Legislative Gazette Show 1311, 2013 March 15

From WAMC in Albany, this is the Legislative Gazette.
A weekly magazine about New York State government and politics, your host is David Castina, with
Political Commentary by Dr. Alan Shartock, Political Scientist and Professor Emeritus
at the University at Albany.
Statewide distribution for the Legislative Gazette is made possible by New York State United
Teachers, representing professionals in education and healthcare, online at nysut.org.
And NISCASA, the New York State Coalition against Sexual Assault, working to support men and
their decisions to end sexual violence with the My Strength is not for hurting campaign
online at nyscasa.org.
Coming up this week, a shooting rampage in Hercomer and the legal debate over guns and
safety.
Our political observer Alan Shartock shares his thoughts on what looks like another
on time even early state budget and will examine the energy highway blueprint.
We'll see you in a few stories and more on the Legislative Gazette.
The legal debate over guns and the safety of New York's citizens continues at a fever
pitch in the wake of the Hercomer Horror this week where four people were shot and two
left critically injured.
The Legislative Gazette Dave Lucas reports.
The Central New York tragedy and Wednesdays refusal by a state judge to block New York's
tough new gun law have kick the gun control issue into overtime.
A Siena College poll recently found New York voters by a 2-1 margin support the New York
Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, which included a broader ban on assault
weapons and lower limits on the capacity of magazines.
The state assembly woman Michelle Shimmel is a staunch supporter of the New York safe
act and a strong proponent of background checks.
She says her heart goes out to Hercomer.
And once again the fact that it's at Hercomer County which is essentially ground zero because
of its proximity to Remington is particularly ironic and particularly telling and it's
very, very, very sad.
Every time I hear of a killing, any killing, it breaks my heart.
And hopefully with the New York law it will be somewhat eradicated.
I'm actually going to Washington DC tomorrow, leaving tonight to lobby congressmen and senators
to do something on a federal level as well so they can copy New York state.
The New York safe act was pushed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who had sought the
changes after high profile shootings in Newtown, Connecticut and Webster in Monroe County,
New York.
Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, Republican of Glenville in the 112th district, championed second
amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution.
With this bill that was rushed to judgment by the governor with a so-called message of
necessity which really is a message of political expediency, it's not going to impact situations
like this.
It's going to impact situations like this is trying to pinpoint these individuals who
have mental health problems, making sure they're getting treatment and making sure the
best of our ability they don't have access to dangerous weapons.
Since New York passed the safe act in January 34 counties have passed resolutions opposing
it, all of which are north of New York City.
Tedisco points out that it's a tough proposition to get harmful weapons out of the hands of criminals
without infringing on the rights of people who own guns for personal protection.
And I agree with the governor and what he had to say today.
Sometimes there's no piece of legislation, there's no type of preparation that can take
place to stop a madman from doing the types of things we've seen here in Newtown and
some other areas.
But we have to continue to pursue a policy that does make us safer, but not a policy that
creates a false sense of well-being and they need to be in danger of our ability to protect
ourselves by banning some weapons which really don't illustrate there a large part of the
problem.
Many law enforcement officials say they are not convinced the safe act will make the streets
any safer and they believe the bigger problem to be the illegal handguns already on the streets.
Charlie Samuels with Saratogaans for gun safety, applaud state and national efforts to pass
gun control laws.
We have a, you know, an epidemic of gun violence in this country and unfortunately these kind
of things are probably going to continue unless we make some changes in gun control.
The Hercomer incident hasn't affected plans for another gun show scheduled to be held
this weekend in the spa city.
Mark Baker is president of the Saratoga Springs City Center Authority.
Interestingly, we are not getting overwhelmed with complaints and responses from people that
are concerned about the gun show.
In fact, we have heard less and less comment on it.
If we do have some folks this coming weekend that are on the street expressing a different
point of view, certainly that is the right.
We welcome them to express themselves in a civil and certainly courteous manner.
Charlie Samuels says his group will be on the scene and plan to demonstrate on the streets.
