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 nysut.org.
Thanks to Capital Connection, I am Alan Shartock, joining us this week is Blair Horner, one
of our all-time favorites, he's the legislative director of the New York Public Interest
Research Group, or Noneig Perg.
Welcome Blair Horner.
Thanks for having me.
Well Blair, let's talk a little bit about what's coming up next week in New York State.
There's an election, and I'm particularly interested in the ballot propositions.
So maybe we could sort of take a look at what they are.
You want to start?
I mean, the big one, you know, what's getting all the air time has been the question on
whether or not the state should have casinos.
Just so your listeners all know, Niperg has no position on any of the proposals that are
coming up.
But because, well, first of all, I wasn't at Niperg when those decisions were made.
I was still against society.
So I can't swear to this.
But my guess is on these questions that these are questions where Niperg didn't have any
sort of institutional expertise, and so you try not to wander into areas you don't really
know very well.
And casinos, I know for a fact, Niperg really hasn't done anything in terms of the policy
of whether or not it's a good or bad thing.
However, in this case, government reached in and sort of tipped the scales of the wording
in one direction to engineer a yes vote.
And we've been particularly unhappy about that.
Can you explain that a little bit?
The state constitution prohibits gambling, and then it has these amendments in it.
One that amends it to allow lotteries, for example, so that people know about the lottery.
So there's a change in that section of the state constitution.
It says basically, if it's approved that the state constitution would say, well, you
can't have gambling except we can have up to seven casinos in the state of New York
as determined by the legislature period.
The board of elections is empowered to write sort of the summary of what constitutional
amendments and other ballot questions are, right?
So that the person who shows up, they don't have to wade through the technical changes
in a constitutional amendment or a bond act.
This is like a simple common sense explanation.
Now in this case, the simple explanation is exactly what the constitutional amendment
says up to seven casinos.
End of story, you want it or not, right?
I mean, that's not hard.
It's not technical, but somewhere in the administration, we know the board of elections
approved it, but we don't know how it happened.
There was language added that says up to seven casinos allowed in the state of New York
that would allow for economic development, additional school aid, tax reductions.
I think they were considering, but they left off that everyone gets a pony, right?
I mean, that was sort of, I think, the whole thing.
So they reach in to tip the scales in one direction to get a yes vote.
I mean, and for most people, most New Yorkers, the only time they're even going to think
about this is when they show up at the ballot box.
It's proposal number one.
It's the first of six.
It's the one that they'll see.
People get what a casino is and they're going to say, oh, wow, this is great.
It's going to lower my property tax.
And so that we don't like the fact that the government reached in to put its thumb on
the scale in one direction.
And so we've been sort of amped up running around about that.
So that's a good one.
Yeah.
And I agree that it is likely, and I think that the polling done by both the official and
the political people are indicating it will pass, albeit closely.
Well, the polling, it's sort of interesting.
The polling says, it's interesting because it proves my point.
If you ask people, do they want more gambling in the state?
It's 50.50.
Yes, no.
If you read them the language with the pony X clause in it, then it tilts in one direction,
like 10 points in one direction.
And so that's, again, that's not right.
And so actually this week, we've put out a call to the media, editorial boards and reporters
and everyone else's.
And when they put together their ballots for the upcoming election, because that's what
newspapers do to educate the readers, not to use the offending language.
We give them two choices, actually.
We say, either just play it straight and just say up to seven casinos or change the language
when you're explaining it to the readers, saying, you know, all the good things.
But by the way, there are bad things too, like an increase in addictive gambling.
It's a regressive tax on the poor, all the kinds of things that you read a lot in editorial
pages.
And that way, at least put the thumb of the media back on the scale on the other side
and see if you can tip it out.
I mean, again, we don't have a horse in this race.
Excuse the pun.
But we don't think it's right that the government should weigh in.
And we know from media reports, so we don't know.
I mean, media reports have said that the Attorney General, which took the first cut at this
language, played it straight and that mysteriously, the state board of elections was able to
cobble together a majority.
