City Councilman Andrew Liuzzo is entitled to his opinion regarding challenges to the Taylor Law and Triborough Amendment.

Liuzzo isn’t entitled to his own facts, though, particularly when it comes to Mayor Sam Teresi and his role in challenging the Taylor Law and Triborough Amendment.

Teresi has been quoted hundreds of times over the years begging for reform to the Taylor Law and Triborough Amendment, both in his role as Jamestown mayor and when he was president of the New York Conference of Mayors. The state’s existing stipulation that arbitration panels are supposed to take into account a municipality’s ability to pay an arbitration award is due in part to the incessant pleading by Teresi and his fellow mayors through NYCOM that the state needed to change the law. It’s not their fault that the state complied with their request with a law that is unclear and ineffective for municipalities. To say Teresi and NYCOM have done nothing about the Taylor Law and the Triborough Amendment is simply not true.

The mayor and the rest of Jamestown’s City Council have also chosen to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to the Taylor Law, the Triborough Amendment and the ineffectiveness of the state’s changes to the binding arbitration law. A few months ago, on Teresi’s recommendation, Democrats and Republicans on the City Council approved appealing the 2018 arbitration decision to give Kendall Club Police Benevolent Association members a 2 percent raise for 2016 and 2017. That appeal hinges on the interpretation of the ability to pay clause.

There was only one vote against appealing the arbitration award and the questioned section of the state’s binding arbitration law — and it came from Mr. Liuzzo.