Legislative Gazette Show 9037, 1990 September 14

From Albany, this is the Legislative Gazette, a weekly magazine on New York State government
and politics, your host is Dave Gleffli, with commentary by political scientist Dr. Alan
Sharkat.
Starting up on this week's Gazette will wrap up a primary day which didn't have too many
surprises.
An Assemblyman criticizes New York's attitude toward organically grown food, debate has begun
on an important education topic.
Those stories, Sal and Char Taco join us and there'll be much much more on this week's
Legislative Gazette.
Primary Day 1990 is over in New York State and our Brian Shields has this report on the
winners and the losers.
Carol Bellamy, fresh off a strong victory in the New York Democratic primary has set
her sights on Republican State controller Edward Regan as she continued her political
comeback.
Bellamy handle beat Westchester County clerk Andrew Spana when the Democratic primary.
She had left politics for a stand on Wall Street after losing a 1985 mayoral primary
to then mayor Edward Koch.
The 48-year-old Bellamy admitted to cheering supporters that she had butterflies as she
waited for the primary results.
As it turned out, there was little for Bellamy to worry about.
She ran extremely well in New York City as expected but also pulled plenty of votes from
outside the metropolis.
She even ran strongly in Spano's home county of Westchester.
Tomorrow, and in fact one minute from now starts the big race, the big race for November
and we are going to win that race in November.
That's what we're going to do.
Because we are going to give the voters of New York a choice.
A choice between somebody who has been a vigorous between a vigorous watchdog which I assure
you I shall be has contrasted with a passive observer who's just worked on as the state's
credit rating has gone down there with Louisiana and Massachusetts.
There's another choice between a fiscal reformer whose balance state and local budgets and
somebody who's allowed the state deficit to grow to more than $4 million.
The voters of New York will have to be a choice between someone who will put their money
to work for New York as contrasted with somebody who loses their money by investing in Boston
buildings.
That's where we're going to make a difference there in the fall.
Election officials reported a low turnout across most of the state of New York's 3.9 million
enrolled Democrats less than 10% voted in the controller's primary.
Susan John defeated Gary Proud in a primary for the 131st state assembly seat in Rochester
following a heated campaign marked by the candidate's disagreement on abortion and
the death penalty.
Proud a 14 year incumbent of the Monroe County seat forced the primary after the Democratic
party selected John as its candidate.
Proud attacked John who supports women rights to abortion as a one issue abortion zealot.
John labeled Proud an anti-choice extremist.
Earlier this year Proud announced he would switch his position and support the death penalty.
That switch drew added significance because the assembly needed just one vote to override
Governor Cuomo's veto of death penalty legislation.
John opposes the death penalty.
John's campaign received an unexpected last minute boost from an endorsement from Governor
Cuomo who rarely gets involved in primaries.
Syracuse common counselor Joan Christensen defeated former state fair director Joseph
O'Hara for the Democratic nomination in Anandaga counties 119th legislative district.
Her victory is considered in upset since the party had backed O'Hara.
Francis Sullivan has a legitimate chance to become a Suigo County's first women representative
in state government Sullivan beat Michael Yurden in the Republican primary for the 117th
assembly district.
In a congressional primary Sean Strub the primary opponent of former Congressman John
Dow for the 22nd district seat in an emotional speech conceded defeat to homophobia and prejudice.
Strub ran as an openly gay Democratic candidate and his concession speech and emotional
strub said he wanted to address the real issue behind why he lost.
He told supporters it was because of homophobia and prejudice against homosexuals and lesbians.
For the legislative Gazette I'm Brian Shields.
Joining us now is our political observer Dr. Alan Chartac of the state University of New
York at New Pulse.
Alan the primaries are over.
You predicted who was going to win the single state-wide race.
What are your thoughts now about the controllers race?
Well I still don't know why Andy Spano got into it except as he lost very badly as I knew
he would and as I said he would and as I suspect he knew he would.
So the only question I had is whether or not he thought that by getting into it he had
a shot at sort of increasing name recognition for future endeavors.
I don't know he conducted himself very well.
He didn't say a mean thing about Carol Bellamy.
She didn't really say anything mean about him.
So now it's Carol Bellamy versus Ned Regan.
Andy how about one?
Well I think that one always goes with the incumbent except that Ned Regan has had a
couple of really rough years.
The voters of New York like to have somebody of the other party.
They don't always do it but they like to have somebody of the other party.
