Every few years, education gets swept up in the next “revolution.”

Remember when mobile tablets and cell phones were going to transform learning? When endless standardized testing was supposed to raise achievement? When social media was simply another way for kids to connect?

We were told to move fast.

Only later did we start asking harder questions.

Artificial intelligence is arriving in our schools with the same sense of inevitability. Contracts are being signed. New AI-enabled programs are appearing. Students are already being encouraged—or expected—to use AI in ways that would have seemed unthinkable just a year or two ago.

But where has the public conversation been?

Where was the careful review?

Where was the independent evidence that this is actually good for children?

A growing coalition of parents, teachers, education advocates, researchers and community leaders isn’t saying “never.”

They’re saying something much simpler.

Slow down.

The petition now circulating across New York City calls for a two-year moratorium on AI use in NYC public schools.

Not forever.

Just long enough for the Department of Education to honestly evaluate what AI is doing to student learning, privacy, mental health, classroom relationships, and even its environmental costs before making it part of everyday instruction.

That’s not an extreme position.

It’s what we usually do when something new could have lasting consequences for children.

The concerns aren’t imaginary.

Researchers have raised questions about whether AI weakens critical thinking and creativity. Privacy advocates warn that many AI systems collect enormous amounts of student data. Others point to growing evidence of bias in AI systems, along with the energy and water demands created by massive data centers. Those concerns—and more—are outlined by the coalition supporting the petition.

Reasonable people can disagree about where AI belongs in education.

Some argue students need to learn how to use it because it will shape the future workforce. That’s a debate worth having.

But shouldn’t that debate happen before AI becomes deeply embedded in the nation’s largest school system?

That is what this petition is really about.

Taking a breath before making a decision that may be difficult to undo.

The organizers have set an attainable goal:

5,000 signatures this week.

Whether you’re a parent, educator, student, or simply someone who believes schools should put children ahead of technology companies, your signature matters.

If enough New Yorkers speak now, City Hall and the Department of Education will have to listen.

The window to influence this decision is still open.

It won’t stay that way for long.

Please sign the petition today—and if you agree with it, share it with someone else. Five minutes of action today could help shape how AI enters New York City’s classrooms for years to come

Sign the petition now

Learn more:

https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2025/12/our-forum-on-risks-of-using-ai-in.html

Then there are stories that quietly stack one fact on top of another until the picture becomes impossible to ignore.

One bill.

One lobbying campaign.

One endorsement controversy.

One internal email.

One paid political advertisement.

And finally...

One declaration of “all-out war.”

Standing alone, each has an explanation.

Taken together, they raise a far more uncomfortable question.

Who declared war?

Michael Mulgrew?

Or the members?

According to a recent New York Times report, UFT President Michael Mulgrew warned that if Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not support the paraprofessionals’ bonus legislation, it would mean “all-out war.”

Every union leader is expected to fight for members.

No one should apologize for demanding better pay for paraprofessionals.

That isn’t the issue.

The issue is something deeper. More than union leadership will let on.

Before the president of a member-funded union commits the organization to political war with a mayor, who decides that war should be fought? And how?

That isn’t a question about Julie Menin.

It isn’t even primarily a question about Michael Mulgrew.

It’s a question about whether one of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions is becoming less member-driven at precisely the moment its members are demanding more democracy and voice.

Let’s begin with what this article is not.

It is not an attack on the Respect Check legislation.

Paraprofessionals deserve a living wage and any temporary relief they can receive while the fight for permanent salary increases continues.

Years before politicians held press conferences or campaign operatives celebrated legislative wins, paraprofessionals were packing organizing meetings, organizing co-workers, flooding City Hall and union leadership with emails, speaking at rallies, signing petitions and refusing to let their poverty wages become another forgotten promise.

That movement belonged to New York City’s paraprofessionals.

It did not belong to any politician or highly paid union staffer taking victory laps or selfies at City Hall.

Which makes what happened afterward worth examining.

Because somewhere between the organizing and the victory, the focus began to shift.

From the members who built the movement...

...to the politicians who claimed the credit.

Exhibit A: The Investment in Menin

Before the Respect Check was passed by City Council, UFT leadership had already made a significant political investment in City Council Speaker Julie Menin.

Campaign finance records show that United for NYC’s Future, an independent expenditure committee aligned with UFT leadership, spent more than $210,000 supporting Menin’s City Council campaign.

She received the second-largest amount of support from that committee among all candidates during the most recent election cycle.

Only Dermot Smyth—a longtime UFT political operative who ultimately lost his race—received more.

That fact deserves attention for another reason.

Unlike many Council races, Menin faced no widely recognized serious challenge for her seat.

None of this suggests anything illegal.

Independent expenditures are lawful.

Political alliances are common.

But political investments are rarely made without expectations.

They build relationships.

They create influence.

And they often shape what comes next.

Around City Hall there has been persistent speculation that Menin may someday seek higher office, perhaps even the mayoralty if circumstances change.

As of this writing, she has announced no such plans.

Still, viewed against that backdrop, what followed becomes harder to dismiss as coincidence.

Exhibit B: The Mobilization Against Mamdani

The next piece of the story came not from City Hall...

... but from an internal union email.

POLITICO reported that Speaker Menin asked UFT President Michael Mulgrew to provide approximately twenty members to stand outside Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s 100-day event carrying “Para Respect” signs.

According to the internal email obtained by POLITICO, members were instructed to arrive before the mayor’s appearance so “the mayor and others can see them as they enter.”

Pause there.

Forget whether you’re a supporter of Mamdani.

Forget whether you’re a supporter of Menin.

Or neither.

Ask a simpler question.

When a powerful elected official asks a union president to assemble members for a political event...

whose event is it?

The union’s?

Or the politician’s?

Members deserve an answer.

Exhibit C: The Recent Paid Advertisement

Then came the paid advertisement after the Menin-led City Council passed the paraprofessional legislation, which Mayor Mamdani has publicly questioned because of possible Taylor Law issues.

A paid social media advertisement.

Not from an outside advocacy organization.

From UFT Action—the union’s political operation.

It did not celebrate years of rank-and-file organizing.

It did not feature the paraprofessionals whose persistence made the legislation possible.

Instead, it featured one politician beneath a headline that read:

Think about that wording.

Not “Respect Check Delivers.”

Not “Paraprofessionals Win.”

Not “Members Made This Happen.”

Speaker Menin Delivers.

And not simply on paraprofessional pay.

On affordability.

That word wasn’t chosen in a vacuum.

Affordability became the defining message of Zohran Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign and remains central to his political identity.

Whether intentional or not, the advertisement did more than celebrate legislation.

It sounded more like a dig at Mamdani coupled with a boastful post-touchdown juke.

It positioned Speaker Menin within the city’s defining affordability narrative and working families’ struggles.

It wasn’t merely legislative messaging.

It was preferential political branding and possibly a tacit endorsement of Menin’s future political aspirations.

And members have every right to ask why their union’s COPE-funded political operation chose to spend resources delivering that message without consent.

Exhibit D: The Pattern

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because UFT members had already been debating a similar question.

The Goldman-Lander endorsement controversy was never really about Dan Goldman or Brad Lander who ran against each other in the District 10 Democratic congressional primary.

It was about who controls the UFT’s political voice.

Leadership publicly announced support for Goldman before the Delegate Assembly—the union’s highest policymaking body—had voted. Then used union resources to canvass for him.

There was also no NYSUT endorsement, even though congressional races have often been coordinated through the state federation.

That distinction mattered.

Had NYSUT endorsed first, many members would have viewed the announcement as part of the normal state endorsement process.

Had the Delegate Assembly voted first, members would at least have known their elected representatives had spoken.

Neither had happened.

Instead, members were left with the reasonable impression that the endorsement had effectively been announced from the top down.

Whether that perception was fair or not, it became the catalyst for a broader debate that had been building inside the union for years.

For nearly sixty years, Unity caucus has governed the UFT through a highly centralized leadership model.

Today, that model faces its most sustained internal challenge in decades.

Reform groups like A Better Contract argue that endorsements, political strategy, and major decisions should flow upward from the membership—not downward from leadership. They support direct member voting when it comes to major political endorsements.

Viewed through that lens, the Menin story becomes something larger than one politician.

A substantial, mostly unilateral political investment.

A close, coordinated legislative partnership.

A reported request to mobilize members.

A paid political advertisement centering the same elected official coronated as the legislation’s “champion”.

An endorsement controversy.

Each event has its own explanation.

Together, they tell a story.

Exhibit E: The Declaration of “All Out War”

Then came the New York Times piece.

The dispute over Respect Check had moved beyond City Hall.

According to the Times, UFT President Michael Mulgrew warned that if Mayor Mamdani refused to support the paraprofessional payments, it would mean “all-out war.”

Importantly, Mayor Mamdani has never argued that paraprofessionals do not deserve higher pay. Instead, he has argued that a permanent living wage should be won through collective bargaining, not through legislation he believes could conflict with New York State’s Taylor Law.

Every union leader is expected to fight for members — especially in the inevitable disagreements that will arise between a mayor, who also represents management, and union labor.

That isn’t the issue.

The issue is something different.

When does a president speak for members...

and when does he presume to speak as the members?

Declaring, or even suggesting, “all-out” political war is one of the most consequential statements a union leader can make.

It commits not simply one individual, but the political weight of hundreds of thousands of educators.

Which brings us back to the central question.

Did the members vote for that confrontation? Did they even help craft the para bill and its campaign strategy?

Did the Delegate Assembly authorize any of these decisions? Or did it serve as a “rubber stamp” after the fact?

Did COPE members debate it?

Or did they simply read about it afterward?

That distinction matters.

Because a member-led union doesn’t simply ask members to fight.

It asks whether they want the fight and how they should do so in the first place.

To be clear, there is no evidence presented here of unlawful conduct, campaign finance violations, or improper coordination.

That isn’t the argument.

The concern is something different.

That the line between representing members and advancing political relationships appears to be growing thinner.

That decisions with significant political consequences increasingly appear to originate at the top while members learn about them afterward.

That the union’s political machinery is becoming more centralized under Mulgrew at the very moment members are demanding the opposite.

Those aren’t legal questions.

They’re democratic ones.

The Bottom Line

Every organizer.

Every COPE dollar.

Every paid advertisement.

Every mobilization.

Every political endorsement.

Every declaration of political war.

Exists because educators built this union.

Not Michael Mulgrew.

Not Julie Menin.

The members.

That is why so many questions are being raised as a result of the New York Times piece matters.

It isn’t whether Mayor Mamdani is right.

It isn’t whether Speaker Menin is right.

It isn’t even whether the Respect Check strategy ultimately succeeds.

The question is much simpler.

When the UFT speaks politically, who decided what it would say?

Because if the answer is no longer the members, then the most important battle facing the union isn’t taking place at City Hall.

It’s taking place inside the union hall itself.

Members deserve greater transparency about how major political decisions are made.

They deserve to know how COPE dollars are being spent. They deserve to see COPE meeting minutes.

They deserve confidence that endorsements reflect established democratic processes.

And they deserve to understand whether declarations as consequential as “all-out war” against a candidate the union hastily endorsed — asserting that he aligned to our priorities — and if this represents the considered, informed judgment of the membership—or simply the judgment and whims of its top-down leadership.

A union derives its legitimacy not from its president, but from its members.

When that distinction begins to blur, asking questions isn’t disloyal.

It’s the very essence of union democracy.

Related

The Good

Ten thousand dollars is real money.

It isn’t a slogan.

It isn’t another appreciation luncheon, paper certificate or acrylic trophy.

For a paraprofessional earning barely enough to survive in New York City, it’s rent. Childcare. Groceries. Gas. A car repair. A chance to breathe, even if only for a moment.

The people who fought for this deserve credit.

Not the highly paid politicians and union staffers standing behind podiums taking victory-lap selfies.

Credit belongs to the hardworking paraprofessionals who were told, “Not now.”

The members who asked for a comprehensive bargaining plan and were handed a paraprofessional chapter handbook instead.

The people who organized under the Fix Para Pay slate and won 75% of the vote within the UFT paraprofessional chapter.

The people who voted for a change in direction.

The people in our classrooms who made neglect politically expensive.

Whether this bill ultimately survives or not, the movement accomplished something larger than a one-time payment.

It forced our union and New York City to confront a reality that had been ignored for decades.

For years, paraprofessionals were told their concerns would have to wait.

Wait until the next contract.

Wait until the next budget.

Wait until the next bargaining cycle.

This week proved that organized members don’t always have to wait forever.

Pressure works.

Elections matter.

Organizing matters.

And the people who refused to accept that paraprofessionals should remain the forgotten workforce inside our union changed the conversation—not just inside the UFT, but across New York City.

Paraprofessionals can no longer be treated as an afterthought.

For that, every person who organized, spoke up, voted, attended meetings, challenged leadership and refused to let the issue die deserves recognition.

Whether the Respect Check ultimately survives politically or legally, the movement has already accomplished something that cannot be repealed.

It forced New York City to finally acknowledge that the people who help educate and care for our most vulnerable students deserve far more than appreciation.

They deserve a living wage. Period. Full stop.

The Bad

For roughly sixteen years under Michael Mulgrew’s leadership, there was no fundamental effort to restructure paraprofessional salaries. Aside from modest improvements to longevity raises in the 2018 contract, paraprofessional pay remained largely governed by the same pattern bargaining that had left many struggling to survive.

Then came the last contract.

The UFT had roughly $450 million in recurring, non-pensionable retention money available.

Leadership had choices.

It could have directed more of that money—or even all of it—toward the city’s lowest-paid title and begun closing the wage gap at the bargaining table.

It didn’t.

The money was spread broadly and equally across all titles.

The people with the least remained with the least.

That decision continues to shape this debate.

Today, much of the union’s messaging presents a false choice between this legislation or waiting until the next contract.

But that presents an incomplete picture. And a false dilemma.

Collective bargaining doesn’t operate on a fixed calendar.

The UFT, as the certified bargaining representative, can reopen negotiations with the city at any time if both parties agree.

In fact, the union did exactly that this year.

While the current teachers’ contract remains in effect, the UFT negotiated a side agreement creating salary differentials of up to $9,500 for eligible teachers assigned to schools that remain above the state’s class-size limits because compliance with the law has been delayed for two more years.

That agreement demonstrates that targeted compensation issues can be negotiated before a contract expires.

Would the city have agreed to reopen negotiations over paraprofessional salaries?

No one can answer that with certainty.

But bargaining remained another available path. And the services they provide are mandated by law.

Another question deserves attention.

The UFT leadership appears to have invested significant political capital in City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who became the public face of this legislation. Campaign finance disclosures showed that an independent expenditure committee aligned with UFT leadership spent more than $210,000 supporting Menin’s City Council campaign, while the union later promoted her as the “Champion of the Paraprofessional Respect Check.”

Menin received the second highest amount of UFT political donation dollars among all other candidates in this past election cycle even as she faced no legitimate challenge for her seat. She was second only to a UFT operative named Dermot Smyth, who lost his City Council bid.

None of this proves that legislative decisions were bought or improperly influenced.

Independent expenditures and political endorsements are legal and commonplace.

But it illustrates something larger.

When a union chooses to pursue compensation primarily through legislation rather than collective bargaining, it necessarily becomes more dependent on political relationships.

