New York State legislators have spent at least the past few decades gerrymandering, allowing the Assembly majority to draw district lines for the Assembly, while the Senate majority draws lines for the Senate. Unsurprisingly, we end up with legislative lines badly tilted toward the parties that drew them.
County Legislator Michael Lane was the voice of sanity at that forum, and I'm delighted to see that he's continued to press the issue as LATFOR - the joint legislative committee managing the deals, I mean districting - is holding hearings. In his closing, he even used the accurate word that legislators least like to hear: corrupt.
I would conclude by saying that the current process is undemocratic. Let's do it the right way. If this Task Force, or the Legislature as a whole, recommends districts in the old corrupt fashion, then I hope the Governor will keep his word and veto them. It would not be pretty and court actions might have to come into play. Whatever occurs, it is definitely time that self-serving partisan gerrymandering come to an end. Make it happen.
I've posted his whole statement below the fold, which includes notes on Tompkins County's own redistricting as well as the way the county is treated for congressional and state legislative redistricting.
[I do not have any insider knowledge of conversations in Albany and Washington.]
Over the last few months, I've concluded that our federal and state governments don't seem especially inclined to regulate fracking (hydraulic fracturing) in drilling for oil and gas.
The Obama administration can't seem to say enough good about natural gas, whatever the source, while New York State seems to be shambling toward a July 1 release of the Supplement Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) on fracking, with a 30-day comment period and a likely shorter review to follow. Despite the Pennsylvania blowout, it doesn't sound like the Governor is looking for much delay. The Assembly held hearings last week, but I've not heard much from the Senate about moratoriums or bans lately.
This approach, combined with the regulation likely to be in the SGEIS, opens up some possibilities, though I'm not sure either the gas companies or the environment will feel protected by them:
Allowing municipalities to zone out hydrofracking will make it easy for places that obviously don't need the risks of drilling - cities and villages - to ban the practice.
Allowing municipalities to permit hydrofracking will make it easy for places that are chomping at the bit for drilling to allow the practice.
Places that have a mix of both will continue to have controversies, but at the local level.
In the short run, my guess is that most of the Southern Tier except perhaps the cities and a few towns will support hydrofracking and gripe that the state gets in the way of economic development by regulating it at all. Other areas will be more cautious, especially the more tourism-dependent parts of the Finger Lakes, Cooperstown (if the Baseball Hall of Fame and Chamber of Commerce are an indicator), and, perhaps most difficult of all, the watersheds for New York City and possibly Syracuse and Rochester.
I can't bring myself to say that this is a great idea. I've watched the mining industries' for too long to think they value the environment nearly as much as their advertising claims. I have less and less faith in the federal government's interest in regulating them, especially as the easy oil and gas disappear. And Albany, well... it's probably better thought of as a bazaar than a courtroom.
However, this does seem like a way to break the logjam. I definitely consider it an improvement on having the state start issuing permits while denying municipalities any power to regulate where fracking happens. Some activists - not the most committed, but some - would likely step aside so long as drilling couldn't happen in their own area. It's at least theoretically possible that municipal-level bans would give gas companies working in the open areas an incentive not to spill, because a clean record might encourage more towns to open up to them.
Of course, they might rely instead on recipes of lawyers and pouring money into local elections. The drilling companies, after all, have a relentless focus on extraction, while maintaining local resistance requires a lot of time and energy that won't sustain a business.
Albany could turn a different direction, but while I don't love this compromise, I do suspect it would take pressure off legislators and the Governor - which always seems to be their goal. It feels a classically New York solution combining regulation (understaffed as it may likely be), placing burdens on local government (political instead of financial this time), and nods in the direction of economic development for Upstate New York, however temporary it may be.
So it's been about three weeks since we last had this conversation, but once again we have to take action to try to keep Social Security from being the victim of "deficit fever".
I know that doesn't make a lot of sense, considering the disconnect between Social Security and the deficit-but once again it's "Continuing Resolution" time on Capitol Hill, where some use the threat of an impending shutdown of the Federal Government to extract concessions from the other side...and some on the other side try to make points with the voters by out-conceding their opponents.
So Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, there's a national push on to get voters to call their Senators and remind them to vote for an Amendment that is a big ol' "I'm not willing to cut Social Security just because other people philosophically want to cut Government any way they can" kind of reassurance to the voters, and I'm here to encourage you, once again, to make a couple phone calls and do some pushing of your own.
I've also been storing up a couple somewhat facetious random thoughts which will be the "garnish" for today's dish; you'll see them pop up as we go along.
We are coming down to the end of the 111th Congress, and we are all surprised that a number of things actually got done: a nuclear arms reduction treaty appears to be on the verge of approval, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was repealed; we have new health care and financial reforms (admittedly, they're imperfect solutions, but...), food safety reform, a better way to do student loans, and a credit card reform act that's forcing issuers to spend thousands of labor hours to develop new and better ways to work over consumers.
And yet there is one important bit of legislation that is still being blocked by Republicans, and, amazingly enough, it's a bill that would provide health care and compensation for those people who ran down to the World Trade Center site on September 11th, and for months thereafter, in the effort to rescue and recover victims, and to restore normal operations in the city after the attack.
Yes, folks, you heard me correctly: the Party of waving flags and "Second Amendment solutions" and tri-cornered hats and Rudy ("noun, verb, 9/11") Giuliani is now engaged in a desperate battle to screw over the very 9/11 first responders that you would think they would be...well, putting up on a stage somewhere next to Rudy Giuliani.
New York didn't have as large a Republican blast as was felt in many states, but I also can't find a great listing of how much changed below the statewide races where Democrats won the field.
In the House, I see us having lost:
NY-1 Tim Bishop (maybe, new)
NY-13 Michael McMahon (Thanks for noticing, GallatinDan)
NY-19 John Hall
NY-20 Scott Murphy
NY-24 Mike Arcuri NY-25 Dan Maffei (Maybe)
NY-29 was Eric Massa, but empty
In the State Senate, it looks like we picked up Avella and Carlucci, but lost:
3 - Brian Foley 7 - Craig Johnson (Maybe) 37 - Suzi Oppenheimer (Very maybe)
48 - Darrel Aubertine 60 - Antoine Thompson (Maybe)
The closest I can find to an overview of Assembly results is this Times-Union piece, which suggests that the 100-vote veto-proof majority is in question. "The Democrats lost at least seven seats" and the 1st, 89th, 100th, 109th, and 121st were in the absentee range.
Any more detail on which seats changed hands there?
Well, I went to bed discouraged about the NYS Senate, and woke up to slightly better news. I am not finding a better results page than the NY Times, which does not give a lot of detail. Not a lot of detail is needed, however, to tell that what we have is a very closely divided house, whichever way the chips (as in, absentee ballots and last few precincts) fall.
Of course, I am with Jay Jacobs hoping that we narrowly hold onto our majority. But, I also see the danger in that. Whichever party ends up holding the narrowest of majorities in the NYS Senate is going to be vulnerable to the kind of foot-stomping tantrums by individual legislators that plagued the body in recent times. With any luck, it will NOT be as bad and blatant as Espada the embarrassment. But, you may recall that Thompson-- apparently aware that he had an eroding base back home-- almost stamped his feet into privatizing our SUNY system and putting it in the business of real estate speculation. Which I am sure would have had no capacity for corruption or anything....
Now is the time for Democratic reformers to INSIST on a new kind of party discipline. Not the kind that ensures that, say, the Aqueduct video gambling franchise goes to Floyd Flake's buddies. Rather, the kind that upholds the sanctity of small-d democracy, and requires the conference to negotiate for the good of ALL NYS.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I am an idealist. It is ideals, and discipline, that will keep NYS Democrats strong.
Dover, Delaware (FNS)-Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell shocked the crowd at a Delaware political breakfast meeting when she announced that she has changed her thinking about masturbation following a weekend bathtub "incident".
Spike Fromula, O'Donnell's press secretary, explained to the press gaggle today that O'Donnell now realizes that it is possible to "masturbate without lust in your heart" after Saturday night's revelatory event, which Fromula described as a "slip and fall episode".
"It wasn't exactly 'The Passion of the Showerhead'" said Fromula, in a reference to her former work as a marketing consultant to the Mel Gibson movie of a similar name, "but there is no doubt that her thinking on the issue has evolved".
