Legislative Gazette Show 1326, 2013 June 28

From WAMC in Albany, this is the legislative gazette.
A weekly magazine about New York State government and politics, your host is David Castino,
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, the legislature ends session with unfinished business.
Our political observer Alan Shartock will share his thoughts on the failed Women's
Equality Act and will have reaction to the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage.
The legislature left Albany last week with some unfinished business.
They did not agree on Governor Cuomo's Women's Equality Act and Cuomo now says at least
one house should return to pass some of the bill's provisions.
More now from the legislative gazettes Karen DeWitt.
In the final days of the session, the numbers nine and ten became key points of discussion
over Governor Cuomo's Women's Equality Act.
Cuomo's ten point package includes an abortion rights provision.
It would codify into state law the protection spelled out in the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe
V. Wade decision.
The other nine points deal with items like a crack down on sexual harassment and human
trafficking and equal pay for women.
The Assembly approved Governor Cuomo's original bill of all ten points in one package.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver spoke just after the vote.
We did women New Yorkers, the simple honor of voting on the agenda.
The entire agenda.
The Senate, though, acted on just nine of the ten measures.
Senate Republicans did not want to vote on the 10th provision on abortion rights.
Governor Cuomo made it easier for the Senate to at least act on the other nine items by
breaking his Equality Act down into ten separate bills.
Vote all ten!
Vote all ten!
Up until the final hours of the session, a coalition of women's groups maintained that
all ten points of the Equality Act needed to be approved and that just passing the other
nine was not enough.
Tracy Brooks, with family planning advocates, appeared at the news conference with Speaker
Silver after the Assembly approved the ten point version, including abortion rights.
We are not nine-tenths.
Nine is not enough.
And the Assembly, we thank you with the greatest heart.
But after the Senate passed the other nine provisions, Brooks and others in the women's
coalition completely reversed their position.
They asked the Assembly to go back and vote on the nine provisions separately so that the
two houses would have matching bills.
In a statement, family planning advocates said women deserve every step forward the
legislature has the opportunity to provide them, the Assembly adjourned without voting.
Brooks explains why her group and others changed their tactics.
There's very real merit in the provisions that passed the Senate that have never seen
the light of day over in that house until this year to actually be signed into law for
the women of the state of New York and that we will not rest until the tenth provision
has passed.
And we ask them to be our partners in that.
Governor Cuomo, who had been working closely with the women's groups and who had never
completely ruled out, accepting only the other nine provisions, also urged the Assembly
to come back.
The nine laws we did passed really make a difference for women and they have to become
a reality and I'm sure they will.
But not all of the women's groups agree that it's now the Assembly's move.
Neyrawl, pro-choice New York, says it's the Senate that should come back and vote on
the 10th abortion rights provision instead.
The group's Andrea Miller says the other nine teneth should not be separated out.
The real question now is will state senators step up?
They have options.
They can come back and put and pass the 10th point to protect the women's right to choose
and send that whole package over to the Assembly or they could pass with the Assembly
passed which is the full 10 point agenda.
And Democratic women in the Assembly also say they don't want the abortion piece separated
out from the rest of the Women's Equality Act.
Assembly Speaker Silver was called down to a meeting with Governor Cuomo along with the
Democratic women in the Assembly shortly before the session ended.
Afterward he said he would not rule out a return to vote on the other nine provisions
of the Women's Equality Act separately.
You know, the day is not magic.
The Women's Groups will meet to try to repair any rifts over whether all 10 provisions
must be voted on or whether nine are enough for now.
But one thing they do agree on, they say they'll make abortion rights and election issue
in the 2014 races if nothing's done.
In Albany, I'm Karen DeWitt.
Joining us now legislative Gazette political observer Alan Shartalk.
Well Alan, as we just heard from the legislative Gazette's Karen DeWitt, the legislature
left Albany last week and did not agree on Governor Cuomo's Women's Equality Act.
Share your thoughts on this.
Well, you know, I always worry about all this, David, in that people say they want something.
I'm never sure what they really want.
I do know that the Republicans in the State Senate said that they did not want to cutify
the Roe versus Wade abortion assurances here in New York State.
