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 health care, online at nysut.org.
What's the capital connection?
I am Alan Shartock, joining us this week, New York State Assemblyman Jim Tadisco.
Welcome my old friend Jim Tadisco.
It's great to be here and I am your old friend, getting older every minute.
Both of us are.
How would you analyze the way the just completed legislative session went?
Unremarkable, you know, a mixed bag.
We passed the third on time budget in a row.
It was fairly well balanced.
We had a little bit of concern because, you know, the governor and the legislature over
the last two years leading into this year were doing pretty well in moving in a very positive
direction other than what we've seen at the federal government.
The governor led the way in many instances, but we were there with them.
There was an altered reality before that we always had a revenue problem.
And as a liberal, as you would say, progressive governor, what you would think, his father,
Mario, was also, you would think he would not move in another direction to suggest that
sometimes it's a taxing and spending problem in New York state in a mandate problem in
New York state for local municipalities, constituent small businesses.
So we moved away from that altered reality and this year passed the third balanced budget.
But the spending priorities were a little miscued this year.
As you know, they tried to eliminate $90 million from the developmentally disabled.
And I got up on the floor with several of my colleagues.
In fact, we put an amendment on there to suggest, look, any budget, no matter how fiscally
responsible you want to be and stay within the realm of spending and have a spending cap,
has to start with those who are most in need of assistance and funding.
And the developmentally disabled, many of us felt were in that category.
And I like Jimmy Fallon.
And we heard all that business about Jimmy Fallon in the tax credits and he was going to
come to New York and put the show on and we had to give, I don't know if it was $5 million
and we had $450 million of tax credits for the tonight show.
And $450 million in tax credits for the rich and famous from Beverly Hills.
And I got up on the floor and I said to your point about sometimes tongue and cheek, I said,
look, I like Jimmy Fallon.
I went to the same college Jimmy Fallon went to.
I went to the college of St. Rose.
He went on to become a great comedian.
I went on to be a special education teacher.
Some people would think I also became a comedian, but that's not the case, of course, but
some people would suggest that.
But to take $450 million and $5 million for tax credits and don't get me wrong.
I think it's exciting to have movies come in.
We had one in Schenectady, the Pines.
I enjoyed the movie, but they come in.
They help the restaurants, they help the hotels.
They create a few jobs, spend some money, help the economy, but then they leave.
My feeling was if you're going to give tax credits to anybody, give them to the small
businesses who are going to create 40 to 60% of the new jobs, but above and beyond that,
it's no joke to take $90 million from the developmentally disabled and give tax credits
to the rich and famous from Beverly Hills.
As you know, our good friend, Assemblyman Weinstein, was able to get that money back with
help of many of us.
He went to the governor who said, look, this cannot stand.
We did get that $90 million back.
We felt validated on our side of the aisle because, of course, we put the hostile amendment
on the floor and felt to suggest to some of those people who think, well, we only care
about the one percenters and the rich business people.
It was our amendment on the floor to get that $90 million back to the developmentally
disabled.
In that sense, we took a step backwards, but we came forth after that.
Not much was created or took place this year as well.
Well, the governor has been accused of having been, as you suggest, moderate conservative,
especially on fiscal issues in the first two years of his income and see.
There's been a more change this third year that he's become more aggressive about his
liberal, burgeoning his liberal credentials, perhaps because he's theoretically taking up
where his father left off and looking at the presidency.
He tacked to the left without question.
He suggested we're going to look at the scientific information as it relates to fracking.
Now, I don't know if you just saw the recent report.
I'm not sure one way or another on that.
I would love to see the jobs created by it, but that recent report that came out just
the other day from a pretty valid organization suggested that the fracking takes place so
deep into the ground, it's nowhere near the water level.
Who paid for that one?
Not the industry.
It was it.
I have no idea really, but they suggested it was a fairly reliable one.
It's best nonpartisan as you can get, but that doesn't mean that it can't happen to our
water supply.
What we're waiting for is really for the NCon, the Environmental Conservation Committee
for the State of New York to give us the best possible report they can give us.
How come it's taken so long?
I think politics, I think it's political.
I think they're holding it back.
As you know, they're trying to pass a more atorium in both houses to hold it off for several
years to get two or three different areas.
