Upstate needs reponsibility

splitting (4.00 / 2)

I still don't understand the reasoning behind not continuing Spitzer's frank treatment of upstate vs. downstate realities.  (Then again, who even understands Paterson anyway...)  Spitzer was moving toward what Diocletian did during the Roman Empire's crisis in the 3rd century: splitting the empire into two administrative halves instead of pretending it was all one happy family.

We do have barbarians a-lurk in the provinces... natural gas drilling companies, with an overtaxed local peasantry all too willing to acquiesce or actually throw in their lots with these Huns.  "Rome" (ie NY's political center, NYC) has already lost these people.  If you ask me, if the center of an empire cannot administer its own territory, to the point where the chief city's water supply might be threatened, then the whole system is declining, not just Upstate.

You make great points about needing to take responsibility -  though I'm sure you know that in politics, nobody ever does anything voluntarily before they are forced to.  Still, in the end when the smoke clears, practical local considerations take over and new local leaders do arise, and maybe some of them will have internalized ideas like yours.

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by: NYCO @ Sun Mar 28, 2010 at 22:00:00 PM UTC

correction (0.00 / 0)

Diocletian created four administrative areas, not two (that came later).

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by: NYCO @ Sun Mar 28, 2010 at 22:06:00 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

you have a friend of mine (4.00 / 2)

saying that he now aspires to be a "responsible barbarian".

No, I have no idea whatsoever Paterson was thinking when he rescinded the ESDC changes, except that he seems to think that the future of the state is Wall Street plus a back office that mysteriously stays in Upstate NY.  

(Cue boos from Buffalo bloggers re: back office; cue boos from everyone else who knows that there's no reason those back office jobs would actually come back to New York from the many places they are now.)

On the problem of politics, I'm actually more optimistic than that.  I tend to see the problems of office-holders primarily holding office as something that gets worse as competing becomes more difficult.  Locally I can point to a number of excellent people who do many things before they're forced to, and there are even a few in the federal level who try to stay at least a little ways ahead of being forced.

Breaking the state into smaller units would help with that, I think.  One thing I found especially interesting in Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great Cities was her call for strong districts, above the neighborhood but below the borough level.  She clearly didn't think much of the Board of Estimate and city-level government, but still had hope for the levels, especially the informal levels, below that.  I think something similar could apply to the state.

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by: simonstl @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 00:49:52 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Collapse (4.00 / 1)

At risk of having people misunderstand why I bring up the subject... thinking about political and social collapse can be useful in conducting calm, measured thought-experiments on what might happen to NYS in the future, and how to best survive it, and point your own local/regional political system toward where you want it to go.  This is a state within an overarching federal system... but so much of "The Empire State" as it developed through the late 18th through early 20 centuries presaged what America itself would become.  It's one of 50 states, but it's also a complex society unto itself (certainly, a political system unto itself) - perhaps more than most other states have a right to claim.  

I don't know if anyone here is familiar with Dmitry Orlov's "Reinventing Collapse."  It's about how Soviet citizens dealt with daily life and "daily politics" (i.e., looking out for their own interests) in a USSR that was quickly falling apart.  It is an entertaining read.  If you read this book with New York on your mind, many interesting parallels can be perceived.   And you might get a glimmer of how one's own local political emphasis has to change in order to survive the ongoing collapse of how things used to be.  How to get away from "central political planning" (i.e., NYC-based political planning, for us Democrats especially).

I'm not impressed by the usual arguments about "secession can't happen" because when these things happen, they happen.  They don't wait upon legalities or constitutionalities.  I'm sure it was against the constitution of the USSR for the republics to vote themselves control of the USSR's assets.  Yet it happened fairly quickly, didn't it?  When the game is over, it's over, no matter what a piece of paper says.  Particularly when there is no more money to pay the lawyers.