They said that that would cause more abortion.
Many people including me think it's nonsense.
But they had their way.
They got burned to Republicans when they voted for the gun law, the safe act.
And they got threatened by the conservative parties that they would run primaries against
and nevertheless, there's still fewer Republicans in their own Democrats in the whole State Senate.
And thanks to a J.R.R.G.
deal with four so-called traders to the Democrats, they have a majority.
The traders now were in a Jeff Klein, were in a terrific pressure.
So they put up some kind of an amendment, the hostile amendment, it went down by one
vote.
They didn't get the abortion bill on the floor, in which case it would have passed.
The same old nonsense that in a democracy, everybody deserves a vote.
You know, get one.
The governor says he's all for it.
And yet, did he call the way would Democrats into yell at them and tell them that he was
going to make sure that all the Democrats were together on this?
No, I don't think it really happened, although I suspect they spoke.
I'm saying here, David, is if they wanted this thing passed, the Democrats, they would
have gotten it passed.
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.
Now that the US Supreme Court has overturned the federal law that defined marriage as a
heterosexual union, the Legislative Gazette's Dave Lucas gathered reaction.
Brad Hayes is an assistant professor of political science at Union College.
He says the interesting ruling was expected by people who had been watching the oral arguments
closely.
The court today basically said that the idea that the federal government can impose restrictions
against a group that a state, the state such as New York, has sought to protect, violates
kind of a basic principles of due process and equal protection.
And as such, same-sex couples that are married under a state law will then be treated the
same for the purposes of federal law.
US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, issued a statement saying in
part that every loving committed couple deserves the basic human right to get married, start
a family, and be treated equally under the law.
No politician from this day forward should try to stand in the way of this fact.
GOP Hudson Valley Congressman Chris Gibson weighed in as well.
My view on this is marriage is a religious matter.
It should be for religious institutions to decide.
I support civil unions and equal protection under the law.
And at this point, the Supreme Court has spoken.
Reverend Bill Benucci, executive director of the New York Faith and Freedom Coalition,
says his group sees the Doma decision as a call to double its efforts to teach about
the sanctity of what it calls authentic marriage.
And the need to make God's design for marriage and family once again, the primary order for
a peaceful and prosperous society.
The next generation is really depending on us.
So the Supreme Court is wrong.
It was wrong on Roe v. Wade and after many years of teaching truth, we've turned many
hearts to the pro-life position.
And so it will be with authentic marriage.
And we're committed to the process.
At the opposite end of the opinion spectrum, Danielle Moody Mills, she is an advisor for
the Center for American Progress on LGBT Policy and Racial Justice.
As an African-American lesbian, this is a huge day for equality.
It means that my marriage and the marriages of hundreds of thousands of Americans are recognized
by our government.
Do you see this ruling as a catalyst for additional social change?
Absolutely.
This has been a really interesting week in terms of Supreme Court decisions.
The one hand we have is the Supreme Court that struck down a part of very vital voting
rights act, essentially kind of ruled in favor of voter suppression based on race.
And then on the other hand, the next day, you have them vote in favor of equality and
recognition for all of American.
Massachusetts Governor DeVal Patrick, a Democrat, issued a statement saying that freedom
includes keeping government out of people's most personal and intimate choices and affirming
human dignity.
Telly Rinky PLLC Attorney Jennifer Corcoran explains how the Doma decision relates to New Yorkers.
As soon as we legalized marriage in the state, all state benefits became entitlements to
anyone legally married.
So that extended them to same-sex couples.
What the problem in the disconnect has been is that Doma prohibited the extension of
federal benefits to people living in New York who were validly married in the state of New
York as a same-sex couple.
In the wake of the Doma decision, 11 national LGBT advocacy organizations have jointly issued
a series of fact sheets to provide guidance to same-sex couples and their families.
As they navigate accessing federal rights, benefits and protections, there's a link at
wamc.org.
For the legislative Gazette, I'm Dave Lucas.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court will review an appeals court ruling that overturn the
Environmental Protection Agency's cross-state air pollution rule to Adirondack Environmental
Group, say the move is crucial for the long-term health of the region's ecosystem.
