Welcome to the Capital Connection, a weekly program questioning New York State leaders
on a variety of issues.
Your host is Dr. Alan Shartock, political scientist and professor emeritus at the University
at Albany.
Distributions for the Capital Connection is made possible with the help of New York
State United Teachers, representing professionals in education and healthcare, online at nyut.org.
That's the capital connection this week.
No, not with Alan Shartock.
Hi, I'm David Gishtina, producer of the program, faithfully sitting in, honored in fact,
to be sitting in for Alan Shartock, who is finishing up a fun drive, a million dollar
fun drive as we speak.
And that's thrown everything into disarray.
And so he's asked me to sit in and I'm delighted because this week we have New York State
Assemblywoman Sandy Gailiff.
Can I call you Sandy?
Absolutely.
Well, Sandy Gailiff, Democrat who represents New York's 95th Assembly District, including
Putnam and Westchester counties, welcome to the Capital Connection.
Well, it's great to be up here again.
Well, it's great to have you here.
And I know you're here because you are coming from Westchester and you're going even further
north for what is it?
An assessor's conference?
Tell us what's going on.
An assessor's conference up in Lake Placid.
So I'm going up.
I'm the real property tax chair and the assembly.
Right.
So I do a lot of work with the assessors and tax directors, attorneys that are in the
the tax area and government officials.
So they have a conference up there.
So I'm on my way and this was a wonderful stop and it's great to be back.
I haven't been in Albany since we left on June 22nd.
So it's been a while.
And it's still here and unlike the federal government has shut down.
Let me ask you about that.
You know, obviously there's a ripple effect and it's going throughout communities all over
the country, including in New York State.
And of course, as we mentioned, you're in Westchester, Putnam counties and we have, of course,
West Point in Westchester.
I know that's a big issue.
And of course, other federal employees in your district talk about that and what the
ripple effect is.
Well, there will be, you know, a very large ripple effect.
Everything when it changes kind of starts slowly.
And some people may be in convenience for a day or two, but if they don't get their act
together in Washington, and I'm certainly glad I'm a legislator up here in the state
capital, as opposed to being down there, they will be a ripple effect.
But right now they're talking about West Point, those servicemen that are getting educated
and so on are fine.
Although I have heard some of the professors that are not military professors may be unfurlough,
as well as a lot of the other people in the community that have other ties to West Point.
And the very small town that's there, the town of Highland Falls, really depends on activity
and people spending money in their community.
And if people aren't working and not getting paid, there's that kind of ripple effect too.
But I think it's going to be broader than that.
The New York State Comptroller, Tom D'Appley, has actually indicated that there may be problems
potentially with pension systems, the amount of money that we have in our state coffers,
education aid, whenever that check comes through the federal government, will it come through?
For transportation issues, we're doing a lot of road work right now.
We all see that.
I saw it actually appear in Albany around the Empire of Plaza.
As you tried to navigate your way up here in the woods.
I tried to figure out how to get to Central Avenue.
But a lot of our road work, much of the money comes from the federal government estate money
too, but it's a lot of federal money.
And it depends on when those checks are supposed to be cut.
So we may not see something right away, but certainly we'll have it later.
I'm worried about the stock market.
I mean, we've been through that in 2008.
And New York is in a unique position in that record, isn't it?
Yes, we have the stock market.
But for anybody who has their planning for their retirement or whether they're investing
in the stock market, if that goes, it hasn't yet actually understood it around the world,
but maybe not here in the United States.
But if that happens, that has an impact on everybody.
And we're all on this game together.
And my feeling is, well, we've started the National Health Care yesterday, with all of our
health exchanges opening up.
And I guess all of the computers went down because everybody, there's 7 million New Yorkers
that were on the computer between 9 and the morning and 12.
That is amazing.
It shows.
And most of the states seem to be reporting more turnout than expected in signing up for
the market.
So it shows that there's a need.
There are a lot of people that don't have health insurance that are looking to see whether
they can afford something that is presented to them.
But probably other people are saying, I have health insurance.
