The Public Employees Federation are in union talks, and facing layoffs. So yesterday, Capital Confidential discovered they'd posted the offer they'd received from Governor Cuomo in full on their website.
The plan would rule out across-the-board raises for four years, while making some sizable shifts in the burden of health care costs.
Casey Seiler of The Times-Union notes that to this point, both sides had agreed to conduct negotiations in private.
Will this portend a new phase of negotiating in public? Speaking as a member of the press, I certainly hope so.
Syracuse University to begin paying "taxes"
Mayor Stephanie Miner has reached an agreement with its biggest tax-exempt landholder to begin making payments in lieu of taxes. The plan lays out payments totaling $2.5 million over five years.
Syracuse faces a reality shared by many cities: an exodus of private companies over the last several decades means their downtown is dominated by non-taxpaying not-for-profits.
The Post Standard reports that the University, if non-exempt, would pay $24 million a year for its $630 million of real estate.
The mayor said she will try to negotiate similar payments from other tax-exempt organizations, such as hospitals and other colleges, many of which draw heavily upon city services but pay little, if anything, in property taxes. Some 51 percent of city property is tax-exempt, a situation that is increasingly untenable as state and federal funding grows scarcer, Miner said. “It is unrealistic to expect 50 percent of the taxable land in the city of Syracuse to pay for 100 percent of the services,” she said.
SUNY 2020 and fracking on air
And finally, not in news past, but in news ahead: United University Professions President Phillip H. Smith will be on tonight's Capital Connection to talk SUNY 2020. The bill on SUNY funding was submitted yesterday by Governor Cuomo. Tuition hikes ho.
The Innovation Trail's own Daniel Robison will be on On Point today for a discussion of fracking.
