CLT
UPDATE
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Kriss hammered again for daring to
speak the obvious
Organized labor's political power is a "hidden tax" that drives up the wages and benefits of public workers and the cost of building in Massachusetts, Governor Mitt Romney's budget chief said yesterday in the administration's latest broadside against labor's influence on Beacon Hill.
Eric Kriss, whose blunt remarks about "givers and takers" of social services ignited a controversy two months ago, urged a gathering of Boston-area mayors to "stand up and be counted alongside this administration" in support of curbing labor's power....
Kriss said "public employee unions enjoy a labor monopoly over Massachusetts state and municipal employment," creating a drag on state and city budgets. "Like any industrial monopoly, a labor monopoly creates a political imbalance. Massachusetts unions tilt civic life and the penalty is heavy, like a hidden tax." ...
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Romney aide says unions too powerful
Oh, how we wish Gov. Mitt Romney could clone his budget chief Eric Kriss. Chutzpah and common sense are such a delightful combination.
Kriss has drawn fire for calling the cost of union domination of state and municipal government what it is: "A hidden tax."
The last time Kriss spoke in such provocative terms he made the salient point that the balance between "the givers and takers" of government services was way out of whack. Kriss' boss quickly backpedaled amidst the resulting furor.
Romney should back up Kriss 100 percent this time.
A Boston Herald editorial
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Blunt talk welcome on union 'tax' cost
When last heard from, Kriss, the secretary of administration and finance, was bemoaning the imbalance between "givers and takers" in Massachusetts. He was not comparing overburdened taxpayers to corporate beneficiaries of generous state tax breaks. He was comparing those of us fortunate enough to have a job in a state that has been hemorrhaging jobs to those of us unfortunate enough to need tax-funded social services.
Yesterday, it was the poor; today, the unions. Here a demon, there a demon.
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Big Dig and blame games
By Eileen McNamara
For the first five minutes, he blathered on about Gov. Mitt Romney's reorganization plan, arguing that state government needed a "pendulum swing" from a weak executive office to a strong one and that middle managers should be eliminated because they are not needed, according to several people in attendance.
For the next 15 minutes, the supposedly off-the-record speech took a turn for the worse. Kriss told the crowd that the rules of engagement had now changed under Romney and the state would no longer be "held hostage" by the unions....
And therein lies the problem with the Romney administration. Out-of-touch with working people and disconnected from those who want to help, the Romney administration plods along blind to the notion that government is supposed to be for the people, all of the people, not just another budget to be trimmed, another dollar to be saved.
Demonizing labor unions is the same thing as ascribing intelligence to the rich - it's not necessarily true. Yet the Romney administration believes both, and allows Kriss, by all accounts a loose cannon, to travel throughout the state spewing just plain nonsense.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
State budget czar offended by union label
By Howard Manly
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
The last time Romney administration Secretary of
Administration & Finance Eric Kriss spoke the obvious truth and drew
outrage, the Boston Globe reported ("Romney balks at aide's remarks about needy,"
Oct. 22):
"What ratio is sustainable?" Kriss asked. He noted that when President Lyndon Johnson launched his Great Society programs in the 1960s, the "sustainable" ratio of givers to takers was thought to be 9 to 1 -- that is, 90 percent of the population should pay taxes to help the bottom 10 percent rise up by receiving government services.
"Forty years later, our ratio at the state level is more like 3 to 1 -- 75 percent net contributors and 25 percent net recipients -- and edging towards 2 to 1," Kriss said, adding later: "And the trends are unsettling." ...
Michael J. Widmer ... also faulted Kriss -- and the administration -- for taking taxes off the table in negotiations over the budget. "The implication of Kriss's remarks is that this is not sustainable and therefore we have to reevaluate services, and that misses half of the equation," Widmer said.
Since Kriss again dared speak the obvious on Monday,
he's being hammered again by the usual suspects. Yesterday the Boston
Globe reported ("Romney aide says unions too powerful,"
Dec. 16):
Kriss said "public employee unions enjoy a labor monopoly over Massachusetts state and municipal employment," creating a drag on state and city budgets. "Like any industrial monopoly, a labor monopoly creates a political imbalance. Massachusetts unions tilt civic life and the penalty is heavy, like a hidden tax." ...
Michael J. Widmer, who heads the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-funded nonprofit group that studies taxes and government spending, said Kriss is right to point out labor's political power but that he may be overstating the unions' clout in shaping the state's construction rules. "It is a fact that unions play a stronger role in Massachusetts than in most other states," he said in an interview after Kriss's speech. "But I think the issues he's raising go well beyond the power of unions."
