Politics on the Hudson

Gov. David Paterson announced today that he signed two bills aimed at reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS. The first will allow patients to agree to HIV testing in a general consent form that stays in effect until it expires or consent is revoked, and it will require health-care providers to offer testing to patients who are between 13 and 64. The second law clarifies that intravenous drug users who are part of a needle-exchange program can’t be prosecuted for having trace amounts of drugs in syringes they are turning in.

“By making HIV testing a routine part of health care, this legislation will increase HIV testing rates, letting people learn their status and begin treatment at an earlier stage, which can significantly improve the length and quality of life and help reduce transmission of the disease,” Paterson said in a statement.

On the second bill, which he proposed, he said needle-exchange programs provide drug users with clean syringes and substance-abuse counseling, and numerous studies have found them to be effective in reducing the spread of blood-borne diseases like HIV and hepatitis C. A number of people participating in such programs have been arrested for possession of needles and syringes and have been subject to criminal charges because of residue in the syringes. The new law requires the state Department of Criminal Justice Services to notify law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors about the rights of participants in needle-exchange programs.

“I proposed this legislation to prevent people from being arrested unnecessarily, thus ensuring that syringe users are not deterred from participating in these important programs,” Paterson said.

Senate Health Committee Chairman Thomas Duane, D-Manhattan, said that with the signing of the HIV legislation, “New York has taken a tremendous step towards ensuring that all its residents have knowledge of their HIV status, know how to prevent new infections, and have access to necessary treatment and care so that we can finally stem the spread of this deadly disease.”

The syringe access legislation ensures that New York penal law “finally conforms with its rational and compassionate health policy,” Duane said.

Patrick J. McGovern, CEO of Harlem United: Community AIDS Center, said the HIV testing legislation “falls short of a true opt-out approach to HIV screening” but the group believes it will help efforts to make HIV-screening a routine part of health care.

“We strongly believe that the required offering is a necessary corrective to 25 years of segregated HIV testing – segregated in the sense that a legacy of counseling and testing regulations make HIV testing someone else’s responsibility in health care. The required offer of an HIV test in all primary care settings foretells an end to the current practice of segregated and stigmatized HIV testing,” McGovern said.

Gov. David Paterson today rejected the Legislature’s compromise proposal on a plan that would grant new powers to New York’s public colleges.

Paterson spokesman Morgan Hook said in a statement that “more needs to be done and more details need to provided” before the governor can sign off on the plan, known as the Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act.

The program has become the centerpiece battle in finally completing the 2010-11 state budget, which was due on April 1, the start of the fiscal year.   The Legislature has been wary to sign off the college proposal, which would allow individual colleges to set their own tuition rates, undertake economic-development projects and borrow money. The power to raise tuition currently rests with the state Legislature.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, and Senate Democratic Leader John Sampson, D-Brooklyn, said this week that a broad outline for the proposal had been agreed to.

Legislative leaders were hopeful that their proposal sent to the governor last Tuesday – which included an expiration date for the program and caps on tuition increases – would be approved.

Lawmakers are scheduled back in Albany on Tuesday.

“Senator Sampson is trying to bring the Assembly and governor together to build toward a final agreement,” said Austin Shafran, a spokesman for the Senate Democrats, today.

Sisa Moyo, a spokeswoman for the Assembly Democrats, said talks continued at the staff level on Friday, but no specific deal is in place.

“The Assembly never said there was an agreement,” she said. “There have been positive conversations and those conversations continue.”

Attorney James E. Johnson, the court-appointed monitor in Westchester’s fair housing/False Claims Act case, will appear in an Editorial Spotlight interview 11 a.m. Wednesday on LoHud.com.

Over the next seven years, Westchester must build 750 units of affordable housing, most of them in overwhelmingly white communities that have long shunned or discouraged such housing. The obligation arises from a consent degree brokered last year by the Spano administration and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and approved by the U.S. District Court. HUD entered the case after the nonprofit Anti-Discrimination Center of New York, a fair housing group, successfully argued in a lawsuit that Westchester had failed to discharge its fair housing obligations, despite accepting millions of dollars in federal funds and pledging that it had.

