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From Albany, this is the legislative gazette, a weekly half-hour review of New York State
government and politics.
Your host is political scientist and syndicated colonist Dr. Alan Shartak of the State University.
Hello and welcome to the legislative gazette.
This week, the New York State Council on the Arts defends its decision-making process.
Four major insurance companies are being accused of creating the health insurance liability
crisis that hit the country in 1985.
April 19th primary is just a few weeks away.
We'll look at how the presidential candidates are doing in the polls and who, if anyone,
Governor Cuomo will endorse and, of course, will check in with Fred Dicker.
All these stories and more are coming up on this week's legislative gazette.
Last week, Fred Dicker of the New York Post reported that the New York Council on the
Arts is promoting homosexuality and transvestism through its grant program.
A hearing was held recently where Kitty Carlisle Hart, the head of the Arts Council, defended
the council's distribution of funds, Bruce Robertson has the story.
It was standing room only as hundreds of arts advocates converged on the New York State
Capitol this week to view a legislative hearing, dealing with the hot issue of homosexuality,
state taxpayers dollars, and the arts.
Kitty Carlisle Hart, chairwoman for the state's council on the arts, was, admittedly, sitting
in the hot seat.
State lawmakers grilled her about the use of taxpayers dollars for programs that one reporter
claims promotes homosexuality and transvestism.
The hearing was in response to a recent article by Fred Dicker, state editor for the New York
Post.
Dicker recently wrote that the arts council approved grants for programs that promoted
such alternative lifestyles as homosexuality and transvestism.
Speaking before the legislative panel, Carlisle stood in full defense of the council's decisions
and the decision-making process.
That we found art.
We are neutral as far as anything else is concerned.
We do not fund anybody's point of view.
For instance, you know, you go to the opera all of you, I'm sure.
And if you remember, if you remember that Rigoletto, which is the backbone of almost every
opera house in the country, is filled with rape and murder.
Ketapus is about incest.
We do not advocate rape or murder.
We fund artists and artists have different points of view.
Art is interested in everything in the human condition.
We do not have any particular bias of any kind.
We're not allowed to by law.
Carlisle says the arts council, which has been in existence for more than 20 years, has
been set up so that a wide variety of artists and devers will be supported.
She says the process in which the council decides which grants to approve is nearly full proof
when it comes to personal biases.
Therefore, I would like to describe the process, which saves us all from terrible mistakes.
The process is like democracy.
It may not be perfect, but it's the best thing we've got.
And sometimes things go wrong as they do in a democracy, but in the main, it is a wonderful
system, which you have given.
Now, the process is very simple.
And we defend it with everything we've got, because it's a model for everybody.
Every request that comes to us is looked at by the staff for artistic excellence and
financial responsibility.
And then it goes to a panel, a peer panel, a professional.
Because who is to say what is art?
I don't think any of one of us could define art.
Therefore, we have professional peer panels to decide what is good art.
The peer panels we have number almost 300.
So then, and also, the panels rotate.
One third of every panel is off every year.
And therefore, there is really not much.
And then after that, after the peer panel review, it goes to a subcommittee of the council
which I have a point.
And there are never less than five members there.
And then it goes to the full board of the council.
So you can see that every request goes to about 25 to 30 hands.
No one person's bias could possibly maintain.
Several of the legislators came out in support of the arts council.
Assemblyman Philip Healey, however, said he hoped the council's decision to approve grants
for programs including Affeminist Magazine and a film about the recent National Gay and
Lesbian March in Washington were mistakes and not an overt act of biases.
For the Legislative Gazette, this is Bruce Robertson.
New York's presidential primary is just a few weeks away.
And that means that the contenders will be looking toward the Empire State for support.
Paul Rosenthal reports on a recent public opinion poll that shows George Bush and Michael
Lukakis are running neck and neck in the state.
The latest Maris College Public Opinion poll came out recently.
And for the most part, there were no surprises.
Massachusetts Governor Michael Duke-Kakis has a strong grip on the Democratic vote in the
state and vice president George Bush is retaining his grasp of GOP support.
