For the Record

Two aspects of our coverage last week of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association arbitration require some clarification.

First, it was erroneously stated that former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who testified on behalf of the union, has endorsed his former boss Rudy Giuliani for President. Mr. Bratton, who is now Chief of Police in Los Angeles, had a well-publicized meeting with Mr. Giuliani last summer after which they spoke highly of each other, but no endorsement was given.

Second, Labor Relations Commissioner Jim Hanley took issue with our claim in an editorial that the PBA's 1997 arbitration award was more generous than the contracts negotiated by civilian unions for the same period. While the final wage hike under the PBA award of 6 percent exceeded the 4.75 percent negotiated for civilians, the cost of the deals to the city was actually identical.

The two primary factors in evening out the costs were a longer term for the PBA pact and a change in interest-rate assumptions that affected the Police Pension Fund but not those funds to which civilian employees belong.

The PBA award ran for 64 months, or four months longer than the contract reached by District Council 37, which generated an additional .88 percent for wage and benefit increases. The interest-rate change, under which the Police Pension Fund assumed earnings of 8.75 percent compared to the old assumption of 8.50 percent, produced an additional 1.15 percent in funding for the union's award. In the early 1990s, obligations connected to the Variable Supplements Fund for police officers had limited an increase in assumed earnings for the police fund so that they rose by just .25 percent while the largest civilian fund was able to raise its assumption by .75 percent.

Once those items were factored in, the cost to the city of the PBA award matched the 13.29 percent of the five-year DC 37 contract.

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United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten has twin rooting interests - for and against - in the presidential primaries: she's a committed backer of Hillary Clinton with an equally strong aversion to her old antagonist, Rudy Giuliani.

Asked whether she was surprised by the extent to which the ex-Mayor has shifted positions on matters such as gun control and immigration to curry favor with Republican voters, Ms. Weingarten said, "Look, I think he's disingenuous and I think people see he's disingenuous. But both parties tend to penalize people who are centrists. Yet if you look at the national elections, Americans want more centrists, or people who can convince them that they are."

Of course, Ms. Clinton, while making fewer drastic shifts in position, has also been accused of taking stances out of political calculation rather than personal conviction, most notably when she voted in October 2002 to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq.

Ms. Weingarten asserted that given the realities of national politics, "I think it would have been very hard for any Senator to vote against" the war authorization if they had White House aspirations.

"I think she learned a lot in retrospect," she said of Ms. Clinton. "I happen to be one who respects her integrity - I've never seen her violate it. She's cautious, and sometimes that caution is seen as straddling the fence."

Where the Clinton campaign has sought to emphasize her experience as an advantage over her leading competitor for the Democratic nomination, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, Ms. Weingarten said that claim also applies in comparing her to Mr. Giuliani in the area of foreign policy.

"And I think Hillary's right when she says the cowboy diplomacy has hurt us," she said, referring to the posturing of President Bush. "The tough-guy, stare-down approach has made things pretty precarious. Foreign relations is not a sport."

Does she expect Mayor Bloomberg to launch a presidential bid?

"No," the UFT leader said. "Want to? Yes. Will he? I don't think he will. Even [with] as talented a political operative as Kevin Sheekey is, and as much money as the Mayor may be prepared to spend on a campaign, I don't think the electoral map works" for him.