Well, your house, I think they've already passed it.
They've passed it.
It hasn't been able to pass the Senate.
So he tacked a little bit to the left on that.
That's a salad term.
You a seller, are you?
Well, not really.
I can roll a kayak, but I can't get it on top of the car to get it to where I want to
go.
It's too heavy.
I got you.
But in those instances, and many of us were there willing to support 9 out of 10 of the
Women's Equality Act, and we think it's a shame that we left without it.
And the only one that you weren't willing to support was the abortion issue.
Right.
And the kind of buying of abortion.
That's a sensitive issue.
And we're up for a separate debate on that.
But why punish women when they could get better salaries, better access to jobs that
are appropriate to them?
The sexual harassment piece on that was extremely important, especially what we see with the
speaker and Vito Lopez and things of that nature taking place.
Somebody will call him Gropes.
Well, they've used that term, Mr. Gropes.
Right now, though, it's like I try.
I'm for it out there in the city.
You got Vito Lopez.
You got Spitzer.
You got Weiner.
And they all look like they're heading the polls.
So I'm not sure what's that.
You're not going to mention Spitzer and Weiner.
You're not for giving people a second chance.
Are you?
You're not for giving people a second chance.
But I think he's had a second, third, fourth and fifth chance.
You see, it's not about Spitzer's or Weiner's private life.
It's about their temperament.
You know, I was the guy in the through way where he said, look, I'm going to be an F and
steam roller.
I remember that.
Roll over you and anybody else who gets in my way.
It's my famous J.T. James Taylor song.
And you went and blabbed that he did that, didn't you?
You went and told him that.
No, I didn't.
Oh, you didn't.
I was just a little bit off, obviously, because I had to go back as minority leader and say,
look, I just want to say no, I had an interaction with the governor because he talked about
transparency.
He's going to be the most transparent government, but he wouldn't let me in the meetings.
And finally, he let me in the meeting out of minority leader.
We had a five way meeting.
And now with this governor who promised transparency, we're down to three, sometimes two, sometimes
he's the lone ranger without the time to interrupt.
You're talking about a president governor around.
Yeah, he likes his way or the highway sometimes also, but the temperament thing, he went after
Joe Bruno.
But then when you wait, wait, wait.
So you had the spitzer came after you when he was governor and he said, get out of my
way, I'm a f-ing steam roller.
And I'm going to steam all over you.
It's a James Taylor song.
Yeah, right.
And for the fact, we played it, right?
But we had to beep the f-ing thing out of there.
Have you ever had contentious arguments with this governor?
No, no contentious argument.
Of course, I'm not the minority leader now, but I've taken certain positions.
And I have to tell you, he's being very good at taking the suggestions I give to him.
For example, I put forth an idea for used resources, accountability act where we, you know,
at the end of the year, I found out what agencies were doing.
We're taking brand new furniture, brand new computers and saying, well, these are no good
throwing them out so they could spend down all their budgetary money so they could at
least get the same amount.
I said, look, this is inappropriate.
They should be evaluated by you and the controller and they should be put on eBay.
He created what he calls New York store.
New York store puts these used resources on eBay.
Did he give you credit?
No, but that's okay.
You know, you're a really interesting guy.
You are because you come up with these great ideas.
People, if they're good, people tend to adopt them, but we never hear the Tadesco name
attached to them because you're in the minority.
No, but you can't have a pride of authorship.
You've got to be able to do it.
I can.
I have it.
Well, some people do.
And if I were you're about to get my name on bills and getting credit for it, take this
digital bill, we got none.
Everybody's talking about, oh, we got a important question on the ballot.
It's casino gaming and that's going to bring in money for education and state.
Well, probably the most important question we're going to have on the ballot is 2014.
Should New York State go digital in terms of the legislation that puts on the desk of
legislators?
It's going to save projected $50 million.
I was going to say gazillion dollars.
Yeah.
The ink, the delivery, the waste, the smells.
You'll put some people out of work, though, won't you?
Well, this is the point that people ask me, our job is not to create public sector jobs.
Our job is to create, help create private sector jobs.
Our job is to create the best possible services.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm with you.
I think it's a great idea.
And I told the speaker and everybody, give those guys different jobs.