Under the agreement, the county must affirmatively market the units in Westchester and nearby communities with large non-white populations, though the housing will be available to all income-eligible populations. Johnson recently told the federal court that the county’s most recent plan for implementing terms of the consent decree “falls short of a true plan to comply with either the stipulation’s specific terms or its overarching goal of building a more integrated Westchester.”

Watch the interview at www.lohud.com/editorialspotlight; to submit a question during the interview, engage the CoverItLive feature on the right side of your screen.

Republican comptroller candidate Harry Wilson took some swings at Democratic Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli over whether DiNapoli—who Wilson has labeled “Albany Tom”—supports a property-tax cap.

Wilson went so far as to point out that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo and Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio support tax caps. So does Gov. David Paterson, but the Democratic-led Assembly has rejected a tax cap even though it has passed several times in the Senate.

Cuomo started running television ads this week in support of his cap proposal.

Here’s more on the whole property-tax-cap debate—which was the second installment of the ongoing property-tax series by Gannett’s Albany Bureau.

DiNapoli spokesman Dennis Tompkins said DiNapoli has long backed a tax cap and wants a circuit breaker, which would tie property taxes to household incomes. Here’s his response.

“Comptroller DiNapoli supports a property tax cap. His audits and reports have identified the need to control both state and local government spending. New Yorkers cannot afford endless tax increases.

Comptroller DiNapoli supports Attorney General Cuomo’s tax cap proposal and he strongly believes that an expanded “circuit breaker” must be an integral part of any property tax cap plan. The state must also evaluate the costs it pushes down to local governments.”

There will no gubernatorial run for Steve Levy this year, officially.

The Suffolk County executive who lost the Republican nomination for governor at the GOP convention in June, said in a statement today he will forgo a run as an independent candidate.

He’s also endorsing Rick Lazio, the fellow Long Islander and party nominee who is running in a primary against Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino. And the Democrat-turned-Republican said he will stay a Republican and work with Republicans to win the Senate majority.

“While I realize that it would not be possible to win the governor’s seat without major party backing, I considered running on a third line in order to keep attention focused on important policies for which I care deeply,” Levy said in a statement.

“I am, however, heartened by the fact that many of the innovations I championed in my campaign have now been adopted by other candidates in the field,” Levy said, citing the calls for a property-tax cap and pension reforms being cited by the major party candidates.

Levy, a Democrat turned Republican, said Lazio “will work hard toward accomplishing many of the goals I had set out in my campaign.”

These are some of the comments Women4Ball made this week in support of Assemblyman Greg Ball, R-Patterson, in his Senate campaign. Ball is running against Somers Supervisor Mary Beth Murphy, the endorsed Republican, and Westchester County Legislator Michael Kaplowitz, D-Somers. The women accused the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, which supports Murphy, of running a “smear” campaign against Ball.

Lauren Pistone, an ex-girlfriend of Ball’s, said she has been approached by the Murphy campaign and asked to speak against Ball. (Murphy has denied the allegations.) This is part of her statement:

“Very few politicians get elected and do what they say they are going to do. Greg Ball is not one of those politicians. He has promised to vote down tax increases and fight against the corruption and the status quo in Albany. I as a voter do not want Mary Beth Murphy, who raised her own salary as Supervisor and would surround herself with a team that thinks going after the ‘ex-girlfriend’ is the way to win an election. All this does is just prove she is the worst kind of politician, attacking on garbage issues and surrounding herself with career politicians who sink to this moral low of avoiding what the people need. The women and families of New York need a voice who will fight for what is right, not a career politician who thinks talking about trash and garbage is going to get her elected. Ask yourself these questions as a voter. Why do they always attack him personally?  Why has he chosen to accept zero outside income and continue to be attacked personally every two years? It’s all they have, a bag full of garbage. Enough is enough. Let’s throw this trash out!”

“I am upset, but my tears will not come from the filth that passes our mailboxes, with my neighbors and my family, my clergy men, and my mailman. It doesn’t matter, because Greg taught me when he said he had to go on his own. I said, ‘Why on your own?’ and he said, ‘Because I’m honest. And I don’t want to become corrupt. And I don’t want to make backroom deals.’ And I watched my son for four years fight for you people, and fight against these indecent people that put garbage in our mailboxes. And Greg has not been at my dinner table for the last four years because he’s been at every event, every parade walking with the people he supports and fights for. He’s been to your home, knocking on your door, talking to you. For four years, Greg Ball has been in the communities of this district.”