It's very expensive.
Let me look and see what's on the exchange.
So you're probably getting a mix of all kinds of people very curious is to what their options
might be.
And for everybody, it's a different conclusion, most likely.
And then you have the rhetoric in Washington, into all of this, as people are signing up,
looking into this health exchanges across the country state by state.
You've got the Republicans essentially, the GOP in Washington saying, we're going to
shut the government down unless we get some movement on quote unquote, obama care.
You know, I know what political aisle you're in, but talk a little bit about that because
you referenced it in the beginning by suggesting I'm glad I'm in the state and not at the federal
level.
Right.
Well, you know, we've had dysfunction in Albany and, but we have never, since I've been
there, we have never closed down government.
We thought about it, you know, the governors would pressure us to vote for a budget and
we would think, okay, well, we really don't like this budget.
But so maybe we shouldn't vote for it.
And then, you know, then I think more serious minds came into perspective saying, look, if
we shut down government, we're hurting so many people.
The people that have jobs with government, but all the services the government provides,
I think it's an opportunity for people to find out what services government provides
when you do this.
To have this kind of discussion over healthcare, you know, I'm on the side of look, we had
the discussion many years ago.
There were votes and the votes put in this healthcare plan.
And probably it's not perfect.
And we probably need to come back and make corrections.
But I think the people that are holding up government, they're just saying we don't want
it at all.
And it wasn't just that they voted it, but the Supreme Court also ruled out.
Right.
Supreme Court said, go forward.
There was a presidential election after this all happened.
So I think we just have to get on with it.
I think actually Mayor Bloomberg pretty much said, you know, it's been done.
It's been elected and put into place.
Let's see what happens.
If it's not good, then we can either correct it or decide to go on a different path.
And maybe maybe the different path is to have never been a supporter of the single payer
system.
But maybe that's the only way for our country to go like all these other countries have
done.
So I don't know, but I just know so many people call our office and they have no health
insurance or they pay a huge, huge amount for health insurance.
And it's been going up every year and educators, you know, they'll say we had 15% in our health
care costs for all of our employees.
So it's been going up, up, up.
We have to bring it down.
That's a huge cost for all families.
And so I'm hoping that it works and then it works well.
And I think that the fact that so many people are interested in it shows that there's a
need out there.
Well, one of the things that some people in New York think is a burden on them is property
taxes.
And we have a property tax cap in New York.
I'm wondering where you are on that and all your work on real property taxes and everything
you've been doing, bring us up to date on these issues.
Well, I'm a big supporter of the property tax cap because I couldn't figure out how else
we were going to start to really ratchet down our spending.
And I think it's forced everybody, whether you're a school district, a state government,
a county government, a local government, everybody's looked at their budget and they've kind
of looked at it line by line and said, okay, we've been doing this for 20 years.
Is this the best way to do it?
And you'll start to see the school district I represent looked at their health care costs
and figured out a different avenue to save their money.
Other people have said, look, we've had our own police force, but we only have 17 people
on our police force.
If we joined with a county force between local government and the county, we could save
a lot of money for our residents and they went forward with it.
So I think without that pressure of a tax cap, which isn't really 2% exactly because it
plays out differently when you do the bills, it's on the levy, but it doesn't necessarily
when you get your bill, it might be more than that, less than that, but probably more than
that.
So I think it's really put a lot of pressure on us to do things and think about things
differently.
We need to continue that pressure for a while.
I'm a believer in merging school districts, emerging localities, not having in my field
assessors.
Why would we have a village assessor and a town assessor?
I don't understand it.
I think it's just probably been a lack of trust as to whether people would do their job
correctly.
I don't know how these things all started, but I think they started when we were able
to spend a lot of money.
We just did a lot more things.
Well, and certainly all these places have local identities.
Whether you have your local village assessor, the city, the county, the town, whatever it
may be, it seems like New York, unlike some other states, have all these different local
identities.
That's hard to change, isn't it?
Because everyone has their little feet.