Those relationships can change.

Menin has been mentioned in political circles as a potential mayoral candidate who could someday challenge Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Whether that happens or not, political alliances rarely remain permanent.

Elections change.

Speakers change.

Mayors change.

Budget priorities change.

Collective bargaining, by contrast, isn’t dependent on who occupies City Hall.

It remains available regardless of which politician holds office.

That distinction matters.

Then came the victory laps.

Within hours of the Council vote, a senior UFT staff member who has never taught in a classroom, and makes hundreds of thousands of dollars, described Michael Mulgrew as a “generational leader.”

That’s quite a remarkable claim.

Because for multiple generations of paraprofessionals, the story has largely been the opposite.

Contract after contract. Pattern raise after pattern raise.

Paraprofessionals fell farther behind inside a union that proudly calls itself “A Union of Professionals.”

If this is the defining achievement of a generation, then it’s fair to ask:

Why did it take sixteen years? Twenty years? Forty years?

Why wasn’t this fight waged years ago, when paraprofessional pay was already in crisis?

History doesn’t remember who announced the building of a bridge.

It remembers who finished building it.

The Ugly

The promised fix has kept shrinking.

Members were first promised a permanent Para Pay Index—a non-pensionable annual payment of more than $10,000 based on a formula designed to grow over time and begin closing the wage gap.

That became a non-pensionable annual workforce stabilization payment.

Then it became what passed this week: four legislatively authorized payments tied to a single school year.

Now union leadership tells members that if the money isn’t incorporated into a future contract, the City Council can simply reauthorize it.

Maybe. If it can.

But that isn’t what this law actually says.

This legislation contains no internal mechanism for annual reauthorization.

Instead, it authorizes payments for one defined school year and then repeals itself in 2027.

If paraprofessionals are to receive another year’s payments, the entire legislative process begins again.

A new bill.

New sponsors.

Committee hearings.

Another Council vote.

Another mayoral decision.

Potentially another legal challenge.

That isn’t extending this law.

That’s passing an entirely new one.

Which raises another question.

If the proposal changed this dramatically—from a permanent formula, to annual stabilization payments, to a one-year program—why weren’t members kept informed as those changes occurred?

Why wasn’t the rationale explained?

Why did members have to discover major revisions by reading amended legislation instead of hearing them from their own leadership?

Good leadership doesn’t simply announce victories.

It explains compromises.

Especially when the promise changes.

Then comes the legal question.

The Taylor Law has long treated wages as a mandatory subject of collective bargaining.

Whether this legislation ultimately survives judicial review remains an open question.

Maybe the courts uphold it.

Maybe they don’t.

But every municipal union in New York City is now watching.

Recent lobbying disclosures show District Council 37 (DC37) actively lobbied on Intro. 692. Those filings don’t reveal whether the union supported or opposed the legislation, but they confirm that the city’s largest municipal union recognized the significance of what was happening.

The ripple effects are already beginning.

Council Member Joann Ariola has announced legislation proposing $20,000 workforce stabilization payments for FDNY EMTs and $25,000 payments for FDNY paramedics, arguing they face the same recruitment and retention crisis.

She probably won’t be the last.

School aides.

School crossing guards.

School food service workers.

Childcare workers.

EMTs.

And countless other lower-paid municipal employees now have every reason to ask the same question:

If City Hall can legislate additional compensation for one title, why not ours?

That creates a dilemma for organized labor.

For generations, unions have argued that wages belong at the bargaining table.

If legislative compensation packages become the preferred solution whenever bargaining falls short, unions risk weakening one of the central principles they have historically fought to protect: collective bargaining itself.

Perhaps the lesson isn’t that collective bargaining should be replaced.

Perhaps it’s that it should be reformed.

Pattern bargaining has produced percentage raises that often widen, rather than narrow, the gap between the highest- and lowest-paid workers. A 3% raise means something very different to someone earning $180,000 than it does to someone earning $42,000.

Maybe the next conversation shouldn’t be about bypassing collective bargaining.

Maybe it should be about improving it.

That debate is only beginning.

So let’s celebrate this one-time check.

Paraprofessionals have earned that celebration.

But don’t confuse a temporary payment with a permanent salary.

The real victory won’t be measured by four temporary checks.

It will be measured by whether paraprofessionals finally secure what they have sought for decades:

A permanent place on the salary schedule—with a living wage that no longer depends on politics.

Something that builds over time.

Something sustainable.

And doesn’t expire.

On Thursday, the New York City Council approved legislation that would provide eligible Department of Education paraprofessionals with up to $10,000 in additional compensation during the 2026–27 school year.

The campaign for this legislative fix has been dubbed “The Respect Check” by the educators union that authored it, the United Federation of Teachers.

The measure passed unanimously (49-0) and would provide the money in four installments beginning in January 2027. Supporters say it addresses a recruitment and retention crisis among one of the city’s lowest-paid school workforces. Critics question whether the legislation can withstand legal scrutiny under New York’s Taylor Law, which generally reserves wages and compensation for collective bargaining.

But this story didn’t begin in City Hall. It began inside the union hall of the United Federation of Teachers.

For years, paraprofessionals argued they had become the forgotten workforce inside New York City’s schools.

They support students with disabilities, help manage classrooms, assist with communication, behavior intervention and personal care—yet many struggled to afford the city where they worked.

That frustration eventually became organized.

Where The Pressure Was Born

In early 2024, a rank-and-file movement known as Fix Para Pay began demanding a living wage and introduced a resolution calling on the UFT to support national legislation supporting better pay and conditions for school-related professionals and to develop a comprehensive bargaining strategy to achieve one. The proposal sought a concrete plan—not simply another round of percentage raises produced through pattern bargaining, the long-standing system in which municipal unions generally negotiate the same percentage increases regardless of title or profession. The resolution was ultimately amended by the union’s leadership, removing the requirement for a comprehensive, robust bargaining plan.

During debate, union leaders defended their record by noting that New York City paraprofessionals earned more than many paraprofessionals elsewhere in the country, while critics argued those comparisons ignored New York City’s cost of living. Leadership also pointed to gains, including a newly published paraprofessional chapter handbook. They further argued that any compensation strategy should originate from the paraprofessional chapter itself rather than from delegates or members at large.

The debate didn’t end there. It only intensified.

Months later, in the spring of 2024, the Fix Para Pay slate defeated Unity Caucus in the UFT Paraprofessional Chapter election, overwhelmingly with 75% of the vote. The historic win ended decades of Unity control over the chapter and made paraprofessional pay the defining issue within that division of the union.

Its platform focused on a living wage, better longevity increases, line-of-duty injury compensation, stronger due process protections and greater involvement by working paraprofessionals in decisions affecting their compensation and working conditions.

The debate over paraprofessional pay also drew renewed attention to choices made during the UFT’s 2022–27 contract negotiations. A November 2024 report by The Wire, citing a contract costing summary, estimated that the agreement devoted roughly $450 million to recurring, non-pensionable retention payments distributed across UFT titles. The report argued that union negotiators could instead have directed a larger share of that money toward paraprofessionals and other hard-to-staff positions.

UFT leadership defended the equal payments as fair, while critics said distributing the same amount broadly missed an opportunity to address the much deeper wage crisis facing the most in need — paraprofessionals, the union’s lowest-paid members.

The episode became part of the larger rank-and-file argument that paraprofessional compensation required a targeted bargaining strategy after decades of stagnant wage increases —not simply the same percentage raises and payments applied across the workforce.

The Shrinking Promise

Following the 2024 rank-and-file victory, during the spring 2025 UFT general election campaign, as union leadership sought re-election, they unveiled a legislative proposal promising to close the paraprofessional pay gap.

According to Fix Para Pay leaders, the proposal was developed without consultation with the newly elected paraprofessional chapter leadership, and chapter members were not part of that decision-making process.

That legislative proposal would eventually evolve through three different versions.

The first version, introduced in 2025, proposed creating a Para Pay Index—a non-pensionable annual payment of more than $10,000 based on a formula outside traditional collective bargaining that would begin offsetting decades of pattern bargaining. It was presented as a permanent solution to begin narrowing the wage gap.

That proposal stalled.

The second version, introduced in 2026, abandoned the Para Pay Index and replaced it with a non-pensionable annual workforce stabilization payment, shifting away from a formula-based approach toward legislatively authorized annual payments.

Then came the third version—Intro. 692-A.

The legislation approved this week authorizes four non-pensionable payments totaling up to $10,000 for eligible paraprofessionals employed during the 2026–27 school year. Unlike earlier proposals, it does not establish an ongoing annual payment and instead limits the benefit to one school year. The law also repeals itself in 2027, meaning any future payments would require entirely new legislation.

Where Things Stand Now

The bill now goes to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who supported increasing paraprofessional pay with a “Respect Check” while running for mayor but now says the Council’s approach may violate New York’s Taylor Law.

The mayor and his administration argue that compensation should be resolved through collective bargaining and say they are reviewing the legislation and considering their next steps.

It remains unclear whether he will sign or veto the bill within the 30-day window.

City Hall insiders say a legal challenge remains possible, even as supporters call the legislation long-overdue recognition.

Critics call it nothing more than a Band-Aid and temporary relief.

Either way, one thing is beyond dispute.

Whether one celebrates the legislation or questions its long-term viability, one conclusion is difficult to escape:

Editor’s note: We will follow up with a deep dive news analysis of this bill, its immediate and future impact, in tomorrow’s companion piece: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Related links:

Chalkbeat: Council approves $10k perk for public school paraprofessionals

Daily News: NYC Council approves $10K checks for teacher aides, Mamdani considers ‘next steps’

Daily News: Council paraprofessionals bill breaks N.Y. law

The Wire: The Newly Revised UFT Para Bill: The Promise That Kept Shrinking

Union Matters: Real Respect for Paras

A BETTER CONTRACT (ABC-UFT)

PARA RESPECT CHECK PASSED -- Now what?

Dear UFT Members…

Read more

12 days ago · 17 likes · 3 comments · A Better Contract

There is a paraprofessional in Queens who probably still has one of those old union flyers from last year’s UFT election tucked inside a kitchen drawer.

Not because she saves campaign literature.

Because she saves hope.

Hope is expensive when you make barely enough to live in New York City.

She remembers what she was told.

Not that she might get a temporary, “one and done” bonus.

Not that City Hall might help for a year.

She was told the union had finally found a way to undo decades of pattern bargaining.

A permanently recurring payment. A Para Pay Index.

A new formula that would finally stop paraprofessionals from falling farther behind every contract. A payment tied to the widening gap between the highest-paid principals and the lowest-paid paras. A payment that would grow as the inequity grew.

It sounded less like just a supplemental check.

More like justice for decades of working without a living wage that keeps up with the runaway cost of living in New York City.

It sounded like somebody had finally looked around the school building and realized the people changing diapers, building one-on-one relationships with students, helping them communicate, preventing meltdowns, feeding children, escorting wheelchairs and protecting kids every single day deserved more than another speech about appreciation, acrylic trophies or paper certificates.

Then something funny happened between wearing blue at school to show solidarity and on the way to City Hall.

The legislation kept changing.

Not once.

Twice.

Then three times.

And every time it came back, it was a little smaller than the initial promise.

The first bill proposed and rolled out during the 2025 UFT election campaign created a Para Pay Index.

Gone.

The formula that adjusted with growing inequity.

Gone.

The permanent recurring concept that members were sold.

Gone.

Instead came a new phase with the 2026 version of the para bill.

Workforce stabilization.

Politicians love words like stabilization. They’re temporary by design.They’re what you use when you don’t want to admit you’re not fixing the foundation.

But then came the latest rewrite.

And that’s where the story really changes.

Read the latest amended bill (692-A), just introduced yesterday.

Not the colorful UFT Facebook graphics. Not the tweets.

Not the campaign slogans and cleverly worded talking points handed to Mulgrew’s Unity-UFT patronage machine and its highly paid talking head pundits.

Read the actual legislation.

The newest version no longer creates an ongoing payment system.

It defines an eligible paraprofessional as someone employed during the 2026-2027 school year.

It schedules exactly four payments tied to this upcoming school year.

January.

March.

June.

August.

That’s what the law says.

Now compare that with what leadership is saying.

The union now tells members that payments may be reauthorized each year if shortages continue.

May?

That word appears in union messaging. But not in any mechanism within the bill itself.

The legislation contains no annual renewal process.

No mechanisms for automatic extension.

No continuing Para Pay Index.

No guarantee that another payment exists after August 2027.

If paraprofessionals are ever going to receive another year’s payments, someone will have to draft another bill.

Introduce another bill.

Move another bill through committee. Organize again for more hearings.

More days that we all wear solidarity blue.

Get other council members’ signatures. Try to pass another bill.

And repeat the process all over again.

Every.

Single.

Year.

The original promise offered some permanence.

The current legislation is one school year.

That’s not a tweak. That’s a transformation to something different entirely.

Leadership will undoubtedly say politics required compromise and concessions.

Maybe.

City Council lawyers and OLR undoubtedly examined every word.

They always do.

But members should still ask a simple question.

Why weren’t they told how dramatically the promise had changed?

Because this wasn’t marketed as a temporary bridge to carry paras through next school year in an ongoing affordability crisis — with the hope that the next contract will finally provide a living wage to paraprofessionals. Another Mulgrew IOU of sorts.

It was originally marketed as a recurring respect check that would supplement pay until collective bargaining could chip away at the big pay gap that exists for New York City’s paraprofessional.

It wasn’t sold as one year’s stabilization payment. It was sold as correcting decades of injustice.

There’s another part of this story that’s impossible to ignore.

Before any of this legislation existed, UFT leadership negotiated our last contract containing roughly $450 million in recurring non-pensionable retention money.

Leadership had discretion over how to distribute those dollars.

They could have concentrated resources on the city’s most underpaid title, equitably.

They chose instead to spread the money broadly across all titles, equally.

Lest we forget that with each negotiated contract during the last couple of decades that gave equal raises across the board, we were told there is nothing that can be done to reverse the inequity because of pattern bargaining.

We were told to be grateful, we have it better off than others and this was “the best we could do”.

Today we’re told legislation is the only realistic path to hoping for a better contract in the future. Even as our out-of-pocket expenses increase with higher copays and deductibles as a result of their negotiated “healthcare cost savings”.

Members have every right to wonder why that wasn’t true when the bargaining table offered opportunities to permanently lift the people who needed it most.

But, you know what? None of this means paraprofessionals shouldn’t support this bill.

They absolutely should because it’s the best Unity can do, for better or worse. Even if this non-pensionable check barely moves the needle to a sustainable living wage.

They simply have proven, time and time again, that they don’t have the skillset, organizing prowess or negotiating wherewithal to bring this to where it belongs: The contract bargaining table.

Ten thousand dollars matters, right now, when our sub-inflation 3% raises can’t keep up with cost of living in the New York area — which currently sits at a 5.1% inflation rate.

Every dollar matters when so many of us are living paycheck to paycheck.

Every paraprofessional has earned far more than this city has ever paid them.

But supporting the bill shouldn’t require pretending it is still the bill that was first promised.

The legislation evolved, or some mights say, de-evolved. The union’s “Respect Check” sales pitch didn’t.

Somewhere between the UFT election campaign and the lawyer’s red pen, “permanently recurring” became “one school year.”

