Politics on the Hudson

Unlike the Assembly Democrats, the Senate Republicans are expecting revenues in 2011-12 to exceed what Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has forecast by $438 million, according to a Senate report released today. Democrats, who control the Assembly, are projecting receipts will be $37 million less than the administration’s estimate.

However, for the 2010-11 fiscal year, which ends March 31, Senate Republicans are projecting the state’s receipts will be $23 million less than the projections by Cuomo’s Division of the Budget. (Assembly Democrats are predicting the total will be $49 million less.)

The balance—$415 million—should be placed in state reserve funds or be used to provide state and local tax relief, said Senate Republicans, who control the chamber. “While a forecast of additional revenue is good news, it should not be used for additional spending,” Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, said in a statement.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman John DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, said the Legislature is on schedule and is following the Budget Reform Act of 2007. The Senate plans to act within two weeks on a budget, which will be submitted to public conference committees on the budget and used during continued discussions with the governor.

“This process bodes well for an orderly budget process and hopefully a timely budget,” DeFrancisco said.

Superintendents and other school officials are not pleased with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to cap superintendents’ salaries based on student enrollment, with a maximum salary of $175,000 a year. Cuomo is modeling his plan on New Jersey, where regulations took effect Feb. 7 that cap annual salaries of superintendents in districts with fewer than 10,000 students at $175,000. In that state, school districts with more than 10,000 students can come to their own agreements on pay.

Cuomo said his plan would save about $15 million a year. Roughly 225, or 33 percent, of New York’s superintendents earn more than $175,000 a year, according to Cuomo’s administration.

“We must wake up to the new economic reality that government must be more efficient and cut the cost of bureaucracy,” he said in a statement. “We must streamline government because raising taxes is not an option,” he said in a statement.

Superintendents said Cuomo’s proposal is a “distraction” from the $1.5 billion in school-aid cuts he is recommending for the 2011-12 school year and the 2 percent cap on property taxes that he is seeking. They said they have been cutting back in the past few years, and they face ballooning costs for pension contributions, health insurance and other expenses.

The average superintendent salary in New York was $163,000 last year, compared to $160,000 nationally, the state Council of School Superintendents said. Education and living costs are higher in New York.

The council believes the governor is attempting to take attention away from the large budget cuts he has proposed, said Robert Reidy Jr., the group’s executive director.

“We think this issue is about resources for children and communities and school districts,” he said, “and quite frankly, we feel this is a diversion from the real issue at hand, that the governor’s proposal, with all of the cuts, has the potential to devastate many school districts.”

It’s difficult enough finding qualified candidates to serve as superintendents, and the governor’s proposal would make that job even tougher, said Brian Butry, a state School Boards Association spokesman. Setting superintendents’ salaries is also a home-rule issue, he said.

“This has been a local decision and we tend to stick by that and we think that local communities and school boards should be the determining factor in what they want to pay superintendents,” he said.

Rochester city schools superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard said the change would be especially unfair to administrators in the state’s largest urban districts, which serve many students from challenging backgrounds and are facing increasing pressure to comply with state and federal accountability standards.

“I expect my colleagues are going to see this as one more attack on school superintendents,” said Brizard, who earns $235,000 a year.

Capping salaries would save a negligible amount when compared with the total cost of education in the state, Eastchester, Westchester County, Superintendent Marilyn Terranova said.

Superintendents, teachers and other school staff have been renegotiating salaries or not taking pay hikes, said Terranova, who has not had a pay hike in three years. Her annual salary is roughly $238,000 a year, she said, and her contract expires in 2014.

These are the proposed caps:

Tier 1, up to 250 students, $125,000
Tier 2, 251-750 students, $135,000
Tier 3, 751-1,500 students, $145,000
Tier 4, 1,501-3,000 students, $155,000
Tier 5, 3,001-6,500 students, $165,000
Tier 6, 6,501-plus students, $175,000

Assembly Democrats are projecting the state’s receipts will $134.5 billion for the 2010-11 fiscal year, which ends March 31. That’s an increase of $7.8 billion—6.2 percent—over 2009-10. It’s $49 million less than what Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration is estimating.

For the 2011-12 fiscal year, Assembly Democrats are estimating the state will bring in $132.8 billion, $1.7 billion less than 2010-11. The projection is $37 million less than what the Cuomo administration if forecasting.

The details are in the Assembly Majority’s annual revenue and economic reports, which were released today.

The report is an important step in the process of working with Cuomo and the Senate on a 2011-12 budget, according to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, and Assembly Ways and Means Committee Chairman Herman D. Farrell Jr., D-Manhattan.

