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Wake-Up Call

Bomb cyclone

Posted

The New York State legislature, in order to demonstrate to the commonplace citizenry that despite being special, they too are ordinary people equipped with the routine human vices of greed, envy and vanity, have gifted themselves with a $32,000 annual pay raise in recognition of their unselfish dedication to public service.

 If they were braggarts, they could now boast being the highest-paid lawmakers in the nation. That is their prize, they claim, for being devoted emissaries of the People's Will.

Their outside income will be capped at $35,000. The door to finagling formerly customary revenue streams will no longer be ajar, but neither will it be locked. Certain means of traditional enrichment will be exempted.

I'd bet that in practice there will remain more avenues for stipends than there are species of rattlesnake.

It's all about economic principles and the just desserts of merit. In other words, "you get what you pay for.” If New Yorkers want to maintain the spectacular standard of their legislator's performance, they must shower their venerable leaders with commensurate incentives.

That's their take.

Even after the act of self-love they voted themselves during a special session when all media was inert, their posted incomes will remain competitive with senior civil service ranks. But it won't be long before they will no longer be in the same league as police captains or school superintendents.

And the difference won't be statutory.

Ten years from now, many of these members will mysteriously have financial portfolios with more pages than the federal Omnibus Bill. There will be more shelters for their earnings than there were shelters in New York City buildings in the 1950s during the heyday of angst from the nuclear scares of the cold war. 

And with less risk of fallout. If I'm wrong, I'll stand outside in my long johns and do the bossa nova during a bomb cyclone.

There will be restrictions on the legislators' outside income. Bravo. Let's clap with one hand until we have solid evidence that it will be overseen by an independent authority not beholden to them. Who will search, find and vet that monitor?

The lawmakers will also get around $200 per sleepover in Albany, and around 58 cents a mile driving allowance when using their car for official business. Even when business is pleasure? 

Who's going to verify compliance?

What sanctions will there be for undisclosed revenue streams and schemes? Will the loopholes be wider than the Holland Tunnel? Will the subjects of blockbuster revelations have the power to quash investigations and dismiss alarms from whistleblowers as the sound and fury of toy whistles?

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins defended the money grab with the incisive observation that "sooner or later, in order to be able to afford to do the job, we have to raise pay.” Ms. Stewart-Cousins has done much fine work in Albany, and I regret having to harshly characterize her stand on this issue.

There should be an airtight state law which stipulates that automatically and unconditionally, without plea deals or pardons, any legislator who breaks the income ceiling, regardless of pretext or alleged misunderstanding, should upon substantiation, be fired without right of appeal and be permanently ineligible for elected office thereafter.

There should also be "zero tolerance" for conflict of interest violations.

That won't be easy, as it will entail renouncing and abrogating tradition. It should be pointed out that extreme cases, such as that of the late former Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver, have been suitably prosecuted.

What should nurses, teachers, police officers and other unionized civil servants say when they are slapped down for proposing pay increases of a small fraction of the 29 percent annually that the legislators bestowed on themselves for being on the clock for two months a year?

The New York Public Interest Research Group notes that the new law "does not prohibit outside income from entities where the legislator would have a fiduciary responsibility to a client.”

It appears that the prohibitions are more selective than sweeping. Some Republicans opposed the law, not out of an abundance of humility and fair play, but because they demand there be no limits whatsoever on their lucre-gathering.

Too bad that 14,000 private-sector nurses can't take the legislators' royal route to prosperity.. Around 99 percent of them voted to approve a strike unless their utterly reasonable demands, most of them directly tied to patient welfare, are met.

My column in The Chief ("Montefiore, Do No Harm,” Nov. 16) spells them out.

When hospitals plead poverty, it is often more of spirit than purse. According to a source quoted in The Chief (Dec. 30), one hospital's CEO was paid almost $12 million in 2020, yet nurses are being asked to embrace an increase far below inflation, while also making other major sacrifices, such as accepting a drastic slashing of their own health benefits.

Patients wait in emergency rooms for more than two days, nurses have more than triple their appropriate caseloads and, to compensate for shortages from the perennial staff retention crisis, nurses must work multiple tours without rest, jeopardizing their own health as well as that of their patients.

With Covid, nurses were the medical counterpart to soldiers in a combat zone.

At my local Walgreens, they were allowing only seven customers into the store, with its humongous square-footage, and at the front door was a stern sentry, backed up on the street by a police cruiser with officers eyeing them. Somewhere at that moment, no doubt, a nurse was attending to a breathing or feeding tube or ventilator or some other critical duty, without complaint or narcissism.

A strike will be especially rough on the nurses themselves. The situation need not get worse before it gets better. Management's heart, more than their budget, is being tested. 

Organized labor is better at fighting on multiple fronts than are the armies of nations.

Another current battle in New York is being waged by New York Taxi Workers Alliance-represented Uber drivers who went on a 24-hour warning strike recently. Bloomberg News relished that the job action "fizzled.”


The drivers had got no pay increase for 10 years. Last month, the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission granted them one, but Uber sued on the grounds that it would give their bottom line a boo-boo.

They were concerned that fairer pay for the drivers might bruise their corporate reputation. They cited the 25 percent per mile raise as being "dramatic, unprecedented and unsupported.”

It sounds hefty, but should be viewed against the backdrop of a decade of nothing. Uber estimates it could save itself $21-23 million if the drivers did their share by not demanding their share.

Management also claims that wage increases will diminish ridership and drivers' earnings. In other words, management needs to be cruel to be kind. It knows what's best for its children.

Now the TLC's proposed fare boost and 11 percent pay increase for the drivers is in suspended animation until Jan. 31, because of a federal judge's ruling on Uber's lawsuit. Lyft drivers will be similarly affected by the Uber adjudication.

Uber insists it does right by the drivers. They allege that driver pay has increased 38.4 percent since 2019. Maybe that's potential proof but it's not proof positive. Uber's business model knows no boundaries and neither does it appear to respect borders.

According to The Hill, "Uber pushed into markets around the world … lobbied political leaders to relax labor and taxi laws and used 'kill switches' to thwart regulators and law enforcement.”

More hours, less pay for workers. Regardless of the industry, whether regulating nurses, drivers or other productive laborers, that is the mantra and dictation of bosses.

Maybe the only solution is for each of these breadwinners to get elected to state office.

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