It is, but if you want to keep saying, I don't like to pay high property taxes, and
I think I would rather maybe not give up a name, but maybe it's a shared name.
If you combine school districts, could you combine them and keep the same name?
For the football team.
Sometimes the football team is one of the reasons that it's hard to have changes in
mergers, but if you merge to school districts, a lot of it would be really the administrative
part of it.
And you'd still have your various high schools.
You're not downsizing.
You still have the same number of kids, but administratively you're doing things differently.
And the business office is doing it for a larger base.
I mean, you could also use bocies, which a lot of communities we do have board of cooperative
educational services.
And you could use them as a way, as some have done, to do all of that administrative back
off of stuff, send the checks out for the teachers.
Do the teachers really care whether the check comes from their local school district or from
bocies or from county government?
In fact, I don't think it really matters as long as they get the check.
So there are other ways to do things.
You're talking about personnel and the basic time to do a lot of this is when you're losing
a superintendent, you're changing.
That's a wonderful time to make some of these changes.
And I keep trying it in my school districts and that part is not working.
It's really hard to get people to change.
And then they complain about their property taxes, but they know if they're to superintendent's
versus one that would at least drop one salary down.
Sure.
And you mentioned the state controller earlier.
Of course, he's been following communities across the state and issuing a list of stressed
communities.
We recently saw the city of Detroit, the Claire bankruptcy.
And there was some talk at that point in upstate New York, the Syracuse area, Rochester,
those places of the possibility in the future of one of our upstate cities going bankrupt.
And of course, we're speaking with assemblywoman Sandra Gala, a Democrat who represents New York's
95th assembly district.
We have a sort of a tale of two states in New York, don't we?
We have this sort of down state and upstate.
And we've watched Governor Cuomo spend a considerable amount of his time upstate and coming
up with the upstate strategy for how to make up state better and more successful and
more productive.
If that's a question, I just asked.
Right.
Well, it's hard to define upstate and downstate exactly.
You know, I live in Westchester County right side of New York City.
And we're really doing quite well.
But that doesn't mean people don't complain about their property tax.
And we spend more per child and education than a lot of other places do.
Are we getting a better education?
I think you can debate it.
So we're in a region because we take advantage of being around New York City and New York
City is where the economy is doing very well.
People are moving there.
Students, it's amazing how many people are going to college there.
And it's really a magnet for young people too, which is great.
And that doesn't happen upstate.
But as you go up the Hudson River and you go into Putnam County, Orange County, those
are areas that I would consider upstate.
You might not when you live in Albany, consider them upstate.
But someone considered Western New York.
Right.
That's true.
So it depends on where you are.
But having the advantage of New York City is such a draw.
So yes, the governor was very right to go.
And we have been passing legislation that helps with more economic zones, taking our universities
and trying to get business on the universities and giving them tax exemptions and so on
to be able to motivate more development and get more jobs.
Right.
And to get more jobs.
And I'm very supportive because even though my residents don't need it the same way, I'm
a New Yorker.
And I want all New York to achieve because I think if everybody achieves here, we're just
a much greater state.
But back to what you said with the controller a little bit, there are mechanisms now to
try to help the communities that are going into distress to see if through the controller's
office and other places to try to have somebody from the outside, some time to come in and
look at what you're doing because they may have seen in another place how it's done.
Now, you know, it wasn't also long ago that you had New York City in bankruptcy.
What in the 70s?
It was a while ago, I guess.
But so it can happen in lots and lots of different places.
And we always have to look at our spending.
You know, we spend more in New York state than any place else.
It's, I think, the greatest state to live in.
And I think we get a lot for our money, but it's too much money for the public.
So we need to work on that.
And we're talking with somely woman, Sandy Galef, her district is in Putnam and Westchester
counties.
And boy, it's a fascinating conversation.
And I want to go over to the issue that I think is making news in Albany at least.
And that has been this Moryland commission that the governor has set up that has been holding
hearings.
Interestingly, right?
And you have been witnessing what we've all been witnessing, which is a spate of New
York legislators at the behest of preach Barara, the US attorney who has been the one
to uncover a lot of this corruption.
