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Public Sector Workforce
January 09, 2007
Two stories in yesterday's New York tabs offer a crash course in the law of unintended consequences. The Daily News cover story, Cops pay big price for 25G salary, makes the obvious but significant connection between the new starting pay rate, a 40% cut to 1986 entry levels, and a force that's shrunk by 300, despite plans for an 800 officer increase. And even those who join reconsider—the drop-out rate among recruits has doubled to 20%, and at least one cop has applied for food stamps.
In short, Bloomberg was outfoxed by the PBA, which agreed to lower pay for new rookies in exchange for pay raises for veterans, knowing that the rookie pay would have to be pushed back up—and that the raises, of course, would not be scaled down in return. In a nice judo move, the union is actually using screwed-up young cops as an argument for paying young cops more:
…the city's largest police union argued that too many sub-par recruits are being accepted into the academy.
Patrick Lynch, president of the PBA, seized on the high dropout and failure rate of the July class.
"It shows that they have been putting anyone they could get into the academy," he said. "So many other departments in the metro area pay their police substantially more. They are getting the best candidates."
Union officials say their position is supported by the recent arrests of two rookie cops.
In September, Officer Danielle Baymack was arrested for allegedly killing her close friend and fellow officer in a drunken car crash in Long Island. Baymack, who had a checkered driving record before joining the department, graduated from the Police Academy last July.
Last week, Officer Dixon Zapata, who graduated from the academy last January, was arrested for attacking his wife in front of their kids in Brooklyn.
"There is such a scramble, a push, for bodies, there is no way they can give everyone a real checkup," said a police supervisor who works with recruits. The planned expansion of the department was designed to keep a lid on crime as the city's population expands by 200,000 over the next five years.
Meanwhile, the Post reports on that rare crime drop the city is less than eager to claim credit for, or explain, in this short dispatch, here in full:
Police brass want more arrests to com bat rising rates of murders and shoot ings, so they're eliminating limits on over time pay to encourage cops to haul in more perps.
"The more bad guys you put in jail, the less likely they are to shoot and kill people," said a source familiar with the thinking behind the shift in policy.
Department Chief Joseph Esposito announced the change - effective immediately - in a meeting Thursday with borough chiefs and brass in the transit, housing, narcotics and detective bureaus, a source said.
Traditionally, overtime pay is capped at the end of every month or quarter, depending on the command, with a typical limit of about $8,000 per quarter. Additional overtime hours are compensated with time off. But those rules may discourage some officers from making arrests after they hit their limit, because the average collar is a time-consuming process, often running into overtime.
The new policy is a response to the spike in murders in the city this year - almost 10 percent over last year.
As of Dec. 24, there had been 579 murders, compared with 527 during the same period last year. Shootings are up 2 percent, to 1,530.
But overall crime is down 4.6 percent citywide, and busts were up this year 5.5 percent over last year.
Esposito reportedly warned chiefs to keep an eye out for overtime abuses - like deliberately making an arrest at the end of a shift to rack up bigger paychecks.
The Daily News touches on the impact of overtime in their story, closing with
Though overall crime fell 4.7% last year compared with 2005, the murder rate rose 9.2%. Last week, police brass put out the word that overtime would be easier to get, ideally to allow cops to make more arrests.
"It's the old 'dollars for collars,'" said a police official who asked not to be identified. "Is some of it fueled because there are less cops out there? No doubt."
Bloomberg, having been badly out-manouvered, is likely to be forced to push rookie salaries up, and has already restored more generous overtime rules that amount to a de facto raise.
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October 03, 2006
New York has a Medicaid program that is two-and-a-half times as expensive as the national average, and larger than those of Texas and California combined. Two stories in the Metro section today's Times speak to why this is, and what can be done to provide a better safety net at a lower cost.
Continue reading
Is Medicaid Sense Coming To New York?
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April 16, 2006
Michael Barone: US News and World Report Blog 4/14/06
In many but not all states, public-employee unions have been forcing greater-than-economic-growth spending increases on state and local governments—spending that produces very little in the way of public benefit. (Steve) Malanga's most important point (in writing about New Jersey for the City Journal) is that taxpayers aren't getting much value from the huge spending increases, and neither are the intended beneficiaries of the huge transfers from affluent suburbs to decaying central cities. Huge increases in spending on central city public schools have resulted in virtually no improvement in test scores. They have resulted instead in bloated salaries, benefits, and pensions for teachers and other public employees. And of course for public-sector union officials. And, through the unions, large flows of money have gone to the Democratic Party. All this is, evidently, gratifying to the upper-income liberals who vote Democratic in order to preserve the right to abort fetuses…..many on the political left complain about the disappearance of the middle class, the alleged tendency of our economy to produce hefty income growth for those at the upper end of the economic scale and relatively little income growth for the large number at the lower end. Interestingly, this tendency toward income inequality is most pronounced in states that have been voting Democratic in presidential elections—especially New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California. Income inequality tends to be much less in many states that vote heavily Republican. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California have imported many high-income earners and low-income immigrants and have been exporting many more middle-income earners. This process is accelerated when, as in these four states, high-income earners have been eager to vote for Democrats backed by public-employee unions: The same people who have been complaining about this trend have been causing it.
This is an urban trend that began in 1960s New York under John Lindsay and has now extended to state and national politics. For the way public employee politics are playing out in Michigan see "Michigan Withers/Public Employees Prosper" below.
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