Colby Hamilton

Governor Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday that he’d use his veto pen to strike approximately $640,000 of what he called “new member items” inserted into his original budget by the legislature.

Like a sequel to a horror movie most people never saw in the first place, New York’s redistricting saga continues to play out in court rooms and administrative offices from Washington, DC and Albany.

Even before Governor Andrew Cuomo signed off on a compromised redistricting agreement with state legislators—which was ...

State Sen. Adriano Espaillat's decision to challenge Rep. Charlie Rangel most certainly came down to the rise of a singular culture in the district, which is now 55 percent Hispanic.

Most New Yorkers say the state is headed in the right direction, according to the latest Siena College poll. Of the voters surveyed, 55 percent said New York is on the right track--the highest percentage to say so in the seven-year history of Siena polls.

Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is in solid shape for her re-election campaign, which reported $9.1 million on hand. At the same time polls show that New York's junior senator c...

The contest between Republican David Storobin and Democratic City Councilman Lew Fidler — now more than two weeks after the March 20 special election to fill the seat vacated by dis...

They might not like his methods, but they like him.

In the latest Quinnipiac poll of New York voters, Governor Andrew Cuomo continues his stratospheric approval streak, with 68 percent of those polled approving of the way Cuomo is doing his job. He was one point shy of his all-time ...

At what point does something become ritual? In reporting we have this maxim that tells us when something has moved on from random to rote: one, two, trend.

But in Albany, at least, doing something twice can feel like a quantum leap into the new inevitable. That’s the way legislative ...

Today on "The Capitol Pressroom":

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos on the budget agreement and his priorities for the rest of session.

Tim Kremer of the New York State School Boards Association checks in.

Senator Pat Gallivan of Western New York discusses both school aid and his bill on the Scaffold Law.

Governor Andrew Cuomo took a moment to applaud the $22 million Adirondack Club & Resort deal in the Town of Tupper Lake during a conference call on Wednesday. But not everyone is a fan of the deal. Today we will be joined by attorney Bob Glennon of Protect the Adirondacks and Charlie Morrison of the Sierra Club. They are suing the Adirondack Park Agency (which they say has “become a rogue agency”), the DEC and the developer of the Adirondack Club and Resort.

For show archives, please visit The Capitol Bureau's website here.

State lawmakers are in Albany this week to pass the agreed-upon budget finalized by legislative leaders and Governor Andrew Cuomo. The $133 billion budget impacts many facets of life in New York, and probably none greater than the City of New York. Lawmakers from the Big Apple explained the impact some of the key pieces of this year’s budget will have on the city.

The whole host of Democrats running for Congress in the new Queens 6th Congressional District had something to say about Republican Councilman Dan Halloran's entrance in the race this week.

Today on "The Capitol Pressroom":

Economic development is the centerpiece of the newly agreed-upon budget. Governor Andrew Cuomo will discuss some of the plans with us on the show.

Then, reaction to the budget agreement.

We begin with Stephen Acquario of the New York State Association of Counties on the Governor’s plans for mandate relief and a state takeover of Medicaid.

There is new money in the budget as well as a new 3-year Foreclosure Prevention plan that Kirsten Keefe of the Empire Justice Center will have details about.

Not everyone is pleased with the plan – advocates for education like Billy Easton of the Alliance for Quality Education say policies in Albany are making educating our children less effective rather than more.

For show archives, please visit The Capitol Bureau's website here.

By Karen DeWitt, New York State Public Radio Capital Bureau Chief

The seemingly recession proof business of lobbying grew once again in New York last year. The state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics found a total of $220 million was spent to influence the Governor and members of the legislature.

In particular, JCOPE found that a lobbying group closely associated with the Governor’s policies, The Committee to Save New York, was the biggest spender in 2011. The group, made up of business interests, financed nearly $12 million worth of lobbying and advertising campaigns.

In second place, is the health care workers union SEIU 1199, which spent nearly $7 million dollars on lobbying. Most of the largest lobbying clients were health care or education concerns.

Also on the top ten lobbying expenditure list: Wal-Mart and New Yorkers United for Marriage. The state approved same-sex marriage in June of last year.

Among the highest paying clients: the gambling conglomerate Genting, which wants to expand the Aqueduct race track’s gambling capacity, and Rudin Management, a major real estate firm.

The top lobbying firms include many with ties to government leaders. For example the firm of the Assembly Speaker’s former press secretary, Patricia Lynch Associates, netted nearly $8 million dollars form lobbying clients.

The report can be read here:  http://www.jcope.ny.gov/pubs/annualreport2011/2011%20Annual%20Report.pdf

 

Governor Andrew Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos announced Tuesday that a final agreement has been reached on this year’s $133 billion budget. It marks the second year in a row the state’s budget has come in balanced and before the deadline.

"For the second straight year, New York State has worked and created a balanced budget based on fiscal responsibility, job creation, government efficiency, and the premise that we must invest in our communities," Cuomo said in a statement announcing the final agreement.

