Politics on the Hudson

   Gov. David Paterson did a ceremonial signing today in Queens today of a bill that reduces sentences for non-violent drug offenders. The legislation, which was passed as part of the 2009-10 state budget early this month, gives judges total discretion to divert non-violent addicts to drug treatment, and it expands the state’s treatment programs.

    “This is a proud day for me and so many of my colleagues who have fought for so long to overhaul the drug laws and restore judicial discretion in narcotics cases,” Paterson said at Elmcor Youth and Adult Activities Inc., a state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services-funded drug-treatment center. “For years, thousands of New Yorkers have spoken out against the Rockefeller Drug Laws.”

   The Rockefeller-era drug laws set up mandatory sentencing for non-violent criminals convicted of drug offenses. There were some changes made to the laws in recent years, but advocates said they were not enough. Besides providing judges more authority over offenders, the new law provides opportunities for additional relief to offenders who were sent to prison under the old statutes. Drug offenders who are not addicted but who sell drugs will be sent to prison under the laws. The law also creates new crimes to ensure that adults who sell drugs to children are appropriately required to serve time in State prison.

   Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, D-Mount Vernon, said the new law  creates a “balanced approach to drug addiction and crime.”

   “We are now shifting resources to treat addiction as a medical problem. By diverting addicts to drug-treatment courts, we believe we can get people off drugs and thereby reduce the demand for them,” she said in a statement.

   Assemblyman Greg Ball, R-Patterson, Putnam County, criticized a component of the new law that allows illegal immigrants who are drug offenders and face the “severe collateral consequences” of deportation to get substance-abuse treatment and not prison. (more…)

   Former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno of Brunswick, Rensselaer County, said on Albany Talk 1300 radio today this his main political adversary, now-former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned after it came to light that he was involved in a prostitution ring. Bruno said when Spitzer departed “under those pretty unpleasant circumstances, I said, you know, people ought to just pray for him and his family and give him any support in terms of his own mental and emotional state…”

   But, he added, “This man has more problems than I think than just dealing with prostitutes over the years. My experience with him on a personal level is that he is like two different people, at least two different people.” Bruno said Spitzer tried to annihilate anyone who didn’t agree with him, including Bruno, and showed a pattern of “arrogance” and “ego.”

   “The bottom line here is, I think he needs therapy,” Bruno said, adding that “people like this are dangerous.”

   Bruno, who was indicted early this year on charges of public corruption, said his lawyers have moved to have charges against him dismissed. He is accused of accepting more than $3 million from individuals and groups in exchange for his political influence. Bruno was first elected in 1976 and he was Senate majority leader from January 1995 until leaving office a few months before his term ended last year. 

   “So I’m hoping and praying that takes place long before the trial takes place in November,” Bruno said. (more…)

Here’s a fairly cordial exchange picked up on video by New York Now between Gov. David Paterson and a state worker yesterday after she stopped Paterson following a news conference at Washington Park in Albany over his proposed layoffs of state workers.

It was a milder scene than the protest Paterson encountered when he spoke last week at the Democratic Rural Conference in Saratoga.

The mayor of Binghamton, Matthew Ryan, and its City Council, all Democrats, released a resolution today encouraging the state Legislature to pass Gov. David Paterson same-sex marriage bill. Binghamton Sen. Thomas Libous, a Republican, doesn’t support the legislation.

“Today, the Mayor of the City of Binghamton and the Binghamton City Council, representing separate branches of City government, join in one voice to endorse Governor David Paterson’s marriage equality bill, to urge our State representatives to pass this bill as soon as possible, and to call for an end to marriage discrimination everywhere,” the joint statement reads.

“In this action, we are guided by our nation’s founding principles: that all citizens are created equal, and are deserving of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, these principles have not been equally applied to all our citizens, and it is only with determination and vigilance that true equality prevails.”

Here’s the full statement.

Sponsors of same-sex marriage bills in the state Legislature officially introduced the legislation yesterday.