And those guys, you can't get them to get to agree on what day it is, was somehow able
to reach in and just decide, oh, let's add this language that would be helpful.
Board of Elections is coming in for increasing criticism.
Is there a better way to do it than we do the Board of Elections in New York City?
Well, it's ironic.
This is a result of a reform back in the mid-70s.
The theory was you create a Board of Elections that's bipartisan.
And so they look over each other's shoulder, of course.
The problem is if you're in a minor party, if you're not affiliated with a party, or
the public in general, often your interests are not looked out after.
It's really the interests of the parties.
That's the public interest.
Sometimes it's the major party's interest.
Now, those major parties calling in the plays, in other words, it's Shelley Silver telling
the Democrats on the Board of Elections.
This is what we want you to do.
I mean, we don't know, of course.
But I think it's a safe bet just to stay with these sort of casino metaphors.
I think it's a safe bet that the representatives on the state board of elections check off with
their patrons.
I mean, we don't know that for a fact, of course.
They shouldn't do that, but that may be the case.
It wouldn't surprise me one bit.
It would surprise me if, in fact, the opposite were true.
And that's the reason why there's a lot of complaints.
The Board of Elections has this bipartisan board.
There are co-executive directors, one from each party.
There are co-staff groups from each party.
So it's like two agencies intertwined in one, and that's why you can't get them to do
anything, or if they come up with ideas, sometimes they're crazy ideas.
Give an example.
Under New York State corporate law, you can set up a limited liability company.
So we could have the Alan Shartak LLC.
And let's say Alan Shartak is independently wealthy.
I know, it's hard to believe, but let's just guess it.
And let's say you somehow married into the Gates fortune.
In his case, the Klein fortune.
Or whatever fortune it is.
But you're in a fortune 500.
My wife's father ran a shoe store, but let's go.
Well, it's good.
We'll walk into that issue in a second.
But you could set up then multiple.
You could have an LLC for the Linda, an LLC for you personally for your business interest,
an LLC for the WAMC.
You could have multiple W.
And so the board of elections has interpreted the law to mean that each of those LLCs would
be treated separately, and the contribution limits would be set as an individual for each
one, even though they're corporations.
Under New York State law, corporations can give no more than $5,000 in the aggregate.
The LLCs, for some reason, are considered individuals, and you could have multiples of them.
So it really is Alan Shartak, Xerox copied three times under the scenario I just gave.
And so you could give the max under each one of those.
Now why would they think of that idea?
Somebody told them to.
The FEC doesn't view it that way.
The New York City Campaign Finance Board doesn't view it that way.
But the board of elections under its own administrative authority opened up a loophole
for more campaign contributions to go into the political parties.
And of course, the greater politics of New York State are that we have a Democratic party
in the assembly, we have a Democratic governor, we have a very fractious and split state
Senate.
And I think that in order to stay Republican, the state Senate has to look at Governor
Cuomo and his good offices.
So then when we see this being played out in the board of elections, we can't be too
surprised.
No, no, I mean, we can't sadly can't be too surprised about anything at the state board
of elections.
I guess the only thing we'd be surprised is if they actually did anything other than game
ballot questions for the voters.
I mean, we identified, we reviewed the campaign finance filings of out over 100,000 violations
and they really haven't done anything about it because they don't have resources.
Again, the budget doesn't have investigators.
They can just sue them and say, do your job.
Our argument is that they can't because they don't have other resources.
That's not your problem.
That's not my problem.
But Nipurg would have to have a vast litigation department, which of course we don't have.
It's the same problem when you ask me before why we haven't weighed in on casinos.
You know, there's only so much bandwidth in our little operation.
There's a second proposition that I'm fascinated by and that's allowing judges.
Yeah.
I'm 72 years old.
I think I should say that.
You don't look a day over 50.
Yeah, right.
And thank you for that.
Well, the question is on judges.
Should they be allowed to serve after this 70 years old?
I think it's ludicrous to kick out a Judith K or Jonathan Lippmann when they reach 70 years
old.
Yeah, I'm just curious.
Again, Nipurg has no position, but I agree with you.
