UNITED WE STAND — PEF President Roger Benson thanks the PEF Retirees Executive Council for the activism of the retirees and discusses a new agreement between the union and retiree organization for further joint efforts in the interests of both groups.
See related article — Photo by Sherry Halbrook
Every challenge an opportunity
By Roger E. Benson
Each state legislative session presents its own challenges and opportunities. This year’s session is no different. The state’s budget deficit has been pegged at $4 billion. The state is facing enormous pressure for the court-mandated school funding, health care funding, Medicaid funding for counties, and funding for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) capital program. These are just a few of the budget issues that will mark this legislative session.
The same fiscal pressure that threatens the vital services we provide has also given us an opportunity to fight a more insidious threat — privatization and off-budget shadow agencies.
Time and again, report after report, and audit after audit has shown that contracting out and privatization cost state taxpayers more.
Ongoing scandals at the Canal Corporation, the MTA, and New York Racing Association have focused the public’s attention on the lack of accountability and oversight of these agencies and have driven calls for reform.
These issues have created an opening for PEF and our members to press for solutions and real reform in the provision of public services. We are already prepared to take advantage of this urgent call for accountability. Last November, the PEF Executive Board approved the first phase of what will be a nearly $1.5 million
campaign to fight
privatization.
The goal of this campaign is to pass legislation that will give us the tools we need to level the playing field between us and the privatizers and shadow agencies, by:
1. Requiring cost benefit analysis prior to contracting out;
2. Merging shadow agencies and authorities into state agencies and requiring more financial disclosure;
3. Limiting the influence of lobbyists in contract awards; and
4. Definitively identifying where contract employees work.
The struggles to maintain the essential services we provide and to generate real reform and accountability in government will be difficult ones. Fortunately, the key to our success is a familiar one — mobilization, political pressure and public relations — a formula that has served us well.
With your help, we can meet these challenges and succeed in protecting and improving the state’s taxpayers, our members and the important services we provide.
The
Communicator May 2005
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