PEF’s Response — PEF President Ken Brynien is interviewed by a statewide news organization on PEF’s response to the State of the State address. — Photo by Darcy Wells Mergers, Tier 6 dominate 2012-13 state budget mix By SHERRY HALBROOK In presenting his state Executive Budget proposal for 2012-13 in January, Gov. Cuomo acknowledged the state is operating with 16,000 fewer employees than it had to do the job in 2008, and the job has grown over that time. He stopped short of proposing to add substantially more employees. Instead, Cuomo is looking to closings, consolidations and reorganization of agencies and programs to get the maximum work from the force he has. Topping his list: Close Kingsboro Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn which serves the state’s most populous county, and give the state commissioner of mental health a free hand to close or reduce more services as he chooses. He also wants to reduce the notice requirement for closing or reducing mental health facilities and programs from 12 months to a maximum of 60 days. In addition, the governor proposes to implement recommendations of the “SAGE” Commission he created last year to: • Merge the Office of Employee Relations and the Department of Civil Service into a new Department of Workforce Management that would operate a new statewide training center; • Merge the Division of Lottery and the Racing and Wagering Board into a new NYS Gaming Commission; • Transfer operation and management of the Belleayre Mountain Ski Center from the Department of Environmental Conservation to the Olympic Regional Development Authority; • Centralize “similar” agencies’ finance, human resources, real estate, information technology and customer service functions into statewide centers. The state Office of General Services would provide procurement, real estate, financial and human resource services throughout state service; and • Integrate the collection function at Higher Education Services Corp (HESC) with the state Department of Taxation and Finance. While the governor’s workforce charts don’t show any HESC staff moving to Tax and Finance, the state Division of Budget says that could happen. The governor’s appropriations bills, which cannot be altered by the Legislature, would allow him to move funds between agencies. The SAGE Commission is expected to recommend further mergers and consolidations of state agencies over the next three years. Message To The Governor — PEF members attend the 22nd Annual “Peoples’ State of the State” rally in Albany’s Academy Park January 3. PEF President Ken Brynien was among those addressing the crowd about tax fairness and quality public services. — Photo by Darcy Wells It takes people “It’s time for our state's elected leaders to recognize nothing gets done without workers: trained, competent, professional workers,” said PEF President Ken Brynien following the budget address. “Initiatives proposed in this budget will increase the privatization of key state services in agencies that serve youths and people with disabilities,” Brynien said. “The governor has also proposed ‘reforms’ to the Civil Service system that will make it easier to appoint politically connected individuals by making whom you know a more important factor in hiring than what you know.” While the budget does not propose to lay off large numbers of employees at most agencies, it would leave many of them increasingly shortstaffed, which opens the door to still more wasteful reliance on costly private contractors to provide state services. Brynien said, since the year 2000, the state Department of Transportation has lost 1,900 employees, including more than 900 engineers. The department is expected to lose another 91 employees this year including 62 engineers. Meanwhile, DOT increased its spending on consultant engineers even though they cost 50 percent to 75 percent more than the state engineers. In just the last year, DOT has increased its spending on consultant engineers by 22 percent. The proposed budget would add a net gain of 70 employees over all state agencies, but that slight increase is deceiving because the plan would let attrition continue to shrivel many already depleted programs and services. The Labor Department, for instance, would lose 227 employees and the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities 114. No group of PS&T members has been forced to struggle harder in recent years than those at the state Office of Children and Family Services, and the governor singled them out for still more challenges.   He proposes to lay off 123 of them and to hire 314 others. He links this to a proposal to remove New York City youths from the agency’s non-secure facilities, and to eliminate 324 beds and after-care opportunities. The new positions would strengthen mental health and direct-care services and they would staff a new 24-hour multi-agency hotline for reporting allegations of the abuse and neglect of children and vulnerable adults. The only other state agency that would face outright layoffs under Cuomo’s proposal is the Division of Human Rights, which would lose three employees. Tier 6: Enough already “The governor's proposed budget ignores that state workers have done their share to address the state's fiscal problems,” Brynien said. Not only is the governor not proposing to hire substantially more workers, his call for a new pension Tier 6 would make it even harder to recruit them. Brynien said it’s difficult to see how that could help ease the state’s budget problems now, since it would only affect future employees and it will be years before anyone retires who was hired under the Tier 5 that was created in 2010. Tier 5 is supposed to save the state and local governments $35 billion over the next 30 years. Just last fall, PEF’s PS&T members reluctantly agreed to sacrifice $230 million over four years to help the state climb out of its financial hole, by ratifying a contract that denies them raises for several years, delays some of their pay and charges them more for health insurance. “The governor’s new Tier 6 proposal is nothing more than a false choice of accepting severely reduced pension benefits or joining an inefficient 401k-style pension system,” Brynien said. “It would force public employees into a pension gamble that virtually guarantees a lower level of benefits. This proposal is similar to the misguided proposals for reforming Social Security proposed by former President George W. Bush. “Our members earned their pensions, which are reasonable. The average annual state pension is $19,000,” Brynien said. “The current increases in pension costs don't result from increased pension benefits. They were caused by the collapse of the stock market.” Instead of always looking to state employees and their pensions and benefits to make up for budget shortfalls, the governor should focus on creating true fiscal fairness and close corporate tax loopholes, Brynien said. “We support a different approach to budgeting. If the governor respects the professionalism of the state workforce, we can work with him to get the job done.

The Communicator Letters policy We welcome letters to the editor about union issues and events relevant to PEF's diverse membership. All letters are subject to editing for space, fairness and good taste. Please keep them brief (up to one page, double-spaced or a maximum of 250 words), and please include your name and phone number for verification. Send letters to thecommunicator@pef.org: The Communicator Public Employees Federation P.O. Box 12414 Albany, N.Y. 12212-2414 Email to Sherry Halbrook, Editor or Darcy Wells, Editor-In Chief