Democrats have a new video out today on Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio’s $1.3 million bonus from JP Morgan.

Lazio, meanwhile, continues to press Democratic rival Andrew Cuomo on investigating the Muslim community center planned two blocks away from the World Trade Center site.

In a video posted on GOP Reality Check, a website built by the state Democratic Party to knock Lazio, issued a video using footage from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” to portray Lazio, a former congressman, as a “bonus baby” while working for JP Morgan.

The Democrats point to Lazio’s bonus while the bank was accepting funds from the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Lazio’s campaign also released a YouTube video today called “Waiting.” The campaign knocks Cuomo, the current attorney general, for not taking up a debate challenge over building the community center near the World Trade Center and whether or not its funding should be investigated.

“We don’t need silence now, we need leadership,” Lazio says in the video.

Here are the videos:

The war of words heated up today between Assemblyman Greg Ball, R-Patterson, and his supporters and the Senate Republican Campaign Committee. The committee is backing Somers Supervisor Mary Beth Murphy in the race for the seat, which is being vacated by Sen. Vincent Leibell, R-Patterson.

One of Ball’s ex-girlfriends and a contingent of other women, including Ball’s mother, said at a news conference today that Ball is being unfairly maligned. The event was in response to a committee-sponsored mailer that detailed an alleged incident in which Ball is accused of groping an Albany waitress.

Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, confirmed that it sent out the negative campaign literature on Ball. Reif said Ball has a “pattern of sexual misconduct towards women,” and that is a legitimate campaign issue. The Senate Republican Campaign Committee released the following statement this evening:

“This is a tired rerun of what happened two years ago when news first broke that Greg Ball had been hit with an order of protection for stalking his ex-girlfriend.  The facts are the facts, and Greg Ball stands accused of groping a waitress at an Albany bar, an account several eyewitnesses confirmed.  Today, he trots out a woman whose mother is on the payroll of Ball political ally Steve Katz to spread lies.  Those accusations are slanderous and are subject to legal liability.  The residents of Dutchess, Putnam and Westchester counties are tired of the distractions, tired of the conspiracy theories and tired of all of the excuses.  You can’t take anything Greg Ball says seriously.”

If the Legislature accomplished anything today and Wednesday, it was exposing new fissures in the Senate Democrats.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, and Senate Democratic Leader John Sampson, D-Brooklyn, emerged from a close-door meeting this afternoon to announce they had a “framework” in place to pass the higher-education bill that would overhaul the state university system, known as SUNY Empowerment.

The bill is opposed by some in Silver’s Democratic conference who fear the impact it will have on tuition rates, especially if individual campuses can raise them and not the Legislature.

Silver hasn’t been enthusiastic on the proposal. But Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, D-Mount Vernon, Westchester County, also vented her concerns over the proposal, minaly and her desire to not allow the plan to pass without some scaling down of the bill.

Silver said the final budget piece and the SUNY plan are now completely linked.

“We are again attempting to come together with the governor, with the Senate to get a budget in place,” Silver said. “In order to do that, we have to come to some kind of proposal for SUNY/CUNY Empowerment.”

John Sampson said there would be a modification of the empowerment proposals put before the governor. Paterson hasn’t gotten back to them yet.

“Once again, I think we’re still waiting for the governor to come back to us with respect to any modifications,” Sampson said.

Ed Cox, the chairman of the state Republican Party, this afternoon weighed in on the session of the Legislature that produced no results, a feet that he called an “abomination.”

“This session’s entire budget process and the conduct of Democrat legislators in complete control of the proceedings have been an abomination. Legislators will again leave Albany having failed to end our budget nightmare due to stonewalling by the Democratic leadership. Voters in New York State have every right to be furious with the ineptitude of Democrat leaders whose so-called ‘solutions’ to the budget deficit have all involved nothing more than raising taxes even further. I commend Senate Republicans for standing strong against such tax and fee increases, which threaten to cripple New York’s economy and drive more businesses from this state. Republicans are unwilling to place an increased burden on our families because Democrat legislators aren’t willing to make the necessary cuts.”