Dr. Lee Mirrengoth, the author of the Maris College poll, matched up the presidential
aspirants, showing that statewide the Duke has inched ahead of Bush in the running.
Bush was significantly ahead of four of them.
That part Jackson, Gore, and Simon, but trailed statewide narrowly to Michael Duke-Kakis.
He was ahead of Depart 51 to 34.
This is Bush.
He was ahead of Jackson 53 to 33.
Gore was 54 to 30.
Simon 55 to 30.
Similar numbers for those Democrats.
In contrast, the numbers between Bush and Michael Duke-Kakis were 47 percent for
Duke-Kakis to 41 percent for Bush with 12 percent undecided.
Duke-Kakis is the front-running Democrat, but that's not the whole story.
Jesse Jackson is also doing very well in New York.
Most of his supporters found among younger and urban voters.
The Maris poll says if the April primary has a low turnout, Jackson may come out ahead
of Duke-Kakis.
If one-third of the registered electorate votes, Jackson will have 80 percent of the support,
while Duke-Kakis will have 60 percent of the vote.
And what about the favorable unfavorable rating?
The Maris College poll showed Duke-Kakis with the strongest favorable unfavorable rating,
followed by Jackson, whose unfavorable rating dropped significantly since the previous
poll.
George Bush is way ahead of the GOP contenders.
It looks as if he's tied up the Republican nomination in most of the polls, but there's
one interesting trend there.
The Iran Contra scandal may be soiling Bush's reputation a bit in the area of trustworthiness.
Again, Lee Mirangoff.
Bush is seen overwhelmingly by Republicans as being the one who has the most experience
to be president.
80 percent seem that way to 12 for a dull.
Less than 1 percent see Roberts in that way.
There was a significant drop off on the honest and trustworthy question.
Although Bush carries that overwhelmingly, less than a majority see him in that way.
48 percent see him as the most honest and trustworthy.
18 percent view dull that way.
5 percent see Roberts in that way.
And as we'll see in the numbers, the unsure rose significantly at that point.
Dr. Lee Mirangoff is the director of the Maris College Institute for Public Opinion.
The poll also looked at whether New York Governor Cuomo should run for the presidency.
The majority of respondents said, yes, Cuomo should run, but more than half said they did
not think he would run for president.
For the legislative gazette, I'm Paul Rosenthal.
The New York State Assembly has an electronic voting system where legislators insert their
cards into a machine before they can vote on legislation.
I spoke with Fred Dicker, state editor of the New York Post about alleged abuses in this
system.
Well, I consider it a highly unusual story, which notes that a prominent Democratic Assemblyman,
John Deerey of the Bronx, was voted yes on two measures that were in the assembly on
the floor of the assembly just a few days ago.
And at the time he was apparently voting yes, he was actually 150 miles away delivering
a speech to a senior citizens group.
Now, what this means, I mean, it might sound amusing, but what this means is that the integrity
of the assembly's entire record keeping system has now been called into question.
We have the situation here of the possibility that phantom legislative votes are being
regularly recorded at the Capitol.
I called John Deerey in the Bronx.
I said, some of them in Deerey, just an hour, a couple of hours ago, you were listed here
as being voted yes on a couple of bills.
How could that possibly happen?
And he said, I have no idea.
I can't imagine how it happened.
And the assembly leadership is also throwing up its hands saying, oh, we can't imagine how
this could happen.
It must be just some sort of minor technical error.
But on the other hand, I think we both know that it's been long-roovert at the Capitol
that oftentimes, just members are taken care of and devoted present when they're not present
in order to help them politically.
So sometime down the road, they can't be accused of missing a lot of votes.
Well, in fact, let's talk about that for one more second.
One of the things a lot of people have always objected to in the legislature is that with
all voting, you are voted affirmatively or yes, as long as you are in the chamber.
Got it?
That's true on fast-roll call votes, which are kind of 95% of the votes.
Certainly most of them.
You're right.
The presumption is, if you're in the chamber, you're going to vote yes.
Now, the reason for that, of course, Fred, I don't have to tell you of all people.
The reason for that is that nothing usually comes to the floor because of the leadership
that isn't going to pass in the first place.
