What Deal Did Cuomo And Bloomberg Make On LIFO?

Bloomberg is going full speed ahead with teacher layoffs. Many knowledgeable education observers believe he would not be going with the layoffs if he knew he was going to have lay off cheaper newbie teachers and retain more expensive veterans. But with his attempts to change LIFO having been stymied in Albany so far, the question becomes, what does he have up his sleeve?

New York Magazine may have the answer:

The mayor spent much of the winter leading a full-court press, angrily complaining about state government’s unfairness to the city and loudly insisting on the repeal of “LIFO,” the state law requiring that teachers with the least seniority be fired first. Didn’t work: Andrew Cuomo needed peace with the teachers union and Shelly Silver more than he needed Bloomberg’s backing, and the new governor didn’t appreciate the mayor trying to push him around. Bloomberg is still rightly blaming Albany — and, to a lesser extent, Washington — for shifting problems downstream. But today Bloomberg was downright conciliatory and regretful as he criticized, claiming he holds out hope for last-minute help from the state. “I’m very sympathetic to Andrew Cuomo,” he said. “I’m not going to second-guess.” A reporter asked why Bloomberg’s lobbying efforts in Albany had failed; the mayor shrugged off the invitation to attack, instead attributing the setback to prevailing anti-government sentiment.

The soft-pedaling — and Bloomberg’s legitimate touting of his generally solid record steering the city’s finances — didn’t win him much love locally. Comptroller John Liu jabbed at the administration for spending “billions of dollars on high-priced consultants.” Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, accused Bloomberg of playing politics with the budget. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio did better than merely carping: He’s planning to mobilize parent groups to fight the teacher layoffs.

There was also deep skepticism that Bloomberg will follow through with the most painful cuts. “The mayor has a believability problem,” one public official says. “He made a very substantial threat last year to lay off teachers, which dissipated as the revenue dynamics changed. Now, after the snowstorm and Cathie Black and the CityTime scandal, why would he want to do the single most unpopular thing he could do?”

Bloomberg insists he means it this time, that the money isn’t there, and that he isn’t laying off teachers to prove a point about LIFO. But if this isn’t the usual shell game, in which city tax revenues spike and Bloomberg saves thousands of jobs just before the July 1 deadline, he really is going to need an assist from Albany. There’s not much chance of the state suddenly coughing up more cash; a compromise on seniority rules or state mandates, though, should be possible. Two weeks ago the mayor and the governor had a long dinner on the Upper West Side. Perhaps today’s quieter tone at City Hall is the next step in trying to get Cuomo to pick up part of a much bigger check.

The last time Cuomo met in secret so publicly with "education reformers" was when the NY Times reported he met with some hedge fund managers in a NY hotel room, heard their concerns about education reform, walked out of that room with a suitcase full of cash and released an education plan the next day that was an EXACT replica of a Democrats for Education Reform pamphlet.

Cuomo is a crook, big time, and he is up for sale always, so while he has so far not helped Bloomberg on the LIFO issue, you know that if the price is right, he will change direction like a weathervane in an Alabama tornado.

What is Cuomo's price on the LIFO? What would Bloomberg have to give him for Cuomo to push through LIFO changes by June and allow Bloomberg to lay off any teacher he wants this year?

Dunno, but I would imagine cash would be one thing.

While Cuomo has been as low key as possible about future career moves (unlike his Republican brother in New Jersey, Chris Christie), it is believed that Little Andrew wants to run for president someday, and now that Mayor Bloomberg's own White House ambitions have been mostly destroyed by a snowstorm, a spate of outside consultant scandals, and poll after poll showing people would rather elect Donald Trump than Mayor Bloomberg to be president (though Harpo Marx apparently outpolls both - who knew?), Cuomo may be looking for some rich sugar daddy to fund that campaign for him in 2016.

Could Bloomberg be that sugar daddy?

I bet he could.

2016 may seem like a long time away, but make no mistake, a conniving, ambitious, egotistical man like Little Andrew Cuomo is already thinking that far ahead and lining up potential backers and supporters behind the scenes.

I am going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction (with my apologies to both Johnny Carson and Mr. Talk at Accountable Talk):

I think Bloomberg has a deal with Cuomo on LIFO and that's why he is comfortable going ahead with these layoffs.

His long term plan is to do layoffs every year, slowly bleeding the NYC public education system of human capital and replace it with technology and computers.

Reduce the teaching force to 30,000 or so over the next few years (always claiming economic deprivation as the rationale, of course), replace those laid off teachers with computerized instruction a la Wireless Generation's School of One, hire some cheap teaching aides to work the classroom management angle, and remake the school system into an online computer education system.

That's what the governor of Idaho is aiming to do too.

And the governor of Florida.

So of course the biggest technojunkie of them all, Mayor Moneybags, the guy who made his fortune via technology, is heading in that direction too.

But the one sticking point is the teachers union and the work protections that teachers have.

He has already incentivized schools to rid themselves of vets via the Fair Funding Formula that charges schools 100% of their teacher costs.

He has already changed tenure rules so that schools have been incentivized to use untenured teachers for three years and then dump them rather than grant them tenure.

Now he needs to end seniority protections for teachers so that any teacher can be laid off at any time whenever he decides there is an "economic emergency."

Once he has that change in place, you can bet your subscription of Bloomberg Businessweek that there will be an "economic emergency" every year.

Year after year, teachers will be let go, the layoffs will accelerate until the system is remade into Bloomberg's vision - a public school system streamlined of teachers and dominated by computerized instruction and data-driven testing.

There isn't much time left for him to start this move. He's only got three more years. So he needs Cuomo to make changes to LIFO now.

You can be sure that whatever these two politicians talked about at their long UWS dinner a few weeks ago, Bloomberg's vision for the school system, a LIFO deal and Cuomo's 2016 ambitions were all discussed.

So Governor Cuomo, what's your price?

To paraphrase Michael Corleone from The Godfather, "How much are you getting paid to set us up?"

And when does the shiv get shoved in?