Somewhere along the way, after “fixing para pay” and “closing the pay gap'“, the respect check became “stabilization” for the 2026-2027 school year and yet more promises for the future.

Somewhere along the way, a semi-permanent solution became a bill that, if paraprofessionals are fortunate enough to receive another RESPECT check after 2027, will require politicians to start the legislative process all over again.

Questions still remain about this newly amended bill:

Why are there fewer co-sponsors attached to it? What happens if the mayor doesn’t sign it? Fewer sponsors jeopardizes the tenuous claim that it’s “veto-proof.”

What happens if the city does what it almost always does — challenges the matter in court? Maybe saying it goes against the Taylor Law? The irony.

The bottom line: The people who spend their days helping children find their voices deserve better than having to wonder each year whether City Hall will remember theirs.

That’s not respect. That’s just hope.

And hope, as every paraprofessional already knows, doesn’t pay the rent, pay for groceries or fill up our gas tanks.

Related links:

2025 Intro 1261

2026 Intro 692

2026 Intro 692-A

UFT Feb 2025 Respect Check FAQ

UFT Feb 2026 Respect Check FAQ

TAKE ACTION NOW

The New York State Legislature has now passed A.10835-A / S.9577-A, the so-called Union Communications Bill, and it is expected to be transmitted to Governor Kathy Hochul for review.

Supporters say the legislation is intended to combat fraudulent communications that falsely claim to represent labor unions and their representatives. Fraud should be stopped.

The concern raised by many union members, retirees, labor activists, reform caucuses, and independent labor publications has never been about protecting fraud. It has been about protecting legitimate speech.

Despite those concerns, the bill passed without explicit safeguards protecting internal union dissent, reform caucuses, election communications, independent labor journalism, parody, satire, and member advocacy.

That concern is not hypothetical.

In recent years, union leadership has pursued legal action involving the independent website UFTMembers.org and challenged parody and satire created by retired educator and union activist Arthur Goldstein. Reform caucuses routinely use union names to identify the members they represent, while independent publications, blogs, podcasts, and election campaigns regularly criticize leadership and advocate for change.

Whether one agrees with those communications is beside the point. They demonstrate that disputes over criticism, opposition organizing, independent publications, election activity, and parody already exist within the labor movement.

That is why many members are not satisfied with assurances about legislative intent alone. They are asking lawmakers to explicitly protect criticism, reform advocacy, election communications, journalism, parody, satire, and internal union dissent.

If this legislation is truly intended to stop fraudulent impersonation campaigns, those protections should not be controversial.

The bill has passed, but it has not yet become law.

Governor Hochul must still decide whether to sign it, and lawmakers still have the ability to pursue chapter amendments that clarify legislative intent and add explicit protections for union democracy while preserving legitimate anti-fraud safeguards.

As a result, our Protect Union Democracy campaign has now shifted its focus toward securing those chapter amendments.

Among the proposed safeguards are protections for:

• Internal union dissent and criticism of union leadership

• Reform caucuses and member advocacy organizations

• Union election campaigns and election communications

• Independent labor journalism and commentary

• Parody and satire

• The use of union names for identification, advocacy, organizing, and democratic participation

The campaign is also urging lawmakers to require proof of a knowing and material misrepresentation before liability can be imposed.

Importantly, supporters of the amendment effort are not asking lawmakers to abandon anti-fraud protections. They are asking lawmakers to make clear that efforts to stop fraud cannot be used to chill protected speech and democratic participation.

Our Unions: Born in Dissent

Strong unions and free speech are not competing values.

The labor movement itself was built through organizing, debate, dissent, contested elections, reform movements, and member advocacy. Democratic participation is not a threat to unions. It is one of the things that makes them strong.

The Legislature has acted. Now the question is whether Governor Hochul, legislative sponsors, and other decision-makers will take the next step and ensure that a law intended to stop fraud cannot later be used to silence internal dissent.

Take Action, Now

TAKE ACTION NOW

Take Action Now

A bill moving rapidly through the New York Legislature—Senate Bill S.9577-A, sponsored by Senator Jessica Ramos, and Assembly Bill A.10835-A, sponsored by Assemblymember Judy Griffin—is being promoted as a measure to stop fraudulent communications that falsely claim to represent labor unions and their representatives.

On its face, that sounds reasonable. Fraud should be stopped.

But New Yorkers should ask a simple question:

If this bill is really about fraud, why not explicitly protect criticism, parody, reform caucuses, election campaigns, independent member publications, and internal union dissent?

That question is at the heart of a growing campaign to amend the legislation before it becomes law.

As detailed in The Wire’s investigation, the concern is not hypothetical.

In recent years, disputes have emerged involving UFTMembers.org, an independent publication critical of UFT union leadership. Other controversies have involved parody, satire, and internal political disputes within labor organizations. Reform caucuses and member advocacy groups routinely use union names to identify the members they represent. Independent newsletters, blogs, podcasts, and election campaigns frequently discuss union leadership, governance, elections, and policy decisions.

Those activities are not fraud.

They are part of union democracy.

Yet the legislation currently contains no explicit protections making clear that criticism, reform advocacy, parody, election-related communications, and internal organizing remain protected.

That is why Educators of NYC is calling for a straightforward amendment that would protect free speech while preserving the bill’s stated anti-fraud purpose.

The proposed amendment would make clear that:

• Criticism of union leadership remains protected.
• Reform caucuses can continue organizing and communicating with members.
• Independent member publications can continue reporting and advocating.
• Election campaigns and internal union debates remain protected.
• Parody and satire cannot be treated as fraudulent impersonation.
• Actual fraud and intentional deception remain prohibited.

In short:

Protect workers from fraud. Protect union members from censorship.

This should not be a partisan issue. It should not be a pro-union or anti-union issue.

It is a democracy issue.

Strong unions require robust debate. Members must be free to support leadership, oppose leadership, organize reform movements, publish independent viewpoints, participate in elections, and advocate for change without fear that legitimate communications could become the subject of legal complaints or government investigations.

If lawmakers truly intend to target fraud rather than dissent, they should have no objection to explicitly protecting protected speech.

Now is the time to act.

Take Action Today

✅ Sign the petition.

✅ Email Senator Ramos, Assemblymember Griffin, and your legislators.

✅ Call your State Senator and Assembly Member.

✅ Share this campaign with fellow union members, educators, retirees, labor activists, and advocates for free speech.

The Legislature is moving quickly. Once a bill becomes law, the debate shifts from what lawmakers intended to what the statute actually says.

Let’s make sure New York gets this right.

Sign the Petition & Contact Legislators

👉 unionvoices.educators.nyc

Read Our Full Investigation

👉 thewire.educators.nyc/p/new-yorks-union-communications-bill

Stop Fraud. Not Dissent.

Take Action Now

Supporters point to a real problem that emerged after the Supreme Court’s Janus decision. Across the country, anti-union organizations have encouraged public employees to resign from unions, revoke dues authorizations, or otherwise weaken collective bargaining organizations. Some campaigns have relied on mailers, websites, emails, and social media accounts designed to appear official or create confusion among workers.

Viewed through that lens, the legislation appears straightforward: stop deceptive communications and protect workers from being misled.

On the surface, that’s a legitimate goal.

But serious legislation requires us to look beyond the surface.

The question is not whether fraud should be prohibited. Fraud is already illegal. Trademark infringement is already actionable. Identity theft is already unlawful. The real question is why additional legislation is necessary and what kinds of communications lawmakers ultimately intend to reach.

The answer may lie in the language supporters use to justify the bill.

Rather than focusing exclusively on impersonation or false representations, supporters argue that certain communications can “disrupt union operations, interfere with representation, and erode the trust between unions and their members.”

That wording should give union members pause.

Fraud deceives. But “eroding trust” is something entirely different.

That concern is reinforced by the bill’s own supporters. In promoting the legislation, they argue that these communications are harmful because they “disrupt union operations, interfere with representation and erode the trust between unions and their members.”

That language deserves scrutiny. As does language that acknowledges that this goes beyond existing tried-and-true statutes, constitutional rights and existing legal precedence.

Fraud laws are designed to stop deception. But disrupting operations, interfering with representation, and eroding trust are often the byproducts of criticism, whistleblowing, investigative reporting, election campaigns, retiree activism, and reform movements. Some of the most important reform efforts in labor history did exactly that: they challenged leadership, exposed uncomfortable truths, and caused members to question those in power.

If fraud, identity theft, trademark infringement, and other forms of deception are already illegal, then what additional conduct is this bill intended to reach?

A law aimed at stopping someone from falsely claiming to be a union is one thing. A law justified, even in part, by the need to prevent communications that erode trust between members and their union is something else entirely.

Trust is not a legal entitlement. In a democratic union, trust must be earned. Members have the right to criticize leadership, advocate for change, support opposition candidates, publish independent media, and organize around competing visions for their union’s future. Those activities may weaken confidence in incumbent leaders, but that does not make them fraudulent.

Trust can be eroded when members uncover corruption. Trust can be eroded when leadership negotiates a contract members oppose. Trust can be eroded when retirees expose healthcare concessions. Trust can be eroded when rank-and-file caucuses challenge incumbents during elections.

In fact, nearly every reform movement in labor history has been accused of undermining confidence in existing leadership.

That does not make those movements fraudulent.

When Dissent Becomes the Target

The distinction matters because recent events inside New York’s labor movement suggest that disputes over union-related communications are no longer limited to outside anti-union organizations.

In 2025, UFT leadership challenged the domain uftmembers.org, arguing that it improperly used the union’s name and created confusion among members. The site was operated by a reform-oriented slate of union members advocating for change within the union.

An independent arbitration panel rejected the union’s claims. It found that the site was engaged in legitimate, noncommercial commentary and advocacy, that the domain accurately described its intended audience—UFT members—and that it was not attempting to pass itself off as the union. The panel also noted the presence of disclaimers and denied the union’s request to seize the domain.

The decision reflected a broader principle found in labor and trademark law: union members, caucuses, reform groups, and dissident organizations often have legitimate reasons to reference a union’s name when communicating with fellow members.

The significance of the uftmembers.org ruling extends beyond a single website.

It highlights a growing question within organized labor:

That question is particularly relevant because reform caucuses and opposition groups have long used union names in newsletters, campaign literature, websites, and social media accounts. Such communications have traditionally been understood as part of internal union democracy—not evidence of fraud.

A similar issue arose in the Goldstein matter, where a cease-and-desist letter was sent over union-related terminology used in a parody piece written from the perspective of UFT President Michael Mulgrew.

Whatever one thinks of the underlying disputes, neither controversy centered on classic fraud or identity theft. Both involved disagreements over how critics, activists, and opposition voices may reference their union when communicating with fellow members.

Where Should the Line Be Drawn?

Consider two hypothetical examples.

A reform caucus launches a website called “UFT Members for Change.” The site criticizes leadership, analyzes union finances, advocates different bargaining priorities, and endorses opposition candidates. Union leaders argue the site creates confusion, interferes with representation and undermines confidence in the organization.

Is that fraud? Or is it protected political speech?

Now imagine a retiree organization publishes a newsletter using the union’s name to identify the retirees it represents. The publication criticizes healthcare concessions, pension policies, and leadership decisions while clearly stating it is not affiliated with union leadership.

Members become angry after reading it. Confidence in leadership declines. Leadership calls it “misinformation”.

Has fraud occurred? Or have members simply been exposed to information leadership would rather not see?

These examples illustrate why the distinction matters.

Everyone agrees that deliberate, malicious impersonation and deception should be prohibited.

The harder question is what happens when criticism, organizing, journalism, advocacy, electioneering, and reform efforts are characterized as communications that “interfere with representation”, “create confusion” or “erode trust.”

That is where the debate moves beyond fraud and into the realm of free speech, union democracy, and the rights of members to organize independently of those currently in power.

The Real Concern

Union leaders may argue that this legislation is aimed solely at deceptive anti-union opt-out campaigns. That may well be true. Those campaigns provide the bill’s strongest political justification.

But legislation must be judged not only by its stated purpose, but by how it can be used in practice.

If lawmakers are concerned exclusively with fraudulent impersonation, the legislation should be narrowly tailored to actual deception.

If concepts such as “interfering with representation” and “eroding trust” become legal standards, however, reform caucuses, retiree organizations, whistleblowers, independent media outlets, and rank-and-file activists may reasonably wonder whether legitimate dissent could someday become the subject of investigation.

That concern grows when combined with the bill’s enforcement structure, which would empower the New York Attorney General to investigate and bring actions involving alleged violations.

While there is no reason to assume any particular attorney general would target lawful dissent, critics often raise concerns whenever broad enforcement discretion is paired with ambiguous, loose standards. If terms such as “interfering with representation”, “creating confusion” or “eroding trust” are left undefined, future enforcement decisions could become entangled with political pressures, complaints from influential organizations, or disputes over internal union communications.

Critics often raise concerns whenever vague language is combined with significant enforcement discretion. Future complaints from influential organizations, political allies, or entrenched leadership groups could place pressure on authorities to investigate communications that are controversial, critical, or disruptive—but not fraudulent.

Nor is the concern merely theoretical.

Several UFT caucuses already incorporate the union’s name into their identities, including A Better Contract-UFT, New Action-UFT, MORE-UFT, Retiree Advocate-UFT, and Solidarity-UFT. Their purpose is often to persuade members that current leadership is failing them. By definition, their communications challenge leadership narratives and may erode trust in incumbent officers while using the union name as an identifier.

That is the essence of democratic debate — especially in a union.

Ironically, the leadership caucus of the UFT, Unity-UFT, uses UFT in its name, logo and social media handles. Yet, leadership is using the same arguments for these bills that it has in legal actions against its opponents while seeking to suppress protected speech within the union.

If the concepts embedded in this legislation evolve from political complaints into legal standards, the line between combating fraud and criminalizing union dissent could become dangerously thin.

The Goldstein and uftmembers.org disputes further illustrate the risk. Whatever one’s view of those controversies, they demonstrate how quickly union-related communications can become the subject of legal challenges when they are perceived as threatening established leadership. Legislation that expands penalties for communications deemed disruptive or misleading could create future opportunities to target critics, reformers, and dissidents whose real offense is not fraud, but opposition.

There is another question legislators should answer. If fraud, trademark infringement, identity theft, and deceptive communications are already illegal, why is a new law needed specifically for unions?

Once the state creates a special statutory protection for communications involving unions that does not exist for many other organizations, it is fair to ask whether the law is simply targeting fraud—or whether it is creating a new shield around labor organizations and their representatives under the AG’s office.

The answer matters. The broader the protection, the greater the risk that criticism, reform campaigns, retiree advocacy, independent media, and internal union dissent could someday be viewed not as political speech, but as legal violations.

History teaches that institutions rarely describe criticism as criticism.

They describe it as disruption.

The labor movement has always depended on workers’ ability to communicate with one another, organize independently, challenge leadership, and advocate for change. Those activities can be uncomfortable. They can create tension. They can even reduce confidence in those currently holding office.

But they are not fraud.

Before Albany grants new powers to police communications involving labor organizations, legislators should carefully determine whether the problem they are attempting to solve is deception—or dissent.

The answer may determine whether this bill protects union democracy and free speech or unintentionally undermines them.