And then they're handling the books while the other party is in power.
So you would have to think that Ned becomes the leader in this thing and that Carol is the
underdog.
However a couple of things.
The voters are in an ugly mood.
New York state's finances are not particularly good.
The governor looks like a shoe in versus Rin Frey.
You don't know where anger focuses and there's a potential for some kind of voter rebellion.
The other thing is that of course Carol Bellamy and there's still many more Democrats in
New York state than there are Republicans.
Carol Bellamy is a Democrat.
She's been around for a while.
She has a tremendous name recognition in New York City.
She was one of their top politicians for years.
So it could be a very, very close race.
She once heard me say in some venue that I thought Ned was the leader and she got very angry
with me and told me I was absolutely wrong and I was going to see that I was wrong.
And maybe she's right.
This Rochester area, Assemblyman Gary Proud, now he was endorsed.
Well, he was not endorsed by Governor Cuomo.
Does Cuomo take some credit here?
Well I think that he won't grab the credit but I think that it didn't help Gary Proud.
Gary Proud was in a lot of trouble.
He knew it.
He was always anti-death penalty.
And then of course there was a serial murder situation in Rochester and he did a flip-flop.
And in politics of flip-flop is a very dangerous thing because the people you are deserting,
in other words the anti-death penalty people say well I like guys are right because he
deserted the cause.
The new people may not suspect you.
They said well he's a little late to this now so we might want to go somewhere else.
He was in a lot of trouble.
Then he went ahead and of course annoyed the governor by turning around and going the other
way on the death penalty and deserting the governor's position and it's very, very close
as you know.
One or two votes can make the difference in terms of whether we're going to have a death
penalty in New York State.
Cuomo obviously was annoyed, called him up and they had a talk.
But I spoke to the governor about this.
And he says that he did not endorse Proud's opponent except for one thing and that is
that Proud used the promotional material from Cuomo and Cuomo had endorsed him four years
before implying that he was endorsing him four years later.
That said Cuomo was dirty pool and that's why he endorsed the opponent.
To see an incumbent lose in New York State is extraordinarily rare and that's what we
saw in a Gary Proud case.
Legislative Gazette political observer Dr. Alan Shartock.
For more analysis on the primaries this week, Brian Shield spoke with New York Post
investigative editor Fred Dicker.
Now surprised there in the contest for state controller.
How do you size it up?
Well, it was a little bit of a surprise and that Bellamy did even better than I thought
she would do.
For whatever reason and I'm sure there was some things that went on behind the scenes.
Andrew Spano, the Oestrister County clerk, decided not to make a race against Bellamy.
Earlier when he first started out, he was very critical in attacking Bellamy.
Allegiance she had no executive experience which he was building his strength.
By mid-summer though, he backed off apparently some of the state Democrats, probably some
of the governor's people spoke with him.
And from then on in it was sort of a love fest between Bellamy and Spano.
I think Bellamy is going to be a very formidable candidate.
She's on the road to a road to an important political comeback and I think she's going to
give the state control and then renegade a heck of a race.
Do you think Governor Cuomo will give her much support?
Well that's a $64 question.
A lot of people expect the governor to try to help Reagan, surprising as that may seem.
I don't know.
I think he'll have a finger up in the air that is feeling the wind.
He'll also be looking at his pose.
If he thinks Bellamy is likely to win, I think he'll try to help her.
If he thinks that Reagan is strong or could use a little help to win or would require a
little help to win, it's possible he'll tilt towards Reagan.
The argument being that Ned Reagan has been a relatively client Republican controller,
generally supportive of Governor Cuomo.
Certainly no challenge to the governor.
You'd be hard pressed to think of a time when Ned Reagan ever stood up to Cuomo.
Bellamy on the other hand is a very strong will, very independent.
Many people think that she turned into a kind of an Elizabeth Holtzman for the state.
A Holtzman being the new city controller in New York City who's already giving Mayor
Dinkins a hard time down there.
Cuomo may not want a newcomer on the scene who conceivably could even one day challenge him
for governor.
Gary Proud, the Rochester Assemblyman lost his democratic primary.
He of course was the man who switched his position on the death penalty to Pro and Governor
Cuomo endorsed his opponent.
Yeah, I'm not sure how much we can read into that.
Keep in mind that Gary Proud switched his position on the death penalty because he already
knew he was in some trouble with the voters in his home district.
So maybe he was switching because he already knew that support for him was eroding and this
was an attempt to short up.
