How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways

Re:How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways by StanislavPetrov on Monday November 20, 2017 @04:29AM (#15738776)

In New York we have a public service union for virtually every public employee. Politicians buy the votes and political support of these unions (and their union members). This means that the average cop, transit worker, prison guard, and members of most other public service unions often make well over $100,000 a year salary (plus massive benefits) with many making upwards of $200,000 a year (with some making far more than that) plus full retirement after 20 years with a full pension for life. That means if you start working for the city or county at 21, you retire at 41, with a full pension and benefits for life (which needless to say, is a crushing financial cost).

As of 2014 over 100,000 MTA workers in New York City were making over $100,000 a year each, not counting benefits or pension costs.

https://www.empirecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/MTA-...

Take the time to see how many pages of police offers you have to scroll through in Nassau County New York alone before you get to a page where they start making under $200,000 a year.

http://data.newsday.com/long-island/data/nassau/payroll-2015...

I'm all for paying people a living wage, but its not hard to understand how, when you are spending countless billions (that increase every year) on paying countless cops and other public service workers $200,000+ a year how there is no money left over for maintaining (or, god forbid, upgrading) equipment. It doesn't matter which corporate party you vote for - Democrats and Republicans are both corrupt to the core and falling over themselves to secure these service-union votes. As a result our infrastructure is going to continue to crumble and our debt will continue to rise until we reach a breaking point which won't be pretty.

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Re:How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways by majos on Monday November 20, 2017 @01:06PM (#15741803)

Here's a list for NYC:

http://www.seethroughny.net/payrolls/city-of-new-york

I do wonder how many of these are one-offs -- the cop making 650k (Adrian Schoolcraft) is on a closer look way less egregious than it sounds. He was something of a whistleblower in a way that fellow cops disliked, and this culminated in his house being raided and an involuntary hospital stay; the 650k is a settlement for all that. Daniel Carione is a cop on there for 450k, but that seems to be from a settlement after he was forced onto disability/retirement when he started wearing a hearing aid.

Even so, that list is amazing. Most of the entries are guys clocking a ton of overtime. The organization clearly wants to show public employees are overpaid, but it seems accurate. The NYT has cited them in the past.

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Re:How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways by bob_theslob646 on Monday November 20, 2017 @10:20AM (#15740461)

How the heck is this even possible? 200k a year to be a cop? Talk about hitting the lottery.. How is this even allowed?

Is the crime rate even that high? Isn't Nassau County one of the richest county's in the United States?

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Re:How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways by StanislavPetrov on Tuesday November 21, 2017 @03:15AM (#15746496)

Crime is low. Its possible because year after year the public service unions (police, prison guard, transit, ect) and a variety of other political patronage groups sell their endorsement for higher pay and better contracts. So every year the salaries and benefits continue to rise. This has been going on for decades. These salaries and benefits represent the vast majority of our county/city/village budgets and result in massive property taxes (and other taxes and fees) to support the bloated payroll. Its not sustainable and as a result we have seen infrastructure (like the rails and the roads) and other critical services suffer.

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