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Razzle
Dazzle
Debate's Unasked Questions
By RICHARD STEIER
Midway
through the Sept. 26 gubernatorial debate, Dominic Carter of New York 1 cited
Eliot Spitzer's support from public-employee unions and Assembly Speaker Sheldon
Silver to raise doubts about the State Attorney General's pledge to end business
as usual in Albany, asking how he could "take on the status quo when the status
quo is behind you."
Mr.
Spitzer never addressed those specific entities in replying, falling back on
some innocuous rhetorical pablum. "I will choose the best regardless of
political affiliation; the current administration makes people change political
parties," he told Mr. Carter and those gathered in a Cornell University
auditorium, as well as a statewide cable-TV audience.
What bothered Arthur Cheliotes about Mr. Spitzer's response as he watched the
debate at home was his decision not to challenge the assumption behind Mr.
Carter's question: that the unions were part of the gridlock in Albany that
impeded meaningful state government.
'Thought He Understood Us'
"We had expectations based on his work as Attorney General that he understood
the needs of working people, and that unions were a positive, progressive force
for those needs," said Mr. Cheliotes, the president of Communications Workers of
America Local 1180, during a phone interview the day after the debate.
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| AN EASY
CHOICE: Eliot Spitzer (left) didn't attempt to defend unions when a
questioner connected them to the 'status quo' in Albany during last
week's gubernatorial debate, but union leaders like Randi Weingarten
and Arthur Cheliotes believe he will bring a welcome change in the
state's labor-related policies if elected.
| | He added, "I'm
troubled by any debate that focuses on not raising taxes [while] improving
services and education."
That was the essence of the positions staked out by both Mr. Spitzer and John
Faso, his Republican challenger, in outlining the sharply divergent ways that
they intended to make the state a powerful force for good while not imposing
additional taxes as part of the bargain.
Mr. Faso tried to hammer Mr. Spitzer over his plan to implement the Campaign
for Fiscal Equity decision, claiming that if it were applied statewide, "That is
a 25-percent income tax increase right off the bat," referring to a potential
cost he put at up to $10 billion a year to upgrade schools.
Mr. Spitzer countered that Mr. Faso's position on the matter suggested that
he "would simply disregard a court order that says 'spend more money on
education.' We know we have to spend it," notwithstanding the fact that Governor
Pataki has managed to outrun the inevitable by continuing to appeal each ruling
against the state, with Mr. Spitzer as Attorney General actually handling those
appeals.
But if Mr. Spitzer was trying to bring reality to the table on education
spending, he also seemed to invite fantasy to grab a chair when he spoke of
providing universal health care without raising taxes. He proposed to do this
through the purchase of generic rather than name-brand drugs combined with
better preventive health-care that he said would allow for the closing of some
hospitals because sicker patients would be treated before their illnesses
reached crisis stages. Mr. Cheliotes said he didn't buy the calculations and
that the prospect of hospital closings worried him.
The other labor-related question during the debate came from Jim Aroune of
the upstate-based R News, who asked whether, with unions providing "the backbone
of the support of your campaign," Mr. Spitzer was prepared to curtail the power
of organized labor upstate as a way of helping the region to recover
economically.
The Attorney General largely sidestepped the question, except to say that he
would seek to reform the Workers' Compensation system and exempt 80 percent of
state construction projects upstate from the Wicks Law.
Never Broached Taylor Law
The focus of the questions was as telling as the answers - and non-answers -
they produced. None of the panelists asked about subjects like the legislation
affecting those who worked at Ground Zero or possible reforms in the Taylor Law
to make it less tilted against unions in contract disputes, something that has
been a priority of the State AFL-CIO and its members since last December's
transit strike. It was a glaring imbalance, one that seemed to suggest that the
questioners were unaware that there are one million public employees and 2.3
million union members statewide, the great majority of them eligible to vote in
the contest.