The reports say employment recovery in the state has been slow. As of January, just 11.6 percent of the jobs lost in the state had been regained. The reports also note that there are uncertainties surrounding New York’s financial industries following the state’s economic crisis, and what affect the industries will have on the economy.

The state Senate today adopted a resolution honoring slain City of Poughkeepsie Police Detective John Falcone.

The resolution states that Falcone “made the ultimate sacrifice” while “faithfully and courageously executing his responsibilities in the line of duty, serving with dedication, loyalty and compassion, and who devoted his purposeful life and career to serve and protect.”

Falcone, 44, was fatally shot on Feb. 18 near the Poughkeepsie Train Station. An 18-year veteran of the department, Falcone was posthumously promoted to detective.

Senators praised Falcone’s heroism during speeches on the floor of the ornate Senate chambers. The state Assembly is also expected to adopt the resolution this week.

“My heart, my prayers go out to his family,” said Sen. Stephen Saland, R-Poughkeepsie. “And I can safely say that the family of the city of Poughkeepsie mourn his loss and pay their respects to him, to his memory, to those with whom he served and especially to his family.”

Falcone was shot and killed when he responded to a call of shots fired just after 1 p.m. on lower Main Street. Moments earlier, the gunman, 27-year-old Lee Welch of Catskill, shot and killed his estranged wife, 28-year-old Jessica Welch, as they sat in their sport utility vehicle. The couple’s 3-year-old daughter escaped unharmed.

Police have said Lee Welch shot and killed himself after mortally wounding Falcone.

Falcone was an extended family member of Sen. Greg Ball, R-Patterson, Putnam County. Ball said he attended many of the services for Falcone.

“He was a warrior of warriors,” Ball said. “He was always in the thick of it. And the stories that were told to me over the course of those few days shows that he was a man amongst men.”

Here’s the resolution.

Falcone Resolution

Assemblyman Thomas Kirwan, R-Newburgh, returned to the Capitol today as the victor of one of the longest undecided races in state history. He was sworn in this afternoon, with a packed Assembly Republican chamber cheering him on.

“They do return to the scene of the crime,” Kirwan, 78, a former state trooper, joked.

Kirwan was sworn in by Court of Claims judge and Acting Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bartlett. Kirwan’s wife, Verna, held the Bible.

Kirwan represents the 100th Assembly District, which includes parts of Orange, Dutchess and Ulster counties. He beat Democratic incumbent Frank Skartados by 15 votes after an array of court challenges. Kirwan was declared the victor earlier this month, and his election will be certified this week.

Kirwan served for 14 years in Albany before being beaten by Skartados in 2008. Kirwan said he’s happy to be back, saying he hopes to be able to help Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, with his cost-cutting agenda.

The seat is important because Democrats now do not have enough members to override a governor’s veto. State law allows the Assembly and Senate to override a veto with two-thirds vote of the chamber. But with Kirwan, Republicans have 51 seats in the Assembly compared to 99 for Democrats, stripping Democrats of the ability to override a veto without help from the GOP.

“It’s nice to be back with the governor practicing what we’ve been preaching for two decades,” Kirwan said. “It’s going to be a good time to be able to sustain whatever the governor vetoes.”

One of the longest serving Democrats on the Board of Legislators says he regrets siding with colleagues on a budget dispute that is heading to court.

Legislator Martin Rogowsky, a Harrison Democrat who in December was the decisive twelfth vote on an override of County Executive Rob Astorino’s rejection of the Section 8 Housing Program, today said board members were spending too much time fighting with each other and the county executive on this issue.

“It’s a mess that we could have foreseen. … The mess just grows and grows,” said Rogowsky, who has served for 13 years including four as majority leader. “I could have avoided all of this.”

“I wish we weren’t going through this mess, debating attorneys fees,” he added. “We have larger issues.”

Rogowsky’s comments came during — and after — a committee meeting this morning where legislators argued for hours over various aspects of hiring outside lawyers to represent the board and county executive in a lawsuit with Civil Service Employees Association.

CSEA, the union representing 38 workers laid off after Astorino canceled a contract to administer the program with the state, sued the county executive and the board in state court.

A court hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

Read more tomorrow in The Journal News.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, reiterated this afternoon what he told the New York Post yesterday: keeping higher income-tax levels for the wealthy is unlikely.

Silver emerged from more than a one-hour meeting behind closed doors with Gov. Andrew Cuomo at Cuomo’s offices to discuss the budget, but said while there may be compromise on some issues, he didn’t see keeping the tax as a likely one.

