Memo to the City Council: Taxpayer money belongs to taxpayers. It is to be used for their benefit — not doled out to friends you think were wronged by Mike BloomÂberg or state law.
Which is the aim of a bill the council is voting on today: It would hand $42 million to school-bus companies so they can pay senior workers higher wages.
Recall that the city endured a painful school-bus strike last year for the sole purpose of restoring sanity to bus contracts and saving taxpayers a fortune. Busing cost the city $71 million in 1979; by last year, it had ballooned to $1.1 billion.
Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg cited the reason: The city hadn’t bid out bus contracts in 33 years. By finally doing so, Bloomberg saved the city hundreds of millions, money that can go to hire more teachers or cops. Or to keep taxes down.
Council members — egged on by Mayor de Blasio and their bus-union pals — want to reverse all that. They didn’t like that, in accordance with state law, the new contracts had no seniority protections. They say some workers lost their jobs or got paid less as a result.
So today they will vote on a bill simply to hand over $42 million in city money to the bus companies to supplement workers’ pay.
Never mind that this may be illegal, as at least one lawmaker notes. Nor that the one-time grant won’t sustain salary hikes in future years and so is little more than a gift to bus companies.
Here’s the key question: This is taxpayers’ money; elected officials have a fiduciary duty to safeguard public funds. Will council members do their duty?