By NY Ed Reform guest blogger Peter Murphy

The New York State United Teachers last week unveiled yet another radio and television advertising campaign (here) its effort to get state lawmakers to spend more on public education.  The union dues generated by 600,000 members can buy a lot of air time, and NYSUT has never been shy of doing so – this time spending $1.5 million.

Last fall, the union spent a tidy sum to block Gov. Paterson’s proposed mid-year cuts in school aid to districts.  That success, however, came with a price.  Next year’s education cuts are now that much larger from the state’s failure to reduce spending this year.

Make no mistake: NYSUT’s ad campaign is about more money for its membership.  The pretenses of its ad campaign – about creating a better economy and a more skilled workforce – mask this reality.  NYSUT cleverly ties spending more on public education to spurring economic recovery in New York.  “Business leaders will go out of state to hire skilled workers…or they may not be in a position to create any new jobs at all,” said NYSUT president Richard Iannuzzi.  But state lawmakers shouldn’t fall for this ruse.

NYSUT wants higher state taxes, including an estimated $3.2 billion from the financial services industry through a stock transfer tax and other measures, and has recently endorsed (of all things) selling wine in liquor stores.  Anything that brings more money into the state coffers, apparently NYSUT is for.

New York State already is among the highest taxed states in the nation.  Not unrelated, New York also has among the highest public employee payrolls in the country on a per capita basis.  Education is a big component of this: according to the Empire Center, the state spends more on education per pupil than any other state and 65 percent higher than the national average.

Meanwhile, last year federal stimulus package spending added $1.8 billion to education that, according to NYSUT, saved 18,600 education jobs.  And yet this year alone, the state raised taxes by at least another $4 billion.

Considering the negative impact of taxes and deficits on the state’s business climate, and the bailout already offered to the state’s public education sector, it’s hard to swallow NYSUT’s line that even higher taxes and even more education spending will help New York’s economy.  If it did, New York’s economy should be booming already.

Instead, what is booming is the public education industry.  A recent Schenectady Daily Gazette editorial describes teachers and other public employees as having “become a privileged class.”  The editorial notes that average education employee salaries exceeds the average worker outside of New York City and the job security, pensions, and health benefits are all more generous as well.

State legislators must weigh bowing yet again to NYSUT’s demands for more taxes and more spending with demanding that everyone in the public sector take a hiatus from spending binges in the simple interest of creating a better economy in the state.

At the very least, if additional education spending is contemplated, any new funds should be tightly tied to real reform efforts.  The best place to start would be to endorse the state Regents’ agenda submitted as an application for a federal Race to the Top grant.  The pot of gold at the end of this rainbow would be as much as $700 million in federal funding if New York’s reforms are deemed substantive enough.  New York had a shot at these funds in January, but the reform efforts were spiked by – guess who – NYSUT.  Evidently, even this massive amount of new federal funding wasn’t worth it to the teachers’ union if it came tied to more accountability and greater transparency.

But you won’t find any of that in NYSUT’s new ad campaign.

Peter Murphy is policy director of the New York Charter Schools Association and also writes for that group’s blog, The Chalkboard.