For many who watched the NY Senate's session yesterday, the relatively uneventful passing of the second-latest-ever state budget was the coda to a long, frustrating session of a government that can't seem to get its job done. As Roatti correctly pointed out, the decision to stop counting prisoners in their location of incarceration is the most momentous aspect of the budget bill...
However, the Senate did continue its very-late August session beyond the budget bill, considering some policy that had been relatively contentious during the preceding six or seven months. The way in which two issues debated-- farmworker rights and protection from unconventional gas drilling methods(commonly referred to as hydrofracking)-- were handled is particularly interesting to those of us who believe that process reform is essential if NY is to have a legislature that is able to govern effectively. The processes by which these two issues were brought forward could not have been more different. Which kind of governance works? Which kind of governance do we want?
For those who did not watch (btw, remote access to Senate floor debate is AWESOME-- NY Assembly, where are you?!?), a recap is over the jump.
Yesterday, Governor Paterson called a special session of the Legislature to deal with the budget that is currently months overdue. So what did our legislative leaders do? They held a session. With a total of 9 minutes in session for both houses. In case you're counting, that broke down to six minutes for the Assembly and three minutes for the Senate.
We already knew that the rank-and-file members of each house are meaningless cogs in the leadership's backdoor power machine, but this is just a slap in the face to the voters of this state.
Shame on Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Conference Leader John Sampson for not even bothering to pretend that the governing institutions of our state are functioning. And shame on each and every member of both houses for allowing this situation to exist.
While we've all been busy watching the "oil spill live cam", a similar uncontrolled discharge has been taking place in Washington, DC
In this case, however, it's lobbyists that are spilling all over the landscape as the House and Senate attempt to merge their two visions of financial reform.
They're trying desperately to influence the outcome of the conference in which House and Senate negotiators have been engaged; this to craft the exact language of the reconciled legislation.
There's an additional element of drama hovering over the events as eight House members, including one of the most vocal of the Republican negotiators, face ethics questions related to this very bill.
The best part: if you're enough of a political geek, you can actually watch the events unfold, unedited and unfiltered, from the comfort of your very own computer.
So far, it's been amazing political theater, and if you follow along I'll tell you how you can get in on the fun, too.
Netroots Nation will be in Las Vegas in just a few weeks; with that in mind we are going to play "piano bar" and fulfill a couple of requests, one today and one tomorrow, from folks who would like to bring a couple of things to your attention.
Today's topic: climate change.
As you know, there is a lot of legislation floating around Capitol Hill that would begin to use some sort of market-based mechanism to reduce the amount of carbon we emit.
None of it will move unless it moves through the Senate, and today, that's what we'll be talking about.
I just watched as the Senate voted 34-27 to accept the budget extender bill and keep state workers on the job, etc. It was a bit ominous-- as Ruben Diaz was, again, wielding a lot of power. He voted against the extender bill; luckily, 3 Republicans (Farley, Fuschillo, McDonald) voted yes.
Now, tell me, what does that mean, exactly, for important bills hanging, like the hydrofracking moratorium? What will happen if there is still no budget next week?
Those who are regular visitors to this space know that I post stories across the country, and to do that I have to follow stories from a number of states.
Because I post at Kentucky's Hillbilly Report, I've been paying particular attention to the Rand Paul campaign, and the news from the Bluegrass State (via "The Rush Limbaugh Show") is that Paul's planning to write his own balanced budget proposal for the Federal Government.
But there's a catch.
He doesn't plan on doing it until after the election.
Well, now, why in the world would a guy who's running for office based on his really good ideas want to hold back the best one?
That's not a bad question, and if we make the effort we can probably figure out the most likely answers.
The latest Siena poll of NY-Sen finds that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has her highest favorability ratings, for that poll, and that she's above 50 percent against the three announced GOP candidates, also for the first time.
Her favorability number is 42, up from 34 in April.
Gillibrand's solid voting record, plus her leadership on issues like DADT and children's health and safety, is impressing more New Yorkers every month.
It's not exactly a big secret that among the Senators who need to be replaced in the interest of what amounts to political hygiene, Brooklyn Republicrat Carl Kruger is at or near the top of the list. After years of colluding with the then-republican Senate majority, he may have finally crossed the last bright line in his 2009 vote against marriage equality.