The 70 year old mandatory retirement age was set in the mid 1800s when the average lifespan
was in the 40s.
People with diets, 40 or 60, right?
Right.
I mean, there weren't 70.
The 70 was a big deal.
Yeah, 60 was an old man.
That's right.
And so, you know, the 70s, you could say 80 is the new 70 at least.
And so, it's basically constitutionally protected age discrimination.
There's no age limit on Supreme Court.
There's no age limit on members of the legislature, Congress, probably not even at WAMC since I'm
talking to you.
And yet, there is constitutionally protected age discrimination.
Vermont has a great one.
Their limit is 90.
Although I would argue that 70 in the mid 1800s is probably like 120 now, but 90 is pretty
high too.
And there are states that don't have any limitations at all.
And it's sort of a technical thing.
It doesn't cover all judges.
It only covers judges in states of Supreme, appellate level and court of appeals.
It's sort of limited in its impact.
But it's certainly a step forward in removing age discrimination that's constitutionally protected.
And the provision says that judges would have to be reviewed periodically for fitness.
So over the ages of 70.
However, I would argue if you had that, you should be also checking for those under the
age of 70.
Because as we all know, there are lots of people in their 40s that are certainly no more
in tune with things than people that are older.
So it just strikes me as unfair and agronistic and yet niper goes in a position.
An a third proposition has to do with a land swap in the Adirondacks.
Now, I'm going to tell you, I've been around a long time.
Let's say 100% is yeah, 100% go into vote.
I'm going to take a wild stab at this and say that maybe half a percent will have some
knowledge of what this is about.
No, you know, I think on the vast majority of these questions, most people haven't thought
about them at all.
I mean, you mentioned this one, which is like a 100 year old lit fighting, legal fight in
the Adirondack Park.
There's also another question on the ballot, which deals with allowing a mining company
to expand its mining operations in the Adirondack Park.
That's one of the questions too.
I mean, it sort of makes you wonder are good friend Jerry Benjamin.
I'm sure it would point out to us.
Why are these things in the state constitution in the first place?
But they are.
And if you want to allow the mining company that's in the state constitution to expand its
operations, you have to approve it in the ballot.
My guess is again, very few people are going to know about that particular question when
they go to the ballot.
We have published on our website, nipergenmypirg.org, a voters guide that looks at the six questions
and offers sort of the arguments and support or an opposition.
If we could find arguments and support and opposition.
We can go back if I could Blair to an earlier point.
I have a feeling that the governor doesn't want to see this proposition pass with the judges.
Do you have any idea what that's about?
I talked to some of his people and they say because of some anti-deluvian aspect of the
way Supreme Court judges are paid, they may get extra money and may cost taxpayers
more.
Well, it may.
I mean, obviously if somebody is on the bench longer as compared to shorter, generally speaking
people get pay raises and there's no.
No, no, no, no, I don't think it's.
No, but I'm just saying it.
But I don't think that's the reason either.
Some of the members of the New York State Court of Appeals, which is the highest queen
in New York state, will have to resign if the retirement age stay in place and the person
that will drive the debate over who the replacements will be will be the governor sometime in
a second term.
And so politics may play a role in this.
I mean, a governor, who knows what's going to happen next year, but I think it's likely
that the governor is in pretty good shape running for reelection.
If he gets a second term, his ability to sort of leave an imprint on the history of the
state in New York in many ways is going to be the reflection of what he does with the
Court of Appeals as compared to his policies.
Typically, governors come in, they get replaced.
A lot of their policies get vaporized.
But if you put people on the court, your legacy is sort of enshrined from much longer period
of time.
The Court of Appeals members get 14 year terms.
So I think there's probably a lot to do with that as well.
I mean, whether or not the state spends a little bit more on some judges that are on the
bench longer, you could make a pretty good argument that if they're competent and they're
experienced, it's worth the money.
Let me ask you about Speaker Silver.
You've been around a long time.
Everybody in the newspapers seems to be, seems to be attacking him all the time.
Yet he survives.
He does very well.
He's very popular among his assembly Democrats.
What's your assessment?
