In a speech at the Conservative Party convention in late January, Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney proudly recounted how last fall, the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) had bused 1,000 members to budget hearings in Syracuse to protest her.

“They stood in front and chanted, ‘Hey, hey, ho, ho, Joanie’s got to go,’” Mahoney recalled, to laughter from the audience.

On stage with Mahoney stood Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks, who eagerly noted that because of her own hardball tactics with unions, health care costs in her county had held static since 2004.

Then came Erie County Executive Chris Collins, who noted his own successful battles with public-sector labor.

“They all laughed at me and assumed I’d give in,” Collins said in an interview afterwards.

County executives say their tough stands have been forced by the state Legislature: amendments to the Taylor Law have hampered executives’ ability to negotiate with unions, and generous Medicaid and retirement benefit handouts have left counties with unfunded mandates.

“This is a way for state legislators to tell constituents they have provided generous services without having to foot the bill,” said Geoff Rosenberger, whose 10-member Upstate Mandate Relief Commission recently released a report on the problem. “Then they say to the counties, ‘It’s up to you.’”

As a result, 70 to 80 percent of many county budgets are now out of the executives’ control, said Stephen Aquario, executive director of the bipartisan New York State Association of Counties. He said this has presented executives a choice: take strict stances on the costs of county labor—one of the executives’ few major controllable expenses—or raise property taxes.

Given recent political events, he said the choice had become clear.

“The people of Nassau and Westchester counties clearly said that it’s time to change and reprioritize the policies of the government that represents them,” Aquario said.

Aquario predicted that over the next decade, zero-percent salary increases for county employees would become the norm, with taxpayers continuing to demand the same level of services while also resisting property tax increases.

But Stephen Madarasz, a spokesman for the CSEA, which is currently engaged in contractual battles with several of these county executives, said the tough stands have hurt employee morale and have actually presented a false choice.

“They say it’s between either property tax increases or labor reductions, when in reality the choice is almost never either/or in labor negotiations,” he said. “It may just be that we’re dealing with some newer folks who haven’t learned that lesson. Or, it could just be a political calculation to beat up public employees.”

For county executives with ambitions for higher political office, these fights have provided means for a potential springboard. The reasoning fits nicely onto a campaign mailer: they have cleaned up county government and they could do the same in state government.

Suffolk Executive Steve Levy, a Democrat, has staked much of his potential statewide race around taking on public-sector unions. In Suffolk, Levy has benefited from a rule that sets a hard April 1 deadline for the budget to be passed, after which Levy’s budget must automatically be adopted.

This has allowed him to play hardball with municipal unions, and Levy said as governor he would attempt to take this law statewide.

“Unless you’re willing to go all the way and say, ‘If you don’t help us, we’ll have to lay you off,’ nothing is going to happen,” he said, adding that he has always been  to win concessions without having to lay off employees. “And that was exactly the case in Albany.”

Collins was also touting this message of taking his county labor negotiations statewide before his verbal gaffes helped force him from the governor’s race. He called for the Legislature to repeal the Triborough Amendment to the Taylor Law, which prohibits a public employer from altering any provision of an expired labor agreement until a new agreement is reached.

“If they get to keep everything they have, it’s hard to make them give things up,” Collins said.

And it is not just those running for higher office that are pivoting from Albany and battering public-employee unions, with property tax revolts contributing to the unseating of Democratic executives in Westchester and Nassau counties last fall.

When it comes to controlling labor costs, Broome County Executive Barbara Fiala, a Democrat, said there is a bipartisan agreement among the executives.

“With sales tax declining 5 percent, we no longer have the luxury of trying to save all these positions,” she said. “Some unions get it and some don’t.”

cbragg@nycapitolnews.com