From Albany, this is the legislative Gazette, a weekly magazine on New York State government
and politics.
Your host is Don Decker, with commentary by a political scientist Dr. Alan Shartuck.
Hello and welcome to the legislative Gazette.
Coming up on this week's show, the ever-passionate issue over abortion.
He did up again this week, as hundreds of pro-choicers descended upon the Capitol to lobby lawmakers
whenever report.
Meanwhile, anti-abortionists say that they're not intimidated by those numbers, and they
vow to lobby as vigorously for their cause.
Also artists in the Empire State are up in arms, about one state lawmakers plan to deny state
funds to any exhibit that is in his words, pornographic.
And Dr. Alan Shartuck, our political analyst, has a lively discussion, to say the least,
with New York Post's Fred Dicker.
All that plus more on this week's legislative Gazette.
New York's chief executive and a famous feminist were among the hundreds who attended a pro-choice
conference this week in Albany for that story in Gisarta.
They came from across the Empire State nearly 2000 strong.
They came carrying signs saying pro-choice is our choice, and I have a uterus and I vote.
They're of all ages, races and denominations, and they're gulped 17 years after the
historic Supreme Court decision, giving women the right to choose an abortion, is simply
to keep abortion safe and legal.
Carol Reichert is the assistant executive director of Family Planning Advocates of New
York State, the group that sponsored the event.
This is our 13th annual legislative conference, and our legislative agenda priorities are to
maintain access to safe legal abortion, not just the right to legal abortion, but access
to legal abortion, and also to promote programs to prevent unintended pregnancies, and
therefore, we hope to promote programs that will decrease the need for abortion.
Although many polls indicate that an overwhelming majority of New Yorkers are to some degree pro-choice,
Reichert admits she knows abortion foes will be lobbying vigorously as well.
Well, we expect to see a move to block Medicaid funding for abortion.
We don't think that that will be successful.
We recently heard the results of a New York State poll, which show that 70% of New Yorker's
support Medicaid funding for abortion.
But I anticipate that the anti-choice folks will try to block those funds.
We also anticipate a major move to push for mandatory parental consent legislation.
The parental consent bill would require parents to be notified of daughters under the age
of 18 seek an abortion.
This week, legislative leaders cast grave doubt on the chances of the full state legislature
even considering the plan.
Assembly Speaker Mel Miller went further by saying he's doubtful any abortion legislation
would be voted out of the health committee.
Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo was honored at the conference for his pro-choice support.
Again, this year, he vowed to remain loyal to the cause.
New York respects the principle in the law of Roe against Wade.
Furthermore, applying its own state statute and constitution, New York provides Medicaid
funding for abortion so that poor women will have the same effect of...
So that poor women will have the same effect of constitutional rights that women with
the financial resources to pay for an abortion have.
I have supported that position once again in my budget this year, as I have during all
my time as governor.
I will make the case again if I am called upon to do so.
We will argue Medicaid funding for abortion, no matter who takes the other position.
I am hoping this year, and maybe there is some reason for believing this, that the Republicans
who appear to have come almost to the edge of a new era of enlightenment on this subject,
that the Republicans of the state of New York, like the Republicans nationally, will have
a change of heart and will decide this time, finally, not to challenge Medicaid funding
for abortion.
Cuomo also says that more needs to be done to convince teenagers to abstain from sex, although
he knows many will not heed his message.
But at the same time, it is obvious that not all or even most young people will follow
the preferred path despite our advice, and that leaves us with an obligation to all young
people who, for whatever reason, are sexually active, but unprepared to take up the responsibilities
of parenthood and terribly at risk of contracting AIDS and other serious illnesses.
How do you deal with them?
Well, these young people should be made fully aware of the possible consequences of being
sexually active and should be fully instructed on and be given access to the best uses of
contraception.
Governor Cuomo, meanwhile, former New York State Assemblywoman Constance Cook was also
honored.
The Republican from Ithaca was the principal sponsor of the Assembly Bill to legalize abortion
in New York back in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade, a staunch pro-choicer.
She's urged current Republican lawmakers to follow in her footsteps.
First to the Republican Party, you cannot win without the women's vote.
You should not win without the African-American vote.
You must amend your ways and the party platform.
And while all agree that keeping abortion safe and legal is a serious subject, feminist
glorious Steinem added a bit of levity.
