At one time all localities in New York State were allowed to limit their desirable local government jobs to local residents. Beginning in the late 1950s, however, a series of state laws have gradually prohibited New York City from excluding suburban residents from taking city local government jobs, while continuing to allow the suburbs to exclude city residents from suburban local government jobs. Often New York City’s own elected officials, as part of contract or political deals with public employee unions, specifically requested the very state laws that discrimnated against the city. In part because their backers were moving to the suburbs and wanted to keep their city jobs in the family. Now, according to the Daily News, unions and members of the City Council are proposing lifting the remaining restrictions, including those on managers.
Whether residency restrictions in public employment make sense in general is debatable as far as I’m concerned. Whether it is fair to permit them outside New York City but not for New York City is not. But I have never once, in all the years I’ve followed public policy, read about a single NYC politician demanding that local governments in the suburbs also be forced to open up their civil service jobs to New York City residents. Not once. Ever. Have I missed something? And if not, how can it be explained that this gross inequity is among the unsaid?
The best argument for limiting the city’s civil service jobs to city residents is this: if New York City’s government workers relied on the same public services they themselves provided, they might be motivated to do a better job. For most of the past 40 years residents of the suburbs have come to expect schools, parks, libraries and similar services that were superior to those city residents received, all without a local income tax on top of their property taxes. The schools, in particular, have been a good reason to move out, particularly for schoolteachers, and those remaining in the city often chose private or parochial schools for their own children. A second argument is that government jobs are a very desirable sweet deal, and if city residents are paying for them, city residents should have the first shot at them. A third argument is that a residency requirement would produce a demographic diversity in the city’s public employment that reflected the people of the city, not the people of the suburbs.
A counter argument is that New York City public employment should be a fair deal, not a sweet deal, with government workers required to produce public services whose value was commensurate with their pay, not worth less, and the city should recruit workers as broadly as possible to facilitate that. On the other hand, getting fair value from workers represented by suburban state legislatures, who are openly hostile to the needs of New York City’s people as service recipients and taxpayers has proved difficult. Those legislators push through state law after state law either forcing the city to pay those workers more (in retirement benefits for example), or allowing them to do less, often over the objections of the city’s Mayor. Then again, state legislators from the city vote for those deals too.
At this point, however, the debate about a residency requirement for employees of the City of New York is moot. Former Mayor Ed Koch fought for it and lost, residency requirements have been loosened ever since, and suburban and upstate legislators would never consent to have the employment options of their residents limited.
So what about the reverse? Why not demand that similar state laws prohibit suburban jurisdictions from favoring their own residents in public employment? Such a law would open up jobs for New York City residents. One would think that some state legislator or city council member from New York City would take up the issue. Particularly one representing Queens or the Bronx, the boroughs whose residents would be most likely to take the suburban public sector jobs by reason of proximity. Many residents of those boroughs commute the low-paid, low-benefit jobs in the suburbs, but government jobs there, with pensions and benefits, often exclude them.
As it happens, according to the Daily News, there is a Queens Councilman with an opinion on the subject of residency. “Councilman Tony Avella (D-Queens) said he has a solution to the problem: wipe out residency requirement for all city employees. ‘Why are we bothering when more than 75% of the workforce is exempt?’ said Avella, who introduced his bill to abolish residency requirements several months ago. ‘It's unfair for the remaining part of the force to be penalized. Why are we playing political games?’" Just to be clear, he is proposing a city bill to allow suburban residents to take all local government jobs in New York City. No one ever asks for a state law to abolish all residency requirements overall. And no one ever asks why access to suburban jobs for city residences is never asked about, and who is benefiting from this.
As it happens, abolishing all residency requirements within New York State could be good for city taxpayers. Because for fifteen years local governments in the rest of the state have been on a hiring spree, and when the resulting property tax increases draw opposition, demand that New York City residents be required to pay for it via New York State. As I showed here local government employment in the rest of the state is up by nearly 120,000 since 1990, while it is down by 14,400. My guess is that if for politicians for the rest of the state rising employment meant jobs for people in places like the Bronx and Queens (or the town next door) paid for by local taxes, many of those 120,000 extra workers would not have been necessary. But if they are sinecures for well connected in town paid for, increasingly, by the rest of the state, the more the merrier.
Won’t someone have the guts to propose a state law eliminating residency requirements for non-managerial positions for every part of the state? And, since knowledge of how to work the system to get a New York City civil service job is passed down through the generations in suburban families, requiring that all local government jobs elsewhere be widely advertised so city residents can find out about them? And enforcing against discrimination against non-residents?
I’ll probably will never want to take a local government job outside New York City, but as a state taxpayer I’d like the local politicians in the suburbs to believe that if they create a new position, someone from Brooklyn rather than one of their local supporters might end up with it. And who knows? In a reverse of the 1950s, perhaps those holding higher-paid local government jobs in the suburbs might want to flee to New York City over the next couple of decades.