We don't want the gun show in our camp.
Please don't bring your guns to town.
The gun debate is far from resolved as gun crime continues and other issues including
gun insurance and micro stamping are likely to be scrutinized more closely in this year's
legislative session in Albany.
For the legislative Gazette, I'm Dave Lucas.
The New York State Legislature is fast tracking the budget process as they try to reach
final agreements and pass bills next week.
The negotiations drew protesters to the Capitol who are demanding that the budget include
a minimum wage increase to $9 an hour with automatic future increases for inflation.
We get more now from the legislative Gazette's Karen DeWitt.
The 50 or so demonstrators directed their eye or toward Governor Cuomo and Senate co-leader
Jeff Klein, who they say aren't doing enough to convince Republicans in the Senate to go
along with a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour.
Hey, Klein!
At least nine!
Hey, Klein!
At least nine!
Senator Klein, a Democrat who led a breakaway faction of Democrats to join a coalition government
with the Senate Republicans, has been attempting to compromise with the Senate GOP.
As of called a minimum wage increase a job killer, Klein ultimately agreed to a plan
to increase it gradually over a three-year period instead without naming any specific
amount.
Mark Dunley, with Hunger Action Network, says that's not good enough.
He questioned Senator Klein's motives for forming a coalition with the Republicans in
the first place.
And when Jeff Klein stood and said this is not about patronage, this is not about
greed, this is not about personal power, this is about doing something different for
the good of the voters of New York State.
And yet, the one issue we talked about by me becoming co-mejorating leader, we're going
to get a minimum wage, it has still not been increased.
Dunley, who demonstrated with other protesters outside Senator Klein's office door, says
food pantries and soup kitchens in New York feed three million people a year.
Forty percent of clients have jobs, but they don't pay enough to make ends meet.
They don't make enough money to feed their families.
They have to choose between paying their landlord, paying the utility company, paying the medical
bill, or putting food on their table.
Senator Klein was asked about the protesters following a budget conference committee meeting.
I was just at my office, I didn't see any protests.
The Senator and other legislative leaders met several times with Governor Cuomo throughout
the day, but offered few details of their talks, assigned that a final deal is close.
Lawmakers agreed to divide up $550 million in additional spending for education, health,
and other items.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver says that doesn't mean the legislature is spending half a
billion dollars more than Governor Cuomo wants, though.
Senator, along with Senate GLP leader Dean Skellows, say they have instead moved money
around, but they couldn't name the total increase in state spending.
Schools will receive $290 million more under the agreement, but lawmakers have not yet
convinced Governor Cuomo to agree to restore around $250 million cut to New York City schools
after they failed to meet the governor's deadline for a teacher evaluation plan.
There was also discontent with some of the other restorations.
The governor and leaders allotted $40 million additional dollars to service providers for
the developmentally disabled, but supporters objected, saying that's only one third of the
$120 million originally cut by Governor Cuomo.
The newest state senator Cecilia Katchick demanded an explanation at a budget conference committee
meeting.
The Democratic conference totally supports the full restoration of $120 million, and
I assume the Republican majority is concurring with that.
So I don't understand why we're not at that $120 million and could the chairs explain
why we only have $40 million.
She was told that negotiations are not yet done, and the final number could still change.
In Albany, I'm Karen DeWitt.
You are listening to the Legislative Gazette.
So
We've even seen the US Department of Veteran Affairs weighing in saying they won't comply
with the provision of New York's gun law that requires mental health providers to report
potentially dangerous individuals to state authorities adding this all up a pretty amazing
week and one more incident of gun violence.
Well, David, we're just going to have to get our arms around this problem of guns.
Is a certain irony that in Central New York is the Remington factory right there and putting
out guns?
And I think that to some degree, we are prisoners of the idea that so many people who feel
so passionately about this have been ratcheting up the rhetoric.
They have been saying, for example, that the law was passed too fast using something
called a message of necessity.
Messages of necessity are supposed to be used only when you have a real crisis.