Sure.
And I think it's a legitimate effort to speed the process, too.
If you always had to have everybody there for every single vote when they have perhaps
what eight or 9,000 bills a year, it would be ridiculous.
On the other hand, the assembly rules do require.
And I think common sense requires that if an individual is going to be voted yes or chooses
to vote no on a particular measure, at least that individual should, if not be in the assembly,
chamber itself, be in one of the outer offices.
So, of course, now what we have, Fred, is we have the specter, since you're going to be
voted affirmatively on every bill, that if you are mistakenly or fraudulently perceived
as being present, then your vote is going to be yes on every day.
Sure.
I think the concern is not so much that the person may be voting yes when he or she wants
to vote no, but that the full suppression is given that a legislator has been much more
active as a legislator than he or she actually has been.
And of course, when we think about this, this legislature, we have known for years, really
comes down to three or maybe five major players if you're going to count the minority leaders.
And now we are saying not only do they have all this power to tell people out of vote
and everything else, but now they can actually vote them.
Well, and of course, we're not dealing in a political vacuum here.
What we're dealing with is a legislature that's been buffeted to the last year or so with
all kinds of allegations, some of which have clearly been proven of improprieties, if not
illegalities, and having something like this emerged now is just one additional black
mark against them.
Well, of course, the other thing is that once you pass bills, and in fact, you don't really
have the people voting for them who say they're voting for them, you give somebody who
doesn't like the law a chance to go to the court and say this bill was passed fraudulently.
Therefore, I was convicted under it or I didn't obey it and now I don't have to listen.
Sure, but that's very unlikely because we know how difficult it is to prove that this
practice goes on.
I mean, I've been around here a long time.
I don't have you, and this is the first time I've been able to prove it.
And I think it's going to be a lot harder in the future to ever prove it again if it's
continues to go on.
How confident.
Well, because there's a code of silence, we're dealing with people here that have a strong
sense of the need to protect the institution in their old ways from public scrutiny.
And I think there'll just be more cautious.
If, in fact, and I want to make it clear, if in fact, there was a pattern of fraudulent
activity here, I think there'll just be a little bit more cautious now from here on
in.
Fred, a lot of people, since you are the premier investigator reporter in Albany, a lot
of people would like to know how a reporter, you don't have to give us your source, but
how a reporter finds out about this kind of thing.
Look, that's a very legitimate question.
I mean, here I am at the cap, and I've got 18 things going on.
In all of a sudden, I wind up for the story about a Bronx assemblyman being in the Bronx
when he should have been on the floor of the assembly to at least be properly voted.
So how did I get that?
Clearly, and I don't think I'm reaching any great secrets here or confidence is clearly,
I was alerted to it.
By someone who, I dare say, had a vested interest in getting this news out.
Now the interest might have been to embarrass the Assemblyman, John Deere, and I assume
he's to some degree embarrassed by this.
The interest may have been to embarrass Mel Miller, the Speaker of the Assembly, who's
had a lot of problems in the last couple of years, and I think he's clearly embarrassed
by this.
But frankly, I don't usually deal in motives.
My philosophy in approaching this stuff.
Is the information right?
Yes, is it true and is it news?
And the person's motivation, while academically, it might be fun to reflect on, is far less
of concern to me than whether it's a good story or not.
Okay, let's move on to another Fred Dicker exposé about a week ago.
You came up with some information about the New York State Council on the Arts and an
award for a Transvestite Cross-Dressing Program, which was labeled as art.
I wonder if you could tell us what has happened since then?
Sure, it was not only the cross-dressing program.
There were several programs that we said were not, sort of, homosexual lifestyle advocacy
programs, as well as left-wing political activists-type programs, for instance, funding a movie that
was very pro-Sandanista.
Well, in response to my stories, the legislature announced it would hold a special hearing
this past week on the propriety of some of the grants being given out by the council.
The arts and indeed that hearing was held.
The State Council on the Arts Chairmen, that's her title, Kitty Carlisle Heart, was here,
and played to a standing room only crowd of quite an interesting hearing in which she did
an excellent job, I think, of sweet-talking the lawmakers.
