Albany

Kathy Sheehan is really the mayor now. The honeymoon is over.

The job seems like a pretty sweet gig when everything is smiles and candy, when you're newly elected and still breaking in that stately corner office, when the toughest and biggest decisions are yet to be made.

But you're really the mayor when the heckling starts, when an influential group realizes a difficult decision is going to hit them in the wallet. That's where Sheehan is now, nearly 11 months into her first year on the job.

I'm talking, of course, about her plan to close Ladder No. 1 in the city's impoverished South End, a move that would keep taxpayers from having to pay $1.2 million in overtime.

It's a gutsy proposal. Certainly, it would have been easier to look elsewhere for savings.

For one, the cut targets a popular group of city employees — firefighters who put their lives on the line to protect us from harm. Two, it affects a station in a neighborhood where residents are understandably suspicious they'll bear the brunt of service cuts.

But if you've been paying attention to the city's budget crisis — or if you've seen its property tax bills — you know that Albany desperately needs someone to make tough and even unpopular decisions. Jerry Jennings wouldn't do it in his final two years. This new mayor will.

"We have to make operational changes and identify savings," Sheehan told me during an interview in her City Hall office Monday morning. "We can't keep doing things the way we've been doing them."

Sheehan, a former city treasurer, all but drowned me in a sea of budget numbers. I never heard Jennings talk that way, but he was a very different mayor with a very different set of skills.

From Sheehan's perspective, shuttering Ladder No. 1 is a no-brainer, because there aren't enough firefighters to staff it without big overtime costs — and haven't been since reductions that took place under Jennings. The move won't affect response times, she says, or the safety of residents in the South End.

And yes, Fire Chief Warren Abriel agrees.

But to listen to the Albany Permanent Professional Firefighters Union, which is loudly mobilizing against the change, you'd think that the cut would put residents of the South End in imminent danger. You also might think Sheehan and Abriel, a fourth-generation firefighter, are being intentionally negligent toward some of the city's poorest residents.

Sheehan uses one adjective above others to describe the union's language: irresponsible.

"Firefighters are out there telling people that they're not going to be safe, and that's just patently wrong," Sheehan said, thumping fingers on her desk to emphasize the point.

It's important to remember what Sheehan's budget doesn't do, despite having to overcome a $16 million budget deficit. It doesn't shutter fire stations. It doesn't cut firefighter jobs, or the position of any city employee. It doesn't touch benefits or pensions.

It does, however, eliminate a piece of firefighter overtime. Call me cynical, but I think that's the union's real concern.

OK, fine. The union is certainly within its prerogative. But its leaders should be honest about their campaign, rather than scaring people into thinking they'll be in danger.

It's telling, by the way, that union President Bob Powers is responding to Sheehan's proposal by calling for five new firefighters — which, of course, would mean more insurance and pension costs for a city that's struggling with existing insurance and pension costs.

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It's like trying to fight a fire with gasoline. It won't work.

Still, the union's campaign is swaying some members of the Common Council. So I asked Sheehan what would happen if the council refuses to go along with the proposed cut.

The mayor didn't want to play along with the hypothetical. She'd said she'd keep working toward getting the council and city residents to understand why it makes sense to shutter Ladder No. 1.

Then, she reframed the issue. The ultimate goal is to bring jobs and investment to places like the South End, she said, and that won't happen until Albany embraces a new fiscal reality. City officials, she added, have to commit "to what will bring real opportunity to these neighborhoods."

This budget fight, then, will tell us much about where Albany is headed. Certainly, it's the biggest test of Sheehan's tenure so far.

The honeymoon is over, and the mayor is ready to make difficult decisions. Who's with her?