An agreement announced last week that will end the wage freeze for 7,000 county workers appears to be a good deal for everyone involved, including the taxpayers who will foot the bill.
Please note that we say “appears.” The devil may be in the details.
Nassau County officials including Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, three employee unions including the Civil Service Employees Association, the Police Benevolent Association and the Detectives Association, and the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, the county financial oversight agency, have reached an agreement to end the three-year wage freeze.
The tentative agreement calls for wage increases between 2014 and 2016 of 3.5 percent, 3.75 percent and 3.5 percent.
Can the county afford this? NIFA Chairman Jon Kaiman is certain it can.
“We think it saves hundreds of millions of dollars and it also gets the public employees the confidence that they are going to get step increase and wage increases regularly,” he said.
The agreement is based on his proposal. Kaiman wants the county to pay for the raises by setting aside $129 million in new revenue that will be generated by speed cameras, increased sales taxes and mortgage recording fees, if concessions, such as making new hires pay 15 percent toward their health insurance don’t generate sufficient savings.
What if the cameras work and drivers slow down? Would that then turn out to be a bad thing?
Former NIFA board member George Marlin is skeptical. He estimates that the cost of the agreement will actually be closer to $250 million.
He writes in a blog: “The means to pay for these deals? Nobody’s yet sure – they’re taking the county’s word for it now.”
The deal must still be approved by the county Legislature, the NIFA board and the union rank and file. It appears that this will happen.
For the sake of the workers, we hope it does. They have families to feed and they deserve the pay raises.
The lawsuits have been costly.
But, like Marlin, we want to be certain that the agreement is affordable before anyone signs on the dotted line.
