According to the New York Times, police corruption is rising. "One former Internal Affairs Bureau investigator who was involved in scores of cases in recent years said the number of corruption complaints — ‘logs in police parlance — had been on the rise, climbing to about 65,000 a year from about 45,000 a year in a little under a decade." Why is that?
A little rumor I heard third hand. The soaring number of criminal cops dates from the era when police starting pay was slashed to $25,000 per year. To pay for all the retroactive pension enrichments around the year 2000, which have caused pension spending to soar toward equality with payroll for cops actually on the job. Now we are paying hugely for each police officer, but most of the money is going to the retired. And the police on the job increasingly resent their pay — no matter how much they cost. Take the two together and it isn’t the police who are getting ripped off, at least collectively. Those who pay for them are.
Mayor Bloomberg was more than happy to go along with the union solution — screw the newbie. He has in fact proposed screwing the newbie even more, and Governor Paterson took action to force future police to work 25 years before retiring rather than 20. At the time, when starting pay was slashed for those working in DC37 represented titles, police officers and firefighters, “fiscal watchdog” groups were happy. They are concerned with the level of taxes, and apparently don’t care much about the quality of public services. Less work for less pay has been the deal between taxpayer advocates and the public employee unions since the 1970s fiscal crisis. Except that thanks to all the retroactive pension deals of the past 16 years, it’s less work for more money in total. And if fact New York City has just about the highest state and local tax burden in the country.
The unions claim that enriched pensions attract, motivate and keep good workers. But those pension enrichments were granted in Albany political deals, not in exchange for doing work, and the unionized public employees are not grateful for them. With wages frozen and the number of New York City workers going down, we’re getting a good test of who is right. The unions who claim that higher pensions lead to more services. Or me, with my view that unionized public employees provide public services, if at all, in proportion to their cash pay.
So in exchange for $25,000 and massively rich pensions, we get increasingly corrupt cops — and we can afford fewer of them. Same deal with teachers, transit workers, etc. In fact, the teacher’s union is protesting classroom cuts despite the fact that total spending on teachers has soared. That money is all going to the early retired too, as a result of a 2008 deal to cut the number of years teachers cashing in and moving out had to work. To pay for part of it, the take home pay of future teachers was cut, except that now the city can’t afford to hire the future teachers.
This generation of state legislators, the unions, and the Mayor are going to leave public services in ruins. I blame the Mayor because with regard to the teachers, he was in on both ends of an enrichment for those cashing out, and a screw the newbie giveback shortly after, that took place years after the stock market bubble burst. But I’m really furious at the unions. They shouldn’t be complaining as increasingly corrupt cops fail to do their jobs and classroom services are cut. They should be yelling “in your face!” as the move the suburbs or retire to Florida.