Well, I think he is facing the biggest challenge that he has ever faced, even when including
the near coup against him 10 years ago.
I'm Michael Bragg, man.
By the former assembly majority leader who ostensibly had the votes to topple.
Till he bragged.
Till he bragged, which is why he's Bragg, man.
That's right.
And he sadly didn't have the votes really lined up and locked in going into this fight.
One note for any listeners is if you're going to have a revolution, don't announce it,
we can advance.
But I think the combination of things, I mean, the speaker has been set up by design to
take the slings and arrows that normally go to his members.
He has deliberately set himself up as the lightning rod for the conference.
And after decades of assault on his integrity by former governors and his political opponents,
that obviously has an impact on how people view him in the public, generally, who really
don't even know what happens up here, but generally speaking.
I think that the scandals with assembly, purport, alleged scandals with assembly members
Lopez and Kellner and the at best, slow to react, at worst, putting the interests of
the majority ahead of the public interest, I think those things create real problems for
him.
But again, you know, I mean, he's going to run for reelection night, but presume if he
does, you got to have something to be at him.
And as you mentioned, it seems to be that he's still very popular with the members of his
conference.
The conference is very hard.
It means a huge conference.
It's about a very diverse conference, both racially, economically and geographically, and
to hold that whole operation together, you really need to have institutional knowledge,
keen political sense and knowledge of each of the members' districts and their needs.
Silver clearly has all those things.
He apparently has occasional blind spots when it comes to ethics, which is a problem,
and that may come back to haunt him.
But assuming he can survive this, he's in a position to be the longest-serving speaker
ever.
Speaker hack from Schenectady to beat him out.
I think the speaker has to go to June 2016, which would mean he'd have to run for reelection
and serve out his term as speaker if he wanted to do that.
Yeah, he'd have a...
An interesting little historical footnote.
Right, like Mariana Rivera and how well he's done setting the old time record for saves.
Although it's harder, I think, to throw baseball.
I...
Well, I don't know.
The cutter for years that mows down all your opponents.
The cutter and breaks their backs.
I mean, backs.
Silver breaks their backs and he breaks their backs.
Let's talk about the Morlin Act Commission.
Under the state constitution, the governor has the power to set up a Morlin Act commission
to do investigations.
He gets together with the attorney general of the state.
They announce that they're going to look at money, no matter where it goes.
If it goes to the legislature, it will so be it.
It looks like the governor, according to Ken Lovey of the Daily News, got caught trying
to tell the commission where to issue subpoenas and not.
There was hell to pay.
And now they're subpoening everybody.
What do you make of all that?
Well, again, all we know is what Lovey has written from the Daily News, which is that the
governor's office reached into the actual investigations by the Morlin Act Commission.
So if that's true, that's a big problem.
If it's not true, because again, they both the Morlin Commission members and the governor
deny it.
If it's not true, it still is damaging to the Morlin Commission.
Because the Morlin Commission is, again, it's created by executive action.
The only way that it can actually succeed in driving changes, because they're supposed
to come up with recommendations at the end of the day.
And they're supposed to put out their first report in December.
The only way that they're going to have an ability to drive public opinion is if the
public views them as an independent creature that is really just working for the public
interests.
The governor made that harder by a point in my opinion, by appointing a bunch of district
attorneys who are elected officials, by the way, who do raise campaign contributions
and do have to play ball to some extent with their local political establishment in order
to be DAs.
So while they may offer technical skills, they are sort of, you know, they're not necessarily
the white hats.
I mean, they can be, but we don't know.
So that makes it more complicated.
The story is about the governor reaching in and driving the decisions of the commission
further undermine the credibility of Morlin.
And so the Morlin Commission, if it wants to have any success at all, and there are great
people on it, are going to have to really be clear that they're rejecting, that they're
clearly rejecting any influence from anyone and that they're going to just follow the facts
without fear of favor.
They've started to do that.
We'll see what happens with these subpoenas.
But ultimately the product is going to be what decides whether or not we believe that
the way they acted was independently or not.
Now of course, there are several people on that commission who might like future political
careers.
