The Capitol Connection Show 1323, 2013 June 6

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.
Distribution for the Capital Connection is made possible with the help of New York State
United Teachers, representing professionals in education and health care, online at nysut.org.
It's the Capital Connection, hi, I'm Alan Shartock joining us this week as New York State
Senator Cecilia Ketchik, a Democrat from the 46th District, Senator Ketchik, is the ranking
member on both the elections committee and the committee on mental health and developmental
disabilities.
She also serves as a member of the following committee's agricultural environmental protection
education and children and families.
Welcome, Senator Ketchik.
Let me ask you this to begin with, we just described you as ranking member.
Tell everybody what ranking member means.
Rankers are the person on the committee who's kind of the leader of the minority group.
Right, so you're the top Democrat on that committee.
So let me ask you this, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the politics of mental health
in a New York State a long time ago, right then things weren't good, things going well
for the mentally ill or is there much more we can do.
I think there's definitely more we need to be doing.
The challenge, and I want your listeners to know, I am thrilled that I'm on this committee,
it's one of the committees I wanted to be on and it's important that whatever changes
we're making are ensuring that we're providing the services that we need to, to people who
need the service.
And in mental health, we, as you know in the past, have had large institutional histories
where we had a lot of people in institutional settings that was not the best place to deal
with this population.
And we involve local nonprofit organizations, you have a different structure because you
have people who are on the board to the nonprofits providing services more directly.
So you have a way, if you're a parent of a person who's getting the service, for example,
and you're not happy with the service, the person that's in charge has to respond to
a board.
So you have a better ability to make changes.
So I'm a big fan of having services on a local level.
And we're still in the process of changing from an institutional based system to more
local service providers.
And so when we close a hospital, for example, or a ward of a hospital, the savings, it's
costing us now over $300,000 a year to have someone in an institutional setting, or
is in a nonprofit local setting that's more like $60,000, for example.
The savings, the state and gas, we historically have the Community Investment Act has said
50% of that should go to local services.
So there's a change in existence in becoming more hopefully efficient because we're not
doing it on the state level.
We have to make sure those resources are going to local providers.
And that's something that I'm very cognizant of.
Well, how do you make people keep their word on that?
Well, you pass laws.
And that's something I'm looking at.
I'm looking at the history of what we've done over the last 20 years because the Community
Mental Health Reinvestment Act is now 20 years old.
How's this been working over the last 20 years?
Do we need to do a better job?
And I will work on that issue in the coming days that are left.
What I want to see is us making sure the services we provide locally are the best.
We can do.
And making sure we have the resources to our local service providers is critical.
And we've got a lot of budget challenges in the future.
I'm also seeing, you know, I'm a former school board member.
I'm seeing other systems that impact, I mean, it's not just the Department of Mental Health
that deals with mental health issues.
Our schools often have people on staff who provide help to teachers and students who may
need services.
But other things I've seen schools do because of state aid cuts is lose positions like
the school psychologists that's helping the whole district.
That's bad because we're not, especially in rural areas, we don't have resources locally
in and when the schools have our kids for six hours a day and you're seeing some behavior
issues, you need the resources and help at our schools.
I'm very concerned about losing the ability of having the resources at all levels of age
groups for our kids because when you get to kids early on, that's when you can have the
best ability to help them and change the trajectory of their future.
So there's, you know, even though I'm on this committee, I'm cognizant of how we can
make sure we've got mental health services throughout our systems in the state.
Let's talk a little bit about the public forum you held recently on the effect of testing
and mandates so that our schools and teachers and children are all having to live under
now.
The teachers are furious, as you know, about some of the scapegoating that goes on with
them in terms of their evaluations.
They think that the tools aren't in place and yet they think some of these systems are
going to crowd them out.
I wonder if you could comment on that.
Yes, we just yesterday had a forum on this issue.
We called it education at a crossroads and it was a way to give people who were in the
classroom.