We get more from the legislative Gazette's Pat Bradley.
In August 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down the
Environmental Protection Agency's cross-state air pollution rule in a two-to-one decision.
The lower court determined that the EPA had exceeded its authority by imposing, quote,
massive emissions reduction requirements on, quote, on power plants in upwind states.
The Obama administration appealed, and on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear
the case.
Adirondack Environmental Groups had lobbied for implementation of the cross-state air pollution
rule. Adirondack Council spokesman John Shean says the council had called for an appeal
of the lower court decision.
We believe that the rule itself was valid when it was written, and that the lower court
had overlooked some things.
The dissenting judge had issued a 26-page dissent in this case and made a very solid case that
the Supreme Court obviously took notice of for why this rule should be reinstated.
So we're very hopeful that the court will not only take up the case, but they will overturn
the decision of the lower court.
Adirondack Mountain Club executive director Neil Woodworth explains that the rule was
needed to close a loophole in the Clean Air Act.
Unfortunately, a large number of coal-burning plants built in the 40, 50, 60s and 70s were
grandfathered when the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1977, and although they toughened the
Clean Air Act in 1990, they still left a big fat loophole for the energy industry to keep
running coal-burning power plants without air pollution control devices.
This cross-state interstate rule would have closed that big loophole.
Woodworth says that if the high court upholds the cross-state air pollution rule, deep cuts
will be required in sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury emissions.
It would mean the end of acid rain.
The Supreme Court will assess the Court of Appeals jurisdiction in the matter, the state's
roles in prohibiting emissions and interstate pollution obligations, and whether the EPA properly
determined the significance of upwind emission contributions to each state.
For the Legislative Gazette, I'm Pat Bradley.
To our listening to the Legislative Gazette, a program about New York State government
and politics, I'm David Guestina.
Two environmental groups are calling on New York State officials to better implement
a sewage pollution notification law.
State officials being while say they're implementing the law and phases.
More from the Legislative Gazette's Allison Dunn.
River Keeper and Citizens Campaign for the Environment are calling on the New York State Department
of Environmental Conservation to fully implement a law passed during the 2012 legislative session.
Tracy Brown is a water quality advocate for Westchester-based River Keeper.
What the DEC has implemented for the Phase I, what they're calling Phase I, implementation
of sewage right to know is not consistent with what the law is calling for.
Brown contends the Sewage Pollution Right to Know Act, signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo in
August of 2012, calls for incident reporting of combined sewer overflows, and reporting
this information in an easily accessible way to the public.
That doesn't mean put up a blanket statement on the website that say they exist and where
they are.
It means tell the public when they open and when they discharge and they're saying, well,
we don't have the technology on all of these outfalls to really be able to say when they
open and when they don't, which is true, but everybody knows that they're designed to
open when it rains.
When it rains and a lot of rainwater gets into these combined systems, they bypass.
That's how they're designed.
She says an advisory should go out just to be cautious and stay in effect for 24 to
48 hours.
You say it rained, so we have reasons to believe that there's sewage in the water, there's
an advisory in effect now for these waterways.
A DEC spokeswoman says the first component of the law went into effect may first by which
publicly-owned treatment works and sewer systems must notify DEC and the State Health Department
of all raw or partially treated discharges within two hours of when they occur.
The law requires DEC to provide general public notice only for discharges that may present
a threat to public health, considering the potential for exposure and other relevant factors.
Brown notes the Hudson River is majorly impacted with combined sewer overflow systems in the
capital district communities of Albany, Cajos, Green Island, Rensselaer, Troy and Water
Valet.
There are also such systems in Hudson, Catskill, Kingston, Pekipsi, Newberg and Yonkers.
And Riverkeeper really thinks and we've seen this in other parts of the country that when
someone's going out from their home to recreate and they turn on the radio station to get that
environmental condition report, they want to hear is there traffic between me and my
swimming hole, is there an ozone alert, is there smog alert, is there a feed advisory,
they should also get a water quality advisory in that same news chunk.
She hopes the act will be fully implemented by the 2014 swimming season.
The DEC spokeswoman says a second component of the law requires publicly own treatment
works and sewer systems to notify the public directly when discharges occur.
