Politics on the Hudson

Here’s the Journal News’ video of Gov. Andrew Cuomo in Pleasantville, Westchester County, today talking about the property-tax cap, which he has signed into law.

He held events in Westchester and Long Island.

The Senate Independent Democratic Conference suffered three prison closures in their districts today, with two in Sen. David Valesky’s Syracuse-area district.

A third was in Sen. David Carlucci’s district: the closure of the Mid-Orange Correctional Facility in Orange County.

In the state budget, Senate Republicans ceded authority to Gov. Andrew Cuomo to close nearly 3,800 beds in the prison system—an unprecedented move for a conference who long protected prisons, and the jobs that come with them, in their districts. There was a general belief that Republicans handed over the authority to Cuomo with the assurance the closures would be geographically and politically fair.

So only three of the seven closures announced today are in districts controlled by Senate Republicans. And they are all in safe GOP districts.

The Summit Shock facility in Schoharie County is in Republican Sen. James Seward’s district; the Arthur Kill facility is in Republican Sen. Andrew Lanza’s district; and the Buffalo Work Release facility is in Republican Sen. Pat Gallivan’s district.

Another is the Fulton Work Release facility in the Bronx, which is represented by Democratic Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson.

Valesky’s seat has long been a coveted one for Democrats and Republicans. But now he’ll face voters next year with two prison closures in his district, including the largest one to close, Oneida Correctional Facility, which has nearly 1,200 beds and nearly 600 employees. The other is Camp Georgetown in Madison County.

In January, Valesky and Carlucci joined Democratic Sens. Jeff Klein of the Bronx and Diane Savino of Staten Island to form its own conference, drawing the ire of their Democratic colleagues.

Carlucci said in a statement he’ll work with the state to ensure a smooth transition for the prison closure in his district.

“I am working with the Cuomo administration and the supervisor of Warwick to deal with the potential impact to my constituents if this facility is closed,” he said in a statement.

Rich Azzopardi, spokesman for the conference, said the senators are hopeful that the jobs will be preserved from the prisons in their districts.

Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, D-Buffalo, confirmed to Gannett that he has resigned his position to join the Cuomo administration. He quietly resigned yesterday, but it’s unclear what job he’s taking.

Hoyt referred questions about his new position to Cuomo’s press office. Cuomo’s spokesman Josh Vlasto confirmed the appointment to Celeste Katz, who was on the case earlier today but no word on what position it’ll be.

Hoyt told Gannett it’s difficult to leave his job, which he has held since 1992.

“I loved every minute of it, but it’s a great opportunity and I’m excited about the next chapter,” he said.

Hoyt has been a close ally of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

As Capitol Tonight points out, that’s the sixth vacancy now in the Assembly.

Updated: Here’s Hoyt’s statement on his resignation, saying he’s going to work in a senior position at the Empire State Development Corp.

Hoyt Resignation

The State University of New York Board of Trustees today approved a policy that will increase tuition $300 a year for the next five years, along with SUNY’s 2011-12 financial plan. Lawmakers gave final passage last Friday to legislation that authorizes SUNY to make the hikes, removing the topic of tuition from the annual state budget process for the next several years. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who agreed on legislation with the Senate and Assembly, has not signed the bill yet.

The increase will take effect this fall. Tuition for in-state undergraduate students at SUNY’s 29 state-operated campuses will increase from $4,970 to $5,270 this fall. Tuition for out-of-state undergraduate students will increase 10 percent a year over the five years.

“Today, the Board of Trustees adopted a plan that puts in motion historic reform of SUNY’s long-broken tuition policies,” SUNY Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher said in a statement. “This will allow SUNY to flourish and enable SUNY students and their families to confidently plan for the cost of their education.”

SUNY refers to the five-year plan as “rational tuition” because it will increase in modest, predictable amounts.

