|
On Politics Richard Borreca |
Veto override hurts
taxpayers for HGEA’s gainLast summer, when the Legislature overrode Governor Lingle's veto of a bill replacing the right to strike with binding arbitration for the Hawaii Government Employees Association, veteran labor leader Russell Okata called it a "defining moment."
While legislators tried to paint their veto override special session as an effort to help the poor and needy who had programs cut with Lingle's budget vetoes, the major legislation that slipped onto the agenda at the last moment was that binding arbitration veto override.
One way to define that moment is by estimating what it is likely to cost the state. It could be as much as $50 million a year more in new payroll expenses.
Totals like that will reverberate through state government and could turn Lingle's calls for "fiscal discipline" into a budgetary version of a Marine Corps boot camp.
If you follow the thread of the veto override back to the bill's inception, you discover two things: HGEA used the Legislature to help itself to a better deal in collective bargaining and the resulting pay raises added millions to the state budget.
Binding arbitration was a relatively new public worker bargaining tactic, pushed through the Legislature by the HGEA-friendly former Senate president, Norman Mizuguchi. It was sold as a way to prevent the public from suffering while public services were shut down during a strike.
Management never won an arbitrated decision under that system.
Faced with an arbitrator's decision that forced the state to pay big salary increases, former Gov. Ben Cayetano bitterly complained.
"I found it outrageous to be compelled to cut state programs -- particularly social service programs -- in order to pay for pay raises," he said.
The unions argue that binding arbitration laws have changed since then and arbitrators must consider management's ability to meet these costs without raising taxes.
That clause apparently didn't stop the city from raising car registration fees after the police won a binding arbitration settlement last year.
Today Lingle continues to argue that binding arbitration encourages management and labor to take extreme positions, with the arbitrator always siding with the union. By forcing labor and management to decide whether there is enough to win by a strike, both sides will act with more accountability, she says.
The interesting aspect of the Legislature's veto override session is that while lawmakers cranked up a full-scale public relations campaign to restore some $3 million in budget cuts, not a word was said until the last minute about the binding arbitration override.
"No one knew until the last minute that the bill was even under consideration," said Rep. David Pendleton, (R, Maunawili-Kaneohe).
Now that little-noticed legislative move may keep the state searching for money to fund pay raises instead of expanding state services.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Richard Borreca writes on politics every Sunday in the Star-Bulletin. He can be reached at 525-8630 or by e-mail at rborreca@starbulletin.com.