Bloomberg Presses Cuomo on
Teacher Seniority Rule
By MICHAEL BARBARO and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
January 30, 2011
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg set up his first major confrontation with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Sunday, publicly demanding that he use his coming state budget to reverse a rule that protects long-serving teachers from layoffs, regardless of merit.
Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wants Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to use the state budget to change seniority rules for teachers.
Pool photo by Shannon Decelle
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is to release his budget proposal on Tuesday.
The mayor said that if, as widely expected, the governor’s office proposes deep cuts to the city’s education spending this week, it must give the city flexibility in determining which teachers to lay off. Right now, it must fire new teachers first.
“I say enough with Albany rules,” Mr. Bloomberg said at the church, the Christian Cultural Center in Flatlands, Brooklyn. “You just cannot do this. If the governor’s budget contains education cuts, it must also contain changes to the law so that we can take merit into account when making these difficult decisions.”
Aides to Mr. Cuomo said he opposed scrapping the teacher seniority rules in his budget, to be released on Tuesday, because it was not a fiscal issue. They added that the budget was unlikely to make teacher cuts necessary.
Predicting deep cuts at this stage of a marathon budget process may be premature: Mr. Bloomberg, among other politicians, frequently warns of massive layoffs that never materialize.
Yet his remarks may have been more significant in what they revealed about the relationship between the mayor and the new governor. Mr. Bloomberg endorsed Mr. Cuomo during the governor’s race last fall, has spoken warmly about him since, and emphasized Sunday that he considered him a friend. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, often cited the endorsement by Mr. Bloomberg as evidence of the bipartisan character of his campaign. And both have agendas that bring them into conflict with New York’s public-sector unions, including the teachers’ unions.
But Mr. Bloomberg has made overhauling education a top priority and has made little secret of his disdain for what he portrays as archaic, union-backed rules that impinge on his ability to control the school system.
Mr. Cuomo, however, may not wish to further inflame teachers’ unions, which have long supported the seniority rules. He is already seeking to impose a cap on local property taxes, a priority that teachers fiercely oppose because it could deprive schools of revenue.
Many have viewed a clash between Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Cuomo as inevitable: the mayor, a billionaire and national figure who has entertained presidential aspirations, is one of the few people in the state who can seriously rival Mr. Cuomo for power and influence.
The mayor’s bargaining power may be limited, though. Mr. Cuomo’s popularity is very high, and aides say he has an unmistakable mandate from voters to reduce spending.
Mr. Bloomberg’s poll numbers, by contrast, are the lowest in years. And when it comes to education, he has suffered politically because of his choice of Cathleen P. Black as schools chancellor.
The timing and location of Mr. Bloomberg’s speech seemed deliberate and symbolic: He spoke to a mostly black audience led by the Rev. A. R. Bernard, whose political endorsement is highly coveted in New York.
The mayor told the congregation that state cuts to New York City’s education budget, cuts he has said could reach $1 billion, would disproportionately hurt poor neighborhoods, where schools tend to have the newest teachers because of high turnover.
“So we have to really do something about this,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Across this city, layoffs would send exactly the wrong message to our kids. You know, we tell them, ‘Work hard, play by the rules, you can rise as far as your talents can take you.’ And yet Albany rules say that when it comes to teaching, talent doesn’t matter, results don’t matter.”
Mr. Cuomo has signaled his openness to overhauling the seniority rule, known as “last in, first out” — but not within the budget.
Under the State Constitution, if Mr. Cuomo includes the provision in his executive budget proposal, the Legislature cannot remove it unless Mr. Cuomo consents to resubmitting his entire budget later this year.
As a result, Mr. Cuomo, a politician known to dislike being backed into a corner, would be far more formally committed to defending the change in seniority rules and have less ability to use it as a bargaining chip later.
A senior official in the Cuomo administration said that if the seniority rule were changed, its replacement would have to be “fair, rational criteria that will be the new rules of the road if layoffs are necessary.”
“We will be working on this issue through the budget process,” the official said, insisting on anonymity because the negotiations are confidential.
Aides to Mr. Bloomberg said he wanted the change in the governor’s budget to speed its adoption and emphasize its importance. “We believe that the budget is the one piece of legislation that is guaranteed to pass in Albany,” Howard Wolfson, a deputy mayor said. Asked why the city was pushing for the change now, he said the seniority rule had “significant implications for our budgeting process.”
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