By Henry J. Stern
June 16, 2006
Wednesday's article,
A Silver Bullet,
described Speaker Sheldon Silver's appointment of three loyalists (all holding
Assembly committee chairs by his grace) to create an 11 to 10 majority to
defeat a bill banning double dipping by former city employees. We received
several dozen e-mails on the subject, which are published on
Starblog. One e-letter,
from a city employee, supported the Speaker's position.
The
Daily
News devoted its lead editorial yesterday to the subject. Under
the headline, "BOSS SILVER WHACKS TAXPAYERS", the News opined as follows:
Boss Silver whacks taxpayers
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver this week delivered a virtuoso performance
in the annals of Albany bossism, sticking it to taxpayers, coddling special
interests and trashing the democratic process in a single committee meeting.
The issue was double-dipping by government employees who are hurt on the
job. Because of a quirk in state law, injured public workers can sue for
wages and medical costs even when, thanks to full health insurance coverage
and generous disability benefits, they haven't lost a dime of either.
In the private sector, injured workers are limited to recovering actual out-of-pocket
expenses. Private employers are not required, for example, to reimburse hospital
bills that were covered by insurance. But public workers get the insane bonanza
of having all their costs paid and then collecting the money a second time
in court.
Lining up to demand sanity were the City of New York, virtually every county,
city, town and village in the state, Gov. Pataki, Attorney General Eliot
Spitzer and the state and city bar associations. Their proposed fix - giving
civil servants exactly the same rights as private-sector workers - would
save the city alone $160 million on pending litigation without costing Albany
one red cent. The opposition came from trial lawyers and the public employee
unions, both of which profit from the status quo.
It was a no-brainer tradeoff between the public good and the narrow special
interest. But Silver - himself a personal injury lawyer - came down hard
on the side of the special interests, arguing that the bill amounted to a
change in benefits that should be negotiated at the bargaining table. In
the most dysfunctional state Capitol in the country, Silver's personal opposition
was all it took to squash reform.
Silver's hit job went down like this. Heading into a Judiciary Committee
meeting Tuesday morning, reform supporters believed they had a narrow majority
on the 18-member panel. But at the eleventh hour, Silver used his near-dictatorial
powers to install loyalists in three vacant seats. Thus thoroughly packed,
the committee voted 11 to 10 not to send the bill to the full Assembly.
Silver's spokeswoman insists he never spoke to committee members about the
double-dipping issue and that his last-minute tinkering with the membership
was perfectly routine. That's just the problem. This kind of stuff goes on
all the time at the state Capitol. A political boss changes the makeup of
a crucial committee in the middle of a hard-fought scramble for votes, putting
one side at a huge disadvantage and killing a common-sense, taxpayer-friendly
reform - and it's just another day at the sausage factory.
.-.-.
What is remarkable is that both houses of the Legislature are so supine with
regard to their elected leaders. In future articles, we will try to
explore the reasons for preternatural submission by so many intelligent and
honest public officials, some of whom have served in the legislature for
more than half their lives.
It may be that it is their very intelligence which compels them into ostensible
loyalty to those more powerful than they. Finding a system which will
liberate them from this bondage is a major task. It will be the most
important item for the new governor to consider in 2007, if that is, he really
wants to be an effective governor.