Well, of course, they sued and the judge said, you know, no, this is a legitimate.
Why?
Because we have a crisis of too many guns and too many people being killed.
And if it was your child or your family or your wife or your husband, you would be in great
grief right now and saying, why are we allowing this to continue?
Now there are many gun people out there who truly believe that this is the first step in
the government taking everybody's guns away and being oppressive.
But we haven't seen that.
Of course, in upstate New York where Governor Cuomo has a particular problem, I mean, he's
getting more and more popular according to these Marist and Siena Poles downstate, but
not upstate.
Upstate, he's actually losing some favor.
So he showed up at this shooting.
It was the right thing to do.
And I think that the point was not missed by everybody that this didn't need to be happening.
In the meantime, along comes the folks at the Veterans Administration and they say, look,
we do therapy with our veterans who come back.
We are not going to report them if they say something that in the course of a therapeutic
session that might be considered to be dangerous, we're not going to allow our people to do it.
Well, they're not alone.
The American Psychological Association and so many other people have raised some eyebrows
about this and have said, we don't understand therapy is meant to build trust between a therapist
and the patient.
And if in fact, every time the patient says something that might be a little extreme,
we have to cover our behinds and go and report them.
That is going to destroy the therapy.
You can only imagine what the therapeutic relationship would, what would happen in a case
like that.
On the other hand, I truly believe that most well-for-better word shrinks understand what
their responsibilities are.
And I can't believe that if somebody came in and said, I've got a gun at home and I'm
going to kill somebody that there is in some way in which that psychiatrist or social
worker or psychologist would let somebody know about it because it's just the right thing
to do.
But to tell them in its mandatory, I said when they passed the safe act that that was a
bad idea, it is a bad idea.
And I think the feds are right to put a stop to it.
Alan, you and I have been together for a long time now.
And it seems like each year when we began together, there was always a late budget.
It couldn't get the agreement on time.
One house blamed the other, the governor blamed the Senate, finger pointing.
And it will always seem to stretch past the April 1st deadline, sometimes into July or
later.
And now we see the last few budgets coming in on time.
And now all the leaders are saying, you know, we're going to have probably a budget maybe
by next week.
So you know, I'll teach your political science for maybe 40 years I've been doing this.
I've been telling people about what goes on in legislation.
One of the worst things that happens is that people don't know anything and they begin
to fixate on one or two little things.
One of the fixations has always been on the budget.
They've always said, look, our side is right, we're not going to budge.
And one of the reasons they do that is to indicate to their clients, in other words,
if they're the Republicans, to the business community, and if they're the Democrats, to
the more progressive community, that they're fighting for them.
Well, it turns out, of course, that people just set a pox on you, both of your houses,
because you can't even get the most essential thing done, the budget, along comes Andrew Cuomo.
Now Cuomo, I've reminded you before, I'm going to mind everybody again, now owns both
houses of the legislature.
He's a Democrat, but he wants the Republicans in power.
We've known this from the very beginning.
He didn't veto the self-serving apportionment bill, redistricting bill, and that was a clear
clue to me and to everybody else that he wanted the Republicans to stay in power.
Well there are now fewer Republicans than there are Democrats in the state Senate.
The only thing that stands behind Dean Skello's the Republican leader being out on his behind
is Cuomo, because if Cuomo pulls in the four or now five groups that are being called
the, quote, traitors to the Democratic Party who have made a deal with the Republicans and
says, cut it out, then they're going to be a Democratic majority and it's all over.
Skello's knows that to be in the minority in New York state is the worst possible fate
anybody can go through.
First of all, he's got a lot of old guys at his conference and the minute they're in
the minority, they're gone, they're going to leave.
And so he doesn't want to do that to put it mildly.
He has to do whatever the governor says.
If the governor says get an on time budget, he's going to get an on time budget.
If the governor says get a gun deal done in the middle of the night, he and his group who
are largely opposed to this are going to say, okay, how far do we have to jump?
And finally, these guys woke up one day and said, you know, everybody hates us because
we can't do the budget.
