New York to Delay Raises for Public Workers
Higher wages guaranteed by union contract were scheduled to take effect on April 1
New York state troopers are posted at a Covid-19 test site in Brooklyn on April 14.
PHOTO: JOHN LAMPARSKI/NURPHOTO/ZUMA PRESS
Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday rebuffed calls to allow raises for public workers that were supposed to kick in this month, saying the state did not have the money to pay for them.
Higher wages guaranteed by union contract were scheduled to take effect on April 1 for roughly 80,000 government employees—including blue-collar workers represented by the Civil Service Employees Association, correctional officers and state troopers.
The state deferred the employees’ annual 2% raise for 90 days, officials said, because of a cash crunch caused by the novel coronavirus. State Budget Director Robert Mujica said last week the maneuver would let the state keep $50 million in cash and help avoid furloughs.
One union official said heexpected the money to eventually be paid retroactively in a lump sum. A spokesman for Mr. Mujica said the state would assess the situation after 90 days.
Income tax payments are the largest source of state revenue, but money is not coming in as planned after New York, following the U.S. Treasury Department, postponed its April 15 tax filing deadline by three months.
“It would break the bank,” Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said of the raises during a briefing Wednesday. “The state is broke, and there’s a lot of good things we would like to do for a lot of good people that we cannot do until we have some financial stability.”
Gov. Cuomo on April 7.
PHOTO: MICHAEL BROCHSTEIN/ZUMA PRESS
On Monday, 17 Republican state senators urged Mr. Cuomo to release raises for essential state workers, including prison guards. Unions had already blasted the delay.
In a statement last week, Michael B. Powers, president of the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, called it a “slap in the face to the brave men and women in law enforcement and those on the front lines of keeping order in our state’s prison system and our mental health facilities.”
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Mr. Cuomo filed his own state and federal income tax returns on Wednesday. The governor’s adjusted gross income last year was $280,677, his returns show. That includes $192,858 in salary for his state position.
Mr. Cuomo’s salary rose in 2019 from $179,000 to $200,000 a year, based on the recommendation of a controversial state commission. The governor’s annual salary increased again in January, to $225,000.
Write to Jimmy Vielkind at Jimmy.Vielkind@wsj.com
WSJ hires Vielkind to cover NY politics
Jimmy Vielkind
Vielkind was a founding member of Politico New York’s state Capitol bureau and was named bureau chief in November 2013, when the operation was still known as Capital New York.
He has been reporting on state government and politics since 2008, first as a correspondent for the New York Observer and later for the Albany Times Union.
Vielkind also covered breaking news and Brooklyn for the New York Daily News while a college student, and he spent his first year after graduation as the nighttime police reporter for the Times Union.
At Politico, Vielkind coordinates the largest bureau at the capitol and reports and writes articles and analyses state politics. He has been a regular contributor to Politico New York’s magazine and a frequent guest on radio and television programs.
He has bachelor’s degree in urban studies from Columbia University and a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from SUNY Albany.
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