The final agreement comes a week after Cuomo and the legislative leaders agreed to a number of the Governor’s policy items, including the creation of a new DNA databank, an agreement on teacher evaluations and a scaled back version of the pension reform he outlined in his budget proposal. The deal also saw new state legislative districts, drawn by the legislature, passed alongside an agreement to push forward a constitutional amendment to change the decennial redistricting process beginning in 2021.

This year’s budget closed the remaining $2.1 billion budget gap left over after last year’s tax restructuring, which left higher income earners paying more but helped reign in an initial gap of $3.5 billion. The final budget limits spending growth to two percent, while investing in infrastructure job programs, restoring education aid, and eliminating or consolidating dozens of government agencies.

“This agreement puts us in a position to deliver another early budget that controls spending and taxes, and builds on the bipartisan successes we achieved last year,” Skelos said in the statement.

“This budget includes much needed increases in education spending, including an increase in base aid for community colleges for the first time in five years, and vital restorations to programs that protect our state’s neediest citizens,” said Silver in the statement.

Some of the budget highlights include:

The cast of characters is assembled. Republican City Councilman Dan Halloran’s official announcement yesterday that he is running for Congress in the new 6th District in Queens capped a week or so of campaign launches. Unless a Republican challenger emerges, Halloran will face whichever of the three Democrats pulls out a win in this year’s sprint of a primary race.

“I am running for Congress because the president and the Democrats’ policies have failed, and New Yorkers need a new voice,” Halloran said in a statement announcing his campaign’s launch. “Democrats in Washington, led by President Obama, have spent us into financial ruin. They have failed to grow our economy and have led us deep into a harrowing recession. And they have thumbed their nose at Israel, calling for a return to its 1967 borders and showing an unwillingness to stand up to our mutual enemy, Iran, who wishes to destroy us. My Democratic opponents are nothing but a rubber stamp for this president’s failed leadership.”

Halloran was first elected to the city council in 2009 after a campaign that took some interesting as well as ugly terms. Halloran has been called a "pagan" after reports connected him to a group that worshiped Nordic and Germanic gods. Halloran was also accused of race baiting white voters against his Korean rival, Democrat Kevin Kim.

There’s a decent chance Halloran could again face an Asian candidate from the Flushing area. The early Democratic frontrunner is Assemblywoman Grace Meng. Last week Meng received the backing of the Queens County Democratic organization. This week she officially launched her campaign, listing a large number of Queens Democrats as supporters.

At least from the statements from the campaigns, it looks like Halloran and Meng arepicking up where now-Congressman Bob Turner and Assemblyman David Weprin left off in their special election last September. Republicans appear to want to continue to make the the race about Obama and, in a heavily Jewish district, Israel. Democrats—at least those around Meng—lead with House Republicans’ fiscal combativeness and attacks on the social safety net in Meng’s statement on Halloran entering the race:

Today on "The Capitol Pressroom":

Legislative leaders were in high gear last night: With a Saturday midnight budget deadline starting them in the face, they got down to business, hammering out agreements on infrastructure spending; a new broadly defined commission on gambling and gubernatorial power to transfer money from one agency to another. Newsday’s Albany Bureau Chief Yancey Roy joins us with an update on where things stand.

Then, what will NOT be in the budget? Legislation to create a health care marketplace in New York. Blair Horner of the American Cancer Society will share his thoughts on what that could mean for New York as we head deeper into health care reform.

General Contractors are thrilled by the money that will be spent on transportation infrastructure. Mike Elmendorf, President & CEO of the New York State Association of General Contractors will have reaction.

Plus, Senator Liz Kruger and Senator Bill Perkins, both Democrats, want a bill currently sitting in the Senate Codes committee to be pulled off the shelf. The bill authorizes the use of deadly force in self-defense. Senate Dems say that in light of the Trayvon Martin shooting tragedy the bill invites vigilantism.

For show archives, please visit The Capitol Bureau's website here.

For a while, the conversation around pensions has primarily been focused on the cost and risk public pensions present to their fiscal backstops, the taxpayers. During this year’s budget negotiations Governor Andrew Cuomo pushed for changes to the system for future public employees. They were needed, he said, because New York’s state and local governments could not afford the system as-is. He was at least partially successful.

Now, the man in charge of the city’s pension system, Comptroller John Liu, wants to change the focus on pensions, from the debate over their sustainability to a wider discussion about retirement security, and the positive role public pension funds could play.

On Monday, Liu joined Dr. Teresa Ghilarducci, director of the New School’s Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, to promote an idea they say could help the 60 percent or so of New Yorkers currently without a retirement plan by allowing them to buy into the public pension system.

Today on "The Capitol Pressroom":

A new statewide coalition New Yorkers Against Fracking, is launching a campaign to ban the controversial drilling technique here in New York. Wes Gillingham of the Catskill Mountainkeeper will have details of this morning’s event. Plus keynote speaker, author, biologist and activist Sandra Steingraber will join him on the air. And she won’t just be talking about hydrofracking. She will also be dishing about her latest break-up. In case you didn’t hear the news, Sandra dumped the Sierra Club. She lets it fly in the latest edition of Orion Magazine.

