Current Actions

• Safe Patient Handling

  What’s at stake:
  

  Patient safety, avoiding injuries to health care workers. The old method of manual lifting can cause fear, anxiety, fear and discomfort, not to mention it increases the chance of slip, falls, drops and needless injuries.
  

• The Public Should Know How Public Funds Are Spent

  What’s at stake:
  

  The current definition of agencies covered by the Freedom Of Information Law (FOIL) leaves out certain types of agencies that are technically not agencies of state or local government. These entities are often incorporated as not for profit corporations or limited liability corporations, but operate in effect as subsidiaries of state agencies. For example, the SUNY Research Foundation is incorporated as a not for profit but operates as an extension of SUNY and is controlled by SUNY officials. The Research foundation describes itself as “the organization responsible for managing research grants and other sponsored programs for SUNY.” Corporations of this type often refuse to disclose information to the press and the public on the basis that they are not state agencies as defined in the law.
  

• Help Laid Off Workers

  What’s at stake:
  

  Currently, Employees of the state are subject to postemployment restrictions which prohibit their appearance in a professional capacity before a state agency or board for two years following their departure from state service, but this restriction did not take into consideration cases of a layoff due to budgetary constraints or the elimination of a function. These employees should not be penalized for layoffs and/or elimination of position.
  

• Consultant Contracts

  What’s at stake:
  

  Far too often, vital services of state government are privatized by contracting them out to consultants. While these plans can be made to sound good as pitched by the sales representatives of the vendors, the combination of public money and private interests can be hazardous to the public interest unless carefully regulated.  Each year the state wastes hundreds of millions of dollars on costly consultants when state employees can provide the same services at an equivalent or better quality for comparable or lower cost.
  

• Stop the Public-Private Partnerships for Roads and Bridges

  What’s at stake:
  

  Public private partnerships increase the state’s reliance on costly private consultants.  PEF, two state comptrollers (one Republican, one Democrat), the Fiscal Policy Institute, KPMG, and the Senate Task Force on Government Efficiency, have all studied the issue of DOT engineering and came to the same conclusion – the state can save money by using in house engineers rather than outside consultants.  Consultant engineers cost between 50% and 75% more than DOT engineers including the cost of benefits to do the same work.  Public private partnerships will rely on consultant engineers increasing the cost of that project component rather than saving money.