I detect a pattern in these predictable
attacks: Kriss speaks the obvious; the Boston Globe runs to
Michael Widmer for a dependably critical quote, MTF coyly provides
pseudo-legitimate cover for a marshaling attack; the Globe advances
Widmer's soft assault; the attack dogs take the scent and are unleashed
on Kriss.
In the past, this has led to Governor Romney backing
away ... in fact sprinting in reverse. (See the CLT Update for Oct. 22,
"MTF cheers on Olympic distance runner Romney.")
CLT came to Kriss's defense the last time with a news
release granting him our "Tell the truth and shame the devil" award.
In her syndicated column in the Salem News and elsewhere ("Kriss spoke the truth, but many don't want to hear
it," Nov. 4), Barbara closed with:
Thanks, Eric Kriss, for reminding us that we can't all get everything we want from the state, or the state will run out of money for what it is we really need.
We taxpayers hope that Gov. Romney finds the resolve
to not again hightail it away from obvious truth boldly spoken. It
should be the governor, and not CLT alone, who stands up for an honest and
fearless member of his administration and its reform agenda.
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Chip
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The Boston Herald
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
A Boston Herald editorial
Blunt talk welcome on union 'tax' cost
Oh, how we wish Gov. Mitt Romney could clone his budget chief Eric Kriss. Chutzpah and common sense are such a delightful combination.
Kriss has drawn fire for calling the cost of union domination of state and municipal government what it is: "A hidden tax."
The last time Kriss spoke in such provocative terms he made the salient point that the balance between "the givers and takers" of government services was way out of whack. Kriss' boss quickly backpedaled amidst the resulting furor.
Romney should back up Kriss 100 percent this time.
"A significant imbalance, subtle and out of public view, lurks nearby, imposing great burdens on the public...," Kriss said Monday in a speech to Massachusetts mayors. "I refer to the political influence of organized labor."
Their clout, Kriss estimates, means Massachusetts taxpayers pay some 20 percent more for public construction than they would if anti-competitive construction rules were reformed.
Filed sub-bid laws, project labor agreements, and the prohibition on design-build and other innovative construction processes tack on some $200 million to the state's tab for construction annually, Kriss said. Municipalities pay many millions more for construction on local schools and other public facilities.
Municipal officials are quick to find a television camera to whine about local aid cuts but have been less enthusiastic about pushing hard for construction and other public employee reforms.
It was particularly disappointing that Quincy Mayor Bill Phelan jumped right on the union bandwagon after Kriss' speech.
Phelan recently won a second term on the promise of bringing change to that city's corrupt local government. What better change for Quincy taxpayers than to devote the money spent on union featherbedding instead to education and garbage collection?
There is nothing anti-worker about supporting public construction reform, either. It's pro-taxpayers, who are workers, too.
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The Boston Globe
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Big Dig and blame games
By Eileen McNamara, Globe Columnist
It would be funny if it were not so fantastic -- an administration poised to sue profiteers of the most mismanaged road construction project in US history blaming organized labor for the high cost of building in Massachusetts.
Governor Mitt Romney's chief budget officer made no mention of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority's anticipated $150 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against Bechtel Corp. and Parsons Brinckerhoff, the construction and engineering firms that botched the Big Dig, when he blamed unions for driving up building costs in the state.
Eric Kriss has something of a blind spot when it comes to corporate greed.
When last heard from, Kriss, the secretary of administration and finance, was bemoaning the imbalance between "givers and takers" in Massachusetts. He was not comparing overburdened taxpayers to corporate beneficiaries of generous state tax breaks. He was comparing those of us fortunate enough to have a job in a state that has been hemorrhaging jobs to those of us unfortunate enough to need tax-funded social services.
Yesterday, it was the poor; today, the unions. Here a demon, there a demon.
"All I am asking for is a level playing field," insisted Kriss, who accused public employee unions in a speech Monday to municipal leaders of "a labor monopoly" in state government. "I am against all monopolies," he said in an interview yesterday. "It doesn't make you antiworker to say that when nine out of every 10 public employees in Massachusetts are unionized, that is a monopoly."
As with most things, this is a matter of perspective. Instead of asking why so many state workers are unionized, he might just as well wonder why more workers in the private sector are not. He has a ready answer: "The labor market has spoken. People are satisfied with their wages and benefits and do not want to pay dues to a union they don't think they need."
