The New York State Charter School Association's Peter Murphy is reporting some good news from the Empire State, via the state's highest court:? charter schools are exempt from the onerous ?prevailing wage? laws.
The handmaidens of organized labor, such laws require public bodies to pay the going union rates instead of shopping around.? Is it any wonder that the state's taxpayers (and government) are on life support.? (Don't believe me? See this Empire Center report ? or any number of other reports by this hound-dog resarch center.)
The charter school decision by the Court of Appeals? (in New York, it's the highest)?came as a result of a suit filed by the Brighter Choice Foundation to block the imposition of the Labor Department mandates on construction and service contracts for charter schools.
?We recognize that charters schools possess some characteristics similar to a public entity,? wrote the court, but it concluded that ?[t]he Legislature created charter schools as `independent and autonomous public school[s]??
While admitting that ?the status of charter schools has often been difficult to define,? the decision concluded that ?charters ?are significantly less `public'? than traditionally defined public entities and therefore??do not fall within any of the? categories to which the prevailing wage law applies.?
Sweet.
Text of the?decision is here:
?Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
