Perhaps you are wondering why the state budget would cut municipal aid to New York City to zero, while cutting municipal aid to other areas, including those more affluent than New York City, by very little. It is because need in this state isn’t measured by the need for public services and benefits, which are irrelevant to the rich and a hassle for the political/union complex, which has privileged access to them, to provide to others. What matters is who gets jobs, and who gets sinecures pretending to be jobs. So local government employment in NYC, which was already down sharply since 1990, fell another 13,400 in the year to May according to data released yesterday by the New York State Department of Labor. Local government employment in the rest of the state, which had been up by 130,000 over 20 year, edged down just 3,400 — but public school employment in the rest of the state increased by 3,900. I guess they’ll have to slash New York City’s share of state school aid again, as in the previous two recessions.
Don’t New York City’s public employee unions have any clout? Sure they do, particularly since most of the best paid live outside the city. Far from wanting to keep their jobs, however, most don’t want to work at all. They want to retire early, at 55 instead of 62 for NYC teachers, after 25 years of work rather than 30. Thus you had the biggest fraud of the week, the UFT joining a protest cuts in schools. Guess what — NYC public school spending is going up, but more and more of the money is going to the retired, as a result of the 25/55 pension the UFT managed to grab. Protesting? They should be celebrating the money they will get for providing less and less in return.
“We are getting very close to a repeat of 1976 in our school system, where they cut it so deep it took 30 years to recover,” said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew.”
He was pretending to speak in opposition to this. In reality, the honest attitude is “yes, we did it again! We got the same pension deal, and screwed those little cretins again, and there is no way out! We won!”
Forget 30 years to recover. This time people will realize that if the pensions system eventually gets back to break even, there will be no point in pouring money back into the schools. Because the UFT will just open the gold instruction box with the steps taken twice before, and get another 25/55 pension — or perhaps 20/50. Meaning taxes would once again he higher here than elsewhere despite horrible schools 40 years from now. The UFT will never allow the city’s schools to be adequate. It just can’t happen. The only question is how much is paid for less and less for some, nothing for others.