1. In the past few years, state employees have faced hiring and pay freezes, increased costs for health insurance, furloughs, and a new pension tier with much lower benefits. Which statement best describes your view:

  1. ______ State employees have made enough sacrifices to help the state deal with its budget problems and should not be continually asked to do more.
  2. ______ Cutting the number of state employees is a good way to reduce state spending.

Please explain your answer:

(I have chosen neither answer) You have provided blanket statement justifications. I believe any cuts should be well thought out. There should not be blanket statements used as justification. Either the position is needed or it is not. Cutting state employees, when they are needed, is not appropriate under any circumstance.

2. In addition to using the budget to control state operations and spending, the Governor has increasingly used this process to implement policy changes. Which statement best describes your view:

  1. ______ The Governor has the power to impose changes through the budget process, so the Legislature has no choice but to go along with his agenda.
  2. ___The Legislature is an independent branch of government that can and should refuse to pass proposals that are not good for the public.

Please explain your answer:

The budget should never be used to implement legislation. It is supposed to be used to allocate funds. This past executive budget has enacted tyrannical legislation, especially concerning the attempt to eliminate political 3rd parties and the creation of a campaign slush fund.

3. Do you believe government services generally deliver quality and value to the public or that privatization of services would generally improve the quality and value of those services?

  1. _____ Government services deliver quality and value and should rarely be privatized.
  2. _____ Privatization of services improves quality and value and should be aggressively pursued.

Please explain your answer:

There is a role for government and a role for private enterprise. Both create a trade-off concerning who is served and the cost of those services. I am more concerned with the bidding process that we have established for government services that are provided by private enterprises (for example, construction projects). The process is teeming with corruption, overruns, and nonsense that makes the government look incompetent and expensive. For Example, if a project is worth doing, private enterprise will generally jump in and fund the entire project. Many times government barriers prevent them from doing so. Other times the Request for Proposals (RFPs) are for a project the private enterprise has considered but found to be uneconomical. Other times the RFPs are written in a fashion that prevents the best technology from even being considered. Projects that private enterprise considers to be not economically feasible will be bid on as long as the government is willing to guarantee a profit.

4. Which statement best reflects your view on how to balance the budget?

  1. _____ I believe that to achieve long term fiscal stability New York State needs to, among other ways of raising revenue, close tax loopholes.
  2. _____ I think we should balance the budget entirely by cutting spending.

Please explain your answer:

The government should look for ways to raise revenue other than income and real estate taxes. Inc Some taxes are unconstitutional, and real estate taxes prevent you from owning your own property – you rent it from the government. (Don’t pay the annual real estate tax and see how soon you are evicted.) But to be realistic, the reason we don’t display taxes charged per gallon of gas is that people get upset at the cost of government. We need to reduce the cost of government and allow private enterprise to do what it can as best it can for those services it does provide.

5. Do you support legislation requiring state agencies to perform a cost/benefit analysis before entering into a contract for consultant services to see whether the work can be done by state employees at a lower cost?

  1. _____ Yes, I support
  2. ______ No, I don’t support

Please explain your answer:

Every contract should have a cost/benefit analysis done. I don’t know of a better way to ensure the value received for the taxpayer dollar spent.

6. Public Authorities and Public Benefit Corporations perform many governmental functions but operate with less legislative oversight and outside many traditional government rules such as civil service. Would you support legislation to:

A. Eliminate authorities and transfer their functions to existing state agencies where feasible?

  1. _____ Yes, I support
  2. ______ No, I don’t support

B. Make public authority employment practices subject to civil service?

  1. _____ Yes, I support
  2. _____ No, I don’t support

Please explain your answer:

I am ambivalent about this and will need to look further into it. To the extent the civil service provides a standard for employment, I believe the practice is good, however to the extent that it is rigid and does not allow for independent employer discretion, it is not desirable. But Public Authorities and Public benefit Corporations, to the extent they operate without oversight or reporting requirements to the legislature, they can only be considered corrupt, no matter what the motives or purpose.