Welcome to the first lobbying day of the post-patriarchal egalitarian age.
We're here to celebrate the first time that a woman's issue has been recognized as crucial
in the mainstream of American politics since suffrage.
I was thinking about it and maybe even the Berlin Wall was an example of the post-patriarchal
age.
It was revolution, female style, no violence, and we all went shopping.
Feminist glorious Steinem, not surprisingly, with last year's Webster decision throwing
the abortion debate back to the States, many are saying lawmakers will have to recognize
the strong pro-choice sentiment not just to New York, but nationwide as well.
Before the legislative gazette, I'm Ingas Sardin.
As you've just heard in English report, pro-choices are specifically warning Republicans not to
restrict abortion rights in the Empire State.
Brian Shields talks with those on the other side of the issue.
They're urging the GOP to protect the rights of the unborn.
Barbara Fraterico is the legislative director of the New York State Right to Life Committee.
She says she's not quite sure why National Republican Party Chairman Lee Atwater and State
Chairman Jay Patrick Barrett seem to be saying it's okay for Republicans to be pro-choice.
In her judgment, it's a poor and potentially devastating move for the Republican Party.
Those of us who have worked in the field politically know for a fact that the only reason the Republicans
have been successful these last eight or ten years has been because they have featured
themselves as being in the forefront of traditional family values.
I myself happen to be a registered Democrat and unfortunately I haven't been able to vote
for a Democrat in the last few national elections.
They have gained many seats in much of their power and they have been the presidency itself
on the backs of the family value type situations.
And if we just go back to the first time Reagan ran here in New York State, everyone predicted
that he would be collaborative and the traditional Republicans did not support his candidacy.
And it was a pro-life people who worked their tails off all over the state getting petition
signed and everything and working in his campaign that actually got Reagan the nomination
for president.
And if the Republicans turn tail now and say, you know, we're no different from the Democrats
and we don't care about you folks, they're going to have fewer and fewer seats in a lot
less power than they have today.
Frederico also says that her organization will indeed lobby lawmakers on the parental consent
and Medicaid funding issues.
The sponsor of the parental consent legislation, Senator Frank Pativan, a Republican from
Queens, says although the bill will most likely not make it out of committee, it was still
important to him to introduce it.
It's perhaps a moral issue but more importantly in my view, a family issue.
The notion that a youngster must get parental consent to have a tooth extracted or some
type of medical care given to him or her to take a field trip from school and yet in a
most serious and certainly traumatic matter of an abortion that parents aren't even allowed
to be notified or required to be notified and have a less consent.
Now there's a major contradiction there.
I can't think of a more important time for parents to be involved with their teenage
daughter's emotional and physical problem.
Senator Frank Pativan from Queens, he has introduced the measure for several years on
successfully.
Meanwhile, another abortion foe is telling Governor Cuomo he's going straight to hell
for his pro-choice stance.
Newberg Bishop Austin Vaughn made the comments from the Albany County jail where he was
serving as sentence for blocking access to an abortion clinic in Albany.
Vaughn compared Cuomo to a Nazi soldier who may have objected to the Holocaust but who
nevertheless supported the German government's slaughter of millions of Jews.
Cuomo told our political analyst, Dr. Alan Shartock, that everybody is entitled to their
own claim.
And to those circumstances, sometimes you learn from that that if you seek to defend
yourself against oppressors of that type you ought first to remove their catches mask
which I forgot to do.
But I've tried to learn since then and I think what your instincts should be when you're
the subject of this kind of thing is first to say to yourself, no wait a minute somebody
is charging me with something.
Is there anything to it?
Maybe the person is right, okay?
Listen you say, well no this person happens to be wrong.
Okay then I don't have to worry about having done something wrong now how should I react?
Well this gets back to the point I made before nobody's perfect.
Let's assume the best for everybody.
He's following his conscience, I'm following mine, so be it and that's the end of it and
you move on to something more constructive I hope, more affirmative.
That's another notion.
Here we have waning the waning moments of our lives.
That's true every moment, every moment of your life is behind you, lost forever as an
opportunity.
We should make more of every moment, should be more positive, more affirmative, more constructive.
Don't clutter our lives with the negativeism.
