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By Root 1184 0

hardly an inspiration. In addition to expanding their already bloated staffs, the Albany lawmakers ignored the pleas of Koch and others to reform the antiquated civil service system; to exempt an additional 3,000 city executives from union membership, strengthening the mayor’s ability to manage the bureaucracy; to reform the “Heart Bill” so that it would not be so easy for workers to win tax-free disability pensions; to slash the patronage-rich city marshals programs; to grant City Hall greater control over appointments to the Board of Education, lessening the influence the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) exercised over appointments made by the borough presidents. Though he pleaded, cajoled and romanced, Koch won none of these reforms from the legislature. It was a defeat, Koch told me. “You can’t get anything through the state legislature in an election year that the unions don’t want,” he groused. “I used to have some feeling of the power of the municipal unions, but I never comprehended the extent of their power. I was told the UFT put a hold on the education bill. I was called yesterday and told by a legislative leader we could get something out of the legislature—we could get two more seats on the Board of Education, four out of nine. ‘But what would I have to do?’ I asked. You know what I was told? I was told I would have to reappoint the UFT guy, Louie Rivera. I said, ‘Screw them. The UFT is not making any appointments.’ So we’re not getting our legislation through.” So we get a picture of the legislature’s concept of public service.

The city’s basic methods of delivering public services also did not appreciably change. Sure, the most egregiously incompetent commissioners were gone, the Management Advisory Board achieved some of their excellent recommendations, a director of operations was implementing a management plan for each agency. But it remained accepted city policy, as stated in Beame’s 1977 Management Plan as well as Koch’s 1978 version, that services would continue to decline. The City Council would get their raises. City employees would get their raises. The budget would go up. The banks would secure their investments. Politicians would get reelected. And the public would continue to receive reduced services.

Restrictive union work rules were not amended. The introduction of additional inspector generals checking on sloth was rabidly denounced by labor leaders as “a spy system.” The hot breath of competition was not introduced into the city’s muscle-bound, monopolistic service delivery system. Sixty-five percent of all American cities with a population of 25,000 or more encourage competition by contracting out for the delivery of sanitation services, according to former Deputy City Administrator E. S. Savas, now a professor of public systems management at Columbia. Oklahoma City, he says, saved $850,000 by contracting out two of its five sanitation districts. Neighboring Newark, New Jersey, recently awarded a bid for one district to the New York Carting Company, the city’s largest private carting service. “The city of Newark was spending $4 million to do the job themselves,” said the president of the company, Charles Macaluso. “Our bid guarantees that we’ll do the job for half that, or $2 million.” Experience in other cities shows contracting out not only saves money—Savas estimates New York’s sanitation department could save from $25 to $60 million annually—but also improves the efficiency of the city’s effort. Savas’ study of the city of Minneapolis disclosed that after the introduction of competition the municipal sanitation agency “achieved a 35% reduction in direct labor hours per household per year, a 37% increase in tons collected per man hour, and a 51% increase in the number of households serviced per shift, while the number of complaints by residents has been declining.”

Since the late 1960’s, New York officials have prated on about introducing such competition. Savas proposed it then, and was left an orphan when Mayor Lindsay succumbed to the powerful opposition of the sanitation union.