Senate Bill S9577A

Assembly Bill A10835A

20 Questions for Albany Legislators

Related:

A BETTER CONTRACT (ABC-UFT)

More in Response to Unity UFT Leadership's Threat of Litigation Against A Better Contract

On December 8, 2025, A Better Contract received a cease and desist letter from UNITY/UFT leadership through an outside law firm. The letter accuses ABC of misusing the UFT name and allegedly creating confusion with the membership about our identity. We are choosing to address this publicly because members deserve full transparency, and because this ceas…

Read more

8 months ago · 35 likes · 13 comments · A Better Contract

A BETTER CONTRACT (ABC-UFT)

A Letter to Unity from ABC's Lawyer

We previously shared back in December that Michael Mulgrew and the rest of UFT’s Unity leadership decided to waste YOUR dues money on having a white shoe law firm harass ABC with frivolous cease and desist letters intended to intimidate us…

Read more

6 months ago · 45 likes · 5 comments · A Better Contract

There’s something especially rotten about a city that tells workers to “reach out for help” while the help itself is disappearing behind fake phone numbers, dead directories, and insurance games.

New Yorkers know the feeling.

You do the right thing. You work the overtime. You volunteer additional hours without pay. You raise your kids here. You survive the subways, the stress, the impossible rent, the pandemic, rising costs, the endless grind. And you trust that the healthcare negotiated in your name is at least real.

And then one day somebody in your family needs mental-health care.

Not next month. Not eventually. Now.

Maybe it’s your teenage kid spiraling after lockdowns or social media’s ills. Maybe it’s anxiety so bad you can’t sleep. Maybe it’s grief after losing someone during COVID or a divorce. Maybe it’s burnout after years inside overcrowded schools, subways, or emergency rooms. Maybe it’s an underlying physical condition that is wearing every part of you down.

So you finally pick up the phone. You search the network directory.

And suddenly you enter the Twilight Zone.

The doctor isn’t there.
The number’s disconnected.
The office stopped taking Emblem years ago.
The provider or therapist never accepted the insurance in the first place.

Or worse — nobody calls you back at all.

That wasn’t paranoia.

According to New York Attorney General Letitia James and state law, it was a ghost network.

And now the proof is arriving in mailboxes across New York City.

Workers and retirees are currently receiving letters from EmblemHealth informing them that, following the Attorney General settlement, they may seek reimbursement for behavioral-health services they had to obtain out-of-network because they could not access actual in-network care.

Think about what that means.

City workers are literally being told to gather receipts and proof that the mental-health network they trusted failed them.

The letter specifically acknowledges members may have paid out-of-pocket because:
- providers listed as in-network were not actually available,
- members could not obtain appointments with in-network behavioral-health providers,
- or the provider directories themselves were inaccurate.

And the truly enraging part is this: This wasn’t the first time EmblemHealth got caught.

The current Attorney General investigation found that Emblem maintained inaccurate provider directories, overstated access to behavioral-health providers, and failed to comply with mental-health parity laws — leaving New Yorkers unable to obtain timely, affordable care.

But buried inside the findings is the real bombshell.

Emblem had already entered earlier settlement agreements with the Attorney General’s office in 2011 and 2014 over provider-directory accuracy and mental-health access failures — during the Eric Schneiderman era.

Same company.
Same problem.
Same city workforce.
A decade apart.

This was not a glitch. It was a pattern.

And now the scandal has exploded into federal court.

The American Psychiatric Association and the New York State Psychiatric Association filed a class-action complaint accusing EmblemHealth of operating a deceptive “ghost network” that inflated the size of its behavioral-health provider system.

According to the complaint, Emblem allegedly listed psychiatrists who never agreed to participate in the network, duplicated provider listings repeatedly to artificially inflate network size, and created the illusion of access while patients searched desperately for care.

One psychiatrist was allegedly listed 29 times.

And the plaintiffs and victims are not faceless statistics. They are New York City workers.

And behind every allegation is a real New Yorker who needed help and hit a wall.

An FDNY EMT or police officer who struggled after a suicide attempt.

A NYC special-education teacher dealing with depression and anxiety after a miscarriage.

Real people who called provider after provider listed as “in-network” only to find nobody actually available.

And here’s where the story gets uglier.

Because while workers and their families were drowning emotionally, the political system appears to have treated mental-health obligations as accounting problems.

Back when federal Mental Health Parity laws required expanded behavioral-health coverage, the City and the Municipal Labor Committee fought over who would pay for it through the Health Insurance Stabilization Fund.

An arbitrator eventually ruled the City had to replenish roughly $153 million connected to mental-health parity costs.

But instead of that money becoming a massive reinvestment into mental-health infrastructure for city workers and retirees, Independent Budget Office testimony later described how the MLC allowed the City, in 2015, to effectively count the money toward healthcare “savings” obligations.

All fallout rooted in the worst labor deal in New York City history – the 2014 healthcare savings agreement.

Workers were told there wasn’t enough money. That the healthcare stabilization fund, which has been shown to be nothing more than a City and MLC slush fund, was depleted and we needed more “savings”. Savings that were nothing more than cuts to our hard earned benefits as seen in their failed proposed Medicare Advantage plan.

Meanwhile the mental-health crisis itself became a source of “savings.”

Then COVID hit. The single greatest mental-health catastrophe some New Yorkers have ever lived through.

Isolation.
Death.
Burnout.
Depression.
Anxiety.
Addiction.
Trauma.

And during this exact period — when our employer and unions themselves were publicly talking nonstop about mental-health awareness — investigators say Emblem’s behavioral-health network was still full of ghost listings.

More than eighty percent of surveyed behavioral-health providers were reportedly unavailable or inaccessible.

That’s not a functioning network. That’s a mirage.

And yet Emblem remained deeply embedded in the healthcare system covering city workers. Its largest customer. Partners, even now, along with United Healthcare’s questionable network, under the city’s new self-funded NYCEPPO plan.

Because mental-health care is not some luxury benefit buried in a contract appendix.

It’s the difference between somebody surviving a crisis or collapsing inside one.

And now the cruelest image of all may be this:

A city worker opening a letter years later telling them they may finally seek reimbursement for mental-health care they already should have had access to in the first place.

And, what about those who just threw up their hands and stopped looking for help?

This letter is not closure. It is evidence of a crime against us all – and our loved ones.

Hold them ALL accountable.

Questions City Workers Should Be Asking Right Now

• If EmblemHealth was already under Attorney General enforcement in 2011 and 2014 for provider-directory failures, why did NYC and the MLC continue treating them as a trusted partner without increased oversight?

• Did the City or MLC ever independently audit Emblem’s mental-health provider network after those earlier violations?

• Why are workers only now receiving restitution letters years after being forced to pay out-of-pocket for care they were promised?

• During COVID — amid a historic mental-health crisis — did the City or MLC investigate whether Emblem’s behavioral-health network could actually provide care?

• Why was money tied to mental-health parity turned into healthcare “savings” instead of reinvested into actual mental-health access?

• Why does the City continue partnering with the same healthcare ecosystem after repeated ghost-network allegations?

• What accountability did Emblem face from the City or MLC before the Attorney General stepped in?

• How can workers trust new healthcare partnerships when the old system allegedly failed them twice?

• At what point does negligence and silence become complicity?

Related links:

• NYS Attorney General Letitia James settlement announcement: https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2026/attorney-general-james-secures-sweeping-reforms-improving-access-mental-health

• NYS AG 2014 Settlement: https://law.shu.edu/documents/NY-AG-Press-Release-Emblem-Health-Settlement.pdf

• APA lawsuit announcement: https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/news-releases/apa-class-action-complaint-against-emblemhealth

• APA court complaint: https://www.psychiatry.org/getattachment/c56cab3f-e5e3-4b75-9a41-62b37f6614cf/APA-v-EmblemHealth-Complaint-As-Filed-12302025.pdf

• ProPublica investigation: https://www.propublica.org/article/emblemhealth-ghost-network-mental-health-lawsuit-new-york

• Explosive Audit Urges Dissolving Insolvent City Employee Health Fund - https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/12/30/lander-health-stabilization-fund-municipal-labor/

  ---

There’s something especially rotten about a city that tells workers to “reach out for help” while the help itself is disappearing behind fake phone numbers, dead directories, and insurance games.

New Yorkers know the feeling.

You do the right thing. You work the overtime. You volunteer additional hours without pay. You raise your kids here. You survive the subways, the stress, the impossible rent, the pandemic, rising costs, the endless grind. And you trust that the healthcare negotiated in your name is at least real.

And then one day somebody in your family needs mental-health care.

Not next month. Not eventually. Now.

Maybe it’s your teenage kid spiraling after lockdowns or social media’s ills. Maybe it’s anxiety so bad you can’t sleep. Maybe it’s grief after losing someone during COVID or a divorce. Maybe it’s burnout after years inside overcrowded schools, subways, or emergency rooms. Maybe it’s an underlying physical condition that is wearing every part of you down.

So you finally pick up the phone. You search the network directory.

And suddenly you enter the Twilight Zone.

The doctor isn’t there.
The number’s disconnected.
The office stopped taking Emblem years ago.
The provider or therapist never accepted the insurance in the first place.

Or worse — nobody calls you back at all.

That wasn’t paranoia.

According to New York Attorney General Letitia James and state law, it was a ghost network.

And now the proof is arriving in mailboxes across New York City.

Workers and retirees are currently receiving letters from EmblemHealth informing them that, following the Attorney General settlement, they may seek reimbursement for behavioral-health services they had to obtain out-of-network because they could not access actual in-network care.

Think about what that means.

City workers are literally being told to gather receipts and proof that the mental-health network they trusted failed them.

The letter specifically acknowledges members may have paid out-of-pocket because:
- providers listed as in-network were not actually available,
- members could not obtain appointments with in-network behavioral-health providers,
- or the provider directories themselves were inaccurate.

And the truly enraging part is this: This wasn’t the first time EmblemHealth got caught.

The current Attorney General investigation found that Emblem maintained inaccurate provider directories, overstated access to behavioral-health providers, and failed to comply with mental-health parity laws — leaving New Yorkers unable to obtain timely, affordable care.

But buried inside the findings is the real bombshell.

Emblem had already entered earlier settlement agreements with the Attorney General’s office in 2011 and 2014 over provider-directory accuracy and mental-health access failures — during the Eric Schneiderman era.

Same company.
Same problem.
Same city workforce.
A decade apart.

This was not a glitch. It was a pattern.

And now the scandal has exploded into federal court.

The American Psychiatric Association and the New York State Psychiatric Association filed a class-action complaint accusing EmblemHealth of operating a deceptive “ghost network” that inflated the size of its behavioral-health provider system.

According to the complaint, Emblem allegedly listed psychiatrists who never agreed to participate in the network, duplicated provider listings repeatedly to artificially inflate network size, and created the illusion of access while patients searched desperately for care.

One psychiatrist was allegedly listed 29 times.

And the plaintiffs and victims are not faceless statistics. They are New York City workers.

And behind every allegation is a real New Yorker who needed help and hit a wall.

An FDNY EMT or police officer who struggled after a suicide attempt.

A NYC special-education teacher dealing with depression and anxiety after a miscarriage.

Real people who called provider after provider listed as “in-network” only to find nobody actually available.

And here’s where the story gets uglier.

Because while workers and their families were drowning emotionally, the political system appears to have treated mental-health obligations as accounting problems.

Back when federal Mental Health Parity laws required expanded behavioral-health coverage, the City and the Municipal Labor Committee fought over who would pay for it through the Health Insurance Stabilization Fund.

An arbitrator eventually ruled the City had to replenish roughly $153 million connected to mental-health parity costs.

But instead of that money becoming a massive reinvestment into mental-health infrastructure for city workers and retirees, Independent Budget Office testimony later described how the MLC allowed the City, in 2015, to effectively count the money toward healthcare “savings” obligations.

All fallout rooted in the worst labor deal in New York City history – the 2014 healthcare savings agreement.

Workers were told there wasn’t enough money. That the healthcare stabilization fund, which has been shown to be nothing more than a City and MLC slush fund, was depleted and we needed more “savings”. Savings that were nothing more than cuts to our hard earned benefits as seen in their failed proposed Medicare Advantage plan.

Meanwhile the mental-health crisis itself became a source of “savings.”

Then COVID hit. The single greatest mental-health catastrophe some New Yorkers have ever lived through.

Isolation.
Death.
Burnout.
Depression.
Anxiety.
Addiction.
Trauma.

And during this exact period — when our employer and unions themselves were publicly talking nonstop about mental-health awareness — investigators say Emblem’s behavioral-health network was still full of ghost listings.

More than eighty percent of surveyed behavioral-health providers were reportedly unavailable or inaccessible.

That’s not a functioning network. That’s a mirage.

And yet Emblem remained deeply embedded in the healthcare system covering city workers. Its largest customer. Partners, even now, along with United Healthcare’s questionable network, under the city’s new self-funded NYCEPPO plan.

Because mental-health care is not some luxury benefit buried in a contract appendix.

It’s the difference between somebody surviving a crisis or collapsing inside one.

And now the cruelest image of all may be this:

A city worker opening a letter years later telling them they may finally seek reimbursement for mental-health care they already should have had access to in the first place.

And, what about those who just threw up their hands and stopped looking for help?

This letter is not closure. It is evidence of a crime against us all – and our loved ones.

Hold them ALL accountable.

Questions City Workers Should Be Asking Right Now

• If EmblemHealth was already under Attorney General enforcement in 2011 and 2014 for provider-directory failures, why did NYC and the MLC continue treating them as a trusted partner without increased oversight?

• Did the City or MLC ever independently audit Emblem’s mental-health provider network after those earlier violations?

• Why are workers only now receiving restitution letters years after being forced to pay out-of-pocket for care they were promised?

• During COVID — amid a historic mental-health crisis — did the City or MLC investigate whether Emblem’s behavioral-health network could actually provide care?

• Why was money tied to mental-health parity turned into healthcare “savings” instead of reinvested into actual mental-health access?

• Why does the City continue partnering with the same healthcare ecosystem after repeated ghost-network allegations?

• What accountability did Emblem face from the City or MLC before the Attorney General stepped in?

• How can workers trust new healthcare partnerships when the old system allegedly failed them twice?

• At what point does negligence and silence become complicity?

Related links:

• NYS Attorney General Letitia James settlement announcement: https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2026/attorney-general-james-secures-sweeping-reforms-improving-access-mental-health

• NYS AG 2014 Settlement: https://law.shu.edu/documents/NY-AG-Press-Release-Emblem-Health-Settlement.pdf

• APA lawsuit announcement: https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/news-releases/apa-class-action-complaint-against-emblemhealth

• APA court complaint: https://www.psychiatry.org/getattachment/c56cab3f-e5e3-4b75-9a41-62b37f6614cf/APA-v-EmblemHealth-Complaint-As-Filed-12302025.pdf

• ProPublica investigation: https://www.propublica.org/article/emblemhealth-ghost-network-mental-health-lawsuit-new-york

• Explosive Audit Urges Dissolving Insolvent City Employee Health Fund - https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/12/30/lander-health-stabilization-fund-municipal-labor/

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There it is in black and white.

The New York Times reports that Zohran Mamdani is considering delaying pension-fund payments to ease New York City’s budget gap. Now, official state budget documents backed by Kathy Hochul openly describe billions in “pension restructuring” as part of the plan to stabilize the city’s finances.