Now you that are a secessionist (or so I've heard), I can come out and say that I no longer believe that "Upstate" can be a coherent political entity in a collapsed New York State.  There will be a small handful of separate regional interests - WNY, North Country, pseudo-Appalachia, and so on - and a great deal of confusion (and predatory corporate interference, as we are seeing now with the hydrofracking issue).  To continue the Roman metaphor, I wish I could say we're a future France or Britain, but we're probably going to be a bunch of petty Italian princely states for the foreseeable future post-collapse.  Yet, even that potential future reality can be planned for and wisely dealt with.  Make sure you at least have enlightened princes, even if they're Machiavellian...

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by: NYCO @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 02:37:20 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

one more point (4.00 / 2)

Obviously, if NYC loses or cedes control over Upstate someday, the federal government moves in.  However, these days I tend to look at the federal government as only slightly less trustworthy than the corporate robber barons.  Being small and weak, Upstaters would need to make an enlightened decision on whose protection or "protection" best serves their immediate interest while they develop their own internal political scene.

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by: NYCO @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 02:43:21 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

no, we're not coherent (4.00 / 1)

Right now, "Upstate New York" exists as "the parts of New York State that don't comfortably owe their allegiance to New York City".  That's a pretty fractious place internally.

What does Clayton have in common with Deposit have in common with Buffalo have in common with Morrisville?

I could certainly see the Southern Tier, or large chunks of it, going with Pennsylvania.  The North Country might well talk with Vermont or decide it has its own interests.  Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse might all want to be city states, and the Mohawk Valley is its own place.  The Hudson Valley is another whole set of questions.

I liked the Electoral College Reform map's take on our area.  I'd be happy to be a resident of Erie.

Not that I see that happening either, but it's the most coherent such proposal I've seen in a while.  (Looking at its take on downstate is interesting too.)

I need to take a look at Orlov's book as well - haven't gotten there yet.

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by: simonstl @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 03:32:50 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Right (4.00 / 3)

I recall reading over at the YorkStater blog a comment from someone who said that New York is the most intensely regionalized state they've ever seen.  The only thing we all have in common is a strong distaste for New York City.  

What I do find interesting every time the secession idea comes up, it seems that the NYC proponents ignore that their water and a sizable percentage of their electricity comes from Upstate, while the Upstate proponents fail to consider economic factors.  

Both sides don't seem to acknowledge that besides the practical difficulties, creating new states leads to another can of worms when it comes to multi-state covenants and existing laws.  Just for example, there is no reason why a new constitution for "Upstate" would necessarily have the "forever wild" provision for the Forest Preserve.  

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by: Norbrook @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 12:42:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

difficulties are huge (0.00 / 0)

I put a rough description of negotiation challenges into a very fictional right-wing frame for Upstate 2050.  

The Adirondacks are a key challenge for that conversation, and raise similar problems for anything that would re-open the New York State Constitution.

And yes, we're extremely regional.  I don't think we're unique - California likely surpasses us in number of regions, though they're much larger.  Pennsylvania seems comparable, with the added fun of two major cities creating an extra polarity.

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by: simonstl @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 13:28:17 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It's not just the Adirondacks (4.00 / 1)

The "Forest Preserve" also includes the land the state has within the Catskill boundaries.  Much of that protects NYC's water supply.  So right there is a big problem. :D  About the state's regions, I think the key word is "intensely."  I have lived in other states, and I've never gotten the same "vibe" about the area of the state I lived in versus the others that I do here.  

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by: Norbrook @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 14:23:27 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

UUSR (4.00 / 2)

Union of Upstate Socialist Republics  :-)

(or so a Tea Partier might say)

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by: NYCO @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 15:04:10 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I'd be surprised (4.00 / 1)

if the watershed went with Upstate in any split, and I think that would also likely include the Catskill forest preserves.  

Not that I'm happy about it, exactly, but it's hard to imagine otherwise, especially if any sizable chunk of the Hudson Valley stayed with Downstate.