And it would be very hard for them to take a fall here in terms of the public perception
wouldn't.
Yeah.
And one of the more interesting things that was coming up out of these news reports was
that the governor was trying to negotiate an ethics package with the legislature and then
cut the legs out from underneath the Morlin Commission and have them sort of go away with
a whimper, not a bang.
I mean, the public doesn't pay that close attention to the Morlin Commission.
And if it sort of peedered out, maybe that would solve the problem in both ways.
Because on the one hand, if you want to have a future in politics and you're on this
commission and you don't want to be in a place where the public thinks you went in the
tank, on the other hand, if doing that means going in the tank means you do whatever
it, following the facts means you run into a situation where you're fighting with the
governor who happens to be, you know, the political behemoth in New York state.
That doesn't help you for your future political prospects either.
So it's sort of a tricky place for the elected officials who are in the commission.
And I think this governor, Cuomo, was trying to not do what he perceived to be the mistakes
of his father.
And he created a Morlin Act commission and look at ethics.
He put a lot of people on there that did not have a lot of political experience.
They did a lot of great reports, but it didn't go anywhere.
And so I think in this particular case, this governor was hoping that he could move quickly,
have people that know what the deal is with regard to politics and drive some real reforms.
But we'll see what if that happens.
Lastly, I think the governor's been making a mistake running around saying that he set
up the Morlin Commission to investigate the legislature.
Technically, he can't do that with the Morlin Commission.
And I think again, it creates an environment where in an effect, you undermine the Morlin
Commission itself by saying things that are so easily refuted by opponents of it.
And so I think that this hasn't been handled perfectly.
That's for sure.
So one last question, the state Senate and its future.
It's pretty well evenly divided in blue state, New York.
There are four Democrats who came over to play ball with Republicans and as a result,
other Republicans are still technically in charge.
Do you see any chance that that will change?
The whole thing hinges on what the governor does.
If the governor believes it's in his political interest to have a Senate Democratic Senate,
it will have...
What do you think?
I mean, you've been closely in your work for him.
But I'm not a political person and I've certainly not talked to him on politics.
Well, I'm telling you right now, okay?
I'll answer the question.
I will answer my own question.
He has to stay with what he's arranged here.
I happen to believe he's the guy who kept the Republicans in power.
But if he wants to be in play in 2016...
That's right.
That'd be tricky.
Yeah.
And that leads us to the last question here.
There is an article at the Times about if Hillary doesn't run at the top of the list
for running for president is Andrew, who maintains, stoutly maintains, he's not running
for president, something I don't happen to believe.
So does he get a shot?
Well, I mean, any New York governor, particularly a Democrat, is in the mix, particularly if they're
very popular in the state.
I mean, the whole thing starts to play out though.
If the former Secretary of State is not in the race, I think then there may be people
running for office that we've never heard of.
I mean, not a lot of us had heard of Barack Obama in 2008.
And I think the Democratic coalition holds together better, my opinion.
I'm not in a party.
I'm not involved in politics, but just from as an observer, I think it holds together better
with a different kind of candidate.
But the coalition of minorities, African Americans, Latinos, liberals, and to some extent,
diehard Democrats holds together, I think, better with an African-American candidate.
And the opportunity to elect the first woman president, I think, will have a lot of sway
with voters.
And if it's not Secretary Clinton, it might be another woman.
So we'll see.
I mean, you never know.
It's like many years out from now.
And this particular governor, if he wants to be positioned in 2016, has to make two decisions.
One is, how does he run up the score in 2014 to look big?
And what does he do about the state senate?
I guess has been Blair Horner, Legislative Director for the New York Public Interest Research
Group.
Blair Horner, I love it when you come on the show.
I mean, we really get such great answers to our questions.
I thank you, and I hope that you'll keep coming back.
Anytime.
The Capitol connection is distributed with the cooperation of the public radio stations
of New York State.
David Castina is the producer of the Capitol connection.
A production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio in Albany.
Support for the Capitol connection comes from New York State United Teachers, representing
professionals in education and health care, online at nysut.org.
