By BRENDAN SCOTT
June 19, 2008
More than 100 bills being pushed by municipal unions in Albany - some strongly opposed by Mayor Bloomberg as budget-busters - are DOA because lawmakers haven't determined their costs, officials said yesterday.
"They're being held up. They probably will not go. There's just not enough time to get fiscal [analyses] on them," said Assemblyman Peter Abbate Jr. (D-Brooklyn), chairman of the Committee on Governmental Employees and sponsor of many of the measures.
Abbate said about a dozen bills were ready to pass both houses of the Legislature.
But that was before it was disclosed that the actuary who provided the fiscal-impact statements, Jonathan Schwartz, was on union payrolls.
The city's Independent Budget Office reported yesterday that an early-retirement bill that Schwartz had claimed was revenue-neutral would actually cost taxpayers $68.1 million in its first year.