“The Board’s adoption of rational tuition represents a lifeline for SUNY and the end to the era of uncertainty for students and their families,” Board of Trustees Chairman Carl T. Hayden said in a statement. “Rational tuition gives us a fighting chance to protect access to New York’s great public university and to make it stronger. I thank Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature for enabling SUNY to take this critical step toward a better future for SUNY students, and commend Chancellor Zimpher, our campus presidents, faculty, and students for their leadership and support, which has made this historic act possible.”

The additional tuition money will be invested in SUNY and will not go into the state’s general fund, as has happened in the past, SUNY officials said.

The legislation also adopted the NY SUNY 2020 Challenge Grant Program, which authorizes grants of up to $35 million—$20 million from the state and $15 million from SUNY—to each of SUNY’s four university centers to expand programs and promote economic development in their communities. The university centers are in Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo and Stony Brook, Suffolk County.

This is the tuition policy that was adopted:

Amendment to Tuition Schedule

In a surprise release, the state Department of Environmental Conservation released this afternoon a summary of changes in the latest version of its ongoing review of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.

Among the changes: a full-out ban of hydrofracking in the Syracuse and New York City watersheds, as well as a ban in primary acquifers statewide; a ban on state-owned land, and the implementation of an advisory panel to develop plans for oversight and a fee structure for drillers.

A 60-day comment period on the document will start in August.

Below is the DEC’s summary:

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Standing on a front lawn of this picture perfect suburb where taxes are among the highest in the country, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday said that governments and school districts would have to “live within their means.”
The governor signed a 2 percent property tax cap  law as a way of curbing the chronic tide of increases that have burdened property owners and have forced so many of them out of the state.
“The old question used to be, ‘can you afford the mortgage payments?’ Now, it’s ‘can you afford the property taxes?’ ” Cuomo said. “This is going to end the madness, finally, and once-and-for-all. We have been the highest taxed state for too long.”
“From a homeowners’ point of view, they wanted the tax cap. It’s done.”
The cap would force local leaders to make tough spending choices, much like their constituents have had to do, Cuomo said.
During the mostly ceremonial signing  — he was  on Long Island earlier in the day touting the law — the governor was joined by local and state leaders and  Russell and Tara Klein and their four children at their Grove Street home where they pay more than $16,000 in taxes, or about four-times the state median.
“I think this is a first step in the right direction,” said Tara Klein, a special education advocate, adding that state mandates would also have to be part of the equation. “This had to be addressed first. … I don’t think you can have one without the other.”
With this new law in place, property tax increases will be capped at 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less.
Local communities and  voters could override the cap with a 60 percent vote on the budget for school boards or relevant legislative bodies.
Why such a high margin?
“We wanted the odds in favor of the taxpayers,” Cuomo said.

The state announced this afternoon that it will close seven prisons as a way to save the state $72 million.

Five are upstate and two are in New York City, but the list excludes most in the Hudson Valley and has none in the Southern Tier or Rochester area.

The announcement comes after months of speculation about where the state would look to reduce its number of prison beds by 3,800.

The only one in western New York is the Buffalo Work Release facility in Erie County. The only one in the Hudson Valley is the Mid-Orange Correctional Facility in Warwick, Orange County.

The closure plan includes four male minimum-security facilities: Buffalo Work Release; Camp Georgetown in Madison County; Summit Shock in Schoharie County and and Fulton Work Release in the Bronx.

Three male medium security facilities will also close: Arthur Kill in Staten Island, Mid-Orange and Oneida in Oneida County.

“The state’s prison system has been too inefficient and too costly with far more capacity than what is needed to secure the state’s inmate population and ensure the public’s safety,” Cuomo said in a statement.

Communities affected by the closures can request state aid from a pot of $50 million set aside to help in redevelopment efforts.  Cuomo initially proposed $100 million.

The reduction of the beds will save the state $72 million this fiscal year and $112 million next year.

Cuomo said prisoners will be moved to other facilities with unused beds. No maximum-security facilities, which are largely full, will close.

Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone vetoed a law today adopted by the City Council on May 31 limiting city workers’ overtime to $20,000 annually unless their superiors give special permission for it.

Here’s Amicone’s letter to the City Council released to the media:

Yonkers Mayor’s Overtime Veto

Gov. Andrew Cuomo today traveled to Nassau County to sign New York’s first property tax cap. He’s headed to Pleasantville, Westchester County, later today to do the same.

The events are ceremonial. He signed the bill over the weekend so rent regulations, which are part of the bill, didn’t expire for New York City and its suburbs.

The tax cap was one of Cuomo’s top priorities of the legislative session, and he’s hailing its passage, saying New York can’t thrive as the tax capital of the nation. It ranges among the highest taxed states in the country, and last year the Tax Foundation said it had the worst business climate in the country.

Nassau and Westchester counties are the two highest taxed counties in the country, while upstate counties rank the highest for the amount taxes compared to home values.

He’s visiting the homes of a family in Nassau and Westchester to highlight the problem. He said that James and Janet Gannon in Lynbrook, Nassau County, paid nearly $11,000 annually in property taxes, close to three times the median property tax bill in New York.

“For decades, taxpayers across New York state have been burdened by back-breaking property taxes that have crippled businesses and families,” Cuomo said in a statement. “It is appropriate to sign this property tax cap at the Gannon household, as millions of homeowners like them have had the deck stacked against them for too long. This tax cap is a critical step toward New York’s economic recovery, and will set our state on a path to prosperity.”

The tax cap will limit the growth in taxes to 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. Voters could override the cap with a 60 percent vote on the budget for school boards or by 60 percent of the local government’s legislative body.

Cuomo offered these points about New York’s tax woes:
· The median U.S. property tax paid is $1,917; in New York, it’s $3,755 – 96 percent higher than the national average
· As a percentage of personal income, New York has the highest local taxes in the nation – 79 percent above the national average
· From 1998 to 2008, property tax levies in New York grew by more than 73 percent – more than twice the rate of inflation during that span
· Companies pay five times more in property taxes than they do in corporate taxes
· New York – especially Upstate New York – continues to hemorrhage population and jobs at a greater rate than the national average

UPDATE (1:30 p.m.): The Times just moved a full story expanding on their breaking news crawl, citing sources who say Cuomo will move to lift the moratorium at some point in the future.

As detailed below, there are a number of steps that have to happen first, as laid out by an executive order signed by Paterson and continued after Cuomo took office.

That includes (but isn’t limited to) a public comment period on the upcoming draft document and another round of revisions by the DEC.

The Times also noted that the state will move to ban drilling and hydrofracking in the New York City and Syracuse watersheds.

An outright ban in those areas would be noteworthy. The DEC had already moved to effectively ban fracking in those areas by requiring drillers to complete an individual Environmental Impact Statement for each well they sought to drill, an expensive, timely process that likely would have kept gas companies away. An outright ban, however, would make it certain.

Original post:

In a one-line crawl on the top of its website and a blast from its official Twitter account, The New York Times is reporting that the state will lift its moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.

But Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office quickly moved to knock the report down, with a spokesman Josh Vlasto calling it “baseless speculation and premature” in an e-mail.

The one-sentence was added as a “Breaking News” item on the top of its website at noon: “New York State to Lift Moratorium on Hydraulic Fracturing”

As of 12:40 p.m., it remains there. A full story hasn’t been added yet.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is up against a July 1 deadline for a second draft of its Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement—a massive document that will guide the permitting process for hydrofracking in the Marcellus Shale.

By executive order, the process is set to remain on hold in New York until a final version of the document—not the upcoming draft—is set in stone, so a lift of the moratorium would be a major surprise, to say the least.

The upcoming draft is set to be followed by at least a 30 day comment period, as directed by a separate executive order from former Gov. David Paterson, and extended under Cuomo. Shortly before the NYT alert moved, a DEC spokesperson said there “will be ample time for public comment and it will not begin until sometime after the document is made available to the public.”