Call it “restructuring.”
Call it “re-amortization.”
Call it “pension smoothing.”

But educators and city workers know what it really means: pushing costs into the future so politicians can patch today’s budget hole.

And once again, the people whose retirements are on the line were never seriously consulted.

That should alarm every active and retired TRS member.

This is exactly why the upcoming TRS Trustee election matters.

The Teachers’ Retirement System is not supposed to function as a political piggy bank for City Hall or Albany. The pension board exists to protect members — not to rubberstamp fiscal maneuvers designed to help elected officials avoid hard budget decisions during an election cycle.

Yet that is precisely the danger right now.

The administration is openly seeking authority to restructure pension liabilities in order to produce immediate budget savings. Official city and state messaging already frames pension restructuring as a tool to close the deficit — and a done deal.

And who will be expected to sign off on the details?

Pension boards.

That means your vote for TRS Trustee is no longer symbolic. It is a frontline defense against political interference in pension governance.

We have seen this movie before.

When governments “smooth” pension payments, they reduce pressure today by increasing risks tomorrow. Financial analysts have already warned that lowering annual pension contributions to close budget gaps shifts costs onto future taxpayers and future workers while increasing long-term fiscal risk.

Even supporters insist that constitutional pension protections mean benefits cannot legally be cut. But that misses the point entirely.

The issue is not whether checks go out tomorrow morning.

The issue is whether politicians should be allowed to manipulate funding schedules and pension assumptions to solve short-term political problems without meaningful member consent or independent oversight.

Because once pension systems become a budget-management tool, pressure never stops.

Today it is “temporary restructuring.”
Tomorrow it becomes another refinancing scheme.
Then another extension.
Then another actuarial adjustment.

And if and when the gamble doesn’t pan out, cuts to our services, jobs, schools and city agencies are guaranteed.

And, yet, every time, members are told not to worry.

Time To Ask Tough Questions

TRS members deserve trustees who will ask hard questions publicly:

• Why are pension obligations being used to close operating budget gaps?

• What are the long-term costs of re-amortization?

• What assumptions are being changed?

• Who benefits politically?

• Does this proposal also include purchasing risky pension obligation bonds?

• What independent actuarial analysis has been provided to members?

• Why weren’t educators and retirees consulted before these proposals were floated publicly?

Those are not radical questions. They are the minimum responsibilities of a fiduciary.

Why We Must Vote for David Kazansky

That is why this election matters so much.

David Kazansky is running as an independent, members-first candidate — not as a political rubber stamp for Mulgrew, Mamdani or Hochul.

At a moment when City Hall and Albany are openly discussing pension restructuring to balance budgets, TRS members need trustees willing to stand up to political pressure, demand transparency, and defend the long-term integrity of the pension system.

A trustee’s job is not to protect politicians from bad headlines.

A trustee’s job is to protect members.

On May 13, educators have a choice: Rubber stamp politics — or independent, MEMBERS FIRST oversight.

If you believe pension decisions should be made with members, not behind closed doors…

If you believe TRS should answer to educators, not political insiders…

If you believe fiduciary responsibility means more than quietly approving whatever City Hall wants…

Then vote for David Kazansky for TRS Trustee.

Because our pensions are not a budget gimmick. They are deferred compensation earned through decades of public service.

It’s our pensions. Our voice. Our choice.

Learn more about David Kazansky for TRS

Kazansky for TRS flyer

Related:

Last year, a court had to step in and say what should never have needed saying: the 2024 TRS election was not conducted according to law.

In June 2025, a New York State Supreme Court judge formally declared that the Department of Education failed to comply with Administrative Code §13-507 in running the 2024 Teachers’ Retirement System election.

This was not a technical finding. It confirmed that the process itself broke the law.

That should have been the end of it.

A clear ruling. A clear mandate. A chance to fix the system.

Instead, we are watching the same failures unfold again—this time in real time, and on a wider scale.

I’m writing this not as an outside observer, but as someone directly involved.

I am a middle school teacher, an active TRS contributor, a petitioner in the Article 78 case that challenged the 2024 election, and a former candidate who served as an alternate to Ben Morgenroth. On Thursday, April 30, I sent a formal letter to the Chancellor, the Chancellor’s designee, Corporation Counsel, and UFT leadership raising urgent concerns about what is happening right now.

I will be attaching that letter, along with the judge’s decision, because what is unfolding in the 2026 TRS trustee election is not new.

It is a repeat.

Why 2024 Was Different—and Why That Matters Now

For decades, TRS trustee elections were not meaningfully contested. In most cycles, only one candidate appeared on the ballot. The outcome was effectively predetermined. There was little incentive for outreach, and little awareness among members that an election was even taking place.

The system functioned—but quietly, and without scrutiny.

That changed in 2024.

For the first time in many years, there was a real contest. Multiple candidates. Competing visions. And now, in 2026, there is the very real possibility of more than two candidates on the ballot for the first time in what is likely half a century.

That should have triggered a shift—a recognition that a real election requires real communication.

Instead, it exposed how unprepared the system is when participation actually matters.

The lack of notice, the confusion around timelines, using an electronic poll to conduct a paper ballot election and the absence of systemwide communication were not new problems. They were longstanding weaknesses that had been masked by uncontested races.

Once there was real competition, those weaknesses became impossible to ignore.

And the court confirmed it.

A Law That Is Old—But Not Unclear

The court did not say the DOE came close. It said the law was not followed .

It is true that §13-507 was written more than 70 or 80 years ago, for a much smaller system. But while the law may be dated, its expectations are not ambiguous. The steps are clearly laid out. The timelines are fixed.

Notice.
Nominations.
Objections.
Publication.
Discussion.
Vote.

And the court ordered that future elections must follow that sequence .

That was the reset.

Instead, the Same Breakdown

The DOE issued its 2026 election memo on January 26, laying out deadlines and procedures. On paper, it reads as compliance.

But the entire process depends on one basic condition: members must know it is happening.

The memo required that the notice be conspicuously posted where staff can see it.

That didn’t happen.

In my April 30 email to the Chancellor and others, I cited polling data from hundreds of educators across the largest DOE online community— a group with over 40,000 members.

The results are stark:

This is not uneven compliance. It is systemic failure.

By the time many members realized an election was underway, the key deadlines had already passed.

When Notice Fails, the Election Fails

The nomination deadline passed on April 17.
The objection deadline passed on April 24.

These are the moments when members are supposed to shape the election.

But those rights depend on timing. And timing depends on notice.

As I wrote in my letter, the failure here did not simply violate a requirement—it collapsed the statutory process itself .

Because what does it mean to have the right to nominate a candidate if you never knew nominations were open?

What does it mean to object if the window closes before you knew it existed?

How to you inform yourself about the choices for an election, if you don’t know its happening?

At that point, participation is not limited. It is eliminated.

Rights That Exist Only on Paper

The law includes a safeguard: if 10% of contributors in a school request it, a meeting must be held to discuss the candidates.

In theory, this is how members engage, question, and decide.

In reality, it requires awareness, coordination, and time.

None of those conditions existed.

Reaching 10% of a staff that does not know an election is happening is not difficult.

It is impossible.

That right has not been weakened. It has been functionally erased.

Minimizing Responsibility While the System Fails

A May 2 email from the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators (CSA) to its members offers a revealing detail.

According to CSA, the DOE has told schools their role is “limited” to making information “readily available”—essentially posting the memo and waiting.

But even that limited expectation is not being met.

And yet, to reiterate, polling shows that more than three-quarters of educators report no visible posting in their schools.

That distinction matters.

The law requires active, uniform, and verifiable notice. What is being described instead is a passive model—posting without verification, and no real systemwide effort to ensure it is actually seen.

After a court has already found noncompliance, that approach raises a basic question:

Is the City complying with the law, or simply going through the motions?

What’s at Stake

This is not a symbolic election. A TRS trustee helps oversee more than $130 billion in pension assets. Decisions made at that table, like the proposed pension smoothing/reamortization scheme and calls for issuing pension obligation bonds, affect every educator in the system.

And at this moment when pension financing and risk strategies are actively being discussed, the legitimacy of that representation matters.

If the process is compromised, the outcome cannot be insulated from that fact.

The Process Moves Forward—But the Foundation Is Broken

The election calendar continues.

Candidates will be published.
Ballots will be distributed.
Votes will be cast.
Results will be counted .

But each step assumes something that is no longer true—that the electorate was informed and had a fair opportunity to participate.

Proceeding under these conditions does not fix the problem. It locks it in.

What Real Correction Looks Like

If there is to be any credibility in this process, corrective action must be immediate and real.

That means direct systemwide communication to every TRS contributor—not passive posting.

It means ensuring all candidates can present themselves to members in a way that actually reaches schools.

That includes distributing written and video statements from each candidate, along with clear notice that members have the right to organize school-based forums.

If participation is guaranteed in law, it has to exist in practice.

The Bottom Line

The court already said the law was not followed in the DOE’s bungled 2024 election.

Everyone involved had the opportunity to ensure it did not happen again.

And yet here we are.

At some point, this stops being about whether procedures were imperfect.

It becomes about whether the process itself can still be called an election.

Because if most members never knew it was happening…
if their rights existed only on paper…
if the system moved forward anyway…

Then the votes may be counted.

But the legitimacy and integrity are not.

What can we do? Organize. Send emails to the Chancellor, union leadership and elected officials. Share this post widely.

Related links:

My email to DOE about posting failure

Court Decision re: TRS election

2025 TRS Trustee Election Notice

The candidates for 2026 TRS teacher trustee election:

David Kazansky for TRS

Frank Panebianco for TRS

Tom Brown for TRS

In this episode, we take a hard look at the financial strategies shaping New York City’s future—and what they could mean for workers and retirees. From pension re-amortization proposals and potential borrowing through pension obligation bonds, to the broader implications of pattern bargaining and the uncertain status of Intro 1096, this conversation cuts through the noise. Joined by Marianne Pizzitola and Arthur Goldstein, we break down what these policies actually do, who bears the risk, and why the stakes may be higher than many realize. If you care about pension security, healthcare protections, and the long-term fiscal direction of New York City, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.

Episode Notes

NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees - http://nycretirees.org

Arthur Goldstein’s Union Matters Substack - http://arthurgoldstein.substack.com

New York Times - Mamdani Considers Delaying Pension-Fund Payments to Ease Budget Gap

The Wire - Balancing the Budget on Borrowed Time: NYC’s Pension Shell Game

New York City Council’s latest budget proposal isn’t just creative accounting—it’s a high-stakes gamble with workers’ futures dressed up as fiscal responsibility.

Buried inside the City Council’s preliminary budget response is a plan to rely on two controversial tools: re-amortization of pension debt and pension obligation bonds (POBs). Both promise short-term relief. Both come with long-term consequences.

And both are being advanced while union leadership tells members there’s nothing to worry about.

The Plan—In Their Own Words

From the Council’s proposal:

“The City could find substantial savings… that exceed $1.2 billion per year… without impacting a single pension payment.”

And further:

“The first option available is the re-amortization of the current payment schedule…”

“The second option… would be to explore the use of pension obligation bonds (POBs)… The proceeds would then be immediately deposited into the pension funds.”

On paper, it sounds painless: no benefit cuts, no layoffs—just “savings”.

But what’s being described isn’t savings—it’s a restructuring of obligations designed to ease pressure now by shifting it into the future.

All while the City Council acknowledges that there is additional risk.

Re-Amortization: Relief Today, A Longer Tail Tomorrow

Re-amortization, or pension smoothing, works much like refinancing a mortgage. Payments shrink in the short term, but the repayment timeline stretches, and total costs grow.

New York City’s pension system is already structured over long horizons — the City is presently making re-amortization back payments until 2032. Adjusting that schedule again doesn’t eliminate liabilities—it delays them further in volatile economic times. The bill doesn’t disappear; it moves further down the road, where it compounds in interest quietly.

What looks like fiscal breathing room today becomes a longer, heavier burden of taxpayer obligations tomorrow.

Pension Obligation Bonds: Borrowing on Optimism

Pension obligation bonds take that logic a step further. Instead of just reshaping payments, the City would borrow money outright, inject it into pension funds, and rely on investment returns to outperform the cost of borrowing.

The Government Finance Officers Association—a national organization representing thousands of public finance professionals that sets widely followed best practices for state and local governments—has been unequivocal in its guidance: governments should avoid POBs because they introduce significant risk and depend on market performance that cannot be guaranteed.

If the market underdelivers, the City doesn’t just fall short—it ends up carrying both the original pension burden and the added weight of bond debt. What begins as a strategy to stabilize finances can quickly become a multiplier of risk.

History offers more than theory—it offers warnings.

In Detroit, officials issued roughly $1.4 billion in pension obligation bonds just before the 2008 Financial Crisis. When markets collapsed, the strategy unraveled. Pension investments fell while bond debt remained fixed, leaving the city squeezed from both sides and contributing to its eventual bankruptcy. A similar dynamic played out in Stockton, where pension borrowing collided with a housing market crash and declining revenues, helping push the city into insolvency. In both cases, POBs didn’t create the crisis—but they amplified it at the worst possible moment.

Other governments show how the risks can build more slowly but just as dangerously. Illinois turned to pension obligation bonds in the early 2000s to ease budget pressure, yet decades later remains burdened by some of the worst-funded pensions in the country alongside ongoing debt service. In Puerto Rico, repeated reliance on borrowing to meet long-term obligations contributed to a broader debt spiral that ultimately led to default and federal oversight. The lesson across all four is consistent: borrowing against the future can create the illusion of temporary stability, but it also introduces a layer of risk that becomes most dangerous precisely when conditions deteriorate.

Warnings from Inside the System

Reporting from The Chief Leader adds an important layer often missing from official messaging: concern from those who have managed these systems themselves.

A former New York City pension director, retired NYCERS Executive Director John Murphy, warned that proposals like re-amortization may offer immediate budget relief but come at a cost—weakening long-term funding discipline and increasing the likelihood that future obligations become harder to meet. The concern isn’t theoretical; it’s operational. Stretching out payments can erode the structural integrity of the system over time.

That concern was not limited to internal administrators. Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander (D) and former City Council Finance Committee chair Justin Brannan (D) also warned against a similar re-amortization proposal when it surfaced last year, joining a rare consensus of liberal and conservative fiscal watchdogs, policymakers, and pension experts who viewed the approach as a risky maneuver rather than a real solution.

Analysts across the political spectrum cautioned that the proposal would reduce near-term payments while increasing long-term costs—shifting liabilities forward instead of addressing them.

That same reporting situates these proposals within a broader fiscal pattern. As budget pressures mount, policymakers have increasingly looked toward long-term funds—including the Retiree Health Benefits Trust—as sources of flexibility. But these are not surplus accounts; they are commitments set aside for future retirees. Using them now introduces vulnerability later, particularly in the face of economic downturns.

What emerges is not a one-off decision, but a governing approach: managing present constraints by drawing against the future.

Pizzitola’s Warning: The Illusion of Stability

Retiree advocate and President of The Organization of New York City Public Service Retirees, Marianne Pizzitola, frames these combined strategies more bluntly, describing them as financial engineering that can create the appearance of stability without addressing underlying imbalances.

