Pataki may veto transit pension refunds

[cal04]

Gov. George E. Pataki has indicated he may veto legislation that would give a majority of the city's transit workers $110 million in refunds from their pension plan, throwing into doubt a key part of a tentative contract deal reached this week.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Transport Workers Union agreed to support legislation that would give up to 20,000 of the union's 33,700 members refunds of payments they made to their pension plan before 2001, when the plan was renegotiated.

The MTA agreed to the refunds in negotiations monitored by state mediators after the union ended a three-day strike that stranded millions of commuters days before Christmas. The concession took the Pataki administration by surprise and a spokeswoman, Joanna Rose, said that the governor has vetoed similar legislation in 2000 and 2001.

"The union leadership broke the law and we will not reward those who break the law and put their interest before the public interest. We will not allow the union leadership to benefit from illegal acts," Rose said Thursday. "The governor was clear, the TWU has broken the law and they will suffer the consequences." Pataki administration officials said the governor would be inclined to veto legislation that was similar to that proposed in 2000 and 2001. The union on Friday declined comment through a spokesman and a MTA spokesman did not return a message. The governor appoints a majority of the state transit agency's board members and had been monitoring the transit talks, but said publicly that he would not intervene in contract negotiations.

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/transportation/nyc-transit1231,0,7972828.story?coll=nyc-homepage-breakingheadlines

wonder how many times Pataki broke the law and put his interest before the public

[Rainscents]

1. Well, NYorkers voted for him thinking he was LIBERAL!

[cal04]

2. Not this New Yorker. Hopefully we will get a Dem next

election

[LeftNYC]

4. Spitzer baby...

Post trashes him everyday...gotta love it.

[me b zola]

3. He feels as though he will be politically safe if he makes this awful move

He is counting on the voting public to be so angry at the transit workers for the inconvience that was caused during the strike. I hope NYers will pressure him to not veto the workers pensions.

[newswolf56]

5. It's possible the MTA provoked the strike specifically for this reason:

back the TWU into a corner, force a strike, then use the strike as an excuse to nullify pension buy-outs, thereby saving the MTA $110 million that can then be used to further reward its already obscenely overpaid executives -- who in turn contribute some predetermined percentage of the loot into the Republican Party's secret bank accounts.

Meanwhile the avowedly bourgeois, reflexively fascist, maliciously anti-union voters in the outer boroughs -- the same knee-jerkers who put Pataki and Bloomberg into power -- wildly cheer their heroes for "bravely standing up to union tyranny." And the media, blinded by another of its periodic anti-union frenzies, refuses to investigate -- though the fix is so obviously in, the hookers on Third Avenue now call it "doin' an MTA" when they roll a john, and even the bums on the Bowery are laughing.

(Admittedly I haven't been in New York City since the mid-1980s, but some things -- especially the scheming greed and calculated savagery of the oligarchy -- never change.)

(Note to self: evolve a replacement term for "knee-jerk" that is implicitly fascist, incorporating the Strangelovian notion of a reflexive Nazi salute -- something like "heil-jerk" only still more vivid.)