FOR THE RECORD

The notion of a snowballing feud between Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and the city's former top cop Bill Bratton got a brief roll down the mountain last week when it was learned that the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association plans to give the just-departed Los Angeles Police Chief its "Man of the Year" award at its convention early next month.

An NBC-TV news report, which cited the fact that Mr. Bratton hasn't worked here in 13 years as evidence that the award was a bit of a reach, stated, "It's hard to not see this as a slap in the face to" Mr. Kelly.

The only problem with that theory is, there's a plausible explanation for the honor that has nothing to do with the union's relationship with Mr. Kelly.

PBA President Pat Lynch's chief spokesman, Al O'Leary, told us last week that the award was being presented in recognition of Mr. Bratton's willingness to testify at past union contract arbitration hearings, including the most-recent one in 2008, in support of pay hikes beyond the citywide bargaining pattern.

"We wanted to honor him last year, but his schedule wouldn't permit it," Mr. O'Leary said. Mr. Bratton having left the LAPD recently to become CEO of a new security consulting firm based in Manhattan leaves him within easy driving distance of the PBA convention in Albany, which begins Sept. 1, and so the union is taking the opportunity to say thanks for lending the prestige of his positions as both city Police Commissioner and its equivalent on the West Coast toward helping its contract cause.

Mayor Bloomberg may not have appreciated Mr. Bratton's opposing the city's arbitration position, but the honor was by no means "a slap" at Mr. Kelly, Mr. O'Leary said.

"He was there when we needed him" in the arbitrations, he concluded of Mr. Bratton.

Speaking of arbitrations, last week's contract award for Transport Workers Union Local 100 offered an interesting contrast in newspaper editorialists' views as to who was to blame for what they considered an excessive award.

The day after the award was issued Aug. 11, one tabloid ran an editorial headlined, "Mayor Mike's Complicity," which argued that Mr. Bloomberg's protests of the contract terms rang hollow because they were patterned after raises he himself had granted to city workers over the past couple of years, and as recently as last month he granted 4-percent annual hikes to 7,000 non-union employees.

"For now," the editorial writer continued, "Bloomberg would do well to reflect on his role in a process that almost certainly will produce a premature fare hike, and probably much worse."

The day after that, another tabloid editorial appeared on the TWU award, this one asking, "Was the Fix In?"

That one gave a heaping helping of blame to Governor Paterson, arguing that the "whole deal was a setup from the start," and that he could "claim total ignorance, while winking at the union." It also accused Lieut. Governor Richard Ravitch of waving as the award motored by because "he showed no appetite—none—for tangling with the TWU."

It also endorsed a call by Republican Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos for an investigation of whether the arbitration amounted to a sham and the MTA had agreed in advance to let Local 100 get what it wanted.

This was interesting on two counts. One was that both editorials appeared in the New York Post, leading us to wonder how many more times the paper would be coming up with a Culprit du Jour. If it continued in this vein, it might actually get closer to finding out the truth of what happened by sometime this week.

The other was that Mr. Skelos represents Nassau County, which when it was controlled by Republicans was the home office for police union arbitrations that were often compared to professional wrestling. They featured terms so outlandishly generous that by comparison the TWU award amounted to a wage freeze and jail time for the entire union leadership.

We're not sure Mr. Skelos really wants a sweeping probe of every public-employee arbitration over the past couple of decades suspected of being structured with management's consent to benefit a union while allowing it to disclaim responsibility for the added hit on the public purse.

An article in last week's issue misspelled the name of the political director of the New York Area Metro Postal Union. It is Chuck Zlatkin, not Zladkin as it appeared.