And that's a particularly difficult thing to remember in politics when when accusation
is so easy and instrument when people call one another names and accuse, especially in
these dark negative days of television campaigning where they like to show pictures of your
nose growing because you're a liar where it's easier to bring the other person down and
bring yourself up.
We're losing, we're losing the chance to be constructive and affirmative and do positive
things linking our arms instead we're pitting ourselves against one another.
It's unfortunate a lot of it.
Governor Cuomo, with passions flowing from both sides many say the session bounds to be
a lively one when it comes to the abortion issue.
For the legislative Gazette, I'm Brian Shields.
And now joining us, Professor at the State University of New York, our resident political
analyst, Dr. Alan Shartuck.
He spoke with our frequent guest, New York Post investigative editor Fred Dicker, about
plenty of hot happenings in New York.
Fred Dicker of the New York Post, how are you this week?
Great hour, how are you?
Well, I'm fine.
So let me ask you a couple of questions.
Things are heating up.
We heard Governor Cuomo when asked about Bobby Abrams put his tongue way back in his
shake and say when he heard that Bobby Abrams at a press conference had to said the following
things.
I will run for Attorney General or I'll run for Governor Cuomo doesn't run.
But if Cuomo does run, then I'll run for Attorney General and then I'll run for Al D'Amato
seat in 92 maybe.
Now the governor when asked about that, who has a good relationship with Senator D'Amato
puts his tongue way back in his cheek, I think, and says, wow, you mean to say he's saying
he's not going to run, he's going to run, but he may not finish out his term.
It's remarkable for a politician to be that honest.
What do you make of all that Fred?
First of all, I use a different metaphor.
I think the governor was putting his finger down his throat, not his tongue, and his cheek.
There's been, you know, as we both know in the past, some tension before Bobby Abrams
here's the governor trying to psych himself up, get ready to run again, he's nervous about
a Republican opponent.
And I guess he sees his supposed Democratic colleague just sort of saying, hey, if you don't
go, and I'm not saying I think you should go, that may be with Bernie the governor
the most.
If you don't go, I'm going to be in there running.
On the other hand, let me say that what Bobby Abrams said, what the attorney general
said, has been common knowledge for years in New York.
Bobby Abrams still has great political ambitions.
He's, I guess by many accounts, been a pretty good attorney general, and he's watching and
waiting.
This was not a press conference where he announced this, he was asked this, as I guess you
know, by an associated press reporter, and only then did he volunteer his interest in
future office report.
Well, so somebody, hey, come on, Fred, you've been around the block enough time to know
that when somebody doesn't just respond to a question until they're ready to respond.
Well, I've been around the block enough times I want to know that it's not always where
it seems.
And while I agree with you, it may very well be that Abrams had timed this.
I don't understand why he would time it for now.
I'm sure, I think, for a fact, that the attorney general, like most New York politicians,
expects the governor to seek reelection.
So what gain did Abrams have?
Keep in mind, too, that Abrams issued a caveat with his noting that he would be interested
in challenging Aldermotto in 1992, and that caveat was he would be the first person to
say, don't underestimate Aldermotto as a very potent political force.
So I'm not sure there was any method to the madness.
Maybe you could tell me what you think the intention was.
Well, I think he may have been intending Abrams to clear a lot of other bodies out of the
way.
You can say, look, I'm keeping my options open, and the rest of you stop fooling around
Geraldine Ferraris as she may run.
Can you imagine a talk about fingers down your throat?
I mean, there is somebody who really would get beaten, in my opinion, in a primary.
In any case, let's go on here.
Fine.
The governor now comes down to the New York Post, and he has only nice things to say about
the motto.
Well, they've been friendly, if not friends, for a long time.
I think the governor, and Myers Aldermotto is a guy who, he, the governor, could get a response
from when he needed help in Washington.
I think he had Myers-M as a fellow Italian American.
And I think he admires him as an incredible politician who went from the town supervisor
of the town of Hempstead on Long Island to the United States Center as a romantic and
incredible and unexpected political leap ten years ago.
The governor also had a slow-starting political career in 1982, as we both know, many people,
most people, didn't think he could become governor, and he did.
So I think there's a certain simpatico there that the governor is expressing.
Let me just say one other thing.
I mean, I think it's clear that the governor wants the V. King of the Hill as a Democrat
in New York.