Cuomo didn't formally come out against Proud until last week and that wasn't because of
his death penalty stand.
It was because Proud was circulating campaign literature which suggested that the governor
had endorsed him.
That's what apparently led to Cuomo's decision to go against Proud whether that was decisive
in defeating Proud or whether Proud was going down anyway and that's why he changed his
death penalty stand and that's why he used this literature which apparently misrepresented
Cuomo's position is unclear.
But the message certainly is going to be out there that if you go up against Governor
Cuomo you could pay a very high price politically.
The feeling that concern about the crime situation in New York City seems to be coming to a head.
Will Governor Cuomo be stained by this at all or will it mostly be David Dinkins?
Now Cuomo will be stained or politically damaged and has been politically damaged.
1982 when he ran for Governor the first time he said he would make crime and the battle
against crime his number one priority.
I'm not denying that he's made it an important priority but the statistics all show that
in the eight years the governor has been governor and I'm sure he would concede this.
The crime situation downstate in many other parts of the state as well has gotten worse
and worse and worse and it's reached a point now where it's a topic of conversation to
just you know to raise the question of will New York survive.
And if Cuomo runs for president you can be sure that any opponent he has in a democratic
primary and certainly from President Bush the Republican presumably the Republican opponent
would raise the question of how effective has the governor been on the number one issue
in New York fighting crime and I think the statistics will suggest that certainly the
battle is being lost that the governor has not come up with a way of satisfactorily
reversing the trends towards more and more crime.
Fred Dicker of the New York Post speaking with the legislative Gazette's Brian Shields.
The New York State Board of Regents has begun debate on an emotionally charged topic which
is drawn support and criticism from the state's top education officials.
Lee Farbman has more.
The topic should parents have the right to yank their children out of poor public schools
in favor of better ones.
The state's education policy setting board started discussions on a proposal from education
commissioner Thomas Sobel that takes a step in that direction and it might even allow
for some students to attend private schools at public expense.
Unlike at least a dozen other states New York does not permit students to cross school
district lines in search of a better school.
New York State School Board's Association Executive Director Lou Grumman says he is completely
opposed to the idea.
One of the reasons why you have public school districts is because of the belief that the
education is a public responsibility and as a public responsibility is shared by all the
taxpayers and all the people and they get together and they elect school boards to make
those decisions.
And when school boards they don't like the decision school boards make they tend to vote
down their budgets or they tend to vote in the amount of office.
If you gave parents total control over where children should be, several things will
happen.
First of all 25% of New Yorkers have children in schools which means those 25% will be making
decisions for the other 75%.
Second I think you will have a situation that you could conceivably have segregation of
schools where parents who are wealthier and have greater resources will pull their children
into certain schools and you might have children being placed into white schools and black
schools and Hispanic schools.
This is not a wild idea.
This is what happened in the South when they had that parental choice.
They called them academies.
Advocates of expanded choice contended would inject a dose of free enterprise into a slumbering
school system, prodding bad schools and teachers to shape up or be forced out.
Grummet calls the slumbering label unfair and wonders if our educational system should
have a dose of free enterprise.
We are talking about children who can't be discarded and we are talking about each child
being totally different.
We are not talking about assembly lines and we are talking about decisions are being
made on profit margins.
I might add by the way that the business community which has been calling for great
educational choices and doing so well itself in the world on a competition system they
seem to be constantly looking for exceptions for themselves.
But even day I think would admit that when they are serious that we are not talking about
production lines turning out children.
We are talking about sensitive teachers and sensitive administrators doing what each child
needs.
If you begin to worry about profit motives and you are beginning to worry about competition
in order to make the bottom line children are going to lose and be left in the dust and
the very kids who aren't able to do well for reasons beyond their control.
Kids who came up in a home where there might be drugs or broken homes and need special attention
might be cast aside.
Grummet says if parents are worried about their schools they should get involved in their
school board and make their feelings known.
I am Lee Farman for the Legislative Gazette.
You are tuned to the Legislative Gazette on Public Radio.
I am Dave Galatley.
Governor Cuomo declared this past week organically grown week.
But a state assemblyman says the Department of Agriculture and Markets is not doing enough
to help organic farmers.
Bruce Robertson reports.
Ulster County Democrat Maurice Hinchy is chairman of the Assembly's Environmental Conservation
Committee and he says in a time when more and more people are looking into consumption
of organic food the State Department of Agricultural and Markets support for organic farmers
is waning.