We even had a student come and talk and superintendents and teachers and a parent about how
frustrated they are that the focus on testing has taken away their ability to teach kids
and has, you know, the morale for kids and teachers in the classroom is really appallingly
low.
And we're, I'm very concerned about this.
And I think what we did is provide an avenue for folks to say, this is hurting us.
This is not making sense.
I mean, the student we had came and said, you know, I'm a boy scout.
The first rule of first aid is do no harm.
And he thought these tests were breaking that simple rule.
And he even says, I've been tested on the common core.
I don't even know what it entails.
Because we've, everyone agrees.
We want better standards.
Everyone agrees.
The common core makes sense.
But we're testing kids on the common core when it's not fully implemented.
Yeah.
It's very frustrating.
So they're getting tested on things that they haven't learned yet.
What is the common core supposed to be?
Well, it's a different way of teaching.
And you're, instead of trying to memorize lots of facts, you're spending more time getting
more in depth and doing more analysis and doing more code teaching and incorporating things
outside the classroom into your classroom.
It's a different way of teaching, not just what you're teaching.
So in order for us to align curriculums to this new way of teaching takes time.
And that's what we heard from the teachers administrative yesterday.
Basically, we know what we're doing.
Give us time to realign to this new common core standard.
And the focus on the assessments of the kids is really the focus is on how effective the
teachers are.
And the problem is we're testing kids on whether or not the teachers are teaching to the
common core standards.
It's very confusing.
And it doesn't always make sense.
And we're taking time away from the regular learning process.
And both teachers and students are feeling very frustrated about this.
And we're hearing a lot of that from parents, teachers, administrators, school board members.
And what we're hearing is, we need to make some adjustments here.
So what we're going to take with our forum yesterday, we videotaped it.
And we're going to ask for a sit down meeting with John King, the Commissioner of Education,
and share this with him and say, you know, just FYI.
We think we need to make some changes here.
What can we do and want to share this frustration with you?
Do you think teachers are being scapegoated?
I do.
I really do.
I think clearly there are some teachers that maybe aren't as effective.
But most by and large, most teachers are very effective.
They love teaching.
They're doing a great job.
And they're doing the best they can with the resources we're giving them.
And when we are asking them to make system changes, we need to support them and help them,
you know, go into a new type of teaching and to, you know, push all these tests on them
before the kids and the teachers and the schools are ready.
I mean, one of the things I learned as a school board is, you're on a ship, you know, trying
to turn the ship takes time.
Because these are large institutions.
We need time to implement.
We do everything a year ahead when you're budgeting, when you're planning, because the
current year is done.
And I think the testing that's been implemented is being pushed down before the schools and
kids are ready.
So the results are not going to be what you'd like to see.
And that's a big concern of mine because we're putting in policies or processes that
don't quite make sense to, you know, what's our goal here?
We want great schools.
We want everyone to have a great educational opportunity.
The tests are not, in my opinion, getting us there.
OK, I want to go to something that Governor Cuomo is sponsoring and that, of course, is
on pushing very hard on.
And that is women's equality.
He has an agenda set, some of which wants to put into law in New York State, you know,
to protect women who want to control their bodies through abortion, with the theory that
the Supreme Court picked on this may change.
And so I'm sort of wondering whether or not you can give us a sense of what's going
on in the Senate between the majority and the minority on this.
Yeah, I wish I knew.
I am in the Senate.
And, you know, we've got two weeks left and the women's equality agenda, it's 10 issues.
And one of them includes protecting a woman's right to choose whether or not to have an
abortion.
It codifies what we have now.
It doesn't expand what we have now.
But the other agenda items are really important, achieving pay equity in the workplace, making
sure that we're stopping sexual harassment in the workplace, strengthening human trafficking
laws.
There's a lot on this agenda.
I'd like to see it all get passed.
You know, I don't know why we need a woman's agenda at all.
We're not a special interest, we're a majority of the state.
And these issues should be dealt with.