But then there's this whole other sort of thing that our Dr. Shartock always calls legal
bribery, which some of these hearings are looking at.
What's interesting about this is that the issue seems to be more than just looking at what's
going on in the hearings, but also to what's happening at the board of elections.
What do you make of all this?
Well, I'm really glad that they're looking at it.
As an elected official, when my colleagues are taken off in handcuffs, it's a very discouraging
thing for me and for others who feel like we are in government for the reason of helping
people and know the ethics on try to follow them.
So nobody's perfect, but we have had a lot of imperfect elected officials.
And people will say to me, well, why do you have them?
I said, well, people elect them.
Our colleagues are not.
Sometimes real.
They're not chosen by us.
They reelect.
One of the problems, too, is there aren't a lot of people who are interested in running
for office.
And one of the issues is trying to raise all the funds.
It's hard enough to run to put yourself out there.
But then you have to beg money from people to be able to run a campaign.
So I'm a real strong believer in campaign finance reform, public financial, public finance
of campaigns.
I don't think the public understands the value of that, but I do as an elected official if
I get a check from somebody who I know is doing business with a state or need something
from me.
I usually send it back to them.
But I can see what happens because you take that money, maybe you want that money again
for the next campaign.
And all of a sudden you have some allegiance to that issue or that lobbyist or that group.
And if it were public finance of campaign, all right, I have an allegiance to the public.
Isn't that nice?
That's really great.
I mean, you still have to have this system like New York City where you still have people
that contribute small amounts.
Small amounts are not a problem.
It's the big amounts that are a problem.
So I think we need to do the campaign finance reform, which I assume that the Moreland
Commission, I don't know, is like a side issue.
But we also have election laws that are not followed when you put in your campaign expenditure
form through your treasure and you don't do it timely.
You're supposed to be penalized after a while.
And nobody does anything at the board of elections.
It's just kind of languishes.
Are they afraid to go after the elected officials?
I don't know.
But we need to correct that system.
We also have to look at how campaign funds are used.
And we were having this discussion in the office and becomes very complicated.
Can you use them for lawsuits?
You will see in all these cases where people are using their campaign funds to defend themselves
with a lawyer.
Is it attached to the campaign?
Is it attached to public office?
Or should we be allowing that to happen if it's for a private issue?
If you've abused somebody or spouse or whatever, is that a campaign issue or not?
It's not clear.
We've had lots of discussions like because I want to put together a bill and it's like,
you know, how do we have clarity on that?
And it's really very difficult.
But I think the Moryling Commission really looking at outside expenditures where people raise
the money.
I have to say that I do this full time so I don't have outside income from another job.
And I'm lucky.
But a lot of people, I do believe that unless you raise the salary significantly for people,
New York City, if you're a legislator from New York City, making $79,500 and you spend
a lot of money just to live in New York City, a little different upstate.
You can't do it.
I have another job.
Well, I want to ask one more question and it's a somewhat sensitive question.
But the issue of the sexual harassment of a couple of staffers of Vito Lopez and then
following that, some attacks on the speaker of the assembly speaker, Silver.
Many of the women in the conference came to support him, but it was for his handling of
the event, for the payment and the confidentiality of the sexual harassment incidents.
And I know you've been a big supporter of women's issues and there's been some calls
for him, not from any of the leadership, but from some familiar names, the head of the
Republican Party and some other folks calling for him to step down.
It appears he will remain in play.
I wonder what your thoughts are on them.
Well, I just, you know, for background, I was in an attempt to coup that didn't work
in 2010.
So I've done that once.
You know, the Vito Lopez issue and others that have taken place were really a tragedy.
And I don't know why people don't learn from the mistakes.
The first time something happens, you know, new policy should be put into place.
And, you know, I do think that the speaker made some wrong decisions as he went along.
Made for whatever reason.
I don't know whether he was just protective.
I think he's always protective of every one of us in the assembly or the institution
as a whole.
And sometimes that gets in the way or protective of people that he cares about or for whatever
reason.
