PEP, April 2005: City Council partners

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

DC 37 and local leaders met with City Council members Feb. 16 for DC 37’s annual legislative breakfast to explore the union’s political priorities for 2005.

Building on decade-long relationships with Speaker Gifford Miller, City Council members Bill Perkins, Margarita Lopez and others who support labor, DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts stressed partnering to fight for funding “so DC 37 members can do their jobs.”

As President Bush and his ally, Governor George E. Pataki, proposed budgets that would cut aid to New York City by hundreds of millions of dollars, DC 37 called on its City Council allies to fight for funding restorations and more.

Hardest hit are Medicaid, public education and homeland security. DC 37 also put rising prescription drug costs, the shortage of affordable housing and childcare, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity for city school children, and the newly-enacted single source campaign contribution law high on the “Fix it Now!” agenda presented to the Council.

“We have some of the greatest hospitals in the nation, but cuts to Medicaid are risking the quality of care,” Ms. Roberts said. “New Yorkers are threatened on so many levels. We should not have to live like this.”

DC 37 Health and Safety Director Lee Clarke reminded Council members that along with Firefighters and Police Officers, “DC 37 Nurses, Social Workers, Counselors, School Aides and Cooks, Traffic Enforcement Agents, Emergency Medical Technicians, DOT and DEP workers were all at Ground Zero among the first responders” to the horrific Sept. 11 terrorist strike.

“We need more homeland security funds to pay for training, protective equipment, and increasing staff, so we can be better prepared for the next crisis,” she said.

“We’ve faced the toughest budget crisis ever seen and we did the best for the people of New York,” said keynote speaker Gifford Miller. With suggestions from DC 37, the City Council closed last year’s multibillion-dollar budget gap and preserved hospitals, libraries and clinics.

Throughout March, Ms. Roberts and many local leaders testified at City Hall budget hearings, urging Council members to override the mayor’s preliminary budget, implement court-mandated NYPD civilianization and restore hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts that the mayor has aimed at hospitals, education, libraries and cultural institutions.

“The mayor is focused on building a stadium while he’s cutting the education budget,” Mr. Miller pointed out. “We need to see that his political agenda is not launched on the backs of working people.”

With escalating drug costs consuming an ever-larger portion of DC 37’s welfare benefit, Ms. Roberts challenged Council members to partner with the union to find the needed funds.

DC 37 members’ jobs depend largely on the political system, but the recently enacted single source contribution law “all but shuts unions and working people out of the political process,” said DC 37 Political Action Director Wanda Williams.

“The new rule would preclude DC 37 or a local from donating to a campaign that AFSCME, our parent union, has already contributed to,” Ms. Williams explained. “The regulation is based on a false premise that assumes all labor is controlled by the same authority.”

The new law discounts and dismisses the autonomy of union locals, Williams said. DC 37 asked city legislators to draft legislation that would nullify the rule, which went into effect in late February.

“We have built many fruitful relationships by working closely with you,” Ms. Roberts told the large City Council delegation. “We are counting on our partnership because it will take all of us to do what’s right for DC 37 members and all New Yorkers.”