New York will (one presumes) have a new mayor come January 2014. One question for that mayor will be whether he or she chooses the past or the present.

The (future) present: the new mayor likely will face a deficit of $3.7 billion for his or her inaugural budget (fiscal year 2015). That's a good seven percent of city tax revenues.

The past: unless Mayor Bloomberg and municipal unions do some serious negotiating in the next few months, the new mayor will face more than a dozen expired contracts -- and union leaders requesting retroactive settlements.

A new report by New Jersey's State Commission of Investigation exposes a common practice of "official" or "release" time and has rightly made headlines. See here, here, here, here, and here. The practice entails paying public employees to work for their union. Over a five year period, the report found, the Garden State paid more than $30 million for public workers to conduct union business.

From the Orange County Register's Brian Joseph:

Little known and often misunderstood, the State Personnel Board provides a service with no parallel in the private sector. State employees who are fired, demoted or suspended can appeal their discipline directly to the five-member board, while a private worker's only recourse is the courts.

Whenever people complain that cuts to government will lead to terrible things, consider that those services the public really wants will continue. I wrote about proposed cuts in California state parks, which led to private donations and community organizations pitching in to keep them open. Now we see in England that cutbacks to libraries have led to similar results -- private companies and community groups pitching in. Of course, much of what government does is counterproductive or unpopular. Even important programs (roads, schools, etc.) seem to operate mainly for the benefit of those who work for the agencies that provide the services. Private companies and community groups can provide better service because they are freed from union work rules and excessive compensation packages typical in the public sector.

Maine has been considering a "right-to-work" bill for the last two legislative sessions that would eliminate "fair share" or "agency shop" fees in government--or what critics call "forced dues." If the current bill were to pass, these practices would remain legal in the private sector, where the argument for them is stronger.  The sort of step being considered in Maine is among those that seek to reduce the number of significant advantage public employee unions enjoy over other interest groups in terms of retaining members and raising revenue. It shows that there are multiple routes to reconfiguring government labor relations that don't touch on collective bargaining.