And I'm sure that generates the loyal to the D.
And that's the loyalty, right?
That comes along.
But the instance with Vito Lopez, I mean, it just happened so many multiple times.
It seems like the first time and I've been outspoken about that.
The first time it happened and then if you allow him to hire more people and you just
say to the people that he's hired, let us know if there's a problem, I think we should
have been in there working and looking at his office continually to see what was going
on.
Whether we would have found that he was still doing this, I would have said just hire
men, but I don't know whether he would have abused men.
But I don't think we were strong enough on that action.
And I think the rules have changed now that we will be, I think, you know, when something
happens, we're coming out quicker.
Maybe we're all learning about this.
Maybe the churches and the synagogues are also learning.
I'm not sure that it just, we can't keep protecting people that are abusing other people.
No matter what business they're in and yes, they may lose their job.
And Vito Lopez did, he lose his job running for New York City Council because of this.
I tend to think he probably did.
I don't know exactly what the polls are saying, but I think he lost it because of what he
did up here and he should have to read the report was incredible.
I couldn't even believe I sat very close near him.
He would kind of harass me verbally, I would say, yes, he harassed.
He thought it was funny.
He would think he's funny.
Well, he always called me the reformer from Westchester and then I would never do this
and I would never do that and I could never support this bill.
And I mean, he just, you know, it was like a harang that he goes through and he did that.
I'm comfortable for you.
Very uncomfortable.
And there were a lot of women.
I don't know whether any, he did that with men around us, but, you know, we had a lot
of women in our area and he just, I think he thought he was funny about it.
But and I never said anything because you know what, I'm on an equal part and I didn't,
I could care less about him.
So I just rushed it off, you know, I've been through this a lot.
I mean, as a woman in elected office a long time ago, it was, you know, people would say,
they don't call the old boy system for nothing.
Oh, the old boys would say, Sandy, you're a housewife.
You're a wife.
You need to go home and take care of your kids and your family.
You shouldn't be at this committee meeting.
And that was just last week.
That was a while ago.
It's better now, but, you know, it's been a problem.
So we know how to, I just would say, well, I'm just kind of dinner from McDonald's tonight.
So I'm staying here, you know, this, this kind of thing.
We've been going through that for a while.
You know what, but I do think we've learned.
I do think, however, I'm a believer in not term limits for legislators, but term limits
for committees and leadership and so on.
I think if you could do some rotation that way, that would be helpful to all of us.
So nobody seems to get entrenched that way.
So there's blood fresh idea.
Right.
I mean, it isn't as though the New York state assembly, some people will say it's the people
that have been there a long time that have abused.
Well, by golly, this year we had two people in the assembly that had only been there two
to six years that had taken payment for putting legislation in, had been a whistle below
or and so on.
So it doesn't matter how, if you have that kind of personality, I guess, or drive in the
wrong direction, you will do that.
Or if you're a abuser of females, you've probably been doing that good portion of your
life.
I think that, you know, if you can mix things up a little bit, I think in leadership.
And, you know, I've been real property tax chair for a while and I love it, but I'd
love to have some other opportunity and opportunities don't come along because everybody stays
where they are for quite some time.
Well, we appreciate you taking your time.
The state assembly woman, Sandy Galef, Democrat who represents New York's 95th Assembly District,
including Putnam and Westchester counties.
And she's been here talking with us on the Capitol connection.
I'm David Gissteena, filling in for Alan Shartalk this week, assembly woman Galef.
What a pleasure to have you here in studio and I just encourage you to drive very safely
as you head north.
Thank you very much.
It's great to be here.
The Capitol connection is distributed with the cooperation of the public radio stations
of New York State.
David Gissteena is the producer of the Capitol connection, a production of WAMC Northeast
public radio and Albany.
And for the Capitol connection comes from New York State United Teachers, representing professionals
in education and healthcare.
Online at nysut.org.
And Nis Kasa, the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, working to support
men in their decision to end sexual violence with the My Strength is not for hurting campaign.
Online at nyscasa.org.
