Court Opinion

ID: 9720844
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:42:55.649133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:21.640691
License: Public Domain

OPINION OF THE COURT
Smith, J.
The Mayor of New York City challenges the validity of two local laws, passed by the City Council over his veto, that give certain fire department employees the status of “uniformed” fire service members for collective bargaining purposes. Like Supreme Court and the Appellate Division, we reject the Mayor’s challenge. We hold that the local laws are not preempted by State law, and that the Council had the power to enact them without a referendum.
Facts and Procedural History
Local Law Nos. 18 and 19 (2001) of the City of New York confer “uniformed” status on people employed by the New York City Fire Department as fire alarm dispatchers and emergency medical technicians (EMTs). The effect of the local laws is to require the Mayor to bargain with unions representing these employees, rather than with unions representing the majority of employees citywide, over such matters as overtime and “time and leave” rules. To make this understandable, we must summarize several features of the State and local legislation that governs collective bargaining with public employees.
In general, labor relations in the public sector in New York State are governed by the Taylor Law, Civil Service Law § 200 et seq. But the Taylor Law contains a local option provision, Civil Service Law § 212, which permits local governments to enact their own counterparts to certain sections of the Taylor Law, and thus to displace the Taylor Law to that extent. The State statute requires that the local laws be “substantially equivalent” to the “provisions and procedures” of the Taylor Law itself (Civil Service Law § 212 [1], [2]). As to New York City, however, the issue of substantial equivalence can be raised only *29in a declaratory judgment action brought by the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) in New York County Supreme Court; unless and until such a challenge is brought and upheld, the City counterparts to Taylor Law provisions “shall be of full force and effect” (Civil Service Law § 212 [2]).
In 1967, the year of the Taylor Law’s enactment, New York City exercised its local option by adopting a local law known as the Collective Bargaining Law (CBL) (Local Law No. 53 [1967] of City of NY § 2, codified as Administrative Code of City of NY § 1173-1.0 et seq. [now § 12-301 et seq.)). Later the same year, the Mayor, in an executive order issued “pursuant to the New York City Collective Bargaining Law,” directed that there be citywide, rather than unit-by-unit, bargaining on certain subjects as to which citywide uniformity was thought especially important (Executive Order 52 of 1967 § 5 [a] [2], reprinted in City Record, Oct. 6, 1967, at 6341, 6342). Five years later, the substance of this provision of the Mayor’s order was incorporated, by local law (Local Law No. 1 [1972] of City of NY § 10), into the CBL itself. It is now codified as New York City Administrative Code § 12-307 (a) (2), which provides:
“matters which must be uniform for all employees subject to the career and salary plan, such as overtime and time and leave rules, shall be negotiated only with a certified employee organization, council or group of certified employee organizations designated by the board of certification as being the certified representative or representatives of bargaining units which include more than fifty percent of all such employees, but nothing contained herein shall be construed to deny to a public employer or certified employee organization the right to bargain for a variation or a particular application of any city-wide policy or any term of any agreement executed pursuant to this paragraph where considerations special and unique to a particular department, class of employees, or collective bargaining unit are involved” (emphasis added).
Thus, citywide collective bargaining is the general, though not invariable, rule as to “matters which must be uniform for all employees subject to the career and salary plan, such as overtime and time and leave rules.” The 1967 executive order, however, made “uniformed” employees an exception to this rule, and the exception, like the general rule, was added to the *30CBL by local law in 1972. Thus, New York City Administrative Code § 12-307 (a) (4) provides: “all matters, including but not limited to pensions, overtime and time and leave rules which affect employees in the uniformed police, fire, sanitation and correction services . . . shall be negotiated with the certified employee organizations representing the employees involved.”
No party in this case disputes the validity of the 1967 local law that adopted the CBL, the 1967 executive order issued under the CBL’s authority, or the 1972 local law incorporating provisions of the executive order in the CBL.