You'll still save money, even if you keep those guys.
You won't have the paper.
You won't have the paper.
You won't, Mother Nature will be smiling and Mother Earth.
People should know about the legislature.
I mean, it's one of my earliest memories.
I'm an old guy now.
But I remember going up to those rooms with those old guys standing there and the smell
of all of the paper and all the stuff having the ink and the paper and having to, well,
that would be gone.
Why should we have it?
We're still warm on the desk when it comes out.
We should be moving into the 21st century.
If anybody wants a copy, all you need is a printing machine.
You need one or two copies.
If you go to look at the document rooms, you have hundreds and thousands of copies in these
document rooms at a cost of millions of dollars.
Now the second bill we have is the other side of government, outside of the legislature.
You know, our founding fathers were smart.
They said, you should be able to read the bills at least for three days to understand.
Right.
And now we have something called a message of necessity.
Message of necessity, which the governor has used to quite an extent.
Remember that a message of necessity, I don't have to tell you, was invented so that if
there was a tidal wave heading towards, you know, New York State.
You got it.
You could do away with those three days.
But now we use the message of necessity for a lot of things, don't we?
Well, last year it was the DNA legislation in the middle of the night.
Last year it was the evaluation of teachers in the middle of the night.
He gunned control.
Pension reform.
Gun control.
The first day of this year, safe act in the middle of the night.
Now, I got up in a phone and I said, look, armies used sleep deprivation to confuse their
enemies.
You know, Bob Woodward said, the worst thing we have to fear from Watergate fame, he said,
the worst thing we have to fear is secret government because democracy and darkness dies.
And he was absolutely right.
All these things in the middle of the night are nice in terms of he want to be somebody
who ramrods things through, but they impact democracy in the long run.
The media should be there.
The public should have the opportunity to watch if they want to and be there.
And above all, we should be awake, being that check in balance that our founding fathers
meant us to be because they want us to look at that legislation for three days.
I mean, look at the stimulus plan.
A trillion dollar stimulus plan, nobody read that thing on the federal government.
It went from a jobs program to a snow jobs program.
The next year was 15% unemployment.
And we're working ourselves out of that now.
But our job is to read, understand the legislation and follow what our founding fathers want
us to be.
Come on now, James.
How many people in your party or any of the parties read those bills?
I think quite a few of us do.
Really?
Well, we read the most significant portions and then we use our councils to counsel us
on some that we don't quite understand.
There's a lot of legal ease in these writings.
I want to change the subject if I may.
First of all, you wore the minority leader.
You're not anymore.
You did something that almost nobody does.
You wore the minority leader and you said, okay, now I'm going to go and just begin
assemblymen again.
That's rare.
Have you enjoyed that?
I'll tell you I've enjoyed it immensely.
Listen, the hardest job I ever had besides coaching a 12 basketball plays.
I'm trying to get them to react as a team when I was an educator.
I had a real job in an athletic coach.
I was being the minority leader.
I loved it, but it was a difficult job.
I got to get in the room with Spitzer.
I got to get in the room with Patterson.
I got to get in the room with Pataki.
I got to represent my 45 to 50 members in the room in a large portion of the public and
move, I think, an agenda forward by getting in there because I was a bulldog about it.
I felt it.
If you're going to have transparency, you're going to let me in the room because we represent
five to six million people.
But the worst part of the job was raising the money to continue to help our guys elected so
we could move our agenda forward.
There needs to be some type of reform.
You know what I feel is the most significant reform.
It's recall, I think New York State needs recall.
I know it's not perfect.
It's not the end all in B.
I agree with you.
Well thank you for that.
I agree with you.
It's always doing a bad job.
Call them back.
Yeah.
So what about initiative and referendum?
Are you for those?
To a limited extent.
And because of now.
Because here's why I say to a limited extent, you have nine million people in New York
city.
They could control the entire state because they vote as a block.
So I think you have to do it by congressional type of districts or by districts in terms
of weighted vote and weighted opinion.
Well for example, if you had an initiative and referendum and you put on, you know,
that you got a certain number of signatures and then you vote on it, whether or not there
should be term limits for state legislators.
I guarantee you would take about two and a half seconds to vote for that by people in New
York State.
