The ink was barely dry on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s local government “restructuring” bill yesterday when the governor made two more concessions to unions on the issue of binding arbitration.

As explained here yesterday, the agreed-upon legislation is weaker and likely to be much less effective than Cuomo’s original proposal for capping police and firefighter pay and benefit increases under an arbitration system that has played a major role in pushing municipal compensation costs to unaffordable and unsustainable levels.

Governor’s Program Bill #21, as posted on his website late yesterday morning, would have expired in 2015 — a political off-year.  Legislative sources said the unions were pushing for a later expiration date. The original bill also contained one important loophole for unions in its final paragraph; while the effective date is retroactive to April 1, the new language would not apply to any contract dispute referred to the Public Employment Relations Board for arbitration before June 14 — i.e., last Friday, the last business day before the bill was filed.

Later in the day, however, the governor’s office substituted Program Bill #21R, containing two changes to the original: pushing the expiration date out one more year, to 2016 (which is both a legislative and presidential election year), and adding language that says the law also will not apply to disputes that resulted in a “declaration of impasse” (the step before an arbitration petition) before June 14.