Category: News and Opinion

My Guess On Redistricting

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As secretly agreed, I suspect, Cuomo will veto the usual incumbent protection redistricting plan, the legislature will over-ride, Cuomo will condemn, and that will be the end of it. Those who believe there should be actual elections in New York will have to find a way to create them otherwise, and it won’t be easy. Perhaps the media might consider encouraging challengers and challenging incumbents rather than the reverse. Perhaps someone might raise money to provide lawyers when the incumbents work to kick challengers off the ballot. Perhaps the ease of writing in candidates with the new machines might provide an avenue to an actual election. There will be no actual elections if the state legislature can avoid it.

COUNTING DOWN ‘TIL 31st AUGUST, 2011

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Last week, I informed my editors that after August 31st, 2011, I will no longer be a regular contributor to Room Eight New York Politics. I am taking my columns to a select and semi-public audience. You will just have to subscribe to get them. And there will be no comments-section, since serious readers know how to get their feedback to me: they have been doing it for years. 

Let me explain that further.

The Times on Pensions: The Unsaid Remains Unsaid

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Ron Lieber had a recent New York Times column that continues to avoid talking about what no one wants to talk about. According to Lieber “the big picture question…remains one that is more moral than economic. Decades ago, we made promises to government workers. Now, depending on your view, those promises have turned out to be too generous…Whatever your view, we now face a choice: Should all taxpayers (including the retired workers themselves) pay a lot more in taxes and accept large cuts in government services to pay for the promises to government employees? Or should we break the promises (by a little — or more than a little) because they have turned out to cost too much?”

The unsaid is this. In many cases, public employees are not due the pensions that were promised “decades ago” when they were hired. They are due pensions that were retroactively enhanced in deals with politicians in exchange for political support, with costs to others that were deferred, hidden, and fraudulently misrepresented. And taxpayers often didn’t fully fund the promises workers were made to begin with. The beneficiaries are past taxpayers, today’s seniors, who also left other debts and who now enjoy special tax breaks as retirees.

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