Which is one of the reasons I suspect we're never going to have an initiative and referendum
in New York State.
Oh without question.
And the reason why is because the leadership is so powerful.
Dean Scalis and let's face it, speakers over, control any piece of legislation that comes
to the floor.
I mean, you can have, we've had Bill's, Jenna's law, 149 members sponsored it and never
came to the floor because the speaker who has a little bit of a connection with the legal
aspects, the attorneys was not allowing it to come to the front.
And remind us what Jenna's law was.
Jenna's law was a nurse here in Rensselaer who a violent felon was given probation the
first time he was violent and led out of prison.
Since then we've passed legislation to not give probation in May.
And since the first time violent felons and he got out and he murdered her and raped
her and we passed the law to say, Hey, if your first time violent felon, you shouldn't
get probation.
Do you represent Saratoga?
80% of my district is in Saratoga.
Not the city of Saratoga now.
The reason I say that is there was a piece in the paper, your Italian, aren't you?
Yeah.
There was a piece in the paper.
There was a truck, a food truck.
And it had the word, Dego on it.
And Saratoga, the race course, quite correctly, you know, kicked them out.
Wandering Dego.
It was.
You really wander at this stage of the game in our development, how that could have happened
that they would have been let in in the first place.
Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
But even though they were Italian, it is a derogatory term.
No, but you're looking at dictionary.
It's a derogatory.
It's a derogatory.
It's always been a derogatory term.
And I know the N word is used a lot between African Americans.
Hey, I'm Jewish, but I want the K word on it on a truck.
No, absolutely not.
I think the smart thing for them to do would have been to yield and say, well, look, the
state of New York didn't want my truck there.
Let's change the name.
Yeah, yeah.
Let's do something reasonable here.
But yeah, it certainly impacted those of Italian and other people who just don't like
to see that terminology.
How important is ethosentricity in the legislature?
In other words, ethnic groups, you see the black and Puerto Rican caucus.
You see the, there's an Irish caucus, I believe.
How important is that in the way the legislature operates?
Well, I think it's always important to have your historical identity, your cultural identity.
But in the long run, I think all of us, no matter what your nationality is, have to
make decisions and votes and develop legislation in the best interest of first many people as
we can.
And I think most of my colleagues understand that.
I'm sure there's some partisanism as it relates to culture and as it relates to a political
affiliation into a, if you're tall or if you're short, you know, there's a whole variety
of things that plays into what a decision making is all about.
But I think to the most part, we try to do the best we can with our ideology and our moral
compass.
But I think it's good to have groups that show the diversity of what we have in our New
York State legislature.
Yeah, you're quite a basketball player, but you're not the tallest guy ever.
So, so that you had to try harder as a basketball player.
I know there's a question here somewhere, but does that pull over to politics also?
Oh, without question.
You know, more than just being an athlete in the basketball player, I played, I like to
think I was a team player because you were a star.
It's a team sport.
You were a star, weren't you?
Well, I still hold nine records at Union College, 49 points in one game.
Really?
I still hold the record for the old gymnasium at Albany State, 42 points, and it'll never
be broken because they don't play the games in the old gymnasium anymore.
Yeah.
Right.
So, but, you know, I think what it taught me being involved in athletics is that you
can't separate your moral compass from one area to another.
My coach has always taught me what you do on this court is reflective of what you do
within your family, what you do when you're getting your education, what you do in your
public life, as well as your private life.
And that is why when we talked about Elliott Spitzer, and you know, I don't think the main
reason why he shouldn't be supported for this position is his private life.
But I do think it is reflective, you see, because you can't separate the risk taking
that happens, your responsibilities, and segment yourself out and say, well, that will never
take place in his public life.
It will only take place in his private life.
No, we are what we are whenever we do.
When you're behind that mic, you're who you are.
So are you a Freudian?
In other words, Freud said, you know, character doesn't change after four years old.
Spitzer says he's done with that.
He's over that.
He apologized.
I believe it.
What seems to be your problem?
Well, historically, he hasn't changed.
I mean, the attacks on me, the attacks on Bruno, the attacks on Wall Street, and
some were a granite were appropriate.
They were doing the wrong things, going in the wrong direction.
But here's the man, and this is what bothers me the most about him and Wiener.