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by: simonstl @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 15:16:53 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

oh definitely (4.00 / 2)

the watershed would be kept down there as part of whatever political entity NYC became.  But you'd still probably have recalcitrant "native" people living on the watershed who'd have to be dealt with (starved out, to put it cynically) - which was the point of my own post below.  

(Gee, I sort of feel like making an instructional Flash video of this fictional fantasy/nightmare scenario.  Too bad I don't know Flash.)

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by: NYCO @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 16:58:06 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Orlov (4.00 / 2)

If you're interested in just a sampling of Orlov, this is a brief and very recent interview.

http://jutiagroup.com/2010/03/...

Would like to pull out one quote and apply it to Upstate:

Orlov:  In the United States what you see on television is the ultimate truth, and what you see when you are riding a city bus is just basically the result of you being unfortunate enough to have to ride a city bus.  Basically, if your life in America does not resemble what you see on television, that is your problem, because you are poor.

What Upstate has been told by everyone basically, is the same thing.  If your life in Upstate New York does not resemble what you see on television, that's Upstate's problem, because it is poor.  

That is to say, your problem is not that the structure of state government and state politics is throwing up obstacles in your way making it difficult for you to succeed.  The fault is that you are poor, that it's your attitude and something inherently wrong with you and your region; and therefore, you are going to forever have to rely on the charity of others, and to talk of a future that does not resemble the past (i.e. the same political structure we've "always" had) is crazy talk.

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by: NYCO @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 17:40:57 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Right (4.00 / 1)

One of the things I've seen is that there's often laws passed, and attendant regulations, that make sense from a NYC perspective.  They'd work inside the city, or its suburbs.  The problem often is that they don't make sense anywhere else, but we have to live with them anyways.  

Just to give an example - I used to have a "hobby" business here in this state.  It wasn't profitable, it wasn't even a source of income.  It took me several weeks to get all of paperwork (with attendant fees) filled out and approved to become "official."  Then there were the monthly, quarterly, and annual forms to be filed.  I ended up folding it a little over a year later.  It just wasn't worth it.  A few years later, I started a business in Colorado.  To become "official" took a 2-page form with a modest fee for the State, and a 1/2 page form with a very small fee for the city I lived in.  It took one day to do it.  I had to fill out a very short form when submitting my sales tax revenue each quarter, and another short form when submitting my state income tax payments.  In terms of time and cost, I'd much rather do business in Colorado than here in this state.  That's a sad statement right there.

 

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by: Norbrook @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 18:44:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The Tetrachy failed (0.00 / 0)

Diocletian's administrative change didn't last.  Rome was one and ended up being ruled by one man.  NY is one State and any split, even a symbolic one, not work.  As you stated in the original post, up-state needs NYC for its money and NYC needs up-state to keep NY State fully represented in Congress.

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by: teacherh @ Sun Mar 28, 2010 at 22:58:48 PM UTC

so... (4.00 / 2)

why is there no more Roman Empire, again?  :-)

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by: NYCO @ Sun Mar 28, 2010 at 23:04:23 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

uh, that's not what I said in the original post. (4.00 / 1)

I don't think Upstate (not up-state) needs NYC for its money - that money is actually a problem, not a benefit.

I have no clue what "NYC needs up-state to keep NY State fully represented in Congress" means.  We don't add Senators, and our House members aren't exactly the ones NYC would choose.  (Fortunately.)

NY has been drifting apart since about 1959, when the St.Lawrence Seaway made our uniting transportation corridor redundant and our parallel railroad systems fell apart.  

While I don't think the parts of the state can just divorce, at the very least some counseling and some recognition of differences is in order.  (Though I do think a divorce would be best for the reasons outlined here.)

I should probably acknowledge that I did like Governor Spitzer's One New York speech - but now I look back at that as one of many lost last chances, though there are more to come.  Few seemed to believe him at the time, and fewer now.

