The art of shifting blame to a scapegoat is being practiced with increasing frequency as our public officials -- city and state -- refuse to face up to their responsibilities. The most recent display of this timeworn art was the attempt to amend the Taylor Law to prevent public employee unions from negotiating on anything but salaries, vacations and holidays. In pressing for this amendment, Albany legislators and Mayor Lindsay told the public that the reason for the financial troubles of the state and city was the cost of benefits won by government employee unions. Ironically, while the bill was designed to endear the lawmakers to taxpayers, its enactment would have increased the price of negotiated settlements by removing non-monetary items like transfer and disciplinary procedures from the bargaining process, leaving wages and hours as the only benefits unions could bring to their members.

The bill would also have removed provisions for maximum class size from contracts -- with the implication that school costs were skyrocketing because class size had been reduced too much. It is true that here in New York City we have reduced maximum class size from the 40-45 students in many classes in 1960 to the present maximum of 34 in high schools and 32 in the elementary schools. Those lawmakers who think that there should be more than 34 children in a class should be required to teach such classes themselves for a few weeks. Also, before accepting their view that unions have pushed class size down too far, we should ask the lawmakers how many children are in the classes of the schools to which they send their own children.

Raw Deals by the News

A further contribution to legislative hysteria was made by the New York Daily News in a misleading article and an editorial on teacher pension benefits. The News quoted an anonymous "City Hall insider" as calling the 1969 UFT contract "the biggest steal in the history of municipal collective bargaining." (Once again the scapegoat technique: It's easier to blame the city's teachers than risk exposure of fiscal bungling in the city administration.) The News with a large staff at its disposal apparently never bothered to check its story. It could readily have determined that this "steal" consisted of the same percentage salary increase granted to all other city employees and a pension package providing benefits significantly less than those accorded the uniformed services. In short, it gave teachers essentially what other 100,000 other civil service employees enjoyed. Furthermore, the News, in calling the 1969 settlement "The Rawest Deal Yet," implied secret and private understandings-- an obvious falsehood. Not only was the agreement entered into by the UFT, the Board of Education and Mayor Lindsay (and fully reported in the News) but also the pension package was passed by the Senate and the Assembly and signed by the Governor. Secret deals indeed!

Newest Scapegoat: The Board of Education

The same scapegoat technique is now about to be used against the Board of Education. The City Council has asked the state legislature to give the Council complete fiscal control over the education budget on an item by item basis. The reason given by the City Council for this demand is the recent $40 million shortage of school funds. What the Council does not reveal is that the $40 million shortage was due not to mismanagement by the Board of Education but to the fact that the Mayor and the City Council had cut school funds while requiring the school board to continue full services.

It is time for the scapegoat to be abandoned. Government services, like other goods, cost money and, in inflationary times, they cost more each year. The effort to educate all instead of an elite few also costs more. Government costs are going up because we are trying to do more things for more people than ever before. The overburdened taxpayer cannot be helped by continual scapegoating. He can be helped only by the kind of tax reform advocated by the AFL-CIO -- real reform which shifts the burden to those who can most afford to pay - and by adequate provision on the state and federal levels for high quality public services.