Tonawanda News - Giveaways show who the real boss is in Albany

    Wow, you sure can tell it’s an election year. There goes that state Legislature, giving away the store to the shop help again.

    Recent approval by the legislature has New York poised to grant unionized public workers a punitive 1 percent salary hike when the employing state or municipality is shown to have negotiated in “bad faith.” Naturally, there is no 1 percent giveback to government, i.e. taxpayers, when unions negotiate in bad faith.

    Approval by the state Senate was unanimous — thanks so much, George Maziarz. Our local assemblymen, Republican Mike Cole and Democrat Francine DelMonte, also voted in favor.

    Another bill, vetoed by Gov. George Pataki but very possibly about to become law anyway by legislative override, would allow 52,000 home child care workers to organize and bargain collectively with the state for pay and benefits.

    Other legislation pushed by unions and rubber-stamped “OK” by the legislative majority would increase retirement benefits for whole classes of workers and even change the official starting date of the Vietnam War to increase benefits for public workers.

    The audacity — no, the sheer piggishness — of these policy votes is stunning. The Brennan Center did not call this body dysfunctional for nothing.

    We should be used to it by now, certainly. A few election cycles ago, the Legislature’s gift to the public unions that float their re-election campaigns was the zeroing out of employees’ piddling contributions to their own pension plans. Now it’s up to taxpayers, 100 percent, to fund the pensions. Since 2001, when the stock market was rocked, the cost to government — We The People — for covering obligations has exploded.

    And the kicker? Our own state Constitution says once a benefit is given to public employees it can’t be taken back without a constitutional amendment.

    Yes, we certainly should be giving more to those public employees. They don’t have enough now.

    In Lockport there’s been a collective freak-out this year over property assessments, not because our properties are overvalued per se but because with assessment comes taxes that keep rising, rising, rising.

    Do the politicians who keep giving the store away ever make that connection? Or do they simply not care because their sole loyalty is to the people who support their campaigns?

    Recent statistics show more people have left Niagara and Erie counties in the past five years than they did in all of the 10-year period preceding it. As the tax base dwindles, the tax load climbs. As it gets worse, even people with minimal mobility are making the choice to get the heck out of Dodge.

    Who is going to be left to pay the tab for the legislature’s latest giveaways?

    That’s right, dear reader: you.

    If you haven’t packed up and moved south or west by November, please make an effort to get out to the polls and thank your legislators. Their benevolence shouldn’t go unnoticed.

Excellent editorial!