For a prime example of the extortionate quid-pro-quo way of business in Albany, see Republican Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan’s attempt to force Mayor de Blasio into buying a pension deal at the expense of taxpayers.
Flanagan put it this way: I give you a minimum-wage hike to $11.50 an hour for thousands of needy New Yorkers, in return you give young cops sweetened disability retirement benefits.
The Republicans purport to believe that hiking the minimum wage would be a job-killer. Yet Flanagan’s offer revealed his opposition really wasn’t a matter of economic principle but a chip in a game of transactional politics that falls just shy of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s jurisdiction.
Worse, he was willing to make taxpayers foot the bill rather than go along with a more affordable and fair offer by de Blasio. De Blasio was right to tell Flanagan to go to hell.