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by: simonstl @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 00:39:06 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

One of the other factors (4.00 / 2)

that I've been thinking about for a while, is that the major shift really happened in the 1970's.  Until that era, there was an economic and population parity with the City.  What happened was that we entered a recession, which was hitting the manufacturing economy of Upstate.  At the same time, NYC went bankrupt - or as close to it as possible, and was bailed out by the State.  That emergency caused a lot of hard feelings on the part of Upstate - they felt they were being asked to bail out the City, when the City's problems were due to its own mismanagement.  At the same time, politically, the focus shifted to NYC.

The problem is that the focus never shifted back.  As Upstate's economy has continued to spiral down - we've never really recovered from the recession of the '70's, there hasn't been any attention or serious effort from Albany (read:  NYC) to reverse that.  The mentality became "as long as New York City is doing well, the state is doing well."  

The issue is why the development of the Marcellus shale deposits is a "hot button" one.  It can be seen as one more attempt on the part of NYC to keep upstate poor, and concentrate their power.  That it's not a good thing for the Upstate area in the long run is getting lost because of the resentment.

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by: Norbrook @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 01:21:18 AM UTC

Yes, secession! (4.00 / 1)

The people in Albany couldn't even find their own districts with two hands and the instructions printed on the heel.  Albany has no idea how big this state is, nor how varied its needs.  The fools once proposed that some professors split their time between Plattsburgh and Potsdam!

But why stop at seceding from New York?  Why not secede from the US at the same time?  The rationale is simply "We take your tax money and we don't give anything back.  Just let us go."  Then, we turn upstate into a low-tax small-government financial haven.  We repeal all the stupid laws that have been imposed on us (e.g. low-flow toilets.  We're drowning in water, why do we have to have crappy toilets that are appropriate for California or Texas), and impose appropriate laws like "oh, hydrofracking?  Great, let's see your plan for treating the water ON SITE, and let's see a bond which you forfeit if you pollute your neighbor's land."  Remove the subsidy for nuclear power (power plants aren't liable for all their risk), wind power (required by NYS), solar power, and coal (coal ash is radioactive but not required to be treated as such), and we'll see which is the best.

Etc etc.  We're currently suffering under a huge deadweight regulatory load, which has a large public cost and a small private gain.  When A, B, C, and D each make a small private gain from the larger cost they impose on A, B, C, and D, they are all worse off, but solving that problem requires that each of them give up their small private gain at the same time.  There's practically no way to coordinate that, so the solution is to secede and restart with a clean slate.

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by: RussNelson @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 03:26:19 AM UTC

I fear you've mistaken our region (4.00 / 1)

for a libertarian paradise.  I've never gotten much sense that there's a broad movement of libertarians Upstate.  I do know a few very strong libertarians around Dryden and Ithaca, but the force of their personalities doesn't make up for their small quantity.

Actually, I suspect there are considerably more (and better-funded) libertarians Downstate.

The "let's secede from the US" movement seems to me likely to be even smaller.

On the bright side, I do feel another Upstate 2050 story coming on.

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by: simonstl @ Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 04:03:25 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

story (4.00 / 2)

Give us a heads-up when you post your new story.

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by: NYCO @ Tue Mar 30, 2010 at 22:57:49 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I for one feel connected (4.00 / 3)

Interesting post and discussion.  As an "upstater" who grew up in Saratoga Springs, with the Hudson being a rather prominent landmark / common denominator, the connection between upstate and downstate (Adirondacks --> NYC) has always felt rather natural, and not something I'd ever want to give up.

And while "western upstate" does feel a bit less connected (I went to lawschool out at Cornell, and certainly got this feeling at times), I'd point to the rich NYS settlement history as at least a strong background symbol that continues to explain why the state continues to make sense geographically.  I love the feeling you get as you drive westward, seeing all the greco roman town names, the railroad infrastructure, the canals, etc.  And there's something very powerful this, combined with that mid/late 19th c. industrial feel you get from the towns spread along I-90:  Amsterdam --> Utica --> Syracuse --> Rochester --> Syracuse --> Buffalo, and the gems around and in between (Seneca Falls, Ithaca, etc).  These were all made great by people to whom NYC played a central role (whether where they used to live, or where they immigrated through, etc).

