Arbitrator raised money for DeBlasio

From Capital New York:

An arbitrator who could set a precedent for Bill de Blasio's upcoming, high-stakes negotiations with the city's municipal unions is also a fund-raiser for the new mayor.

The arbitrator, Martin Scheinman, is currently overseeing separate negotiations between the city and two unions, the New York State Nurses Association and the United Federation of Teachers.

The result of the arbitration, whatever it may be, is likely to have an outsize impact on de Blasio's first year in office. The mayor-elect, a close ally of organized labor who has received crucial help from unions at various points in his career, will have to find room in a tight budget to award the raises the municipal unions are now seeking.

His personal and political relationship, including a fund-raiser he hosted at his home for de Blasio in October, will have no bearing on his rulings, Scheineman says.

Bloomberg looks like really big asshole

From Gotham Schools:

An arbitrator has ruled that the city’s plans to reform 24 struggling schools by shaking up their staffs violated its collective bargaining agreements with the teachers and principals unions.

The arbitrator’s decision adds a new and abrupt twist to months of uncertainty at the schools. It also guarantees that the city cannot claim more than $40 million in federal funds that the overhaul process, known as “turnaround,” was aimed at securing.

The turnaround rules require the schools to replace half of their teachers, and the city was trying to use a clause in its contract with the teachers union, known as 18-D, to make that happen. In recent weeks, “18-D committees” told hundreds and possibly thousands of teachers and staff members at the schools they could not return next year.

Under the arbitrator’s ruling, all of those staff members are now free to take their jobs back.

The decision is a shocking blow to the Bloomberg administration, which turned to turnaround in January in a bid to win the federal funds without negotiating a new evaluation system with the United Federation of Teachers.