They have a long-standing relationship with Hershey.
I think it affords them the opportunity to go to Broadway plays and meet big shots
of the acting world.
It never really got down to her explaining why specific grants were given.
It got down to her explaining that the council of the arts is a very good operation that
gives out maybe $50 million a year in grants, something that we at the Post never challenged.
She was treated to say the least with kid gloves and comiums of praise for her performance.
Was there any sense that the crowd had showed up for this was there in order to be supportive
of her?
Very much so, Alan.
It looks like she and her friends, her associates, packed the house.
They were over 100 people there.
It was standing room only and every time this is hard, made some sort of declaratory statement.
There were cheers and applause that sort of rippled through the place.
So I don't think there's any doubt it was packed.
Freddie, did you have any discussions with her during the week?
Yes, I did.
She made her case, but she refused in conversations with me to discuss the merits of the specific
programs, which she did, I think, was try to cloud the issue by focusing on the great
job the council of the arts does.
And I never challenged that and did not want to deal with the specific grants that were
involved here.
She also made one of the points made what I think is just an astoundingly ludicrous argument
that whenever the council of the arts selects anyone to do anything, that person selected
is an artist and the quality of the work that person then produces doesn't matter.
She said, for instance, if we name an artist to do a documentary film, whatever film
that artist produces is art.
And to me that could be the argument to justify the works, for instance, of a Lenny
Riefenstahl, the Nazi Hitler film propaganda, to make such movies as Triumph of the Will,
which to this day I recognize is artistically beautiful, but I'm sure we would not want
to have the New York State Council of the Arts filming or funding films such as that.
Fred Dicker of the New York Post.
9 Attorneys General from States Across the Nation have joined antitrust lawsuits against
four major insurance companies for allegedly creating the liability insurance crisis.
Brenda McMahon has this report.
1985 was the beginning of what came to be known as the insurance liability crisis.
Little leagues were having trouble affording insurance coverage for their players.
Towns, school districts and amusement parks were faced with astronomical fees for what
was once affordable insurance coverage.
The problem came to a head across the state and across the nation as fees jumped from
tens of thousands of dollars in coverage to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In some cases, school districts had to eliminate high-risk sports and localities had a park
vehicles and layoff workers because they could not afford insurance rates.
In 1986, lawmakers began taking steps to minimize the damage caused by this crisis and put
a muzzle on rising insurance premiums.
Recently, attorneys general from nine states including New York and Massachusetts filed
lawsuits against all state, Hartford, Etna and Signe insurance companies for allegedly
manipulating the market and in large part causing the insurance crisis.
Wayne Cotter is the director of research for New York State's insurance department.
He says before 1985 when the insurance crisis began, these four companies worked in collusion
to shrink insurance coverage to commercial consumers.
The insurance shrinkage then made prices sore.
Cotter explains.
We all know that prices were rising astronomically for insurance.
What's not understood by most people is that at the same time that prices were rising for
liability insurance, the coverage was shrinking because of these new types of policies.
The attorney general does not at this time say that they conspired to raise prices.
What he is saying is that he has the evidence to show that these companies got together and
said, we can no longer offer this kind of coverage.
It's too broad.
It's too risky.
We've limit our risks and reduce the coverage significantly for municipalities for small
business owners.
Let's get every state to approve this because by so doing, we can ensure our own profits
and we really do not have to be on risk as much as we were in the past.
If there are companies that do not go along, we, by sheer force of our position in the
marketplace, will, will persuade them to do so.
And that's what New York's attorney general, Robert Abrams and other attorneys general
are saying.
Insurance companies offered businesses a claims made policy.
This means any business that received insurance had to file its claims in the same year as
the incident occurred.
If a business did not file in that year, it was not covered for damages.
Thus there was a gap between incident and coverage and businesses were hurt.
Howard says the reason insurance companies restricted the amount of coverage available
to consumers was because they wanted to protect themselves from losing money.
The insurers wanted, they said that they wanted more predictability.
That if they knew that every claim that was filed in that particular year was the only
claim that they'd be responsible for, they could more easily price their product.
It would make assurance more affordable and available.
