The latest Current Employment Survey release from the New York State Department of Labor shows that local elementary and secondary school employment in the portion of New York State outside New York City increased by 11,400 future pension recipients from September 2009 to September 2010. Public school spending, staffing and pay has been off the charts in the rest of the state for decades.
In the past that has been at the expense of New York City, where local elementary and secondary school employment fell by 100 in the most recent September to September period. But now NYC school funding is higher, if lower than in the rest of the state — but with most of the added funding going to the retired. So local government employment in the rest of the state excluding the public schools is being slashed instead, by 32,600 in the most recent September to September period. In New York City, it fell by 5,800. State agencies are being gutted too. So what else happened in New York City?
Well, according to Crain's New York Busniess "Brooklyn's employment rolls swelled by 1.4% in the first quarter of 2010, compared to the year earlier period, marking the fourth largest gain in the nation, a new report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics finds. The 8,600-job spurt was fueled largely by a hiring spree in home health care, which added 4,500 jobs during the quarter."
To me this raises the following questions. Do all the additional seniors who received this home health care really need it, by the standards of the rest of the country, or did they just want Medicaid funded domestic help? Do those additional seniors actually exist, or was their existence fradulently created? Do the 4,500 additional home health care workers actually exist? And do the alleged workers providing the alleged seniors with the services they allegely need work for "non-profit" organizations associated with members of the state legislature, and/or collect signatures for them?
To everyone who has ever seen the numbers, this smacks of a deal. Sky high public school spending as a sinecure outside New York City, sky high Medicaid spending in New York City as a sinecure. Education and health care have nothing to do with it. And forget high taxes, which we already have and which have already been raised. Now public services will be gutted to pay for all of this too.
I've compiled a few more spreadsheets which I'll try to write up this weekend, showing these relationships. I'll try to write up a post and attach them this weekend.