And it's probably, to some degree, to his political advantage not to have another
Democrat as the U.S. Senator.
He likes Aldermotto.
Okay.
Now, the New York Post ran a story that I thought was might have been a good story, but
I didn't much like personally in which one of the auxiliary bishops from Newberg, New
York, is quoted as saying that if Mario Cuomo continues on his present abortion position,
that he risks going to hell.
Right.
What's that old guy?
Well, that's a story that was picked up as you know.
I'm sure about the New York Times and the Daily News and News Day and it went on the
A.Y. or across the United States.
So it wasn't just the New York Post that wrote the story.
We were the paper that broke the story.
A Christmas Canada, my colleague broke it.
What it's about is this ongoing national debate in Catholic circles and in, you know,
the lay circles on the whole issue of what obligation, if any, does a Catholic politician
who on the one hand, subscribes to the Church of U that abortion is sinful, have to use his
of her power to try to stop abortion.
It's an old debate in New York state in particular.
It's risen and fallen.
You mentioned Geraldine Farah, or you remember back in 1984 when she was running for Vice
President Cardinal O'Connor.
New to New York was a connemiter because of her position and it said off her debate
then.
What's about the anxiety and the anti-choice movement or the anti-abortion movement now?
The lines are sharply drawn than ever before in the wake of the Webster decision last
fall.
And finally, I think there may be a plan afoot on the part of the Catholic hierarchy to
put some more pressure on politicians like Governor Cuomo who have it both ways.
I mean, they say they're against abortion but then they defend themselves for not taking
actions as Catholics and elected officials to try to stop abortion.
The New York Post-Fred Dicker with Alan Shartuck.
And now taking a look at some other happenings this week in state government, Paul Rosen
Thaw with our Legislative Notebook.
The sharp rise in oil prices last month was brought on by simple economics.
Refineries were able to hike their prices because of increased demand.
This was the statement made by mobile oil companies chief representative in the Northeast,
Donald Clark.
Clark was the lead witness at a hearing in Albany by a state attorney general Robert Abrams,
state energy commissioner William Cotter and New York state consumer protection board
chief Richard Kessel.
Kessel disagrees with Clark's statement and feels that oil companies are making a profit
at the expense of the public.
There are certainly some factors out there that led to some of the price increases.
I don't see any factors including the record call that we experience for prices to have
shot up but for some consumers as much as 60 cents a gallon.
That's just unheard of.
And frankly, I don't buy the oil industry's excuse.
I don't believe it's pure supply and demand.
And I think some of it is agreed on the part of the industry to make as much money as
they could from the American consumer consumer protection board chief Richard Kessel.
Republicans far in a new round in the state budget war by calling governor Cuomo's budget
proposal fiscal gimmickery.
Analysts for the state's sentence Republican majority had harsh criticism for Cuomo's
51.3 billion dollar state budget proposal unveiled last week.
The Republican analysts say that Cuomo's proposed budget would raise state spending by
8.2 percent, not the 4.5 percent figure the governor has been using.
They also charged that Cuomo's proposal to indefinitely delay a promised income tax
cut scheduled for this year would amount to an increase in the state's tax rate.
The charges came as the staff of the Senate Finance Committee presented report to Republican
senators on Cuomo's budget proposal.
Attorney General Robert Abrams called on the legislature to approve a package of bills
that designed to protect both people who live in cooperatives and condominiums and those
who invest in them.
The centerpiece of Abrams' proposal has a requirement before a building could be converted
into a co-op or a condo 25 percent of the units would have to be purchased by current
tenants.
That requirement would apply to buildings where the tenants are not being evicted.
Abrams says that's the vast majority of buildings currently being converted.
The state assembly has approved a proposal to expand New York's shield law to protect
non-confidential news sources.
The bill's sponsor says the legislation will prevent lawyers from needlessly forcing reporters
to testify about news events to buttress their cases.
Assemblyman Steven Sanders says the bill is a triumph for the public because it reinforces
the independence of the press in this state.
The Manhattan Democrat says the job of the press is to investigate and report the news, assuring
the integrity of that process he says protects the public's interests in having the truth
exposed.
This is Paul Rosenthal.
The artist in the Empire State are gearing up for a fight.
This week a state lawmaker threatened to try to cut off funds to exhibits considered
by him as lude and pornographic.