“Is it dead?” Silver responded to a reporter’s question. “I think there are members of my conference who think it’s very much alive. I think the Assembly conference would support it. The governor has indicted he opposes it. The Senate has indicated he opposes it. Unless we can figure out a way that our conference can override those two objections, the likelihood of it actually being put into law, I recognize are pretty poor.”

Cuomo and Senate Republicans are both against continuing the higher-income tax bracket on those who make more than $200,000 a year, which expires at year’s end. The tax, instituted in 2009, brings in between $4 billion to $5 billion a year in revenue for the state, and unions and education groups are urging the Legislature and the governor to keep the tax in lieu of cuts to education and health care.

Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, D-Ithaca, said she had five town-hall meetings last week in her district, and constituents implored her to continue the tax.

“The feedback from my town meetings were pretty clear, that we ought to be taxing the multi-millionaires and billionaires our state instead of cutting our kids’ schools and our hospitals and nursing homes,” said Lifton, who has been an advocate of keeping the tax.

But Assembly Majority Leader Ron Canestrari, D-Cohoes, said the Assembly can’t pass the measure alone, saying he supports it too.

“I think it would help,” he said of the tax. “There’s still going to be draconian cuts across the board that will be severe, but at least we can ameliorate some of the cuts and do something to be helpful. I think it also sends a signal that others just at the lower end of the spectrum economically aren’t bearing the full brunt of the cuts.”

Here’s Silver’s comments to reporters this afternoon.

The Rockland County Legislature’s Special Committee on Redistricting continues to hold public forums this week to gather input regarding the redrawing of the 17 Legislative districts’ boundaries following the release of census numbers next month.

The redistricting is to make sure each voting district has roughly the same number of residents in keeping with the constitutional mandate of one-person, one-vote.

All forums start at 7:30 p.m.

Here is the schedule: tonight, Orangetown Town Hall, 26 Orangeburg Road in Orangeburg; Wednesday, Ramapo Town Hall, 237 Route 59 in Airmont; Thursday, Stony Point, Rho Building, Letchworth Village, 5 Club House Lane.

Forums were held last week in Haverstraw and Clarkstown.

Public hearings will be held once new voting districts have been proposed.

Putnam County Legislator Sam Oliverio of Putnam Valley said he will seek a sixth and final three-year term this November as a county lawmaker. Oliverio, 58, is the board’s only Democrat.

Following is his announcement:

1)” I am extremely effective as a senior Legislator. As the sole Democrat on an all Republican Board, I have always been able to work very well with my fellow Legislators and have found that compromise has allowed many of my favored governmental projects to take center stage and be adopted (historic designation of Peekskill Hollow Rd., memorializing school tax reform, funding for our Senior centers/libraries/youth groups, preserving our surplus by not raiding it to artificially reduce taxes, and so many more).  This effectiveness and oversight of our Legislature is important as we slush through the next 3 years during this economic crisis.

2) I also want to finish up and oversee a few County projects that are still on the docket (repair of Peekskill Hollow Rd. from Adams to Oregon Corners in line with the historic designation, foreclosure of the Oregon Corners Garage, establishment of a new Humane Society location, and the ongoing budget challenges).  These projects need a seasoned veteran who can guarantee that the work is done right and that the work gets completed.

3) There is a saying I love using “Carpe Diem” (seize the day).  With the Legislature good enough to start the term limit count down in 2002, this has provided me with one more run for Legislator.  When I was provided with the opportunity to run one more time as Legislator to oversee all of the upcoming important County issues (including sales tax, MS-4 water quality expenses, consolidation of services, putting to bed 3 county contracts that will be negotiated the next few years and so many more) I knew I had to seize the moment and go for this final term. (Note: He is referring to term-limit legislation that was vetoed by County Executive Paul Eldridge because of a technical matter. Oliverio said he expects the Legislature will pass an improved version of the law. Based on the law’s expected timetable, he would be the first legislator forced to leave.)

Please understand that this decision not to run for County Legislator again after 2014 does not preclude my continued involvement in government work.  In 2014 I will re-evaluate the needs of my community and my County and then decide in what capacity I can continue to do the most good for our residents.”
—- Sam Oliverio

Rockland County Legislature Chairwoman Harriet Cornell, D-West Nyack, and Legislator Alden Wolfe, D-Suffern, have both issued news releases with remarks about the county Public Transportation Department’s plan to hike bus fares and reduce some service.

As my colleague Khurram Saeed reported last month, the county is looking to increase fares to raise as much as $1 million in revenue, and to reduce service to save as much as $40,000 in expenses.

The changes, if approved, would effect April 4.

Click below to see a list of proposed service reductions and fare increases, as well as the news releases from Cornell and Wolfe.