So we'll do the budget.
Period.
Legislative Gazette Political Observer Alan Shartoff.
You are listening to the Legislative Gazette, a program about New York state government and
politics.
I'm David Gissteena.
Late last year, the Cuomo administration laid out its agenda.
Late last year, the Cuomo administration laid out its agenda to address New York's
future energy requirements.
The innovation trails mat Richmond examines the goal of the plan known as the energy highway
blueprint.
It's easy to miss this red brick building.
It's on a residential street outside of Albany.
There's no sign telling drivers that the flow of all the electricity in New York state
is being controlled inside.
The organization at the controls is the New York Independent System operators or NYISO.
There are nonprofit created after New York's energy markets were opened up in the 90s.
Somebody once described us as kind of like the air traffic controller for electricity and
that's actually a pretty good description.
That's NYISO's spokesperson Dave Flanagan, 11,000 miles of transmission lines and more than
300 power plants are monitored from six computer consoles at NYISO's control center.
Flanagan says the biggest challenge is making sure power gets to New York City.
We have really a surplus of electricity but we are limited in some cases in our ability
to get the electricity from areas where we have those surpluses to areas where the demand
is greatest.
Flanagan says bottlenecks around Albany are the main issue.
Most power travels from western New York eastward to Albany and in south down the Hudson
Valley into New York City.
Often around Albany there's just too much power trying to get to New York City.
That means higher prices in the city and a reduced market for upstate producers.
Flanagan says a mixture of expanded transmission and new power sources would address the problem.
That's where Governor Cuomo's energy highway blueprint comes in.
It's a series of proposals leading to an estimated $5.7 billion in investment in the next
10 years to increase power transmission and generation.
Donna DeCastanzo, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council,
applauded to the parts of the plan that focus on clean energy.
You need to ensure that what's being brought down from our transmission line is clean.
The blueprint calls for $250 million in renewable energy contracts and $35 million more in
transmission upgrades to connect new sources to the state's grid.
DeCastanzo says renewable energy and efficiency upgrades could supply enough power to replace
Indian point to nuclear power plant 40 miles north of New York City.
It's clear that we do need to do something about Indian point when a natural disaster,
many of which we've seen in the last couple of years, including an earthquake, flooding
and tornadoes, could shut the plant down or trigger a disaster.
Closing Indian point is not included in the energy highway, but Governor Cuomo has argued
for its closure since 2011.
But Jerry Kremmer, chairman of the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance,
says the Governor's plan would be most useful if closing Indian point was left off the table.
The whole idea for the energy highway is to find ways to improve transmission and to
get new sources and not to throw a monkey wrench into an existing source.
He also criticizes a separate transmission project called the Champlain Hudson Power Express,
which would bring power from Canada directly into New York City.
The problem with Champlain Express is that it's like taking the power from Canada and having
a long extension cord into New York City, it creates no jobs.
That project is still waiting for approval.
Kremmer argues the focus should primarily be on carrying additional upstate produce power
into the city.
Some of the projects included in the energy highway are just starting this year, and many
will run past 2018.
In Binghamton, I'm Matt Richmond for the Innovation Trail.
Support for the Innovation Trail comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The Innovation Trail is a collaboration between five upstate public media outlets reporting
about New York's innovation economy.
You can hear more at innovationtrail.org.
And that about does it for this week's show.
We at Health and the New York State Public Radio Network copies of the program are available
call 1-800-323-9262.
That number 1-800-323-9262.
Ask for program number 13-11.
Or just listen or podcast on the web at WIMC.org.
And join us again next week at this same time for more news on New York State government
and politics.
For the Legislative Gazette, I'm David Gazetina.
Statewide distribution for the Legislative Gazette is made possible by New York State
United teachers representing professionals in education and health care online at NYSU
UT.org.
And Ms. Kassow, the New York State Coalition against Sexual Assault, working to support men
in their decisions to end sexual violence with the My Strength is not for hurting campaign
online at NYSCASA.org.