Well it is not nearly high enough.
The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets has got to assume a leadership
role in the whole movement of organic agriculture.
Unfortunately I believe the Department is falling far behind.
I think it's falling more behind in the last couple of years.
There had been some movement in this direction that looked promising but in the last couple
of years I think that we have lost some momentum in the Department here and I think that
momentum has to be recaptured.
At a recent Albany news conference Hinchy was asked if Ag and Markets Commissioner Richard
McGuire is it all responsible for that loss?
Hinchy says McGuire is partly to blame.
This philosophy is one that is geared substantially toward agricultural inputs, toward chemical
inputs in agriculture, toward agribusiness generally and away from what we are seeing.
Increasingly in the agriculture and agriculture activity in other parts of this country and
the world.
One of the complaints is that organic food is not attractive to look at.
While Hinchy admitted that he added there are advantages to organic food and that the
situation continues to improve.
It is a drawback, particularly the economics of it and that will change.
As a matter of fact it's changing right now.
Organically grown vegetables and fruits that are produced with less agricultural inputs
are becoming less expensive.
They have been more expensive and that's true.
That's been a drawback.
And it is also true that we have been trained, use the word trained advisedly, to look for
fruits and vegetables that seem to be shaped perfectly, that seem to be colored perfectly.
We think that an apple that is redder is going to taste better.
Back to the matter is an apple with some green on it is usually crisper and tastes much
better.
As for those who say there is not much call for organic food and she says there is a
demand and it's growing.
I represent a very important agricultural constituency and I think that that agricultural
constituency across the state, more and more, is understanding that first of all the public
wants organically grown vegetables or at least fruits and vegetables that are grown with
fewer pesticides and fewer artificial inputs.
That's what the consumer wants.
That's what the men and women who consume and the children who consume food products in
this state and across the country want increasingly.
In fact according to the second annual Lewis Harris organic index poll, 84% of Americans
would prefer organically grown fruits and vegetables if they were available.
44% of us would pay more and almost 65% said that long term health benefits are the
single most important reason for eating organic produce.
Currently according to data compiled by market data in Valley Stream, New York only 1-3%
of the nation's produce is organically grown but this is expected to rise to 8-9% by
the year 1995.
For the legislative Gazette, this is Bruce Robertson.
For this past week Albany was the site of a national conference aimed at improving the
efficiency of state governments.
Karen Dewitt reports.
The productivity experts from around the country gathered to swap stories of more effective
and cheaper ways of running government and to through improving output help change the
popular image of government workers as lazy, inept and swimming in a sea of unnecessary
paperwork.
Sandra Hale, who had the state of Minnesota's successful productivity program begun in
1986, says bureaucrats have been badmouthed by the highest elected government workers
in the country, presidents for the last several years.
We've been working hard to turn that perception around and to counteract the 12 years of government
bashing at least 12 years and you heard about that this morning from the federal level
on down.
Very destructive.
Carter did it, Reagan did it in spades, Nixon had done it before and of course it just
says this enormous fallout on all of us.
Hale, who admits good government doesn't usually make news, says a major point she
stresses is that state employees do have a customer, the taxpayer.
The ahoeth, who runs Governor Cuomo's office of management and productivity, which he
founded in 1983, agrees with Hale.
In the public sector our clientele, our customers are the taxpayers and we give them services
in a lot of different areas from registering their motor vehicles to, you know, monitoring
the state parks.
Cuomo credits the office of management and productivity with saving half a billion dollars
since 1984.
Hoeth says one big reduction has been in paperwork.
That may sound like something that ought to be relatively easy just throughout every third
form or something but it's not that simple.
What we are doing is training people in the actual design of paperwork.
You know there are good ways and bad ways of asking questions and asking people for
information.
Linen, Sackett, an advisor to the Governor's Management and Productivity Council and who
used to head up a technology development council that linked top CEOs to fledgling firms,
says ideas that work in private enterprise to pare down unnecessary steps can sometimes
be transferred to state government.
For example, she says in the Department of Motor Vehicles, they have reduced the lines.
We now have things like two-year registrations whereby we used to have to get in line and
every year go get your auto registered.
Now automatically in the mail you can opt for a two-year paperwork flow and it reduces
all the personal contact.
The original intent of the two-year registration however was to help increase revenues to close
a state budget gap.