Here’s the main change in the language:

The domestic relations law is amended by adding a new section 2 10-a to read as follows:
3 § 10-a. Sex of parties.

1. A marriage that is otherwise valid shall be valid regardless of whether the parties to the marriage are of the same or different sex. No government treatment or legal status, effect, right, benefit, privilege, protection or responsibility relating to marriage, whether deriving from statute, administrative or court rule, public policy, common law or any other source of law, shall differ based on the parties to the marriage being or having been of the same sex rather than a different sex. When necessary to implement the rights and responsibilities of spouses under the law, all gender-specific language or terms shall be construed in a gender-neutral manner in all such sources oflaw.

The Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Thomas Duane, D-Manhattan, has 18 Democratic co-sponsors: Adams, Breslin, Dilan, Espada, Craig Johnson, Klein, Krueger, Montgomery, Oppenheimer, Parker, Perkins, Savino, Schneiderman, Serrano, Squadron, Stavisky, Stewart-Cousins and Thompson.

It will need 32 votes in the Senate.

The Assembly bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, D-Manhattan, has more, 53: Gottfried, Glick, Titone, Kellner, Silver, Bing, Rosenthal, Jeffries, Dinowitz, John, Kavanagh, DenDekker, Schimel, Sayward, Alessi, Aubry, Boyland, Bradley, Brennan, Brodsky, Cahill, Cook, Duprey, Eddington, Englebright, Farrell, Fields, Gianaris, Hevesi, Hoyt, Jaffee, Lancman, Latimer, Lavine, Lentol, Lifton, Lopez V, Lupardo, McEneny, Millman, Nolan, Ortiz, Paulin, Peralta, Pretlow, Rivera J, Rivera N, Sweeney, Towns, Weisenberg, Weprin, Wright, Zebrowski.

After rejecting a Democratic plan Tuesday to reform the rules in the state Senate, the three Republicans on the reform committee issued their own report today on how Senate procedures should be changed.

Their report includes:
—      A clear process to bring a bill to a vote on the Senate floor, such as a a mandatory vote or a petition process where if 51% of the senators sign a petition a vote is automatically forced.
—Fair committee staff allocations for all senators.
—A ban on allowing only the Senate Rules Committee to sponsor controversial bills.
—Putting a list of bills to be taken up that day on Internet 24 hours in advance and
committee agendas a week in advance.
—Equally distributing member items.

Here’s their full report:

0422.Minority Report on Rules Reform

State leaders indicated Wednesday that they may need to delay the expansion of the state’s bottle-deposit law over concerns from bottlers that companies won’t be able to implement the program by the June 1 deadline.

The protest from bottlers and breweries is centered on a new state law that would require all recyclable bottles to carry a New York-specific bar code. Bottlers say there is simply no way all the bottles in New York could be changed by the June 1 implementation deadline.

“It’s a great example of the law of unintended consequences,” said Jon Pierce, spokesman for New Yorkers for Real Recycling Reform, which represents the bottling industry.

“The idea was they thought they were helping, but in fact – as is the story with the whole bottle law—it creates more problems than it solves.”

The state Legislature earlier this month passed an expanded bottle bill that will require a 5-cent deposit on all bottles of water. But the law also included other measures, such as requiring the new UPC codes and the purchase of more automated machines to collect returned bottles.

Legislative leaders and Gov. David Paterson acknowledged Wednesday that they will need to revisit the bar-code issue, saying they may need to add an amendment to the law to push out the start date.

“We don’t want to do anything to hurt the industry while we are trying to clean up the environment,” Paterson said.

Paterson, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, D-Queens, were honored by environmental groups Wednesday for passing the bottle bill.

Advocates said the expansion of the bottle law will boost recycling programs, make communities cleaner and create jobs.

“The bottle law is New York’s most effective recycling and litter-control program, and we just made it bigger and better this year by expanding it to include water bottles,” said Laura Haight, senior environmental associate with the New York Public Interest Research Group.