DEC is developing regulations and evaluating computerized notification systems for this
portion of the law.
She says one that looks promising is the NY Alert system.
DEC plans to release the draft regulations this fall for public comment.
Currently information on discharges received from public wastewater systems is available
on a DEC webpage.
DEC also has a webpage for the location of combined sewer overflows.
Riverkeeper's Brown alleges the information presented is often not timely and lacks critical
detail such as the quantity of sewage that overflowed.
The DEC spokeswoman says the agency will prepare an annual report of discharges, including
the total number, the volume and duration of such discharges and the remedial responses
if any.
You may access these DEC links at wamc.org.
For the Legislative Gazette, I'm Allison Dunn.
New York State's Public Service Commission is considering the future of the coal-fired power
plant in the town of Lansing, a 10-minute drive from Ithaca.
As the innovation trails Matt Richmond reports, the debate says a lot about the challenges
the state will face if it's serious about switching to new sources of power.
Puyuga Power Plant Operations Manager John Cooper is showing me the path each load of
coal takes from the trains to bring it in through to the two turbines that produce the electricity.
Only one of the turbines was running on this early spraying afternoon.
It's a day-to-day decision.
It's the economics.
We would run it.
Cooper is referring to the price of coal compared to the price of natural gas.
Co-plants just can't compete with natural gas ones because of the boom in natural gas
production in the United States.
In 2012, the plant's owners upstate New York power producers filed a request with the
state to close the plant down.
The state determined that there is a need for the up to 300 megawatts of power produced
there, so it added a surcharge to local bills to keep it open.
The owners then had to submit a plan to transition off of coal.
The plan they submitted included four options for switching to natural gas, ranging in
price from $60 to $370 million.
The Plant Chief Operating Officer Jerry Goodnow says the alternative, closing the plant,
would mean power has to be imported into the area.
That energy is going to get produced from some place, and there's a cost to that, and
we think we can do it very inexpensively.
But not everyone believes that the state even needs all 300 megawatts.
The state business council and seven environmental groups, cosine to letter to the Public Service
Commission calling for the closure of the plant.
Lisa Dix is from one of the co-signers of the letter, the Sierra Club.
Are we just going to remain stuck in a dirty energy past and continue to build out a dirty
energy infrastructure that is going to last generations when really we have to make
the hard decisions now to move to a renewable energy future.
Dix says the power produced inlancing could be replaced with renewable sources, increased
transmission, and a focus on energy efficiency.
The closing of the plant would be a hard decision, especially for the town of Lansing.
Lansing Supervisor Kathy Miller has submitted comments to the PSE calling for a switch to
natural gas.
She says that renewable sources of energy just aren't available yet to replace the plant.
Hopefully we would as a county and as a state be working towards sustainability, so I
look at this as an interim, and obviously as I said it affects our tax base.
In 2012 the plant paid $1.7 million to the town schools.
About 10% of the district's revenues.
The school district's business administrator Mary June King says losing that contribution
would make the loss of programming much more likely.
Do we cut kindergarten?
Everybody knows it's the best thing for kids, but when we have to make those choices it's
got to be paid for.
And like many of the towns in Tompkins County, the town of Lansing has a moratorium on hydrofracking.
Supervisor Miller acknowledges the contradiction in opposing natural gas exploration in the town
while supporting its use at the power plant.
She points to the ban on drilling in the New York City watershed as a reason to ban
it around the finger lakes.
And I just feel there should almost be the zone around the lakes where no matter what drilling
isn't allowed.
The state is expected to make its decision by the end of the year.
County Legislator Carol Chalk wants the PSE to expand the options.
The way this issue is being framed is pitting town against town.
It's pitting the need to continue our tax base against those to create renewable energy.
Chalk says the state should reduce the amount of power needed from the Cuyuga plant and
let them come up with a plan to produce some from solar and hydro power and some from other
locations in the county.
Inithika, 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 had help from the New York State Public
Radio Network.
Copies are available.
Call 1-800-323-9262.
That's 1-800-323-9262.
As for program number 1326, we're just listening our podcast on the web at wamc.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 Gazstein.
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 NISKASA, 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.