will be paying taxes for them in any event. Just because the decline of pubic services is inevitable. After all, if the city's schools can be adequately funded with the state's spending the highest in the country, and health care cannot be universal at 20 percent of GDP, then when?
In whatever plan Ravitch comes up with is approved, some time after fares and tolls, and taxes were increased and services cut, the 20/50 pension plan the Transit Workers’ Union has pushed for and went on strike over, which the state legislature has passed unanimously at least once that I know of (the Governor vetoed it leading to the strike), would also be approved. After all, the MTA would have all that “extra” money. And once the cost of that pension enhancement was admitted to, it would also be apparent that the MTA was not “saved” just as Social Security was not “saved” back in 1983. With the pension back where Lindsay put it, the rapid decline that followed would repeat — if the MTA debt doesn’t make that inevitable anyway. And of course, fair or unfair and even if disastrous, even if merely bequeathed after the fact as part of a political deal rather than worked for, pensions are irrevocable. Ooops, we were wrong, and it wasn’t free! Sorry!
Evidently it is an insult for the riders, most of whom have nothing but Social Security coming (or not coming) at age 67, to ask transit workers to do something for them in exchange until age 55. And, of course, once transit workers are retiring at 50 after just 20 years, won’t “fairness” require that teachers and other public employees get to retire at 50 as well? The city can always pay new hires less to make up some of the difference. How about retroactively making those tax free pensions at three-quarters of final pay rather than half? After all, state legislators get pensions too.
In the past I have always stood for responsibility. For example, when I ran for state legislature one of my four main themes was as follows:
“Some people are grateful for what they have and try, over the course of their lives, to contribute more to others than they have received themselves. I am very grateful to my neighbors who have worked to build up our community, running soccer leagues, organizing the rehabilitation of the parks, working to improve the schools, providing services as volunteers in churches and other organizations, and taking care of their family members. I am also grateful for the many assets and institutions provided to us by prior generations, assets and institutions that contribute to our lives today. New York State politics, however, is dominated by those seeking to leave life with a ‘profit’ by imposing a loss on others. Quickly acclimated with and bored by whatever they have, made to feel envious and inadequate by television commercials selling what they don't, far too many people feel needy today. Our state capital is a place where people are focused on themselves.”
“If you are a net contributor to those with greater needs, you are a good person. If you are a net contributor to those with a greater sense of entitlement, and a greater willingness and ability to work the system, then you are a sucker. Our state politicians have become perpetual incumbents by pandering to the organized selfish, and telling them what they want to hear. As the un-politician, I would tell it like it is, and try to let the losers know who they are. In doing so, I would represent the responsible and considerate people of this community and this state, and would allow their voices, for once, to be heard. And I would work to ensure that their net contributions go to the needy, and to future generations, not to the greedy.”
OK, so now I’m going to tell it like it is. Any additional contributions to the community via the government, particularly the New York State government, will go to the greedy not the needy, and irrevocable deals already made lock this not subject to change. Net contributors under the present institutional arrangements are suckers, losers and fools. And irresponsibility in the context of our current situation, the kind that has driven lower-tax New Jersey to the brink of bankruptcy, is in reality responsible, because money that would otherwise be squandered on special deals, favors and privileges could have been saved for one’s own children or donated to the less well off as well as just blown on oneself. If community obligations are met through the government they aren’t met at all, because the faster you shovel money in the faster others grab it out.
The political terms for egalitarianism — “liberal” and “progressive” — should go back to their original meaning — for opposition to government power and obligations. Because government is going back to what it has always been — an exploitive force the benefits the better off and in which we have no say. Don’t be fooled by the election for President. There is a whole rest of the government that collectivley has a far greater impact on your life. And unless you are in a swing state, your vote for President doesn’t count either.
So I’m telling you in advance, Mr. Ravitch, I’m not willing to pay higher fares, or higher taxes on wages, property or jobs, to “save” the transit system, not because I wouldn’t want to see them saved but because I accept the reality of its impossibility. It’s too late for there to be any reason not to just have fun like the pandering pols who gleefully “fight for the people” by opposing any sacrifice — even if as a result the cash is drained until the MTA shuts down in bankruptcy and re-opens as a degraded system living hand to mouth. Let’s have it happen sooner rather than later, so we don’t get suckered into paying more in for nothing yet again, my children can make adjustments, and your geneation is still around to experience the consequences of its actions.