Waiting for Spitzer

There's been a good bit of discussion of the low starting salary of Police Academy recruits. It's likely to get only more energetic following the filing Friday by the Bloomberg administration of a suit in Albany designed to get the arbitration process going in the wake of its negotiations – if that's what they can be called – with the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. This is one of those odd situations where everyone agrees that the starting police salaries are way too low; even management agrees on the point. It's less than clear that the recruits, or the other officers, are being helped by the process of collective bargaining.

The mayor announced back on July 7 that the city had notified the New York State Public Employment Relations Board that an impasse existed in the negotiations with the PBA. That should have resulted in a process under which each side chooses an arbitrator and then whittles their way down to an agreement on a third arbitrator. The PBA declined to participate in that whittling process, however. The lawsuit Mayor Bloomberg announced Friday is designed to get the director of PERB to designate the chairman of the arbitration panel.

In his announcement, the mayor pointed out that the city has made offers to the PBA, one of which, he said, "would give Police Officers the same raise that Firefighters received while raising the starting salary to $38,000," which is sharply up from the current rate of $25,000 for recruits. He called PERB's slowness "inexplicable." The explanation may turn out to be that PERB is waiting for the new governor to fill out PERB's board, and it may be that the governor is siding with the PBA. It was, after all, one of the first of the unions to endorse him in his quest for the governorship and is no doubt looking for some help in return.