Her organization, the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, was among the first to expose and challenge a similar re-amortization effort last year. According to her reporting, the proposal surfaced with little public scrutiny and would have lowered near-term City contributions by extending pension costs further into the future—effectively refinancing the obligation. What followed was telling: once brought into the open, the plan faced increased resistance and scrutiny, raising questions about how such consequential changes were being advanced with limited transparency.

Her analysis suggests that re-amortization and pension borrowing don’t resolve liabilities so much as reposition them—moving costs outward while relying on favorable conditions to hold. The danger lies in how convincing that can look in the moment. Budgets appear balanced, pressure eases, and the system seems intact.

But the risk is very real. When assumptions about returns, growth, or stability don’t materialize, the burden doesn’t vanish—it reappears, often larger and more urgent. And when it does, it lands on future taxpayers, future budgets, and potentially the very workers whose benefits were said to be untouched.

Her warning is straightforward: a strategy that depends on everything going right is not protection—it is exposure.

Another Warning from Goldstein

Veteran educator, former UFT executive board member and retiree advocate, Arthur Goldstein, has drawn a direct parallel between the current proposal and past efforts to “refinance” pension obligations. In his analysis, the concept is simple but troubling: generate short-term “savings” now, then push the real cost into the future—what he characterizes as a “buy now, pay later” approach to public finance.

Goldstein, who has long written on union and retiree issues and is a potential candidate for leadership within the Retired Teachers Chapter, frames the issue less as technical policy and more as a question of trust. Workers were promised stability in exchange for years of service and concessions. Reworking how those promises are financed—especially without clear, transparent communication—raises concerns that the same pattern is repeating: immediate gains prioritized over long-term security.

A Pattern Taking Shape

Taken together, re-amortization, pension obligation bonds, and the potential use of retiree health funds reflect a disturbing consistent fiscal instinct. Immediate gaps are addressed not by reducing structural imbalance, but by extending timelines and leaning on risking future resources.

It is a strategy that can sustain itself for a time. But it is also one that accumulates pressure beneath the surface, where it is less visible and easier to defer.

The UFT’s Silence—and Its Contradiction

Against this backdrop, the United Federation of Teachers has told members that claims the City is using pensions to balance the budget are a “myth.”

To reinforce that message, union leadership has paraded voices like TRS Chair Tom Brown, who has publicly dismissed concerns as “misinformation” while offering no position, nor educating members about the proposal.

At the same time, others within the pension governance space are telling a very different story. David Kazansky, a nine-year former trustee and current TRS candidate, has been actively working to inform members about the details contained in the City Council’s proposal—pointing directly to the use of re-amortization and pension obligation bonds as mechanisms tied to budget savings.

Concerns are not limited to retirees or outside advocates. Rank-and-file leadership has begun speaking out as well. Brooklyn D75 chapter leader Chad Hamilton put it this way:

“When Mulgrew’s TRS trustee candidate, Tom Brown, says politicians cannot take money from our pension fund, that is technically correct.

However, while politicians cannot take money out, they can absolutely reduce and delay the money going in. This has had disastrous results and contributed significantly to eventual financial insolvency in other U.S. cities and Puerto Rico.

Our union should be having an open dialogue about this important issue. Instead this issue will get a quick and casual mention by Mulgrew at the monthly, Unity-controlled and anti-democratic UFT Delegate Assembly.

Mulgrew will tell us without explanation that anyone with questions or concerns about this plan is a liar and a hater of the union, and then he will move on to the next topic. Many of the Unity caucus sycophants in the audience will clap and cheer, without even knowing what they’re clapping for.

This is the bizarre and disturbing state of our union.”

At the same time, the union is pushing to “fix Tier 6,” advocating for expanded pension benefits that would increase long-term system costs.

The tension between these positions is difficult to ignore. Members are being reassured that pensions are not part of the City’s budget balancing strategy, even as official documents outline over a billion dollars in annual savings tied to pension financing changes—and internal voices raise concerns about what that actually means.

What’s missing is a clear, transparent explanation that reconciles these competing narratives.

The Real Question: Who Carries the Risk?

City officials maintain that these proposals do not affect current retirees or workers. That may be true in the immediate sense.

But it rests on a chain of assumptions: that markets perform as expected, that revenues stabilize, and that future leaders can absorb the deferred costs without consequence.

If those assumptions hold, the strategy works.

“It’s a Myth”? The Record—and the Contradiction—Say Otherwise

The UFT has reassured members that claims the City is using pensions to balance the budget are a “myth.”

But the City Council’s own proposal states:

“The City could find substantial savings… that exceed $1.2 billion per year…”

“The first option available is the re-amortization…”

“The second option… would be to explore the use of pension obligation bonds…”

That is the City explicitly identifying pension financing changes as a source of budget savings, which in turn are used to help balance the budget.

So the message to members becomes contradictory:

And when that framing collides with policies that expand costs while obscuring how they’re managed, it raises a more serious question:

Who is being told the full story—and who isn’t?

Related:

Marianne Pizzitola

Pension Ponzi Scheme 2.0 - City Style

Last March you might recall that we held a campaign against the “Pension Ponzi Scheme” where the UFT TRS Pension Board Member Tom Brown insisted they could be trusted and would not do anything to jeopardize the pension. I am sure he believed that, or at least as a paid employee of the UFT, was told to say it more likely - but the issue remains that ev…

Read more

4 months ago · 19 likes · 1 comment · Marianne Pizzitola

Union Matters

The City, Once Again, Wants to Refinance Pensions

It appears our friends in the City Council are not averse to taking risks with pension funding. Unlike Mayor Mamdani, Council Speaker Julie Menin doesn’t want to tax the rich. After all, rich people are fragile, and if you touch them, they may just break…

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4 months ago · 20 likes · 12 comments · Arthur Goldstein

Ever Upward

NYC pension gimmick alert: it's baackk

A proposal to generate short-term budget savings by pushing unfunded city pension pension obligations into the future—wisely (if wordlessly) abandoned by Governor Hochul just a year ago—has resurfaced in the New York City Council’s response to Mayor Mamdani’s preliminary budget…

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4 months ago · 4 likes · 1 comment · E.J. McMahon

Ever Upward

Assembly backs NYC pension gimmick in state budget

After popping out of the blue into Governor Kathy Hochul’s state budget amendments a few weeks ago, a proposed stretching-out of New York City’s pension funding schedule moved at least a half step closer to reality in Albany last week. Although it was among the Hochul provisions “intentionally omitted” from Senate Democrats’ amended one-house budget bil…

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a year ago · 6 likes · 3 comments · E.J. McMahon

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This week, the United Federation of Teachers revived its legislative push to deliver a $10,000 annual payment to New York City paraprofessionals. Branded as a “RESPECT Check,” the proposal is being framed as long overdue relief for a workforce that earns barely above $31,000 at entry level in one of the most expensive cities in America.

No one serious disputes the crisis. Paraprofessional shortages are real. Turnover is high. Many paras work second jobs to survive. Students with disabilities rely on them daily. Retention is not a theoretical workforce metric — it is a structural vulnerability in the school system.

And the shortage centers around the reality that paras need a living wage.

Two years ago, a dissident slate of rank and file paras, called Fix Para Pay, won the paraprofessional chapter election by a 75% margin by drumbeating this very message.

Fix Para Pay’s success worried the union leadership Unity-UFT caucus so much that they decided that proposing a para “Respect Check” bill in the middle of the 2025 general union officer elections would help them curry favor with paras once again.

But once you move beyond the Respect Check branding, caucus politics, electioneering and read Intro 0692-2026 carefully, a more complicated story emerges.

Is this relief now, respect later?

Or is relief being positioned as a substitute for respect?

What the New Bill Actually Creates

Intro 0692-2026 establishes what it explicitly defines as a “non-pensionable lump sum payment of $10,000” per year for eligible paraprofessionals. The payment is to be issued no later than August 1 following the school year. It does not amend the DOE salary schedule. It does not increase base pay. It does not alter longevity steps. It does not count toward retirement calculations.

The bill calls these payments “workforce stabilization.”

And it calls them temporary.

The statute states that once the city signs a collective bargaining agreement providing an increase in “total annual compensation” equal to or greater than the stabilization payments, the law is deemed repealed.

Not phased out.

Repealed.

The title itself includes the phrase “providing for the repeal thereof.” The exit ramp is written directly into the structure.

But a bigger fact remains. Even if this is passed into law, it could be repealed at any moment at the whims of political actors in City Council and City Hall.

The union calls this respect.

The bill calls it stabilization.

Stabilization is an emergency tool — not structural permanence.

A Hard Pivot From Last Year

The contrast with last year’s proposal is impossible to ignore.

Intro 1261-2025 — sponsored by Keith Powers and backed by 47 Council co-sponsors — was framed as a structural correction, a “para pay index” tied to the widening gap between paraprofessional starting salaries and the highest principal salaries. The union publicly described it as fluctuating above a $10,000 floor, with projected growth over time. Reporting at the time suggested it could begin around $10,800 and rise toward $12,000 in later years.

That earlier model was not pensionable either. It was not collectively bargained. But it was presented as dynamic — responsive to widening inequities rather than frozen at a flat number.

This year’s bill drops the index entirely. There is no principal linkage. No escalator. No formula responding to differential growth. What remains is a fixed $10,000 payment framed as temporary stabilization.

If last year’s pitch was “we fix the gap,” this year’s version is “we issue a relief check.”

That is not a cosmetic change. It is a strategic downgrade. And none of this has been explained to members.

The $450 Million ‘Epic Fail’ Moment

This is not the first time paraprofessional wages were at a crossroads.

During the 2023 contract cycle under Michael Mulgrew and the dominant Unity Caucus, approximately $450 million in non-pensionable retention funds existed within the contract framework. Those funds were distributed broadly across titles as retention bonuses rather than targeted toward restructuring paraprofessional base pay.

Nearly half a billion dollars represented rare fiscal flexibility. Instead of using that moment to permanently lift the lowest-paid title in the system, leadership chose equal distribution across the membership.

The result was short-term relief — but no structural shift in para salary schedules, no pensionable correction, and no narrowing of long-term pay gaps.

In a union that touts and teaches equity – helping those most vulnerable and in need – it failed to practice it.

That was not an inevitability. It was a policy decision.

Now leadership argues legislation is the only path to immediate relief. Members remember the earlier forks in the road.

The Internal Fight Before This Bill

The strategic pivot toward legislation did not happen quietly.

A member-driven resolution called for a comprehensive collective bargaining plan to win a living wage for paraprofessionals — complete with timelines and measurable objectives. It would have required the union to map out escalation before the next contract.

Instead, the key language was stripped.

At Executive Board and Delegate Assembly meetings, the Unity-aligned para chapter leader, Priscilla Castro, argued against tying the union’s hands at the bargaining table. Rather than centering living wages, discussion shifted toward professional development, CTLE credits, and procedural items. Earlier remarks by Castro at the UFT executive board suggesting that NYC paraprofessionals were “better off” than those in other states reinforced the perception that expectations were being managed downward rather than lifted.

The binding elements of the bargaining plan were removed from the resolution. The legislative strategy advanced.

A year later, a plan was devised by the leadership’s “three men in a room” to use our union’s COPE dollars in a local legislative fix for para pay while never consulting paraprofessionals on exploring a range of solutions.

The shift placed compensation reform in City Hall rather than at the negotiating table.

It compensates and relies heavily on lobbyists rather than engage in the work of grassroots planning and organizing with paras.

The Political Optics: Mulgrew, Menin, and the Money

For this bill to pass this time around, they will need a cooperative City Council speaker.

The proximity between Michael Mulgrew and City Council Speaker Julie Menin is not merely rhetorical. It’s closer than we may think.

They say politics creates “strange bedfellows” and, no doubt, the UFT leadership has definitely been courting Menin.

Campaign finance disclosures show that “United For NYC’s Future (2025),” an independent expenditure entity connected to UFT leadership, reported $1.75 million in total contributions and $1.65 million in spending. Of that total, $210,219 was spent in support of Menin’s City Council campaign.

That figure represents independent expenditure support — not a direct payment to Menin — but it places her among the most heavily supported candidates in that filing. Second only to our union’s COPE monies given to former UFT political operative Dermott Smyth’s failed city council run.

That the UFT spent that amount of money when Menin did not face any stiff competition and won her race handily, says something.

Now she is publicly branded by the union as the “Champion of the Paraprofessional RESPECT Check.” She is headlining this year’s UFT para awards luncheon.

More importantly, she presides as Speaker over the revived legislation.

Last year’s indexed bill died because then-Speaker Adrienne Adams blocked it at the end of session. Leadership determines what moves.

This time, the Speaker who received over $210,000 in independent expenditure support from a UFT-aligned entity is overseeing the revived effort.

That does not prove causation.

But it establishes political alignment.

And alignment matters when a bill estimated to cost roughly $260 million annually moves through a Council facing a projected $7 billion budget gap and active discussions about reserve withdrawals.

But honeymoons are short lived. Things can change quickly when the bills start rolling in. And finding close to $300 million a year to pay for this para bill at a time when the city faces a budget crisis may ruin the mood of City Hall and the Menin-Mulgrew relationship.

Other Unions Are Watching — And So Are School Aides, Cafeteria Workers, & EMTs

The ripple effects extend beyond paraprofessionals.

Other union leaders are not happy with this bill as written. Mulgrew has told members as much.

DC 37, which represents low-paid school aides and cafeteria workers, has signaled concern about precedent. A legislative supplement for one title outside collective bargaining disrupts the coordinated framework inside the Municipal Labor Committee.

And the parity pressure is not theoretical.

EMT workers are currently asking the City Council for pay parity with their fellow FDNY colleagues. They argue they perform emergency response work alongside firefighters, operate in the same high-risk conditions, yet are paid significantly less under separate union structures.

If City Council becomes a venue for targeted wage correction, pattern bargaining begins to fracture. Every low-paid title — aides, cafeteria workers, clerical staff, EMTs — will have a legislative blueprint.

This bill is not just a para bill.

It is a precedent.

The Fiscal Headwinds

Even if the moral case is compelling, the fiscal climate is unforgiving.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has outlined budget gaps estimated around $7 billion, with public discussion of drawing from the Rainy Day Fund and the Retiree Health Benefits Trust to stabilize finances.

Based on the mayor’s public budget outline reported earlier this year, the proposed reserve drawdowns to help cover the deficit were:

• $980 million from the Rainy Day Fund

• $229 million from the Retiree Health Benefits Trust

That totals $1.209 billion proposed from reserve funds to cover the budget shortfalls this fiscal year.

As it stands, the preliminary budget leaves out funding for several previously supported school programs, including restorative justice initiatives, expanded mental health services, and certain student support programs such as social workers and internship pathways. Without restoration in the final budget, schools could lose critical wraparound services that support vulnerable students, school climate, and dropout prevention efforts.

Other programs and services citywide will see cuts or elimination while increases to homeowner’s property taxes are also being proposed.

Meanwhile, estimates place the para bill stabilization payments at roughly $260 to $300 million annually.

The union’s FAQ argues the money would come from the City’s general funds and notes that the city previously “found” billions in additional resources. That argument may have sounded persuasive in a surplus cycle.