The local laws at issue here, adopted in 2001, expanded the definition of “employees in the uniformed . . . fire . . . service [ ].” They added to New York City Administrative Code § 12-307 (a) (4) language saying that, for purposes of that paragraph, “employees of the uniformed fire service shall also include” fire alarm dispatchers, EMTs and their supervisors. Thus, the 2001 local laws made the dispatchers and EMTs, like firefighters and police officers, exempt from section 12-307 (a) (2)’s requirement of citywide bargaining.
The 2001 local laws were passed over the veto of then-Mayor Giuliani, who responded by bringing this action for a declaratory judgment that the local laws are invalid, and an injunction against their enforcement. Supreme Court granted summary judgment in the Council’s favor, declaring the laws valid. The Appellate Division affirmed, with two Justices dissenting. The Mayor appeals as of right, pursuant to CPLR 5601 (a), and we now affirm.
Discussion
The Mayor argues (1) that Local Laws 18 and 19 of 2001 are preempted by the Taylor Law and (2) that they were enacted in violation of mandatory referendum provisions of the Municipal Home Rule Law and the New York City Charter. We reject both arguments.
I
As we mentioned above, the Taylor Law permits local governments to supersede certain of its provisions, so long as the provisions and procedures of the local legislation are “substantially equivalent” to the ones they supersede (Civil Service Law § 212). The Mayor does not argue here that Local Laws 18 and 19 fail the substantial equivalence test, no doubt because he lacks standing to make that argument; only PERB can chai*31lenge New York City local laws on substantial equivalence grounds (Civil Service Law § 212 [2]).
The Mayor does argue, however, that the local laws are inconsistent with the Taylor Law’s definition of “agreement”: “the result of the exchange of mutual promises between the chief executive officer of a public employer and an employee organization” (Civil Service Law § 201 [12]). It has been held, and the parties here do not dispute, that the Taylor Law prohibits local legislative bodies from usurping the executive’s prerogative to agree with unions on terms and conditions of employment (Matter of Doyle v City of Troy, 51 AD2d 845 [3d Dept 1976]). But these local laws do not violate that prohibition. They do not dictate the substantive terms of an agreement; they prescribe (as to certain issues) the procedure by which agreements may be reached—bargaining with the unions representing dispatchers and EMTs, rather than bargaining with unions representing a majority of employees subject to the citywide career and salary plan.
The regulation of bargaining procedures generally, and specifically the procedure by which bargaining units are determined, is a proper subject of local legislation. The Taylor Law provides, in Civil Service Law § 206 (1), that a local government “acting through its legislative body, is hereby empowered to establish procedures ... to resolve disputes concerning the representation status of employee organizations.” While this statute is not directly applicable here—the CBL has superseded it—it refutes the idea that procedures to determine the appropriate unit of bargaining are a subject beyond the reach of a local legislature.
The Mayor’s preemption argument proves too much. If these 2001 local laws, which expanded the definition of “uniformed” employees to include dispatchers and EMTs, are preempted, how could the 1972 local law that exempted uniformed employees in general from citywide bargaining be valid? For that matter, how could the same local law have provided for citywide rather than unit-by-unit bargaining on certain issues? And how could the original CBL, enacted by local law in 1967, have given the Mayor authority to provide by executive order for both the general rule and the exception?
The answer offered by the Mayor, and by the dissent, is that the 1967 executive order and the 1972 local law were based on an agreement negotiated between the Mayor and the unions involved. The dissent implicitly asserts that the City’s power to *32legislate in this area extends only to ratifying agreements the Mayor and the unions have already reached. But we see nothing in the Taylor Law, and nothing in any decision interpreting it, to suggest the existence of any such limitation on legislative authority; and we reject as unsound the principle that a legislative body’s power to pass laws can be conferred or withheld by the executive’s agreement, or failure to agree, with labor representatives on proposed legislation.
Local Laws 18 and 19 are not preempted by the Taylor Law.
II
Municipal Home Rule Law § 23 (2) (f) says: “Except as otherwise provided by or under authority of a state statute, a local law shall be subject to mandatory referendum if it . . . [ajbolishes, transfers or curtails any power of an elective officer.” Similarly, New York City Charter § 38 (5) provides: “A local law shall be submitted for the approval of the electors ... if it . . . [ajbolishes, transfers or curtails any power of an elective officer.” We hold that Local Laws 18 and 19 do not curtail any power of the Mayor within the meaning of these sections. We do not reach the question of whether the exception clause of Municipal Home Rule Law § 23 (2) applies.