"We're dealing with the corporate media," Mr. Cheliotes said. He added that
the skewed view of labor issues was also evident in a lengthy Daily News story
the previous Sunday that raised the specter of a union gone wild in detailing
some of the expenditures of Hospital and Health Care Workers Local 1199, then
late in the piece finally provided some explanations that indicated the amounts
involved were not outlandish. He noted that short of a criminal trial, the
spending of corporations on employee-related events never comes to light,
because the corporations, unlike the unions, are exempt from making public such
information.
United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said that unions
suffer from being equated with large corporations, as if they were both special
interest groups that were just interested in lining their pockets. Those
corporations and their supporters in both the political world and the media do
much to invite that kind of lumping together, she said, noting, "There is so
much money that goes into the political process today at the state and national
level from people who are incredibly rich."
Faso Channels D'Amato
She contended that Mr. Faso - whose lack of union support is partly
attributable to his call for the abolition of pensions for future public
employees in favor of 401(k) plans that would be much more heavily funded by
workers - was "doing a D'Amato," referring to former U.S. Sen. Al D'Amato's
losing 1998 bid for re-election in which he launched early attacks against the
power of Teacher unions both here and in Washington.
"Faso's doing it more broadly because he's really far behind," Ms. Weingarten
said, alluding to recent polls that have shown him trailing Mr. Spitzer by 50
points. "It didn't work for D'Amato; what it did was enrage ordinary
schoolteachers to vote against him when they might not have. And it won't work
for Faso because Eliot Spitzer has a reputation for independence. It's hard to
tag him with any other kind of label."
The notion implicit in the panel's questions that organized labor is part of
the problem statewide, Ms. Weingarten said, stands in sharp contrast to "the
days after 9/11, when cops and firefighters and construction workers were all
viewed as heroes because they didn't think twice about sacrificing themselves to
save other people's lives."
Of course, one reason for the disparity is that those who hammer the unions
tend to avoid pointing fingers at the police and fire unions. One example of
this intellectual dishonesty came from Daily News columnist Bill Hammond in a
Sept. 28 piece reacting to the debate. He took shots at the UFT on education and
Local 1199 on Medicaid costs, then asked, "And why do taxpayers shell out more
for government pensions than they can hope to collect themselves? District
Council 37, the Civil Service Employees Association, etc., etc."
Costly 'Untouchables'
Maybe those etceteras stood for the police and fire unions, maybe not. But
there's a good likelihood that Mr. Hammond didn't mention those unions
specifically, even though their pension benefits are far more generous than
those received by members of DC 37 and the CSEA, because they represent
employees who are held in high esteem by the public. Bash them over pensions and
it becomes a little bit tougher to gin up public indignation, particularly among
politically conservative readers who are more inclined to buy the notion that
civil servants have it much too good and the state is suffering as a result.
It is that kind of mentality, Ms. Weingarten said, that leads to labor being
demonized or lumped in with "the status quo." "Blaming the influence of labor
for what has happened in the upstate economy is ridiculous," she said.
"Industries became obsolete and we didn't have alternatives for those areas.
It's like we've just been doing a doggy-paddle in the state for the last few
years," although it should be noted that the Governor she was implicitly
criticizing had the UFT's endorsement when he was re-elected in 2002.
From her union's standpoint, Ms. Weingarten said, Mr. Spitzer is not the
perfect candidate, given his support of charter schools and his commitment to
expanding the number of them statewide. But placed alongside Mr. Faso, she said,
"There is not a question about who would make the best Governor to bring New
York State into the 21st Century."
Make Labor Heard
Mr. Cheliotes agreed, but noted that he has been urging Local 1180 members to
vote for Mr. Spitzer on the Working Families Party line rather than as a
Democrat as a way of making him understand the power that union members have and
the respect their concerns deserve. The political dialogue today, he noted, is
so geared toward promising tax cuts that even progressive candidates are
reluctant to point out the role that tax dollars play in ensuring quality public
services.
"There are many in this city and this state who aren't paying nearly what
they should be while doing very well," Mr. Cheliotes said. "We need a more
progressive tax structure of the sort we had under Rockefeller."
You won't, however, hear Mr. Spitzer talking along those lines when he and
Mr. Faso debate again. And unfortunately, you're unlikely to hear any of their
questioners raising such issues.
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