In the deficit cycle we are currently in, defined by reserve withdrawals and austerity planning based on a $7 billion budget gap, it sounds very unrealistic.

Contractual raises are binding obligations.

Legislative supplements are political and economic line items.

That distinction matters when budgets tighten.

The Pledge Campaign: Commitment — To What?

Alongside the revived bill, UFT leadership, to their credit, has rolled out a coordinated push bringing paraprofessionals face to face with City Council members. Social media posts celebrate “pledges of support” secured borough by borough. The optics are strong: paras in union gear, council members smiling, pledge cards in hand.

But what are they actually signing?

The certificate reads “Para Respect Check Pledge” and includes four commitments:

• Support Fair Pay for Paraprofessionals

• Ensure Quality Training & Development

• Advocate for Better Benefits

• Respect & Value Paraprofessionals

At the bottom: “I stand with our paraprofessionals!”

It is politically airtight. No council member is going to oppose “fair pay.” No one is against “respect.” In a city where paraprofessionals start at barely $31,000, support for fairness is the easiest vote in the room.

But the pledge does not reference the para bill, Intro 0692-2026.

It does not mention a $10,000 non-pensionable stabilization payment.

It does not commit to approving a roughly $260-300 million recurring expense.

It does not bind anyone to vote yes in the middle of a projected $7 billion budget gap.

The language is intentionally aspirational and ambiguous, not legislative.

There is a difference between signing a values statement and voting for a specific fiscal obligation. Council members represent districts with competing demands — housing, sanitation, youth services, public safety — all within a tightening budget.

So when the union announces “commitments secured,” the real question is not whether council members support fair pay in principle.

The question is whether they are prepared to fund this bill, at this cost, under these fiscal conditions.

Those are not the same commitment.

Relief Now — But What About Respect?

Nobody serious denies paraprofessionals need immediate relief. Even critics acknowledge that $10,000 would ease real burdens in this affordability crisis we are facing.

But an investigative reading of this legislation shows something else is real:

This is not the structural solution that was sold last year.

Last year’s model was pitched as a para pay index tied to widening principal differentials, designed to rise above a $10,000 floor.

This year’s model is a fixed $10,000 payment labeled temporary, explicitly non-pensionable, and written into law as something that will repeal itself once certain compensation thresholds are met.

Add the earlier $450 million contract decision. Add the dilution of a bargaining roadmap. Add the political alignment. Add the fiscal uncertainty and precedent implications.

Add that none of this is guaranteed.

A pattern emerges.

Relief is promised.

Union power is deferred.

The union leadership can call that respect.

But the bill calls it stabilization.

And stabilization is not permanence.

The real question is not whether paraprofessionals deserve $10,000 more.

It is whether stabilization becomes the ceiling — or whether respect still means structural, pensionable, collectively bargained pay.

The Bottom Line: Mulgrew and his Unity caucus, time and time again have DISRESPECTFULLY failed for decades to deliver a living wage for paraprofessionals —only delivering more and more excuses and empty promises.

And kicking the can down the road again is not RESPECT, either.

Vamos a ver.

Tonight at 7 PM on WBAI 99.5 FM, Talk Out of School features Part 1 of a two-part interview with longtime NYC educator, unionist, and former three-term TRS Trustee David Kazansky.

In this series, we will dig into:

• David’s storied career as an educator, unionist and trustee

• What really happens inside the TRS boardroom

• Private equity and pension transparency

• Fiduciary duty and divestment

• Tier 6 and what reform would actually take

• The upcoming TRS trustee election — and what’s at stake

This is a substantive, no-spin conversation about retirement security for NYC educators and retirees.

📻 Tune in tonight at 7 PM EST on WBAI 99.5 FM

Or stream it live at wbai.org

We will post the podcast here after the show.

Part 2 also drops here next week and will be aired the next time Daniel hosts Talk Out of School.

Let’s stay informed.

— Dan Alicea

Learn more about David at WeTrustDavid.org

February break is here. Whether you’re on beach somewhere, on your couch, or just catching your breath — this is the moment to plug in.

There are major decisions happening right now about retirement benefits and pension, prescription coverage, and the future of UFT active workers and retirees.

Staying informed isn’t optional anymore.

📢 JOIN TODAY’S LIVE CALL WITH DAVID KAZANSKY

A Beginner’s Guide to the New TRS Roth TDA

The TRS Roth TDA option is now available, and many members still have questions about how it works and whether it makes sense.

This session will cover:

• How the TRS Roth TDA works

• Traditional vs. Roth contributions

• Taxes now vs. later

• What changes (and what doesn’t)

• What to consider before adjusting contributions

Clear information. Practical explanations. No spin.

📅 Tuesday, February 17

🕒 5PM

🔗 Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/xSNwkxWhQHSbZqjlyrup1g

Use a little of your break to make sure you understand your retirement savings options. Share this link with others too!

🔥 STAY CONNECTED WITH DAVID KAZANSKY

Follow David Kazansky for updates and analysis. He’s running for NYC TRS trustee in the upcoming spring election.

Follow at:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61586074705494

Instagram: http://instagram.com/davidkaznyc

🌐 http://wetrustdavid.org

✍️ BEFORE YOU LOG OFF — SIGN THE PETITION

Stop Charging Retirees. NEARLY 5500 HAVE SIGNED ALREADY!

This petition is about one clear issue:

UFT retirees are paying significant prescription drug premiums — while the UFT Welfare Fund holds over $1 billion in reserves.

Here are the numbers:

• UFT retirees pay up to $180 per month (individuals)

• Families pay up to $340 per month

• That equals up to $1,260 per year for individuals

• And up to $3,420 per year for families

Even with a possible reimbursement from the City (up to $900 for individuals only), retirees are still paying substantial annual costs in the thousands.

Meanwhile, several other major NYC unions provide premium-free prescription coverage to their retirees.

The petition calls on the UFT to:

Use its welfare fund reserves to subsidize or eliminate retiree prescription premiums — just like other unions do.

Just use existing reserves to stop charging retirees thousands per year.

👉 Sign here:

http://stopchargingretirees.org

Rest. Recharge.

But don’t disengage.

Protect your retirement. Learn more about your pension options.

Protect retiree prescription coverage.

Sign. Show up. Stay informed.

This is no longer a quiet disagreement inside the Municipal Labor Committee. It is a war over who controls its direction—and it has names.

On one side is Henry Garrido, leading District Council 37.

On the other is Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers.

For years, they moved together. Now they don’t. And because DC 37 and UFT are the two largest unions in the MLC, they also carry the heaviest weighted votes. When aligned, that combined weight has historically been enough to carry decisions and impose direction.

But MLC governance requires a two-thirds majority. And that is where the rupture matters.

With DC 37 and UFT now at odds, neither side can reach the supermajority threshold on its own. Even together, their votes are no longer sufficient without pulling in a critical bloc of smaller unions. The result is paralysis: no easy consensus, no uncontested leadership, and no clear path forward on health policy.

That is not dysfunction. This is a power struggle made structural.

The Breaking Point: When the Cushion Disappeared

For decades, the Health Insurance Stabilization Fund functioned as the MLC’s shock absorber. It covered gaps between projected and actual health-care costs, allowing leadership to promise “savings” without immediately confronting whether those savings were real.

That illusion collapsed when former Comptroller Brad Lander audited the fund and revealed his findings before leaving office in December.

As reported by The City, the audit found that the Stabilization Fund is now entirely insolvent, while billions in long-term liabilities were never clearly disclosed.

Instead of being used solely to stabilize health costs, the fund was repeatedly tapped to plug unrelated budget holes—masking the true cost of labor agreements year after year.

The audit further found:

• Basic financial controls were missing

• Unpaid liabilities: ≈ $3.1 BILLION

• Total taken from HISF overall (City + welfare funds): ≈ $4.3 BILLION

  • To City: ≈ $2.8B

  • To Welfare funds: ≈ $1.5B (lump sum) + ≈ $0.69B (recurring)

• Bulk transfers from the HISF went to the city and the union welfare funds

• Claimed “savings” were often achieved by spending down reserves, not by reducing underlying health-care costs

Once the cushion vanished, there was no buffer left. No room to hide bad assumptions. No way to avoid assigning responsibility.

From that point forward, the central question inside the MLC became unavoidable: who decides direction when the money is gone?

The Minutes Tell the Story

The clearest evidence of the shift is in the most recent DC 37 executive council minutes that have been leaked to The Wire. They read like a union drawing a line.

On welfare fund data, the minutes state plainly:

“MLC members will share Welfare Fund data. DC 37 will do it only after we ensure data is made anonymous.”

That language reflects DC 37’s concern, not any assurance made by insurers.

The same minutes tie Garrido’s posture to a broader warning:

“Executive Director Garrido is concerned with the MLC’s finances, direction, and equity for all members.”

This is not about who “owns” the data.

It is about governance after the MLC’s recent failures.

Lastly, the DC 37 minutes also record a rare break from custom, after two attempts to vote for the next MLC chair resulted in deadlock:

“In the latest vote, neither candidate received the requisite two-thirds vote for MLC Chair. Executive Director Garrido will continue to run and will request a debate with the other candidate.”

In an organization where leadership is typically settled through quiet consensus among the largest unions, calling for a debate signals a refusal to let direction be decided behind among just a few behind closed doors. With DC 37 and UFT holding the heaviest weighted votes but now split, no candidate can reach the two-thirds threshold without persuading smaller unions. A debate forces that reckoning into the open—and makes control of the MLC an explicit, contested question rather than a foregone conclusion.

The Friday the 13th Meeting — Risk Scores, Demographics, and What Was Not Said

That tension hardened at a Friday the 13th MLC meeting convened specifically to discuss plans to share unions’ Welfare Fund data with the City’s insurers, led by UnitedHealthcare and its third-party claims administrator UMR.

If Henry Garrido and DC 37 leadership were concerned about whether data could be considered “anonymous,” that concern was not allayed by the presenters.

There was no representation by UnitedHealthcare or UMR that the data would be anonymized.

Instead, it was made clear—explicitly and implicitly—that member-level and dependent-level data would be used, with each individual assigned a risk score based on specific data tied to real people. Those scores would feed utilization models used to manage care, evaluate claims, fuel delays and denials and shape future cost projections.

That is when Garrido pressed on demographics.

Not as a technical aside, but because demographics are the backbone of risk scoring: age, family composition, medical history, prescription use, and patterns of care. Once those variables are in play, the consequences are predictable.

His concerns are well-founded.

Age alone can drive a risk score. Disability status and pre-existing conditions can too. And race and ethnicity often enter predictive models indirectly—through historical utilization patterns shaped by unequal access to care, systemic bias, and disparities in diagnosis and treatment.

When race, age, or disability function as proxies for cost risk, tiered scoring risks hard-coding existing inequities into benefit administration—raising serious questions about fairness and discrimination, even if no one says those words out loud.

Risk scores do not sit idle. They drive utilization management, inform claims review and power systems that determine:

• what gets approved

• what gets delayed

• what gets denied

• and which populations are flagged as “high cost”

Garrido’s skepticism was not ideological. Acting as an interim chair, he was forcing the MLC to confront the reality of what was being approved—without assurances, and with real downstream consequences for members and their families.

That exchange explains why the DC 37 minutes read the way they do. The caution recorded there flowed directly from a meeting where member-specific and dependent-specific data would be used to automate decisions, while unions would later be judged on whether “savings” appeared.

Why Mulgrew Can’t Run For MLC Chair—and Needs a Proxy

Mulgrew still wants the MLC moving fast, tightly aligned with City Hall, and resistant to internal dissent. But he cannot run for chair himself.

His standing across the coalition has been badly damaged—by unilateral decisions, by the fallout from Medicare Advantage, and by what the stabilization fund collapse exposed.

Frankly, he’s highly unpopular among local union leaders.

So UFT needs a stand-in.

That is why it backs Greg Floyd of Teamsters Local 237. Floyd is not the story. He is the vehicle—allowing Mulgrew to shape direction without putting his own name on the ballot.

Where Medicare Advantage Fits—and Where It Doesn’t

Medicare Advantage did not cause this rupture.

It exposed it.

MA was approved under the assumption that the stabilization fund would absorb the risk. When that assumption failed, MA collapsed into lawsuits, injunctions, and political retreat under former mayor Eric Adams.

For DC 37, it became proof that speed without scrutiny produces outcomes unions cannot defend.

History Isn’t a Metaphor—It’s Memory

DC 37 has lived this fight before.

In the early 1970s, Albert Shanker refused to join a DC 37–led MLC under Victor Gotbaum, choosing instead to battle the mayor directly. The dispute escalated when UFT moved to organize DC 37–represented school aides—an effort many viewed as poaching.

The dispute grew so serious that the AFL-CIO intervened, ruled that UFT had violated its anti-raiding provisions, and ordered it to cease.

The lesson stuck: when roles shift and power is unsettled, representation fights follow.

Why Parent Coordinators Matter Now

That history explains why today’s signals are taken seriously.

Since Mayor Mamdani announced changes to the parent coordinator role as part of his agenda to reform mayoral accountability and increase family involvement in our public schools, some DC 37 parent coordinators say they are being quietly encouraged to consider joining UFT. Nothing formal. No announcement. Just conversations.

Parent coordinators are DC 37 members, embedded in schools, and now facing a role redefinition—similar conditions that existed in the 1970s.

For DC 37, that talk is not rumor. It is a warning.

What Comes Next: The War Spreads

Every fight that follows—the PICA PBM RFP, the blame over missed health-care savings, and the race to negotiate first—traces back to the same fact laid bare by Brad Lander’s audit: the stabilization fund was spent down to mask costs, not control them, and once that cushion vanished, the question of who sets direction—and who owns failure—could no longer be avoided.

Healthcare Savings—and Who Gets Blamed

An RFP for a new PBM to handle PICA drugs is coming. If projected savings fall short again, the fight will not be technical. It will be political: which union signed off, and which union warned against it.

Also, there are internal reports that an RFP is in process to renegotiate the city’s Medicare supplemental SeniorCare insurance, this year also.

After Medicare Advantage and the fund collapse, no one wants to be left holding the bag twice.

The Para Check Was a Preview

The failed $10,000 paraprofessional bonus differential check exposed growing fault lines. Other unions, led by DC-37, with lower-paid members balked at giving only one title a substantial differential, and those objections were made known to City Council leadership.

It is a major reason why it did not pass even with a supermajority of council members claiming to support it. None of them would act decisively because of the fractures it would cause.

Labor unity fractured—not against City Hall, but internally.

Who Negotiates First in Next Contract Round —and Sets the Pattern

Both DC 37 and UFT have contracts expiring next year. The fight over who negotiates first—and who sets the pattern—has already begun.

Mulgrew signaled he wants UFT first at the table at the last UFT delegate assembly. But that strategy collides with a commitment by UFT’s parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, to align contract expirations to May 1, 2028.

The AFT commitment to May 1, 2028 reflects language in its resolution explicitly endorsing the UAW’s call to align contract expirations on International Workers’ Day as a way to build toward mass, coordinated national labor action — including the possibility of a general strike — by ensuring unions are not fragmented by staggered contract timelines.

That constraint and pledge complicates things but many don’t think Mulgrew cares.

