Quinn Becomes Aunt Scrooge

For decades, municipal-employee unions have viewed the City Council as the kindly uncle they can turn to when the Mayor plays the role of stern father in opposing bills that benefit their members.

The decision by the Council's first female Speaker, Chris Quinn, not to undermine Big Daddy Mike by allowing home-rule messages to be approved and assist passage in Albany is a shift in family dynamics that led several union leaders to go nuclear.

The harshest comment came from a spokeswoman for the New York State Nurses' Association, who accused Ms. Quinn of being an enabler for "gender discrimination" for bottling up a bill that would have placed nurses in a category reserved for "physically taxing" professions, allowing them to retire earlier at full pension.

At the risk of sounding naive, we would suggest that the Council ought to be concerning itself solely with the merits of a bill, not the risks and rewards incurred if it displeases either the Mayor or the unions. That should mean not everything the unions submit gets sent upstate, but there should also not be a blanket thrown over everything the Mayor opposes on fiscal grounds.