PEF President Brynien's Message

By KENNETH BRYNIEN
Over the last two months, the governor has made two major addresses, the introduction of the Executive Budget and the State of the State. Both speeches outlined the state’s dire fiscal condition and the need for shared pain and sacrifice.

While the proposed budget makes cuts across a number of areas, person-for-person, public employees are among the hardest hit.

Since last April, state operations have been cut by $1.4 billion, and the governor wants to cut more.

He wants to strip our collectively bargained pay raises, lag our pay, increase health care costs by partially eliminating the state’s contribution to Medicare Part B payments, increase retirees’ contributions for health insurance, and roll-back pension benefits for future retirees, re-creating the tier inequities that PEF worked for the past 25 years to address.

As the governor said, there is shared pain. These proposals affect retired, current, and future public employees. Altogether, these concessions would amount to the equivalent of a 66 percent tax increase for public employees. That’s a burden well beyond what the governor is asking of others.

We understand the need to share the burden of this fiscal crisis and have done our part, absorbing almost a billion and a half dollars in cuts since last April and doing more work with fewer resources. It’s time the governor looked elsewhere for sacrifices.

We have proposed ways to address the fiscal crisis by cutting such areas as overtime and wasteful spending on consultants to get the best value for every tax dollar. We have pushed for the millionaire’s tax and other ways of addressing the state’s fiscal crisis that are less damaging to the state’s economy and the essential services that are needed now more than ever. However, while the governor has included some of our proposals in his budget, the vast majority have been ignored.

On January 7, thousands of PEF members rallied alongside members from the Civil Service Employees Association, the NYS Nurses Association, AFSCME District Council 37 and the Service Employees International Union with one message: “We are Main Street!”

If the governor truly wants this fiscal burden to be shared, he’d better look to more than public employees and public services to balance this budget.

There are two sides to the budget equation, and those who are most culpable for the fiscal crisis should not be immune from its impact. This is a message we hope the governor understands and will act on. If not, the January gathering of thousands on the Capitol steps will be just the first act in this budget drama.