The Mayor’s theory is that Local Laws 18 and 19 curtail his power because he has less flexibility in bargaining with unions than he would have if the laws had not been passed. Before the enactment of these local laws, the Mayor could insist on bargaining with citywide representatives over the overtime and time and leave rules of fire alarm dispatchers and EMTs, unless “special and unique” considerations called for a different approach (Administrative Code of City of NY § 12-307 [a] [2]). The 2001 local laws require the Mayor to bargain directly with the unions “representing the employees involved” over all terms of their employment (Administrative Code § 12-307 [a] [4]). But this kind of limitation on the Mayor’s freedom of action is not the sort of curtailment of power that triggers a mandatory referendum.
A great many local laws limit the actions the Mayor or another elected official may take. A local law requiring the recycling of solid waste prevents the Mayor from ordering the sanitation department to dispose of such waste less expensively (see Administrative Code § 16-305; Matter of Natural Resources Defense Council v New York City Dept. of Sanitation, 188 AD2d 415 [1st Dept 1992]); a local law suspending alternate side of *33the street parking on certain holidays prevents the Mayor from enforcing it on those days (see Administrative Code § 19-163); a local law requiring an office to be open at certain hours prevents the Mayor from closing it (see id. § 7-623). But the Municipal Home Rule Law and the City Charter cannot sensibly be read to subject all local laws of this kind to a mandatory referendum. If they were, there would be more referendums than any community could well manage.
The requirement of a referendum for legislation that “curtails any power of an elective officer” must be read as applying only to legislation that impairs a power conferred on the officer as part of the framework of local government. For example, a local law limiting the power of New York City’s Mayor to appoint commissioners, or to prepare a budget, or to create or abolish positions within his executive office would require a referendum (see NY City Charter §§ 6, 8 [f]; § 225 [a]). But, as a general rule, a law that merely regulates the operations of city government, in collective bargaining or in some other area, is not a curtailment of an officer’s power.
Matter of Slominski v Rutkowski (62 NY2d 781 [1984]) illustrates the distinction. In that case, the Erie County Comptroller challenged county legislation that prohibited the filling of vacancies in certain county offices in the absence of a certificate of necessity from the County Executive. The effect of the legislation was to prevent the Comptroller from doing something she could otherwise have done—fill vacancies in her office without getting a certificate of necessity. But we held the Comptroller’s powers had not been curtailed, and the referendum requirement of Municipal Home Rule Law § 23 (2) had not been triggered, because the powers given the Comptroller by the County Charter were unimpaired. We said: “the only power the County Charter gives [the Comptroller] is the power to fill positions in her office as those positions are approved. That is unchanged. She, and no one else, may appoint whomever she chooses to the vacancies” (62 NY2d at 785).
So here, the Mayor’s power in the New York City governmental structure is unimpaired. A local law prescribing a procedural rule for collective bargaining is not an encroachment on the Mayor’s role in City government. The limitation on his freedom to act is merely a consequence of legislative policymaking. By contrast, the cases the Mayor relies on all involved limitations on an elected officer’s structural authority (see Morin v Foster, 45 NY2d 287 [1978] [limitation on power to appoint county *34manager held to require referendum]; Matter of Fogarty v Warden, 191 Misc 916 [Sup Ct, Orange County 1948], affd 273 App Div 910 [2d Dept 1948], affd 297 NY 963 [1948] [limitation on power to dismiss city manager held to require referendum]; Matter of Heeran v Scully, 135 Misc 874 [Sup Ct, Rensselaer County 1930], affd 229 App Div 822 [3d Dept 1930], affd 254 NY 344 [1930] [adding members to board created by city charter held to curtail power of existing members]; Mayor of City of N.Y. v Council of City of N.Y., 280 AD2d 380 [1st Dept 2001] [limitation on Mayor’s authority to appoint members of police investigatory board held to require referendum]).
Local Laws 18 and 19 were within the power of the City Council to enact without a referendum.
Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed, with costs.