Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Mayor's Veto Puts BOE Employees Back On City Side of Budget

Mayor Sebastian Giuliano exercised his authority Tuesday afternoon to use a line-item veto to restore his proposal to put non-certified union employees, who are party to a municipal labor contract, under the payroll of the city.  They are currently under Board of Education payroll.

The mayor's proposal was shot down at the Common Council meeting last Thursday when the Democratic majority voted into affect an amendment to delete the shift in payroll.

The ensuing public commentary incited the Council, on a bi-partisan basis to call for an investigation into labor practices by the Board of Education, and to audit their finances.  That call for an investigation lead to the posting of a police guard at the Board of Education Administrative Offices by the mayor.

The Common Council will have to call a meeting to address the mayor's veto, and to overturn the veto they will have to pass it with a supermajority vote, or if all Council members are present, eight of the twelve available votes.

"I'm not surprised that this is occuring," Common Council majority leader Tom Serra said in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon.  "We're strategically concerned about the proposal.  We need to be clear, and that is not clear."

Serra said he will meet with the Democratic caucus over the next few days, and is confident they have the votes to sustain the original amendment to defeat the mayor's proposal.  The Common Council has ten days in which to meet and vote on the mayor's veto.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow this fight is just getting bigger. I hope they can solve their differences quickly before draining tax payers of their money......

Anonymous said...

Does the charter provision invoked by the mayor regarding non-certified members of a bargaining unit include the paraprofessionals? They are not certified by the State Board of Education. Why would they be excluded from this line item veto? Shouldn't they also be moved to the city budget as well?

Anonymous said...

To the first anonymous comment, do you realize how much of the taxpayers money has been wasted by the BOE already on completely stupid things? Do you realize that they have violated numerous state laws and don't give a crap about what the taxpayers think? They have used more money on "legal fees" in the past year that they have in probably the last 10 years. Get on board and come down on the BOE. All that was ever being asked was that they play by the rules. When Carol Parmelee-Blancato was in charge, nothing like this ever happened!!!! Micheal Frechette left his last job because he screwed so many things up and abused his authority. No one wants him.