Silver, D-Manhattan, said if revisions to the law need to be made, legislators will do so.

The Empire Center for New York State Policy found that the Democratic-controlled Assembly doled out 3 percent pay raises to 63 percent of its staff this year, despite the state’s fiscal woes.

Gov. David Paterson has frozen salaries from in the executive chamber after being criticized for big raises he gave to his staff. He does not control the legislature’s spending on salaries, as he has called for about 8,700 layoffs.

The group’s review found that of the 1,540 Assembly employees on the 2008 and 2009 payrolls, 971 (63 percent) got raises. Seventy-six percent of them, 734 people, received 3 percent raises. Another 215 got raises exceeding 4 percent, but 25 got raises below 3 percent.

But 190 employees didn’t get a raise and another 379 had their salaries held flat.

Assembly Democratic spokesman Dan Weiller said that in 2008, the Assembly did not give raises to employees who remained in the same positions.

   Gov. David Paterson’s budget director, Laura Anglin, is resigning from her position July 16 to become the seventh president and first female chief executive of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities. She will succeed Abe Lackman, the commission’s president since 1992. Lackman’s contract ends in November, and he will work with Anglin during a transition period, a spokesman for the commission said.

   The commission’s trustees voted unanimously today to hire Anglin, state budget director since January 2008. CICU represents the CEOs of ore than 100 private, not-for-profit colleges and universities in New York.

   New York University President John Sexton, chairman of CICU’s Board of Trustees, said Anglin is a talented professional who understands how to advance policies through consensus building and outreach. Anglin has two decades’ experience in important state-government positions and a deep knowledge of the budget process, he said.

   “Beyond all this, Laura displayed an eagerness to focus on the needs and goals of independent education in New York State, recognizing the importance of this sector to the future of this state,” he said.

   Anglin makes $178,000 as budget director. CICU would not disclose what her salary will be there. Lackman made $280,605 in from July 2006 through June 2007, according to IRS documents.

   “New York’s private colleges and universities have historically played an important role in the economic an social well being of New York—and they will be essential partners for helping to rebuild New York State’s economy for the future,” Anglin said in a statement.  

   Sexton said Lackman positioned the commission as “one of the most important voices in higher education policy, both in Albany and in Washington, DC.” Lackman was secretary of the state Senate Finance Committee from 1995 until he took the CICU job and was a special adviser to now-former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. In 1994, he was now-former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s budget director, and he previously worked in other capacities for the state Senate.

   As the Legislature and governor continue to negotiate on a bailout of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Assemblyman Peter Rivera, D-Bronx, is pushing a proposal to raise $2 billion a year by taxing jet-fuel sales. His plan would raise the state levy on jet fuel by $2 per gallon.

   The MTA, which serves New York City and seven surrounding counties, including Westchester, Putnam and Rockland, is facing a budget gap of at least $1.2 billion. MTA leaders have said they will have to cut services dramatically and raise fares by 25 percent or more if they don’t get help from the state.

   A number of proposals for helping the MTA have been discussed by Gov. David Paterson and leaders of the Assembly and Senate. They have included recommendations like a tax of up to 34 cents for every $100 of payroll in MTA service area (slightly less for counties that are farther away from New York City); new tolls on the bridges across the Harlem and East rivers; and a $1 per-ride taxi surcharge.

   Rivera said his plan would generate millions of dollars a year for the MTA and upstate communities with airports. Jet-fuel consumption is more than 20 million barrels a year in New York. A $2-per-gallon tax would raise $1.7 billion. The tax could sunset when the economy records and mass-transit riders are more able to absorb a modest fare hike, he said.

   “There are over 86 million boardings of airlines in New York State airports yearly. The heavy passenger traffic at New York airports requires the maintenance of road, bridge and rail infrastructure to transport all those passengers,” Rivera said in a statement. “It is only fair to ask for a modest increase in the cost of jet fuel, which will have a negligible impact on the prices of airline tickets and on the operations of airlines.” (more…)