The Supreme Court today begins hearing arguments on the constitutionality of Affordable Care Act. Over the next three days, the court will be presented with four questions:

1. GATEWAY ISSUE -- Should the Justices be hearing this case at all since no one has yet been penalized for failing to obtain health insurance? Aka Anti Injunction Act
2. INDIVIDUAL MANDATE-- Does Congress have the power to mandate that people buy healthcare coverage?
3. DOMINO EFFECT-- If the Justices say “no” the mandate isn’t constitutional, then the next question is “Can the other provisions of the law stand?” (this is the severability question)
4. COERSION --“Does Congress have the power to require states to expand Medicaid? Does it make it impossible for States NOT to comply by forcing them to foot the entire bill for Medicaid, if they say ‘no’?

We will be joined by three experts in different aspects of the case. Susan Low Bloch, a Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown; Richard Kirsch a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the author of Fighting for Our Health: The Epic Battle to Make Health Care a Right in the United States; and Thomas Dennison, professor of public administration and director of the Syracuse Maxwell School’s certificate program in Health Services Management and Policy, and co-director of the Central New York Master of Public Health program, a collaboration between Syracuse University and SUNY Upstate Medical Center.

For show archives, please visit The Capitol Bureau's website here.

It's a Free Country, our sibling site here at WNYC, has a running weekly run-down of the big news items for Governors Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo. It's a fun, informative look at two of the region's--and nation's--political heavy weights, now and going forward. With that, the Empire would like to begin giving you some highlights from It's a Free Country's "Who Had the Better Week--Cuomo or Christie?"

Who'll win this week, Cuomo or Christie?! To find out, visit WNYC'sIt's a Free Country.

Chris Christie

Tax man

NJ Dems may not like Christie's proposed tax cuts, but in putting forth a plan of their own, they've practically guaranteed Christie will preside over significant tax relief in one form or another.

Christie has pushed for a 10 percent income tax cut across the board, but State Senate President Stephen Sweeney countered with a more nuanced proposal of his own: Offer taxpayers a credit equal to 10 percent of their property tax; cap the credit at $1,000; withhold the credit from households making more than $250,000 annually.

Democrats argue their plan will help the middle class more than Christie's while giving away less to wealthier taxpayers. But as Peter Woolley, executive director of Fairleigh Dickinson University's Public Mind Poll, told WNYC's Bob Hennelly, "By introducing this income tax cut, Christie has basically changed the conversation from raising taxes to how are we going to cut them." He can—and will—take credit for reframing the debate.

• Verdict: +2

Nominee rejected

The rejection of Christie's nominee to the State Supreme Court is the first big blow dealt to the Governor in recent memory.

Phillip Kwon was rejected by Senate Democrats in a 7-6 vote on Thursday. Kwon was scrutinized for his political affiliation and his history of working for Chris Christie while he was Attorney General. One Senator expressed concern over confirming someone “who a year before was part of the litigation team to advance Governor Christie’s agenda."

• Verdict: -1

To see more highlights of Christ Christie's week, visit WNYC's It's a Free Country.

Andrew Cuomo

Redistricting reform: 'I failed'

Cuomo campaigned on a promise to veto any redistricting lines that were drawn by the state legislature and not an independent commission.

So much for that.

Instead, Cuomo settled for introducing a constitutional amendment that would put redistricting in the hands of a bi-partisan commission. Two things: a constitutional amendment—if it's passed—wouldn't have any effect until after 2020, when the next round of redistricting begins; also, a bi-partisan commission of legislators is not the same thing as an independent commission.

"I failed. I failed,"Cuomo said.

• Verdict: -1

Pension reform a double-edge sword

Pension reform, which Governor Cuomo has argued is essential to closing the state's budget gap, passed last week during a marathon, overnight legislative session.

And the unions hate it. While Cuomo touts the reforms as sparing New Yorkers from a tax hike, public employees bristle at being forced to pay more into the system and reap less come retirement. The Civil Service Employees Association, the largest public employee union in the state, and several other teachers' unions quickly announced that they'd be suspending all political contributions and endorsements, threatening to back challengers to incumbents in future primaries.

This is a tricky one to score. On one hand, Republicans and Democrats alike can appreciate a balanced budget, and if Cuomo can get a few under his belt it'll play well in a general election, especially with independent voters who may like seeing public employees make concessions.

But let's not forget that the general election won't mean squat to Cuomo if he can't get out of a Democratic primary. Alienating unions, among the party's largest, most dedicated donors, would be Cuomo's version of "Romneycare"—something he'll have to answer for over and over again during the nominating contest.

• Verdict: This one's a wash, 0

To see more highlights of Andrew Cuomo's week, visit WNYC's It's a Free Country.