Bruno and Silver can get together at 4 am, decide that they and their members will go out with a bang, and pass legislation providing every public employee, including themselves, with a pension at double their final salary rather than half.

It would then be irrevocable, and take precedence over a single dime of tax money being used for anything else, forever.

What do you mean? Has the transit system collapsed? Has the school system collapsed? Are tens of thousands of businesses leaving the city? Are hundreds of thousands of people leaving the city? Are the parks too dangerous to go in?

When the succeeded in doing that last time, the pensions and retiree health care got paid. They will continue until they have recreated the 1970s. For the MTA and NYCHA, it may be inevitable. It think it may be time to give up on the schools, too.

As for the police, if you read my post you know how much more we spend on police than average. And yet, I was told by someone who knows (an ADA), that the police are increasingly committing crimes, because the standards are dropping like a stone due the low starting pay -- because all the money is going to the retired. And the non-criminals certainly aren't on a mission to keep people safe like they were back in the day.

You have to ask yourself, why not? Members of the NY State legislature don't send their kids to regular city schools, if they have kids at all. They go to their private politician beach at Kingsboro, not regular city parks. They get their private health insurance, they don't go to city hospitals. They have their placards, they don't take public transit. And because they are not elected, the quality of public services doesn't affect them in any way. And once they walk out with their pensions, they don't pay taxes either.

First though, you can say that some of these pensions are hard to improve. The cops it is all pension. Paying for the ones we have is the next order of business though. And there are enormous differences between the agencies, their respective labor markets and the institutional value of pensions to each. So there are big differences between the UFT and the TWU. But a big factor here is that after the last round most of the TWU people are on the same page with regard to pension values. 20/50 may still be a rallying cry for the whack pack of dissidents but 25/55 works pretty good at retaining transit workers who will likely live 25 or 30 years after retirement.

Mostly though, as you often point out, there is no blood left in the stone. And, we are entering a more inflationary period and that will have enormous effects on pension funding. Any way you slice it, there is much more to the MTAs financial problem and pension problems than assumptions of pension improvements based on past legislative behavior.

The Governor can cut deals like Pataki, rant like Spitzer, be nice like Patterson, it doesn't matter.

And since it doesn't matter -- no fare increase, no higher taxes on wages, no higher taxes on property. Default on debt and retiree obligations, and start taxing currently tax-free retirement earnings instead.

If they raise taxes and fares, the legislature will just turn around and once again pass a full-retirement plan for MTA employees after just 20 years of work (this time over-riding any veto) and the transit system will collapse anyway.