That is not how Human Rights Watch sees it. In August, the international monitoring group released a report on the US labor scene documenting what it called "a systemic failure to ensure the most basic right of workers: their freedom to choose to come together to negotiate the terms of their employment with their employers." Workers trying to form unions were fired, intimidated, or threatened with workplace closures by employers.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative George Miller of California last month filed federal legislation to remove such obstacles to union organizing. The two Democrats argued that the Employee Free Choice Act would put some teeth in labor laws that employers persist in ignoring.
From Kriss's perspective, employers are confronted with hard economic realities that labor needs to share. "One of the dynamics we all have to grapple with in the United States is that employers have less expensive alternatives overseas," he said, citing the number of jobs being exported overseas, where employees will work for lower wages and fewer benefits. "Doesn't it make more sense to keep a nonunion show here than to force a company to send those jobs to Malaysia in order to remain competitive?"
Sure, if you look only through the viewfinder of the company with its eye on the bottom line. The global economy is here to stay, but the US ought to be outsourcing wage equity, not jobs. Instead of demonizing unions, we need to find a path between protectionism and exploitation of workers here and abroad.
In his speech to Boston area mayors, Kriss cited Florida as a model. "Massachusetts is 10 to 20 times worse than Florida in terms of on-time and on-budget construction performance," according to the finance chief. He attributes the disparity to a "political power imbalance" on Beacon Hill where, he says, unions have too much influence.
And here I thought it was the unchecked political power of Bechtel/Parsons that was responsible for those $2 billion in Big Dig cost overruns.
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The Boston Herald
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
State budget czar offended by union label
By Howard Manly, Herald columnist
For such a smart man, Eric Kriss, the state's budget chief, says a lot of ignorant things.
On March 28, Kriss gave a 20-minute speech at an invitation-only meeting sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, a non-partisan, public interest group dedicated to promoting the growth of the state's middle class. The meeting was held at a prestigious downtown law firm, and the 20 or so guests marveled at the skyline views.
They would also marvel at Kriss's unrepentant attack against unions.
For the first five minutes, he blathered on about Gov. Mitt Romney's reorganization plan, arguing that state government needed a "pendulum swing" from a weak executive office to a strong one and that middle managers should be eliminated because they are not needed, according to several people in attendance.
For the next 15 minutes, the supposedly off-the-record speech took a turn for the worse. Kriss told the crowd that the rules of engagement had now changed under Romney and the state would no longer be "held hostage" by the unions.
"The only unfair labor practice that we have in this state is that we have to hire union employees," Kriss reportedly said, pointing out that half of the 800 lawyers who work for the state shouldn't be unionized.
Kriss further argued that privatization could solve all the state's problems.
The crowd of union officials, corporate executives and social activists were stunned. But Kriss wasn't done.
Kriss likened Romney's attempt to reorganize state government to the civil rights movement. "We're going to come back year after year until we get what we want," Kriss told the gathering.
The comment drew near gasps. "It was one of those things that actually made you wince for him," said one person who wanted to remain anonymous.
"The sad thing about it," another attendee said, "is that Kriss really believed it."
And therein lies the problem with the Romney administration. Out-of-touch with working people and disconnected from those who want to help, the Romney administration plods along blind to the notion that government is supposed to be for the people, all of the people, not just another budget to be trimmed, another dollar to be saved.
Demonizing labor unions is the same thing as ascribing intelligence to the rich - it's not necessarily true. Yet the Romney administration believes both, and allows Kriss, by all accounts a loose cannon, to travel throughout the state spewing just plain nonsense.
Just the other month, Kriss went on some tirade about the people who take more state services than actually pay in state taxes. "Givers and takers" is how the state's chief financial officer described one of his peculiar views on government. Nevermind the fact that he has little empirical evidence to support his claim that the state has seen an inordinate rise in takers.
And now two days ago, Kriss launches yet another bit of demon politics, blaming the unions for causing state construction projects to cost more, take more time and, in effect, create "a hidden tax." The state's contracting problem is an old one, and while it has been studied over the past 25 years, most notably by the Ward Commission, state lawmakers have done little to improve efficiency in its construction projects.
That is a legitimate problem; blaming unions is not the solution. In fact, the very study that Kriss mentions doesn't blame unions for the state's inefficient contracting laws and procedures, but rather lawmakers for failing to take action on public construction reform legislation.
But facts never stopped Kriss.
He's still getting even for all the times the big boys at his school hung him up on his locker by his underwear.
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