Governor Cuomo addressing the gathering repeated an often told story of how a local mayor
once by way of introducing Cuomo read from Webster's dictionary the definition of a governor
to illustrate that people don't often think of state government and productivity as having
anything to do with one another.
A governor from Webster, the device attached to a machine to see that it does not operate
at maximum efficiency.
Cuomo says long practice patronage systems now discouraged help create an inefficient
system.
When you gave work to all the people who want make room for the Democrats, make room for
the Republicans, make room for jobs and then they'll work for you in the election time.
It is the way you preserve your political strength and that worked counter to all ideas of
management and productivity was exactly the opposite.
You started with a principle that you must proliferate payroll.
The Howard says making state government more efficient will take on greater and greater
significance as state's financial situation worsened.
In Albany, I'm Karen DeWitt.
And Karen DeWitt's report courtesy of the New York Public Radio Albany Bureau.
Joining us next to the look at some other events taking place in state government this week
is Paul Rosenthal with our legislative notebook.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Pierre Rinfrey says Governor Mario Cuomo should reveal
how he's going to deal with any potential deficits in next year's state budget before
election day.
This Rinfrey is predicting a budget deficit of $2.5 billion or more for next year.
Cuomo administration officials predicted in February next year's deficit could approach
$1 billion but they've said nothing about it since then.
Cuomo campaigns spokesman William Cunningham dismissed Rinfrey's challenge as a purely political
comment.
Cunningham says the governor is not about to change the budget process just because Rinfrey
stamps his feet.
Rinfrey also announced that Vice President Dan Quail will attend a $1,000 per person
cocktail party for him on September 18th in Manhattan.
You can scratch one name off the ballot in this year's governor's race.
The state board of elections said the nominating petitions for activists G2 we use C to get
on the ballot were invalid.
This ends we use these attempt to run for governor on the independent unity party line.
We use C needed more than 20,000 signatures to get on the ballot and the elections board
says the candidate collected 4,000 less than that.
The petition signatures were challenged by the state Liberal Party and the new Alliance
Party.
Black activists we use C had been called a very lent anti-Semite by Liberal Party boss Ray
Harding.
The state controller Ned Reagan has warned that off-track betting corporation despite its
optimism faces a grim future.
Reagan said that the corporation needs to drastically streamline its operations because
betting volume has stagnated.
He said nearly half VOTB's 98 branch offices are operating at a loss.
The controller said that means OTV management must reduce costs and close unprofitable branches.
Reagan said OTV's losses are New York City's losses because they cut into the already diminishing
revenues the city gets from OTV.
A bus boy caught in Buffalo about 500 state University of New York at Buffalo students protested
increased bus fees Monday by walking instead of riding.
The students walked five miles between the university's two campuses.
The students marched 10 abreast shouting we won't pay.
The students are demanding a repeal of all user fees proposed by the administration.
The fees were proposed in response to a statewide budget crisis.
A chemistry student said she feels the administration is trying to cheat students out of their education.
A $50 bus fee was scheduled to take effect Monday but it was canceled by the administration
and an apparent attempt to head off a showdown with students who vowed they would not pay the bus fee.
Due to an apparently effective student boycott, fewer than 1,000 bus passes have been sold
by the administration to date.
At least 3,500 passes must be sold to generate enough revenue to keep the current bus service
operating.
Officials say service will stop October 1st if enough passes are not sold.
Last year's ban on the chemical allar is making for a hectic harvest for New York's
Apple growers.
This falls crop is the first grown holy without allar.
The chemical keeps apples on the trees longer and giving growers more time to harvest.
Federal authorities banned allar in May of last year after it was linked to cancer and laboratory
animals but farm experts dispute those lab tests and they say the ban is crippling the
apple industry.
John O'Donnell spokesman for the New York and New England Apple Institute says the 600
growers his group represents lost 10 to 12 percent of their crop last year because
of the allar ban.
Those are warning consumers they'll see fewer of the apple varieties most help by the
chemical.
The two that are especially popular in New York are the red delicious and macintosh.
For the legislative Gazette, I'm Paul Rosenthal.
And that's about it for this week's program.
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For the legislative Gazette, I'm Dave Galetli.
The votes are in.
They've been tallied and the first round is over.
I'm Dave Galetli.
Coming up on this week's edition of the legislative Gazette, we'll wrap up primary
day in New York State.
Alan Shartack will join us for analysis of those races.
Join us each week for the legislative Gazette.