7. PEF represents over 9,000 nurses. Do you support legislation (A.2954/S.1032) which establishes a maximum number of patients a nurse can care for at one time and requires hospitals and other health care institutions to ensure that there are enough nurses at the bedside of New Yorkers?

  1. _____ Yes, I support
  2. ______ No, I don’t support

Please explain your answer:

Again, I answer this with caution because once a number is set, progress is stifled. It happened with the ‘fax’ technology (to give you an example everyone is familiar with) The government standardized so that it would not have to upgrade its equipment, but as a consequence, faxes that could be sent in seconds, or fractions of a second, can take minutes to send. I would not want to see technology hampered because we set a maximum on the number of patients a caregiver can handle. So, any restrictions need to be considered carefully.

8. PEF represents approximately 19,000 retirees. Do you support legislation (A.4203/S.3854) that would permanently prohibit the diminution of state retirees’ health care benefits?

  1. _____ Yes, I support
  2. _____ No, I don’t support

Please explain your answer:

A retirement program is a contract. Once a person retires, they no longer have the ability to input funds to change the base upon which the retirement benefit was calculated. So, I would never support a change to a retired person’s benefits. Those who are still working can still change their input to the program, So, as long as the previous contact is honored -up to the point it was changed and relative to the benefits already paid for, the diminution of state retiree’s health care benefits can and should be, part of the employee’s retirement consideration. I would hope the trend would be to continue to increase the health care benefits received after retirement.

9. The State Comptroller is the sole trustee of the state pension fund. Do you support maintaining the Comptroller as the sole trustee?

  1. _____ Yes, I support
  2. __x___ No, I don’t support

Please explain your answer:

It is an enormous amount of money to not have any oversight. I have no reason to suspect dishonest actions, but the current situation gives me a lot of concern.

10. The “rule of 3” in civil service requires that a job be given to one of the top three scoring applicants on a civil service test. Do you support continuing the rule of 3, or do you favor a change to give employers broader discretion to choose any applicant they want?

  1. _____ Yes, I support the “rule of 3”
  2. __x___ No, I don’t support

Please explain your answer:

I like the Rule of 3 as a guide, but to be an absolute standard, no. I cannot support it. Employers need to be able to build the team they can work with and that will get the job done. The top three scorers could be absolutely lazy people.

11. The Triborough Amendment in the NYS Taylor Law provides that all the terms of an expired labor contract, including benefits such as employee health insurance, remain in effect until a new contract has been negotiated. Some people advocate repealing the Triborough Amendment to give management more leverage in contract negotiations. Others say that repealing Triborough would undermine collective bargaining and would allow employers to take unilateral action such as terminating or reducing health insurance coverage, and could cause strikes to occur. Which position do you agree with?

  1. _____ Triborough should be repealed.
  2. __x__ Triborough should be kept in effect.

Please explain your answer:

As long as the employees are willing to work and are working, all of the terms of an expired labor contract, including benefits, should remain in place. People should negotiate in good faith and employees need to understand that funds are not unlimited, not even when they are coming in as taxes to pay the salaries and benefits. I was totally miffed that after the 2008 recession, real estate taxes were increased to replenish the PW retirement benefits, at my expense, but the losses in my retirement account, because of the same events, were of no concern to anyone in government.

12. Please include any additional information that you believe will assist PEF in the endorsement process:

The structure of our society has changed dramatically over the past 107 years, and it is continuing to change. One of those changes has been the development of a divided populous: The government/government-worker vs the private employer/employee. In the original structure, the government/government worker served the individual, i.e., the employee/employer. Today, the individual employee/employer act more as just the funding agents, and as such, their task is becoming more difficult. Prior to 1900, the ratio of government employers to private workers was about 1 government employee for every 200+ workers. By 1941, there was one government employee for about every 22 workers in the country. In 2015, there was about 1 government employee for about every 6 workers in the country. (It may be much lower than that today when you consider the impact of the Coronavirus.) This trend is not sustainable. I fear it will cause a major rupture, and perhaps collapse, of our financial system.