I want to see all of these bills come to the floor, get debated, and get voted on.
I don't want to see one of this or one of that.
It's not a Chinese menu.
Let's get them all on the floor, get them debated, and get them done.
Now the Obama election proved that women were siding with the Democrats on many of these
issues.
We have the Republican leader, Dean Skellos, saying no, I'm not going to take some of
this stuff and put it up for a vote.
How does he get away with that?
It's very frustrating because this is about democracy.
We all represent citizens in this state.
And we shouldn't have one or two people deciding, oh, well, because of what I believe, I'm
not going to let that bill get to the floor.
And I think it stops democracy from happening.
So I think there needs to be a way to get these bills to the floor.
I would suggest that if people want to see this stuff get voted on, they should call
him to Dean Skellos and Senator Klein.
And tell them they want to see these bills on the floor.
Now let's talk about Senator Klein for a moment.
Senator Klein runs as a Democrat and is a Republican, I guess, in the Bronx.
But he and a bunch of Democrats went over to the other side.
Some people call them traders, some people call them.
And of conscience, I don't know.
But the point of the matter is they go over to the other side.
And what we heard in the beginning, I read in the paper myself, I learned the New York Times
that every two weeks leadership would change.
Dean Skellos would have it for two weeks as the Republican leader.
And then Jeffrey Klein, the Senator, would have it every other two weeks.
But now I don't think it's working that way because clearly Klein has to be for a women's
equality agenda, doesn't he?
Yes, he says he is.
But the bills need to be brought to the floor.
He's got two weeks left.
Hopefully we will get them to the floor.
I can't comment on how they're making those decisions because I don't know what they're
saying to each other.
Frankly, it's up to them because they control the agenda of the day to get these bills
to the floor.
And it's not just the women's equality agenda that we're not seeing get to the floor.
There's legislation on fracking, for example.
The assembly passed two year moratorium on fracking.
That should come to the floor so we can vote on it.
We want to see more of these bills coming to the floor so we can make decisions.
And I think that's what we're here to do.
Now if the Republicans, senators, like we know how it works in Albany, a leader, a silver
represents the interest of his conference, the speaker, and he offers protection to his
members.
By not bringing it to the floor, there are some senators who would have to vote for a woman's
equality agenda.
And they'd rather not.
Is that the way it works?
I guess that's why you don't want to bring it to the floor.
But again, we're not a special interest.
We're a majority of the state.
And we should get these bills voted on.
Okay, but how do you do it?
What's the logistics of it, Senator?
I mean, how do they get it done?
You know, because sometimes I think politicians want the issue more than actually having a
victory.
So you have a governor who says he wants it, but he has a Republican group who he put
in place basically because he didn't do an apportionment bill that would be in fair.
And he knows it.
So my question is, you've got to be very careful on a question like this.
But obviously, the governor has a huge role in whether this comes up or not, because
there are now more Democrats than Republicans in the state Senate.
Yes.
We have a Democratic majority, numbers wise, in the state Senate.
And if they all came together, I think they would put these bills on the floor and let
them get voted on.
Well, our audience know this, CC, if we can.
Is there a provision that if a majority want to seek a bill come up, they can see it?
I think if you get 32 on a bill that you can petition for it to come to the floor, but
I think the leaders still have the ability to block that.
What kind of democracy do we have here anyway?
Well, you know, if you want things to change, I would say people need to make sure they vote.
I can't tell you, my race should anything is that your vote really does matter.
And you can change things by sending the right people who will stand up for democracy.
You're there.
What about casinos?
Tell us.
Are we going to have casinos in New York State?
I don't know.
That just came out yesterday.
I haven't even had a chance because we did the public forum.
I haven't even had a chance to read through all of the governor's proposals on that.
But it's definitely what I think will happen is it will get negotiated.
I think what we saw from the, what we, we've been handed the bill from the governor probably
will get changed.
And I, whether or not we see that on the floor again, I don't know.
