Politics on the Hudson

The state Teacher Retirement fund, which stood at more than $103 billion two years ago, was worth $75.3 billion at the end of last year, a fund spokesman said today.
Spokesman John Cardillo said the teacher fund, which covers most teachers and other school employees in districts outside New York City, said the fund was at $88 billion in September.
He said he didn’t want to characterize how the board felt about the most recent drop in the value of the fund, which occurred as the national economy continued to struggle.
“We’re managing the market volatility as best we can,’’ he said.
The performance of the fund affects how much money taxpayers have to pay into it. The recent drops will be reflected in the bills school districts receive from the fund in September of 2010, he said.
That figure will be set in July.

Gov. David Paterson has scheduled his next round of town-hall meetings in upstate New York, with stops planned in Johnstown, Auburn and Binghamton.

He was originally scheduled to be in Davos, Switzerland, this weekend, but canceled that amid public criticism.

Rather than hold an upstate State of the State as his predecessor Eliot Spitzer did, Paterson is holding a series of town-hall meetings. He gave his State of the State address on Jan. 5 and has held one town-hall meeting already, in Watertown on Jan. 11.

The Binghamton town hall will take place at the West Gym at Broome Community College, 901 Upper Front St., on Feb. 4. Doors open at 4:30 p.m.; the event begins at 5:30 p.m.

“Now is the time for state government to take action and confront the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression,” Paterson said. “It is equally important that we take the time to hear directly from New York residents about their concerns as we move to address these problems.”

The Johnstown town hall will take place at Fulton Montgomery Community College, 2805 State Highway 67, on Friday. Doors open at 2 p.m.; the event begins at 3 p.m.

The Auburn town hall will take place at the Irene A. Bisgrove Community Theatre at Cayuga Community College, 197 Franklin St., on Saturday. Doors  open at 11 a.m.; the event begins at noon.

Others are planned Feb. 11 in Rochester, Feb. 12 at the state University College at Geneseo and Feb. 18 in Buffalo. Times and locations have not been finalized for those events.

Small business owners and independent wine sellers in New York have formed a new coalition, The Last Store on Main Street, to oppose Governor Paterson’s proposal to allow grocery stores and delis—and anywhere that sells beer—to sell wine.

Governors have proposed this in the past, only to be beat back by similar groups.

“If implemented, this change would devastate many small businesses and cost the state thousands of valuable jobs,” the group said.  “Additionally, the sale of wine in every store where beer is now available would give teenagers greater access to alcohol – resulting in a heightened risk of underage drinking and fatal drunk driving accidents.”

The tumultuous events of the last week had some political observers repeating the old saw about politics: it isn’t like football, where plays are carefully drawn up, or like basketball, where practiced moves can lead to scores.
Instead, it’s like hockey, where when the puck is suddenly in front of the net, you take a whack at it.
That’s certainly what happened to Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco this week, who immediately jumped into the race for Congress when Kirsten Gillebrand quit her Hudson Valley seat when she was named by Gov. David Paterson to succeed Hillary Clinton in the Senate.
Tedisco’s quick shot paid off: just four days after Gillebrand quit, he was anointed as the Republican candidate for the seat, making him the likely winner in a special election that will most likely take place in March. Democrats don’t yet have a candidate to run in the district, which has about 75,000 more Republicans than Democrats.

The National Organization for Women-NYS is holding a press conference Saturday in Albany to call on Senate Democrats to remove Sen. Hiram Monserrate from his chairmanship of the Consumer Protection Committee as he faces charges for allegedly slashing his girlfriend in the face.

“Although there is probably no legal bar to Monserrate’s being seated in the NY Senate, his elevation to a leadership position is a slap in the face for every woman in New York State,” the group said in a statement.

The group even mentions former Gov. Eliot Spitzer: “We will use as an example that it is inexplicable that our former Governor Spitzer was forced to resign for having sex with a prostitute while Senator Monserrate is allowed to continue in a leadership position. Does this mean that it is more OK to beat your girlfriend than to have sex with a prostitute? ”

The group plans to call on legislative leaders  to “use the power of their pens to stop violence against all women, both through strengthened legislation against these hate crimes, and through passage of laws that will punish perpetrators for all sorts of Violence Against Women and girls.”

The state’s fiscal situation took another blow today as Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli estimated the state will lose about $1 billion because of a decline in Wall Street bonuses in 2008.

Cash bonuses paid by Wall Street firms to their New York City employees declined by 44 percent in 2008 in response to record losses by the securities industry, DiNapoli said.

The loss of revenue comes as the state is already grappling with a $15.4 billion deficit over the year and a half. About 20 percent of the state’s revenue comes from Wall Street.

