Category: News and Opinion

New York State’s politicians have found a magic way to reward their supporters lavishly without everyone else noticing how much they are being hurt:  they borrow the money, and put off the cost to a future they don’t care about.  Every year the debt rises, and our future is diminished.  It may be that the state budget wouldn’t pass otherwise, because it is only by finding an unseen victim that everyone who matters can be more-or-less satisfied.  But New York’s debts have grown so large that at this point current New Yorkers aren’t much better off at the expense of the future, they are simply less worse off as a result of the past, as the result of borrowing more.  The bomb has been timed to go off during the next administration. 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:  a statistical artifact…where studies on the remaining population are fallaciously compared with the historic average despite the survivors having unusual properties.  Mostly, the unusual property in question is a track record of success.

It is a mantra among conservative commentators, when pushing privatization and other business provision of public services, that private businesses are more efficient than government agencies.  Let’s leave aside the fact that, based on my experience with the matter, one of the things private businesses do efficiently is rip off the taxpayer.  The presumption of private sector superiority is based on survivorship bias.  Certainly Enron, and the hundreds of thousands of other private companies that go out of business each year, are not more efficient and competent than the typical public agency.  While some such companies can do a lot of damage prior to bankruptcy, however, eventually that damage ends, leaving more efficient and competent businesses as the predominant type operating at any one time.  Private sector efficiency, therefore, is not a result of inherent competence, but of trial and error.  In the public sector, and in certain private industries that rely on public funds, on the other hand, organizations and their employees are presumed to have a right to their current situation, regardless of the value they produce for others.  Since most of the services and benefits produced by the public sector are necessities, rather than mere wants, the least competent and efficient organizations grow, using more resources over time, in an attempt to get the necessary work done.

In reading and hearing some New York City sportswriters call for the firing of Joe Torre, I’m reminded of how too many political writers write about the people who run political campaigns the same way.

Just as baseball writers and fans were quick to brand Torre a loser despite his overall record (one Daily News writer said if Torre was re-hired the Yankees were telling their fan to settle for mediocrity – after a 97 win season!), too many political reporters and folks who comment on blogs consider anyone involved with a winning campaign a genius and anyone in a losing one an idiot.

This article wraps up my journey through this year’s NYC primary results (see also here, here, and here ), which were recently posted on the Board Elections’ website. There will be a summary of my the post-primary observations not made in previous articles, as well as some other things I’ve gleaned from other info recently posted by the Board. (I’ll admit this series would probably have been far more extensive if John Mollenkopf’s maps of the 11^th CD race hadn’t convinced me of the futility of trying to give informed analysis with limited resources). But first:

As I wrote here whether the government is hiring public employees or companies, it faces what I call the “dilemma of discretion.” Allow public sector managers to hire and fire whoever they please, and the government runs the risk of having their brother-in-law – or the brother-in-law of a politico who is in a position to threaten them – hired, and good employees fired.  But bind those managers with all kinds of rules, to hire those who score highest on a civil service test and only fire an employee after a complicated series of steps, and you create a legalistic playground for those who seek to get paid to do a job without actually doing it.   The civil service system and bidding rules, by making personnel and contractor arrangements non-voluntary, eliminate reciprocity in the employment and contracting relationship. Once a test is passed or a contract is won, the employee or contractor owes as little as he can get away with. Management often seeks to do as little as possible for the employees in turn. The result is ongoing, petty conflict over rules, a poisonous work atmosphere, and low productivity and quality – the government is a lousy place to work, and many firms refuse to do business with it.

This is the third part of my trawl through the Primary results just posted on the NYC Board of Elections website. I finished this piece before I learned of John Mollenkopf’s more detailed Election District by Election District (ED) analysis of some of the same races, which puts mine to shame. However, I think the points I raise are still worthy of discussion, so I’m posting this rather than trashing it.

The object of this series is to examine shibboleths concerning the results which have arisen since the September 12^th primary. For example, it has been reported, in the Brooklyn Paper, and in several blogs, that in the 25^th Senate District challenger Ken Diamondstone beat incumbent Martin Connor in the district’s Brooklyn portion, and, in fact it’s been reported that Diamondstone has publicly taunted Connor over this (I’m sure Connor’s crying all the way to Albany). It’s a great story. But it’s not true. In actuality, Connor carried Brooklyn 3864 to 3,806, with two write-in votes going to Tracy Boyland.

The public employee retirement system contains a slew of inequities that benefit the politically powerful – public employees with seniority – at the expense of everyone else, including more recently hired public employees, and the future.  These inequities and negative future consequences grow year-by-year, contract-by-contract, one act of the state legislature after another.

Public employees aren’t grateful for their rich pensions, if their unions are to be believed.   Instead they resent the modest pay that often comes with a public sector career, sometimes using it as a rationalization for modest performance.  And low pay and limited respect, combined with rich pensions, affects the type of worker the government can attract.  Along with increasingly cynical and disappointed idealists that signed on out some idea of “public service,” public agencies tend to attract only those who, from their first day of work, look forward to not working. 

“Jersey’s Lesson for GOP
By Arnold Ahlert
New York Post, October 9, 2006

On September 30, 2002, Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli, mired in an ethic scandal, retired – and was replaced on the New Jersey ballot by former Senator Frank Lautenberg.

On October 2, the State’s Supreme Court decided that Lautenberg could be added to the ballot 34 days before the election – violating a state election law requiring a 51 day limit.

On September 29, 2006, Republican Mark Foley, mired in an ethics scandal, retired and was not replaced on the Florida ballot by the actual candidate Joe Negron – because it violated Florida election laws.

“What ifs” always raise unpleasant issues; after all, as the French say, “if bubbe had cojones she’d be zayde”, and if the Democrats had cojones they’d be in the White House and we’d be in Darfur instead of Iraq (but Michael Moore would still be complaining).

In the aftermath of this year’s congressional primaries, many “what ifs” have been raised about the race in the 11th District; both supporters of runner-up David Yassky (ruefully, and under their breathe, or after a few beers) and also-ran Chris Owens (by the candidate himself, in his concession speech) have claimed, contrary to the initial conventional wisdom that the presence in the race of additional black candidates helped Yassky, that Owens cost Yassky the primary.

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity suit, if it is to ever come of anything, will not only include more equitable funding for New York City’s schools (or at least higher, though still inequitable funding) but also increased “accountability” for those schools.  That is what the court decisions call for, and that seems reasonable, given that the city’s schools have been so bad for so long that the legal system finds that they violate the state constitution.  The usual way to create “accountability” in the public sector is to have a board or boards of people who don’t run an agency second guess it.  Implied is an acknowledgement that for our legislative elected officials, quality public services efficiently provided are not generally a priority.  After all, the New York City Council and New York State legislature control the purse strings and, in the latter case, the structure of the New York City schools.  They therefore have ultimate control over them, and have the ability to hold them accountable.  The City and State Comptrollers may audit their finances, and the New York State Department of Education and Board of Regents audit their performance.  And Mayor Bloomberg claimed that by putting him in charge, the city would gain accountability because he could be voted out if the schools didn’t work well.  But none of this is enough.  And yet another oversight board, appointed by the same politicians who have failed the city’s schools for 30 years, will not be enough either.