There's definitely going to be negotiations on some of these issues.
Maybe they'll get tied together.
And the next two weeks will be very interesting because what we see on the floor is going to
be interesting.
And I think people will, we'll want to see things like women's equality agenda on the
floor and they'll want to see us take votes on it.
If we don't, I think that, you know, we should be held accountable.
Along the same lines, there is now a big push to get campaign finance reform up.
But I, I'm always cautious about this.
I always say, well, you know, there are even some Democrats that you're not one of them,
by the way.
But there are even some Democrats who don't want to see campaign finance reform after all.
You know, they don't want Joe the barber running against them and getting government money
to run for office.
They've worked it all out.
They know how to give the cocktail parties and do all of that stuff.
So when you talk to your colleagues on both sides of the aisle, do you have any sense?
I mean, the Republicans are clearly going to be against it.
Do you have any sense with the Democrats whether they really, really, really want it?
I think our conference really does.
We had almost everyone of our conference on a letter in support of fair elections.
And it's not just public financing of campaigns.
It's lowering contribution limits.
It's giving the board of elections more ability to administer the regulations around it.
You know, there's a lot we can do around campaign finance reform.
Right now the Republicans are just, no, they want the status quo.
They're not giving us any options.
The IDC and the Democratic...
That's Jeff Klein's group, the breakaway Democrat group, yes.
We've all said we want campaign finance reform.
We've put out bills.
This is going to get negotiated to, again, you know, let's stop being told, no, we don't
want to even vote on it, bring something to the floor and let us do something.
And there's a lot that we're going to end up wrapping up these next two weeks for
their critical.
So I think my message to your listeners is now it's time to weigh in and let your legislators
know how you feel about these different issues.
I think campaign finance reform, we have to do something to get the influence of money
out of politics.
And there's a lot we can do around that and I want to see us move in that direction.
So that more people like me can run and get elected.
And when you do that, the voters, that issues matter more as opposed to, you know, people
who have a lot of money can influence the process.
No, senators, C.C.
Ketchik, I want to ask you this real quickly.
You're a brand new senator.
You've gone to the state legislature.
Your hands have never been dirty.
But I did want to ask you this.
What's your impression of the place?
Is it accessible?
There's a lot of people here who want to do a good job.
I look at the freshman class as my, you know, colleagues, we're all new and every one
of the freshman class in our Democratic conference is interested in policy.
We're here to work.
We're very frustrated that these, the issues that matter to our constituents aren't getting,
you know, the focus of, you know, we've got a lot of issues in this state that we need
to work on.
Creating jobs, helping the upstate economy be reinvigorated.
You know, those are the things we, we came to Albany to work on.
Creating our schools.
And that's what I'm focused on.
The fact that there are problems with some of our colleagues, I can't, you know, that's
their problem, you know, that just the system will work those things out.
But we've got to make sure we're sending people to the Senate and the assembly who really
care about their constituents.
And I'm showing by my work that I do.
Well, that's good, but when you come home at night, are you disgusted?
Do you want to throw up?
I want to make sure more people like me get elected and people who care about doing the
work of the people who live and work in their districts get there.
So I take it that's a yes.
I'm more disgusted.
So I take it that's a yes.
That we need to change things.
And that's one of the reasons I decided to run.
Sure.
We should not be gerrymandering districts and saying, this is for one political party.
Everybody else to stay out.
We've got to do a better job of protecting democracy in this state.
Well, Senator Cecilia Ketchik, it's a wonderful thing that you're there and that you're on
the show and we appreciate it so much.
And I hope that you'll continue to check in with us every once in a while and tell us about
your experiences in Albany and whether or not you're seeing the change you really want
to see so much.
But again, thank you so much for all you have done and for being with us.
Thanks for having me on, Alan.
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.
Research for the Capitol connection comes from New York State United Teachers, representing
professionals in education and healthcare, online at nysut.org and Ms. 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.