They're bright.
They're intelligent.
They're good communicators.
They don't need to be bullies.
They could win on the bully pulpit.
You know, I get things done by marketing my ideas.
Wiener bully, because you know, have you heard that?
Well, I've seen them on the floor of Congress just raining like I've never seen anybody
rant before in my life, disparaging people.
And that's one of the things we've changed here in the New York State legislature, and
I'm proud of.
There's not that personal attack to the level that it used to be in the name calling that
we see at the federal level.
And as I said, we've moved away from that altered reality that we always have a revenue
problem to understanding that, yes, we need revenue, but sometimes it's taxing and spending.
As the governor tides, we've got, I think, the lowest tax rate that we've ever had in
57 years.
Now, it started out pretty high to begin with, and we have a long way to go.
This is one of the governor's primes right now.
He's using a lot of money for media to talk about how effective and efficient and how
we're moving forward in New York State.
We're still number two in tax freedom day in New York State.
You know what tax freedom day means?
That's the day when all of your money doesn't go for local, state and federal government.
You start to take one dollar home for yourself.
That's May 6th.
For four months, we pay all our money in taxes to the local, state and federal government.
Only Connecticut goes to May 12th.
As you've seen through the other organizations, we're number one in the worst environment
for small businesses.
So we have some work to do in those areas.
Jim, if you wanted to be known for something, when you're done here, what is it that you'd
like to say?
Yeah, I really like that Jimmy Tisco because he told it like it was because he let his
feelings be known on the issues because under the most difficult of circumstances, being
outnumbered two to one, he got pieces of legislation like a saving $50 million going digital,
used resources accountability yet.
He got the governor to change our DMV laws for a three strikes and you lose your driving
privileges for the rest of your life because there's serial and chronic individuals out
there who are cowboys.
I'd like to think they talk about the fact that he got one of the first animal cruelty
felony bills in the nation past, the buster's law passed when he was outnumbered two to one
in terms of affiliations.
And he did it by using the character, content and quality of the idea and doing the marketing
necessary.
And I tell you where I learned that from and you won't believe this.
Early on in my career, I was a chairman of a chast force on child abduction and missing
children.
I was getting on the through way one day and I saw they handed out the card for the
through it and it said buckle up your seat belt.
And I said, why can't we put the pictures of missing kids or missing persons on our
New York state transportation system be the first state in the nation to use our transportation
system from here to Syracuse the Buffalo to New York City.
I remember that.
Yep.
We called the governor's office that day and I talked to one of his staff.
I never thought he would take it seriously or react to it.
He said, I'll get back to you about an hour later.
He called me back.
He goes meet the governor on exit 23 tomorrow.
We're printing up the tickets.
We've got the first young lady we want to try to put on the through way told tickets.
I said, who is this?
Are you serious?
He goes, yes.
He told me I don't remember what the fellow's name was.
So I went to exit 23.
There was the governor there in exit 23.
They had the picture of the girl on the missing toll ticket.
We had a nice press conference.
After we got done, I said governor.
Tell me something.
Why did you, I'm a sophomore legislator.
I think it's a good idea.
We're going to be the first state in the nation to use our transportation.
But why did you come here with me?
Because I know when I get back to the assembly, all the Democrats, because our picture was
in the paper the next day on it.
I'm going to ask me, how did you get the governor to come to exit 23?
He said, Jim is the character, content, and quality of an idea that counts.
Then he said something I'll never forget.
If a public servant doesn't blow his own horn on an issue, there's never any music.
When I came to understand, he was saying, you have to get a full airing of an idea through
the media, through the public, because they're the most powerful sources on getting things
done.
And ever since then, I've understood you have to market and show the reasons and the logic
behind it.
And you do it better than anybody in the legislature.
Jim to disco, we're out of time.
Our guest has been New York State Assemblyman.
Jim to disco.
I got to say something to you.
We may not always agree on substance, but I really love you.
And I think you've been a great asset to the state of New York and to your party and
to your family.
And I want to congratulate you.
Well, it's mutual to you.
You've done a young one's work with this station and enlighten people.
And I know they get so much enjoyment off your shows and this station.
So congratulations to that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jimmy.
We'll see you all next week on the Capitol Connection.
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