That was the argument for the claims made policy.
And in effect, what they were doing was creating a very confusing policy for most insurance
purchasers, even those these were business people and so forth.
They were not what you would consider sophisticated purchasers of insurance.
And it was a very confusing type of coverage.
Many businesses did not understand the claims made policy.
And Cutter says if they did, they were held hostage to that company because insurance
coverage was hard to come by.
Many general across the nation are saying these actions in large part caused the insurance
crisis.
The antitrust lawsuits were filed in US District Court in San Francisco.
For the legislative gazette, I'm Brenda McMahon.
US Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, also a Democratic contender, visited Albany recently to talk
with Governor Cuomo and Lieutenant Governor Stan Lundin.
Dave Galetli spoke with the LG about this meeting.
Senator Gore came to Albany to have a discussion with the governor and myself regarding his
presidential campaign.
He is looking towards the April 19th New York primary as an opportunity to exploit the
narrowing field and to make a real statement for his candidacy.
The New York has a big group of delegates that will be up for grabs in the April 19th
primary and Senator Gore wanted to talk to us about how his campaign is going and also
the reasons why he thinks he's deserving a support of key Democrats in this state and
in other states.
Was the topic of an endorsement discussed?
Oh sure.
The Senator Gore asked for our endorsement and we told him we were going to give very
serious consideration over the next 10 days or so to the question of whether to endorse
and who to if so who to endorse and that we appreciated his desire for our support.
Is it clear at this point whether you and the governor will make an endorsement before
the primary?
We have not made a final decision on whether to endorse any candidate or have encouraged
our supporters all over the state to become delegates for their favorite candidate whether
to just stay out of that and allow the candidates to compete here in New York without our intervention.
Do you think that timing is everything now and that New York may have become a critical
juncture in this campaign?
I think the New York primary will be very important.
It seems likely that the field will be practically narrowed to three or four candidates by the
time the New York primary comes along.
While Governor DuCaca seems to be emerging as something of a front runner and that he
has a few more delegates than Jesse Jackson who's close and he seems to be doing well in
the polls and those kind of measures.
The fact is he has to win four out of every five delegates between now and the end of
the process in order to have enough to be nominated on the first ballot.
New York could be a key state if DuCaca runs real well in New York.
He may be able to achieve that or at least emerge as a clear enough front runner that Governor
Cuomo and other major national leaders will want to help him round up the necessary delegates
to get over the top.
On the other hand, there is certainly a possibility for a gore upset or Jesse Jackson victory in New
York which would further make very interesting the primaries that will follow in Pennsylvania,
Ohio and eventually on through to New Jersey and California in early June.
So you're still looking at the likelihood of no one going into the convention with a
clear majority?
Well, it seems likely to me that by some process after the final primaries the Democrats will
settle on a candidate so that we go into our convention knowing pretty well who the
nominee will be.
The problem with going into the convention without having resolved that is that you not
only get fights over who are going to be the nominee but fights over rules and credentials
and platform planks and it becomes very disruptive.
We feel that hurt the Democratic Party badly in 1972 and don't want to forget that lesson.
So Governor Cuomo very strongly feels that at the end of the primary process even if someone
doesn't have close to the 50 percent but if one of the candidates is clearly a leader
then the major national figures.
I would presume that that includes the speaker, the House of Representatives, the majority
leader in the U.S. Senate, a couple of major Democratic governors and others get together
and see what they can do.
That's the situation.
Presumably get behind someone who has one most of the support in the primary.
Lieutenant Governor Stan Lundin.
And that's it for this week's legislative gazette.
The show is produced by Brenda McMahon and she had helped this week from Paul Rosenthal
Bus Robertson and Dave Galetli.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
You'll tune in next week to hear what's happening in and around the Empire State.
Until then, I'm Alan Shartock.
The legislative gazette is a production of WAMC News.
Dr. Alan Shartock is executive producer.
This program is made possible with funds provided by the legislative gazette, a weekly newspaper
on state politics with student internships available.
Statewide satellite distribution of this program was made possible by the Lawrence Group,
providing residents throughout New York State with total insurance coverage.