Not surprisingly, as Bruce Robertson reports, opposition is building.
The delicate issue of what is art was dragged into the limelight this week at issue is an
exhibit at the New York State Museum in Albany.
Assemblyman Robert DeAndrea, a Republican from Saratoga Springs, says it's pornographic,
lude and x-rated.
Some officials contend otherwise.
They say the exhibit, one of 24 by upstate women artists, contains very little nudity
and nothing pornographic.
Mary Jo Darty is the exhibit's project coordinator.
No genitalia at any time appeared, anything.
So it was so shocking to everyone involved when they were labeled as such because it's
a dangerous word to throw around these times.
The DeAndrea says it's lude.
In his words it contains scenes of, quote, lesbians making passes and lovemaking going on.
According to museum officials, there is a sign in front of the exhibit stating it contains
some nudity.
They also say it is staffed by a museum guard to ensure that children do not enter without
an adult.
Despite this, DeAndrea maintains the exhibit has no place at all in the museum and he's
so angry he is considering drafting legislation that will deny state funding to any exhibit
considered pornographic.
What we hope to do, Jesse Helms I think was successful in getting an amendment passed in
Congress that did something along this line.
So we're going to check Jesse Helms see just how the language was written evidently.
He managed to find some language that was acceptable to Congress that hopefully will do
the job.
If we think it will be effective then we will use that kind of language in our legislation
and try to give a bill passed in the Senate assembly and hopefully find by the governor
that will not allow any state money going to any organization.
First hand or second hand or any state facilities used in any way she had performed that in
any way promotes supports or displays in any fashion pornographic material.
Justice for who would decide if an artwork is pornographic DeAndrea says it's too soon
to know.
He says he really just doesn't know how his concept would be developed into practice.
What he does realize however is that he will indeed come up against those crying quote
censorship.
I'm sure I will run across people who will say this is censorship.
This is one of the reasons why I hope that the Helms legislation will be a good piece
of legislation and one that will work for us and I can say that a majority of the U.S.
Senate, a majority of the United States Congress felt that this was a good thing to do and that
I believe a large majority of the people of this state would agree that it's a good
thing to do and it's not censorship.
It's proper spending of state dollars.
They're not censoring anybody but when you're spending state dollars they should be spent
responsibly and needs that the people of the state and what the people of the state want
and then certainly I would believe that a large majority of the people of this state they
look at that would let out a large cry saying my dollars should not be wasted in that
material.
Republican Assemblyman Robert DeAndrea, he says he does not know yet how much support
he will get from his legislative colleagues.
At mean time, Exhibit Coordinator Mary Jo Dority says that if DeAndrea proceeds he can
expect fierce lobbying against the measure.
This is the art state.
This is New York, the art state.
We are the leader in the art world and I don't think I can imagine that anyone will legislate
and legislate vote for such an amendment.
Who would determine what is censorship and that's why you have peer review system.
That's why we had a curator.
Project Coordinator Mary Jo Dority.
Martin Sullivan, director of the New York State Museum says this could be just the tip of
the iceberg for artists in the Empire State.
My fear is that this is going to be a difficult year for the arts in New York State anyway
because of the state's fiscal condition and the governor's proposal to reduce the budget
of the council and the arts and my fear stems from a concern that it may be thought by legislators
that a way to live with major reductions in the arts is to point to the insensitivity
or inappropriateness of work produced by artists.
And that's a very bad reason.
It's a very bad precedent for the future.
So I think that there will need to be a lobbying effort and I hope it can focus not on the
negative issue of censorship or artistic expression that goes beyond the boundaries of
society's acceptance but rather on the positive note of why we need a flourishing arts community
in New York State in order to enhance the quality of life for everybody.
Martin Sullivan, director of the New York State Museum.
With Dority, he too says lawmakers should expect some passionate opposition if DeAndre's
measure is transferred from mind to matter.
For the legislative Gazette, this is Bruce Robertson.
And that does it for this week's show.
The legislative Gazette is produced by Ingasarda with technical assistance from Phil Sluzarez.
This program is made possible with grants from the legislative Gazette, the newspaper about
state government, subscription information available, 518-4736482, and Empire Information
Services, serving New York and New England with electronic news release distribution.
For the Gazette, I'm Don Decker.