DiNapoli said the drop in Wall Street bonuses shouldn’t add to the state’s deficit total because the projections were in line with what is being reported today.

DiNapoli estimates that the bonus pool from Wall Street firms totaled $18.4 billion in 2008, a decline of 44 percent compared with the $32.9 billion paid in 2007.

The decline is the largest on record and the largest percentage decline in more than 30 years. Yet the size of the bonus pool is still the sixth largest on record.

Employment in the securities industry in New York City declined from 187,800 in October 2007 to 168,600 in December 2008, a loss of 19,200 jobs, or 10.2 percent. At the beginning of 2008, there were seven major financial firms based in New York City. Since then, two have been acquired, one failed, and two converted into commercial banks.

Dinapoli said the federal bailout of Wall Street has saved some financial institutions from failing, but there needs to better transparency and oversight to ensure that any bonuses are properly administered.

“Every dime counts, especially when they’re taxpayer dimes and taxpayers ought to know if these funds were used to buy corporate jets, pay dividends or bonuses,” he said.

   Following intense media scrutiny of the State University of New York’s Research Foundation, SUNY will be scheduling a joint public meeting of its board of trustees and that of the foundation. The boards will go over all the assets of the research foundation so it is clear how it works, John O’Connor, officer in charge of the 64-campus system, said today.

   The private foundation is the vehicle through which researchers obtain and use grant money for their projects and moves inventions by SUNY researchers into the marketplace. Every state university in the country that was created by statute is set up the same way, according to SUNY officials.

   “There is a vast mythology surrounding the Research Foundation and immense suspicion about what lurks there,” thinking there are “vast amounts of money,” said Carl Hayden, chairman of SUNY’s board of trustees.

Hispanic state legislators called off a news conference Tuesday to blast new Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s record on immigration, but said they still have major concerns about where she stands on the issue.

Since her appointment Friday to the Senate, Gillibrand has faced some of her strongest criticism from immigration groups because of her record, in which she has opposed amnesty for undocumented immigrants and co-sponsored the Save Act, which would crack down on illegal immigrants by using the military to patrol the borders.

Gillibrand has spoken with some Hispanic leaders in recent days to calm their concerns, and they plan to meet. Leaders said they held off on the news conference in order to get more answers from her.

“It was our contention that she has a questionable immigration background, among other issues,” said Assemblyman Jose Peralta, D-Queens. “We wanted her to answer some questions.”

Assemblyman Peter Rivera, D-Bronx, put out a strongly worded advisory of the news conference Tuesday morning before it was hastily canceled, saying “Gillibrand’s pandering to xenophobes has made her persona non-grata in communities across the state.”

The news release indicated that Hispanic leaders would be meeting with other candidates to unseat her in 2010. But Peralta said the advisory was the case of a misunderstanding among aides.

Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco was tapped today by the county GOP chairmen in the Albany area to be its House candidate in the seat vacated by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, several Republican officials said.

“He’s the nominee,” a source close to Tedisco said.

Tedisco received the majority of the weighted vote from the chairmen, mainly by picking up Saratoga County which has about 1/3 of the total vote.

John Faso picked up Columbia, Greene, Rensselaer, Otsego and Delaware, but after the first round of voting the counties, Tedisco also picked up Dutchess, Otsego and Warren.

That took Dutchess County candidate Richard Wager out of the running and gave him more votes than Sen. Betty Little, who still had Washington and Essex counties, and Faso.

“Naturally you are disappointed, but that’s the way it is,” Faso said.

Tedisco is planning to address the media on the steps of the Capitol later this afternoon.

Governor Paterson sought today to move the discussion away from his U.S. Senate selection process and refocus on the state budget issues, but he was again dogged by questions about whether he knew about the source of a leak that bashed Caroline Kennedy.

“I had nothing to do with any of the negative characterizations of any of the candidates, particularly Caroline Kennedy, who withdrew from the process,” Paterson told reporters today after meeting with Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

“I felt bad for Caroline. She worked very hard.”

A day after Kennedy withdrew her name from consideration, an official close to Paterson told reporters that Paterson had no intention of picking her because of her inexperience and because there were potentially embarrassing personal issues that might come out about her, including tax and nanny problems.

Paterson has been pressed on whether he authorized the leak, but he said he knows nothing about it and won’t investigate further. He said chief of staff Bill Cunningham has told staff to not leak information to the press.

“I’m not going to hunt down scurrilous rumors from sources I don’t know,” he said.

He did admit he could have handled the selection process better by not talking publicly everyday about his thought process.

“Certainly during the process revealing how I felt every day confused the process and I would have probably acted differently in retrospect,” he said.