"I'm not intimidated, although I'm a first time candidate," Oberman said. "When my candidacy really rolls out, the defining moment will not come from Carl Kruger's big bankroll, but on September 14 when the people make a choice."
As of his January filing, Kruger has $2.2m in his campaign account, an amount sure to be swelled by any number of backscratchers.
What might make this challenge different from the usual tilting at windmills that is any New York primary campaign against incumbents is the confluence of two factors: one, the 27th Senate district is the largest Russian community in the United States, and two, the sheer fury of the LGBT community at Kruger over his abject betrayal on equality.
And given that gay dollars made the difference in getting the Democrats their majority, this is not a threat that Kruger should take lightly. However, it appears that that is precisely what he's doing.
"He wants to run for something and get it out of his system," Kruger said. "But I've never met him and don't know his view of the world."
"I don't know of one organization, one issue, one scintilla of community involvement he can lay claim to," Kruger said. "I'm Carl Kruger. I'm the state senator."
The Child Victims Act (A.2596) was pulled from the legislative calendar on June 23, 2009 as Assembly leaders found they did not have enough votes to pass it. This bill would have extended the statute of limitations from 5 to 10 years for childhood sexual-abuse victims to bring cases against their abusers. A.2596 would have also created a one year window from the time the bill was enacted that would have allowed anyone to file a claim alleging sex abuse, no matter how old the victim now was or how long ago the alleged act occurred. After the one year period ended, the statute of limitations period would have reverted to the expanded 10 year period.
In the past few weeks, more and more information is coming to light about the role the leaders of the Catholic Church have played in their efforts to conceal abuse by pedophile priests and protect them from prosecution, thus maintaining the Church's reputation and good standing.
In light of these new revelations, it is time for the NY state legislature to revisit A.2596 and finally give the victims of the sexual abuse and systematic cover-up their day in court to face their abusers.
In case there was any doubt that the June coup was only about pork and power, an article in today's Daily News makes it completely clear. The June coup wasn't an ethical stand by Republicans; it was a power-grab by a disaffected minority that handed control to a corrupt Bronx machine politician in exchange for pork and power.
Senate Republicans added 98 new taxpayer-funded positions, bringing the total to 420, and granted raises to a host of others, Dems charge. In addition, Republicans created the new office of GOP Minority Policy Development, which has four people and costs $260,000, Senate records show.
Senate Republicans are on pace to spend $17.5 million, a jump of about $3.5 million from the $14 million that was available before the botched takeover.
Let's not forget that the ethics law "passed" by the Senate Republicans was a meaningless gesture of half-hearted reform. And let's also not forget that the day of the coup was the same day that the Senate was to vote on earmarks and Malcolm Smith put forward a plan denying Pedro Espada the allocations for his infamous Soundview health facility. Of course after Pedro came back to the Democratic fold, those earmarks magically found their way back into the member items.
Our state is run by a cabal of greedy individuals looking to pay back their friends, employ their family, and line their own pockets. The continued abuse of member items and the length to which the Senate Republicans went to snatch back power from the elected majority goes to show how important that pork spending is to New York Senators. We've lost any notion of a meritocracy, where money is handed out to projects and people that have earned the support of government. We need a new system where member items are split between both parties equally and closely scrutinized to avoid throwbacks to campaign contributors. We also need a fair system for creating Senate jobs, to avoid situations just
The day may be fast approaching when some animals will have greater labor protections than tens of thousands of New York State's farm workers.
The city Health Department has proposed rules that would mandate five weeks of vacation per year for carriage horses, plus limits on daily hours of work and upgraded stable facilities.
The people who plant and harvest our food should only be so lucky.
When the National Labor Relations Act first passed in 1935, farm workers were excludes from the bill so that FDR could garner support from rural Senators. The campaigns of Caesar Chavez for farm worker rights fought at the state level to give rights to farmworkers through state government. In New York advocates have continued to fight for a Bill of Rights for farmworkers. With new developments and new commitments from state leaders, we may fast be approaching the day where farm workers will possess the rights of other private sector employees to organize, collectively bargain, and receive overtime pay.
