Man bites dog? The City Council — usually consumed with blocking cops from doing their jobs, imposing new burdens on local business or harassing school reformers — may this week actually do part of its real job.
The council plans a hearing Wednesday to hold the de Blasio administration accountable — challenging its lack of transparency on a multibillion-dollar issue.
In question are the supposed billions in health-care savings the city claims will help pay for the mayor’s generous contracts with city unions.
Last spring’s deal with the teachers union, for example, granted 18 percent raises and retroactive pay — made officially affordable by a complex gimmick that supposedly would mean $1.3 billion in health-care savings.
Now that nearly all the municipal unions have inked similar deals, the administration says such savings will total $3.4 billion.
But, as Capital New York reports, Finance Committee Chairwoman Julissa Ferreras has zeroed in on the problem: Is there any sign the savings are proving real? “I’m concerned. There’s a lack of transparency [over the assumed savings]. We’ve asked for details and we haven’t gotten it,” she says.
Daneek Miller, the Civil Service and Labor Committee chairman, will co-chair the hearing. He sounded a similarly vigilant tone: “We don’t want to take anyone’s word for it,” he said. “Even if I have [the administration’s] information…I’d still want to hear it from [the unions] first.”
Hence the Wednesday hearing.
Will the council truly probe? Here are some obvious questions:
After nearly a full year under the new contracts, what savings have been realized? Especially among teachers’ health care, since that deal came first? What baseline is Team de Blasio using to show the presumed savings?
The Independent Budget Office notes city-employee fringe benefits (including health care) will total $8.7 billion this year, but are on track to hit $11 billion by 2019.
So, even if the $3.4 billion “save” is real, it doesn’t go far enough.
Which raises some questions we doubt the councilmembers will ask, like: Why didn’t the city demand more transformational changes, such as having employees pick up part of their health-care premiums?
Why not require future retirees to pick up their own Medicare Part B premiums, as most Americans do, even public-sector workers?
We’re glad to see the City Council at least asking for accountability from an administration that it usually rubber-stamps.
The test will be if the questions — and followups — are more than superficial.