This is beyond insane, it’s beyond outrageous it must be criminal. Where oh where is Eliot Spitzer, the chief law enforcement officer of the state? While we suffer in this state the unions and the politicians runaway with the pocketbooks and wallets of the taxpayers. But who really cares? Every election year we re-elect the same group of selfserving, corrupt legislators and a governor to match.

ALBANY — It began with a simple plea for equity, for the same deal that other unions had. It ended with thousands more former New York City employees getting expensive Christmas presents: bonus checks in each year of retirement that would eventually reach $12,000, all paid for by taxpayers.

The road to a new pension benefit that will eventually cost New York City an estimated $100 million a year began in 1995, when the city’s correction officers decided that on top of their regular pensions, they deserved the “Christmas bonuses.” Retired police officers and firefighters already received such checks, and the correction officers reasoned that they should, too.

When the union asked for the money during contract negotiations, the city said no, saying it could not afford such largess. But the matter did not end there.

The union turned to Albany. It endorsed Gov. George E. Pataki’s 1998 re-election bid and gave state lawmakers and political parties $79,000 in campaign donations in 1999. Then, after more lobbying and contributions, it persuaded the City Council to ask the state to pass the bill.

That year a bill establishing the annual bonuses sailed through the Legislature. The Giuliani administration, disturbed about the city’s being stuck with the cost, howled in protest, and both the city and state comptrollers and the governor’s own budget division recommended a veto. But the governor signed the bill.

Over the last six years, those checks have cost the city $60 million — during a period when big budget gaps forced the city to lay off workers, close firehouses and raise taxes to balance its budget.

The bill was hardly an aberration. At a time when many businesses are reducing or eliminating pension plans, Governor Pataki and the Legislature have approved billions of dollars in new pension benefits for government workers after lobbying from politically connected unions, an analysis by The New York Times of pension bills and campaign contributions shows.

In recent years, the state decided to let city auto mechanics retire at age 50 with full pensions. It allowed the city’s 911 operators and urban park rangers to retire after 25 years of service, even if they are still in their 40’s. It passed laws decreeing that heart disease be considered a job-related ailment for correction officers, emergency medical technicians and sanitation workers, qualifying more workers for lucrative disability pensions equal to three-quarters of their salary, all exempt from state and local taxes.

The state also gave death benefits to people who had quit their city jobs before retirement age, enabling survivors of people who left the city work force to collect payments, often in the tens of thousands of dollars, when their spouses die.

Some city workers are entitled by state law to pensions that are too big even to be allowed under federal Internal Revenue Service regulations. So in 2004, citing “the numerous new plans and benefit improvements” that allowed city workers to retire earlier with bigger pensions, the state passed a law allowing the city to set up a special fund to pay those workers the difference between what the federal government allows for their pensions and what the state says they are owed.

More, plenty more…..——->

“It’s outrageous,” said Edward I. Koch, “The municipal unions own the State Legislature.”

So this all brings us back to a point I have been making for years and years…. Who negotiates these union contracts? The politicians that are supposed to represent US. They give freely to the unions and bow down to their every demand and in return, the unions and their supporters line the pockets and the campaign warchests with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Who pays? We do, we pay for every deal they make and it is time to bring this to a screeching halt.

This is election year people, every assemblyman, senator and governor are up, we need to make this their last term.