Advocates and supports in Albany have dubbed the proposal the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act . The bill models itself after most other labor laws in the state and the country and provides a legal framework to provide labor rights for farmworkers. Notably it provides farmworkers the right to organize and collectively bargain, sets a standard for overtime pay for overtime hours, creates a disability insurance provision for workers, and a guaranteed day off per week. These are standard rights of workers that have largely been in place for private sector employees since the New Deal.
Unfortunately there has been a great deal of push-back from the Farm Bureau and the farm owners community.
Tim Bigham, area field advisor for the New York Farm Bureau, described several aspects of the bill as "anti-business," saying farm owners, especially the smaller ones, simply won't be able to afford them.
Bigham said a main concern is a provision requiring forced payment of overtime rates to workers who are on the job longer than eight hours per day. Bigham argued that farm work should continue to be exempt from such overtime provisions because, by its nature, it is seasonal work, requiring individuals to put in longer hours during warm weather when work can actually be done. Such items, Bigham said, could drive up costs for area farmers, many of whom are struggling financially as it is. source
With an eye to compromise, advocates recently announced a variety of changes to the bill to mollify the concerns of the Bigham, the Farm Bureau and small farm owners throughout the state. The changes provide substantial compromises while guaranteeing protection to workers in great need of better working conditions. The new proposal makes the following changes:
-Collective bargaining protections are limited to workers on farms with sales exceeding $500,000-exempting over 95% of New York farms and covering only agribusinesses.
- The overtime threshold (i.e. the number of hours of straight pay before time-and-a-half kicks in) is increased from 40/week and 8/day to 60/week (55/week beginning in 2013) and 10/day, and on the 7th consecutive work day.
- Only 1.5 times the minimum wage for workers paid by piece-rate will be required for overtime hours, rather than 1.5 times the worker's regular rate .
- Existing unemployment tax liability on guestworker wages is eliminated entirely, resulting in $1 million or more in annual savings for New York farmers.
-Small farms are allowed continued exemption from workers compensation and unemployment insurance tax liabilities.
-"Family" is defined as broadly as possible and exempted from coverage under the Act
These are substantial reductions in the overall effect of the Act. 95% of farms will be exempt. Overtime thresholds are pushed back. Overtime wage scales are lowered. The most important thing, however, is that the bill has met the concerns of small farm owners and will provide rights to those in desperate need of protection. Farmworker advocates took a major step to unilaterally meet the concerns of the Farm Bureau.
Can we expect the bill to pass now? As Reverend Richard Witt of the Justice for Farmworkers Campaign stated, "We hope that all interested parties will now act in good faith as New York takes this major step toward justice and equality for all workers." Opponents of the bill have a duty to act in good faith and work with worker advocates to pass a bill that provides workers protections they deserve. We are closer to a bill then we've ever been. Now is the time to pass the bill and bring farm working conditions into the 20th (let alone the 21st) century.
The Labor Committee is expected to meet next week and discuss the bill. Expect to hear more as it comes in...
Note: I am proud to work as a new media volunteer for the Justice for Farmworkers Campaign. The views expressed in this piece are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Justice for Farmworkers Campaign.
It's fairly predictable that Harold Ford will try to remake his image to better appeal to New York Democrats. In fact he's already started to do so, albeit in fairly small steps. Ford made sure to say that if he had his way on the health care bill, the Stupak amendment would be out.
"He wants to improve the health care bill so he can vote for it, addressing the concerns of Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Paterson, so New York gets its fair share, removing anti-abortion language, and protecting more small businesses from mandates," Goldin said.
source
This is not a major step because opposing the Stupak amendment does not make someone pro-choice. However the entire statement is a clear pander at New York voters. Not only is Ford supporting the choice lobby here, he's specifically supporting New York interests over a more fiscally conservative bill. But the pro-choice language here is a complete shift in the rhetoric of Harold Ford.
Ford supporters will predictably say that Senator Gillibrand also shifted her rhetoric and her record as a Senator does not match her record as a Congresswoman. While Gillibrand has softened her stance on certain issues, there is nothing inherently inconsistent with her major stances. Senator Gillibrand always stood up for woman's rights and LGBT rights. The change of heart that Harold Ford needs to undergo to be competitive in New York just won't be as convincing. It will be the biggest "change of heart" that New York has even seen.
