Politics on the Hudson

The good news for Gov. Paterson is that legislative leaders today didn’t dismiss out of his hand his proposal to establish a new independent ethics-watchdog panel that would also have authority over the Legislature.

“We are open to changes,’’ said Dean Weiller, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan.

Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, D-Queens, said he welcomed the plan – but pointed out the Senate was  already working on its own proposal. Historically, lawmakers have nixed any plan that would take oversight of their ethics out of their own hands.

Such is life for a governor who has record-low approval ratings. His plan would set up a five-member commission appointed by a 10-member nominating panel whose members would be selected by him and other top state officials.

Paterson wants to shuffle the deck in part because the existing Public Integrity Commission is in hot water because its executive director leaked confidential information to an aide to Eliot Spitzer when the commission was probing that gov., according to Inspector General Joseph Fisch.  Paterson called on them all to quit, but they said no.

With an expansion of the state’s nickel container-deposit law to water bottles slated to take effect in nine days,  state policy is still in flux, with four different bills being considered by the Legislature to change the measure that passed in April.

The biggest problem is that bottlers say they can’t meet a requirement that all water bottles have a unique bar code for New york on them by the deadline.

“It needs to be fixed,’’ said Laura Haight of the New York Public Interest Research Group, which has long championed expansion of the original 1982 law that covers only beer and soda containers.  “But right now trying to decide how to do it is a real mess.’’

She said Gov. David Paterson’s proposal is the worst of those on the table, since a delay he has proposed in increasing the handling fee on the containers would put many redemption centers out of business.

There was no immediate comment from Paterson.

Cornell University will get $27.5 million in federal and state money over five years to do research on materials for high-storage batteries and other energy-storage devices, state officials announced Thursday.

“The funders recognized the strengths we have as an institution,’’ said Hector Abruna, director of the Cornell Fuel Cell Institute.

Abruna said the money will pay for about 30 researchers, and should also generate as many as 70 other jobs.

The grants to Cornell are part of a $95.5 million grant to five institutions in the state from the federal stimulus package. The state is contributing another $10.5 million.

The State University at Stony Brook, Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, Columbia University and the General Electric Global Research Center in Schenectady were also awarded grants.

Cornell and Brookhaven got the largest grants. Columbia got $17.6 million, Stony Brook $18.7 million and GE $16.5 million.

A state law passed last year to help reduce mortgage foreclosures has been mostly a failure, with only six settlements in Westchester, a state senator said today.

“Current anti-foreclosure efforts have not been very effective,’’ said Sen. jeff Klein, D-Bronx, who also represents Pelham and Eastchester as well as parts of Yonkers, New Rochelle and Mount  Vernon. “We need to do more…:”

Figures gathered by Klein show that a law signed last August that requires settlement conferences between banks and borrowers mostly hasn’t worked. Of the 94 conferences in Westchester in March and April,produced only six settlements. Figures for New York City and Long Island showed equally dismal results.

Klein announced today he’s sponsoring a bill with Assemblyman hakeem Jeffries, D-Brooklyn, that would require homeowners facing foreclosure who want to avoid losing their homes to work with a counselor from the state Banking Department and work out a plan to present to bankers at a conference. Banks would also be given more incentives to reach settlements.

The program would cost $7-$8 million, but Klein said money has already been allocated for counseling programs.

_ State tax revenues are likely to fall short of projections this year by $3 billion, meaning more cuts will have to be made in state spending, Gov. David Paterson said today.

“There will be further cuts,’’ Paterson told reporters. “We’re going to have to start thinking about what more cuts there will be.’’

Paterson’s comments came on the heels of a report from Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli that found that tax revenues for April, the first month of the state fiscal year, were almost $250 million below projections.

Paterson said he is likely to call the Legislature back into session later this year – as he did last year – to deal with a hole in the budget. Or, he said, it is possible that lawmakers could act before the end of the regular legislative session, now slated for June 21.

Happy 55th birthday, David Paterson.

The state’s first African American and first legally blind governor surely didn’t expect to be where he is today when he turned, say, 50 (when he was a state senator) or even 53  (when he was lieutenant governor). But by the time he turned 54, the New York political world was turned upside down with the prostitution scandal that brought down Eliot Spitzer and elevated him to the top governmental job in the state.

He will most likely still be governor when he turns 56 next May, but polls show he’s a long shot to still be in his post on his 57th birthday.  The next gubernatorial election is November 2010.

Voters in more than 97 percent of school districts approved their budgets yesterday, a record number, according to counts from the state School Boards Association and New York State United Teachers.

If that figure holds up, it would top the old record of 95 percent set two years ago.

“Even in tough economic times, we see that voters recognize the importance of supporting their local schools,’’ said NYSUT President Richard iannuzzi. The average passage rate since 1969 has been 83 percent, according to the school boards association.

Iannuzzi said a big factor was the inclusion of $1.25 billion in federal stimulus money in state aid to local schools, which eliminated cuts the state had planned to make.

In addition, proopsed tax increases were on average less than 2 percent.

Districts where the budget was defeated  can hold a second vote on June 16. if it is defeated again,  a continegency budget is put in place. That limits tax increases to 4 percent.

Just what the state needs: another dose of bad financial news.

Comptroller Tom DiNapoli reported today that tax collections last month were 44 precent less than a year earlier, and about $239 million below what Gov. Paterson projected last month.

“This was a poor start to the fiscal year,’’ DiNapoli said. “It’s been less than a month since the state’s financial plan was released, and general-fund revenues are already off nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.’’

He warned that the state has already tapped most of its reserves, “so there is very little cushion if revenues continue to fall.’’ He urged leaders to “watch revenues and spending very closely.’‘

Two weeks ago, Gov. Paterson gave the four legislative leaders what sounded like a pretty simple assignment: give him a list of issues they wanted resolved before the end of the legislative session.

Maybe it wasn’t so simple. Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb, R-Canandaigua, so far is the only one of the four to comply.

Here’s his list:
—Come up with an economic-development plan
—Make sure businesses promised Empire Zone tax credits in past years get them
—Adopt an energy plan that uses more renewable resouces and lowers costs
—Allow industrial development agencies to finance not-for-profit projects
—Boost farm-based renewable energy resources, like biofuels, wind and anaerobic digesters
—Exempt local governments in the Hudson Valley and downstate from paying the new payroll tax
—Adopt a plan for road and bridge repair

Kolb told Paterson his group of 41 Republicans (in a body of 150 members) “stand ready to work with you, and anyone else, commtted to the cause of a less costly more affordable state and successfully move beyond the partisan finger-pointing that for too long has deferred New York’s limitless potential.’‘