Written by Michael Moran on August 17, 2010 – 7:16 am
New York Daily News columnist Bill Hammond writes about Andrew Cuomo’s efforts to reshape his party’s relationship with the public employee unions.
He writes: Andrew Cuomo has pulled off the unlikely stunt of winning the endorsement of the state AFL-CIO without selling his soul to the usually all-powerful public employee unions.
Which is a good sign - because the last thing New York needs is another elected official who owes his job to the government workers he’s supposed to be managing.
Albany has plenty such puppets already, which is the major reason that a state with one of the highest tax burdens in the country is perennially teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
Cuomo knows this, coming out strong for proposals that average New Yorkers love but public unions hate, such as capping property taxes and freezing government wages.
Those taxpayer-friendly positions cost him the support of unions that would normally be aligned with a Democratic candidate for governor: the New York State United Teachers and the Civil Service Employees Association, the state’s largest union for blue-collar government workers.