Obviously times have changed, and it certainly feels like NYC, its suburbs, and LI is another planet compared to the rest of the state, but at the root there I still see the connection, and desperately want it to work.  I suppose this is wishful thinking, but I guess someone has to still do that :)

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by: warwick @ Tue Mar 30, 2010 at 04:22:37 AM UTC

There's always been a competition (4.00 / 1)

or "split" between the City and Upstate.  What linked us was what you think of as a landmark - water routes.  For quite some time, water travel was the only way to move large amounts of people and equipment rapidly.  Given that New York has the north-south corridor of the Hudson - then Lake George and Lake Champlain, a northern border with the St. Lawrence - linkage to much of eastern Canada and then to the Atlantic,  an east-west corridor with the Mohawk River, and later the Erie Canal, and two Great Lakes, you're looking at not just natural borders, you're looking  major transportation routes.  Access to resources - food, minerals, timber depended on them. Even the current Interstate system inside the state tends to follow the same routes.    

NYC didn't really play a "central role" in many of the people's thinking after one generation, for the most part.  If anything, the central role tended to be based on the industry and markets around the nearest cities. For example, Buffalo was a major city due to it's positioning on Lake Erie and the Erie Canal. That gave it easy access to iron ore from the west, coal from Pennsylvania, as well as grain from the west. That's what made it a major steel town. A lot of the markets for the cities you mention were to the west, or to the south, through various canals/rivers/lakes.  It's why NY tends to be so intensely regional - it's a hold-over from those days, of when the people in a given region more commonly considered where they lived and what centered around their effective "market."    

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by: Norbrook @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 03:38:18 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I have a similar sense of the history (4.00 / 1)

but I see too much breakdown over the last fifty years, as the largely 'natural' transportation-based connections faded.

Growing up in Corning, I wondered why we had all New York State stations on cable - WPIX and 2 other independent NYC stations, plus Elmira/NBC, Binghamton/CBS, Buffalo/ABC - with the one oddball exception being CHCH from Hamilton, Ontario.  There weren't any PA stations, though.

I knew our rail lines went to New York City and Buffalo, and that 17 went to New York City and Jamestown.  In lots of ways we seemed to be between New York City and someplace else.  The family that ran Corning Incorporated had New York City roots, and participated in New York City institutions, notably the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Except for the cable TV, though, all of those connections had been established in the 19th century and were fading.  I wrote about this breakdown a while ago, and I've not seen anything to convince me that the Empire State has a response.

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by: simonstl @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 12:46:07 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It depends a lot on the particular region (4.00 / 1)

I know that in the history of the Adirondacks, most of the early settlers (which really wasn't until the mid 1800's) didn't come from or through NYC.  Most came down from Canada - there's a lot of old family names that are French - and from Vermont.   The "connection to NYC" was mainly because of the Great Camps.  

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by: Norbrook @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 21:18:31 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Settlement patterns (4.00 / 2)

I always thought Upstate settlement was fairly straightforward - first a couple of waves of New Englanders after the Revolution, and then a century later, the ethnic immigrants from NYC.  But then I learned there was another wave that came up from Pennsylvania and I believe these people founded Rochester, if I'm not mistaken.  

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by: NYCO @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 13:46:32 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Penn Yan (4.00 / 1)

is a shortening of Pennsylvania and Yankee, apparently based on the settlers who lived there.

Western New York and the Southern Tier seem to have a lot more early Pennsylvania influence.  Early Dryden history is all settlers from New England or eastern NY.

I'd love to see something like "Albion's Seed", which looked at English regional patterns transplanted to America, done for New York.

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by: simonstl @ Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 14:55:02 PM UTC

[ Parent ]