http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/05/16/2010-05-16_cancel_the_party_andy.html

Cancel the party, Andy: Cuomo must not toe Working Families line

Posted:Sunday, May 16th 2010, 4:00 AM

New Yorkers are desperate to give their next governor a mandate to fundamentally change the state’s direction, and most believe, with good reason, that Andrew Cuomo will seek that critical mission.

He must do so free and clear of the special-interest groups that hold Albany captive to the detriment of 19 million people whose concerns have been trampled for too long by insiders.

Among those forces is the Working Families Party, a political organization that has become largely a front for labor unions that make claims on public funds.

Cuomo must renounce the party’s support. Cuomo must refuse the party’s endorsement – and its November ballot line. Cuomo must lead Democratic members of the Legislature in spurning the WFP’s electoral resources.

The very success of his presumed governorship could depend on shunning the party line. Because, even now, the WFP is working feverishly to neuter the coming executive by locking legislators into positions that would vastly strengthen labor’s stranglehold.

The party is circulating a stunningly detailed 20-page candidate’s questionnaire, whose pledges reflect the wants of major financial backers – among them the teachers and health care workers unions and, amazingly, trial lawyers.

Cuomo must show the state’s lawmakers by example that genuflecting to win the party’s backing would not be a blessing to them but rather a curse upon their constituents.

Established in 1998 as a counterweight to the power of municipal unions, the WFP morphed over the years into the exact opposite – a group that has the labor funding and troops to boost or battle politicians.

Although couched in terms of the general good, and although including some worthy aspects, the party’s to-do list largely amounts to advancing the agenda of the public workforce in the halls of power rather than at the bargaining table.

The thrust begins with ever larger spending, never mind that the state has a $9.2 billion deficit, and never mind that New Yorkers are among the most heavily taxed people in the country.

To keep feeding the Albany beast, the WFP would impose confiscatory taxes that would cripple Wall Street rather than consider, say, trimming pension benefits for new public workers.

The party’s more extensive causes, as spelled out in its questionnaire, are sweetheart deals for WFP backers.

The party demands support, for example, for special job protections for nurses – who happen to be represented by the health care workers union SEIU 1199, Albany’s biggest-spending lobbying group and a major donor to the WFP.

Carrying water for the teachers unions, the WFP endorses a scheme to squash charter schools – which do a bang-up job educating poor kids but are anathema because they mostly lack union contracts.

On behalf of trial lawyers, the party demands opposition to a key tort reform that would lower the cost of new housing and office space.

Other WFP-backed measures would torpedo an overhaul to the New York City Charter, force taxpayers to subsidize wages for private employees, discourage lower-cost nonunion contractors from bidding on government jobs and drive up already sky-high electric rates with costly mandates.

While Cuomo says it’s premature to discuss his intentions, since he hasn’t yet announced his candidacy, it is clear that no would-be reform governor can afford to associate with such an agenda, let alone run as the candidate of its party. Would his election be a mandate for change? Or would his mandate be for more of the same?

Should Cuomo win with votes on the WFP line, the party could rightly describe him as its man in Albany and stand ready to call in its chits. And he could forget about striding into the Capitol with the clear will of the people behind him.

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