Mulgrew moved first, in 2014, when De Blasio was elected and took office after years of city unions being without a contract under Bloomberg. It was in 2014 that he made his ill-fated deal for retroactive raises, by dipping into the Stabilization fund for wages, and laid down the groundwork for the slew of healthcare savings givebacks since then. And with newly elected Mayor Mamdani, he has a key player in that 2014 deal — First Deputy Mayor, Dean Fuleihan.

The Bottom Line

This is not a dispute over data. It is not a Medicare Advantage post-mortem.

It is a struggle over who governs the MLC after the money ran out and who the city will hold accountable at the bargaining table because of the failures to achieve “cost savings”.

Garrido is betting that scrutiny, debate, and accountability are unavoidable.

Mulgrew is betting he can still move fast and first.

The minutes show the split. The audit explains the stakes.

Two power brokers have collided.

And the next round of decisions will decide who actually controls the future of the MLC.

Also read:

“So… Are We Being Held Hostage?”

The question didn’t come from a script. It came from the tension in the virtual meeting room.

The informational meeting itself was convened because the City and its health care partners want the over 100 city union locals that comprise the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) to share their welfare fund prescription drug data to support additional projected savings of the new NYC Employees PPO.

As revealed by leaked audio obtained by The Wire, the discussion quickly moved beyond technical questions into how participation shortfalls would be handled if unions refused.

After nearly an hour of discussion about projected savings, participation thresholds, prescription drug data, and repeated reassurances that everything being proposed was “normal,” a union leader finally asked what many people had been thinking:

“So… are we being held hostage?”

It wasn’t a provocation. It was an attempt to understand the leverage at play.

If unions don’t agree to share prescription drug data, what actually happens next? Does the issue simply go away? Or does it come back later—during contract talks, benefit negotiations, or arbitration?

The answer mattered. And the response that followed clarified the real pressure point.

MLC leadership explained that if the projected savings tied to the new health care plan are not achieved, the City carries that gap forward. It doesn’t disappear. It becomes part of the City’s argument in future labor negotiations—used to justify demands for benefit changes, cost shifting, or concessions in the next round of bargaining.

The discussion made clear that failing to meet the plan’s savings assumptions would not simply be absorbed by the City. As captured in the meeting audio, those gaps would be carried forward and used in future negotiations—and potentially pending arbitrations—as evidence that unions did not deliver on health care cost containment.

No one said unions would be punished for saying no. But everyone understood the implication.

That was the moment the meeting stopped being an information session and became something else entirely.

What That Question Changed

Up to that point, the discussion had been framed as technical and optional. Data sharing was described as voluntary. Participation targets were presented as goals. Savings were discussed as estimates.

Once it became clear that unmet savings would be banked and leveraged later, everything else had to be understood differently.

From that moment on, the meeting wasn’t really about whether prescription drug data should be shared. It was about whether unions realistically had the freedom to refuse—or whether saying no today simply meant paying a higher price tomorrow.

The $100 Million Hanging Over the Room

The discussion kept circling back to the same figure: roughly $100 million in projected savings tied to the NYC Employees PPO.

Leadership framed these savings as necessary to stabilize health care costs and preserve benefits. But what became clear is that the savings are not guaranteed. They depend on participation—specifically, whether enough unions agree to share prescription drug data.

Roughly 75 percent participation was cited repeatedly. Hit that number, and the plan works as designed. Miss it, and the savings gap doesn’t vanish—it becomes future leverage for the City.

This was not a neutral discussion about data governance. It was a conversation conducted under the shadow of upcoming contract negotiations.

When “Data Sharing” Became a Concrete Demand

As the meeting continued, unions began asking basic questions: how would the data be shared? Who would receive it? What additional costs will Welfare Funds bear in this data transfer? How often?

The answers were delivered calmly and antiseptically.

Prescription drug data would flow directly from union PBMs to the carrier. It would be sent weekly. This was described as standard practice.

But weekly prescription data is not routine. It is a detailed, constantly updated record of what medications people take, what conditions they are treated for, and how their care changes over time. It allows future costs to be anticipated and managed before they ever show up in claims.

Importantly, this data does not relate only to union members themselves. It includes their spouses, children, and other covered dependents, sweeping entire families into the same AI-driven analytic and scoring systems.

When the Real Value of the Data Slipped Out

At one point, almost in passing, an MLC leader referenced the prescription drug data itself as being worth around $500 million.

There was no valuation process behind that number. No bidding. No negotiation. The $100 million figure discussed throughout the meeting was not payment for the data—it was an estimate of how much money could be saved by using it.

That distinction matters.

It means unions are not being compensated for a valuable asset created by members’ and dependents’ lives, illnesses, treatment histories and other related personal information. They are being asked to give it up so the City and its insurer can strengthen their hand in future negotiations.

Tiered Risk Scores — What Really Happens When You’re Labeled “High Risk” by AI

When the meeting turned to risk scoring, the structure became clearer—and more troubling.

Members would be sorted into three tiers — low, mid, high — with each tier determining how closely their care would be monitored and managed. While presenters framed this as a way to “prioritize outreach,” the effect is obvious: the sickest, most vulnerable people are flagged first, watched most closely, and subjected to the most intervention.

In a system designed to generate savings, that intervention does not mean more generous care. It means more scrutiny.

By definition, tiered risk scoring concentrates attention on older members, people with chronic illnesses, disabled members, and those requiring ongoing medication or specialty care—the very populations most likely to generate higher costs.

What stood out was not what was said, but what wasn’t.

When Henry Garrido, President of DC 37, asked directly whether demographic factors such as age, gender, race, or ethnicity were incorporated into the risk models, the question went unanswered. Presenters fumbled and spoke generally about algorithms, while they avoided confirming what variables were actually used, how they were weighted, or how bias would be meaningfully mitigated.

They simply answered that they have a “nationally recognized” committee that ensures there’s no bias. The name of the committee was not shared, nor their methodology, nor who funds it.

That silence matters. Age alone can drive a risk score. Disability status and pre-existing conditions can too. And race and ethnicity often enter predictive models indirectly—through historical utilization patterns shaped by unequal access to care, systemic bias, and disparities in diagnosis and treatment.

When race, age, or disability function as proxies for cost risk, tiered scoring risks hard-coding existing inequities into benefit administration—raising serious questions about fairness and discrimination, even if no one says those words out loud.

In practice, tiered scoring does not sort members by who needs help. It sorts them by who is expected to cost money. Once a member lands in a higher tier, prior authorizations increase, step therapy becomes more common, and approvals take longer. This alone dispels the talking points that there’s no bias in this AI predictive model.

For elderly, disabled, chronically ill members—and communities already facing barriers to care—that friction is not incidental. It is inherent and structural.

Why “Care Management” Usually Means Denials and Delays

Throughout the meeting, leadership described the plan as “care management” designed to reduce redundancy and “holistically” help patients get healthier.

In a self-funded plan, redundancy means utilization. And reducing utilization is how savings are created.

Once prescription data and risk scores are in place, care doesn’t get coordinated so much as filtered. Tests require preauthorization. Medications trigger step therapy. Procedures slow down under review. Scores are inextricably tied to denials.

Friction is intentionally caused by United Healthcare’s subsidiary, United Medical Resources (UMR).

When we talk about friction, we are not talking about thoughtful oversight or better coordination. Friction is the accumulation of small obstacles that make care harder to get: extra paperwork, repeated phone calls, new forms, longer waits, and constant justifications for care that was once routine. For people who are sick, elderly, disabled, or already marginalized, friction is often the difference between timely care, life-saving procedures and worsening health.

“Financial Navigation” Is Cost Control by Another Name

When UHC presenters talked about “financial navigation,” they framed it as help.

In reality, it is about steering care based on price, not simply medical need.

It inserts the insurer into decisions that used to be between a patient and a doctor—questioning prescriptions, pushing substitutions, delaying needed treatments and procedures, and nudging members toward cheaper paths.

Called help, it functions as control over care — motivated by profits.

“We’re Only Here to Help”

Throughout the meeting, UHC and UMR presenters repeatedly cast themselves as neutral helpers.

But let’s be honest, UnitedHealthcare is not a benevolent, altruistic partner; it is the largest for-profit health insurer in the country, widely criticized for leading the industry in denials, delays, and aggressive utilization management. UMR applies that same model inside self-funded plans like New York City’s.

The data’s value comes from control.

“The Welfare Fund Owns the Data.” Does It?

Presenters reassured unions that welfare funds would “own” the data.

Ownership on paper is not control in practice. Once prescription-level data is transferred weekly, integrated into analytics, and used to train models, it cannot be meaningfully clawed back. The insights learned belong to the insurer and train its systems.

The Change Healthcare Breach — and Why It Matters

UnitedHealth Group’s tech subsidiary Change Healthcare suffered the largest health data breach in U.S. history, exposing over 192 million Americans.

This matters. The same corporate ecosystem now seeking weekly prescription-level data has already shown it cannot guarantee security at scale.

And this is the same United Healthcare that leads the industry in claim denials.

Once shared with UHC, data cannot be unshared.

A Seat at the Table — and a Position Already Taken

Legal counsel for the UFT Welfare Fund was present during the Friday discussion. As was UFT Welfare Fund Director, Geof Sorkin, who expressed enthusiastic support for moving forward with the data transfers saying it was just about “care management”.

That mattered. When one of the the largest and most influential unions signals acceptance early, it narrows deliberation for everyone else.

It also revealed context not disclosed to members or the MLC: the UFT Welfare Fund has used UMR for benefits administration since 2020. During the meeting, counsel acknowledged that the UFT Welfare Fund had an exclusive seat at the initial discussions about prescription drug data sharing under the NYC Employees PPO—well before the issue was brought to other unions.

That history changes the frame. What was described as a new, collective, and exploratory proposal was not starting from the same place for everyone. One union entered the room with an existing partnership, early access, and influence—while others were being briefed in real time.

A Call to Action — For Union Leaders and Members

Union leaders are being asked to approve a deal that hands over members’ most sensitive health data—data that will be used to sort, score, and manage care—while being told the risks are minimal.

They should reject the data-sharing agreement.

Members also need to understand the reality: you will not be able to opt out of data sharing. At most, you may be able to opt out of outreach calls or emails from UMR and their “member education” — which amounts to why you or your family member’s claims and care are denied or delayed.

You and your dependent’s prescription data will still be transferred. Your information will still be analyzed. Your care can still be shaped by systems you never agreed to.

And you will never see your score from their proprietary blackbox.

If an algorithm labels you “high risk,” will you be told? Will you know what data was used? Will you be able to challenge it—or even confirm it exists?

Or will you simply feel the consequences—more delays, more denials, more scrutiny—without ever being told why?

When the presenters were asked if members will know their individual scores fueled by their union welfare prescription data, the answer was a flat out: NO!

That is not transparency. It is control without accountability.

Members should demand that their unions say no to this deal—and insist that no AI predictive system be adopted where people are scored, categorized, and managed in the dark without direct, transparent oversight, explicit safeguards and ability to directly appeal through human review by stakeholders.

A Line That Can’t Be Uncrossed

Prescription drug data will be shared weekly with United Healthcare’s deny and delay machine—unless unions stop it.

Risk scores will be created. AI tools will shape human care.

Leverage will be carried forward into bargaining.

This is not ‘business as usual’ or normal. It’s unusual.

The quiet part is no longer quiet.

The only question left is whether union leaders—and union members—act while they still can.

Learn more:

When members ask why union leadership is only fighting for 30/55 and not 25/55, the uncomfortable answer is this:

55/25 was already conceded.

And the concessions didn’t start with Cuomo.
They didn’t start with Tier 6.
They started with Randi Weingarten.

2009: The Deal That Built the Runway

On June 22, 2009, Mayor Bloomberg and UFT President Randi Weingarten jointly announced a so-called “New Age-55 Pension Plan.” The City’s own press release bragged about what the deal really was:

$100 million a year in savings for the City — for 20 years.

That savings didn’t come from Wall Street.
It came from future teachers.

To undo her own self-inflicted disaster from the 2005 contract—forcing teachers to report two days before Labor Day—Randi agreed to a contingent Memorandum of Agreement, pending Albany approval, that fundamentally altered the pension landscape.

Here’s what she gave up:

• Retirement moved from 55/25 to 57/25

• Career-long pension contributions for new hires

• Guaranteed TDA return cut from 8.25% to 7%

That deal is what many educators rightly call “Tier 4B.”
It was followed by the short-lived Tier 5, and then—inevitably—Tier 6.

Tier 6 didn’t come out of nowhere. The runway was built in 2009 by Randi and Unity.

Unity Didn’t Just Accept Givebacks — They Normalized Them

This wasn’t a one-off mistake. It was yet another banner moment where Unity institutionalized concession bargaining.

Every giveback was sold the same way:

• “Necessary”

• “Responsible”

• “For the common good”

• “ We achieved “cost savings for the City” while “improving our benefits”

And no one embodied that thinking more than Unity’s chief apologist, Randi’s longtime personal assistant, Leo Casey.

For decades, Casey has faithfully defended:

• The disastrous 2005 contract

• The 2009 pension concessions

• And now, copays imposed on retirees

Different issue. Same message:
Suck it up—for the common good.

His 2009 defense of the Bloomberg–Weingarten pension deal is still archived online, frozen in time, and devastating in hindsight.

While the Ground Was Being Given Away, There Was No Fight

Fast-forward to 2011–2012.

Bloomberg and Cuomo push through Tier 6, the worst pension tier in state history.

And where was Unity?

There was no mass mobilization.
No sustained organizing.
No serious resistance.

Now—13 years later—the same leadership claims they’re “fighting Tier 6,” while refusing to admit that:

• Extended years of service

• Lifetime pension contributions

• Reduced retirement security

…were already conceded on their watch.

James Eterno Warned Us — In Real Time

The late, great James Eterno saw exactly where this was heading and said so in 2009, when it still mattered.

He called it what it was:

A billion-dollar giveaway to save the City money — paid for by future educators.

He was right then. He’s right now.

All Roads Lead to Randi

This is why “Fix Tier 6” stops at 55/30.

Not because 55/25 is unrealistic. Not because it’s impossible.

But because Unity already surrendered it — quietly, strategically, and proudly — while calling it “responsible unionism.”

The same concession logic that gutted pensions is now being used to gut healthcare.

Different decade. Same playbook.

These are not the values of unionists.

These are Proxies for Management.

Morticians of our hard-earned benefits.

Receipts 👇

James Eterno on the 2009 giveback:
https://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/billion-dollar-days-off.html?m=1

https://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/june-da-report-farewell-randi-tier-v.html?m=1

Leo Casey defending the Bloomberg–Weingarten pension deal:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150606054122/http://www.edwize.org/uft-and-city-reach-agreement-on-pension-ending-two-days-before-labor-day

Unity’s failure to fight Tier 6 (2011–12):

A BETTER CONTRACT (ABC-UFT)

Mulgrew and Unity's TIER 6 BIG LIE: "We were caught by surprise in 2012 when 'Cuomo created Tier 6 in the dead of the night’."

Mulgrew’s administrative Unity caucus that has been behind many of the poor decisions and concessionary givebacks in the last couple of decades wants you to believe their TIER 6 BIG LIE…

Read more

a year ago · 17 likes · Dan Alicea

Editor’s note: To all those who celebrate: Happy Valentine’s Day. Shout out to The Tribe of Love.