Legislative Gazette Show 1321, 2013 May 24

From WAMC in Albany, this is the legislative gazette.
A weekly magazine about New York State government and politics, your host is David Castina,
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 not ORG.
Coming up this week, Governor Cuomo backs further away from hydrofracking in his economic
development plans.
Our political observer Alan Shartock shares his thoughts on the latest political scandal
and will take a look at the governor's plan for allowing businesses to operate tax-free
on SUNY campuses.
Go to the next slide.
Governor Andrew Cuomo, who still has not issued a decision on whether hydrofracking should
be allowed in New York is backing further away from the controversial gas drilling process
and his economic development plans for the future.
The legislative gazette's Karen DeWitt reports.
Two years ago, Governor Cuomo considered hydrofracking a key component of his plans for
economic development in the faltering upstate regions of the state.
Now with the decision stalled over a month's long health review by the administration, Cuomo
is spending more time focusing on other ideas like expanding casino gambling and attracting
businesses through a tax-free offer for tax start-ups near all SUNY campuses upstate
and on Long Island, which are 100 percent tax-free communities that will be located all
across the state of New York.
This is how it will work.
New businesses would pay no taxes for the first decade of any sort, even employees would
not owe any income taxes.
Governor Cuomo was asked recently at a press conference about how fracking fits into his
economic development plans.
His answer?
It doesn't.
No change in where we are on fracking.
That's not what I was referring to when I was talking about economic development ideas.
The Governor's Health Commissioner, Dr. Nurev Shah, also said recently he continues to examine
large-scale studies being conducted by the EPA and in Pennsylvania on the long-term health
effects of fracking.
Since the last time I spoke, I've been to Washington, D.C. met with EPA officials on their study.
I've been to Pennsylvania, met with a Marcellus Research Institute officials about their
plan study.
My plan is to continue to work on this until I am comfortable that we have a good review.
Fracking up!
People in!
Fracking up!
People in!
Anti-fracking groups held the latest of numerous protests at the state capital, this time joining
up with tenet activists and advocates for campaign finance reform.
Roger Downs with the Sierra Club says while no news is good news on fracking going forward
in New York, he'd like to see a more definitive answer.
I think that he realizes that there's a real downside, an economic development downside
to fracking.
I think he's very nervous about it.
But I think he also deserves, the public deserves to know what he intends to do.
Downs and others are seeking another state moratorium on fracking.
The measure has already passed the state assembly, but it's stalled in the Senate.
It would take the gas drilling process out of consideration for economic development or
any other plans for at least two more years.
In Albany, I'm Karen DeWitt.
Joining us now legislative Gazette political observer Alan Shartock.
Alan, it just seems like every week there's just one more thing to add to the political pile
and then there's a bunch of things to talk about.
Let's start with the fact that Assemblyman Vito Lopez resigned on Monday because he was
essentially going to be forced out after a state ethics commission report on sexual harassment.
He was claiming his innocence to this, but certainly he has resigned and moved on meanwhile.
Speaker Silver who has been pasted with some of this because of his role in the settlement
in the case has apologized.
His promised reform in the sexual harassment case amid calls for him to step down mostly
on the Republican side.
Your thoughts on that?
Well, first of all, I was talking to a couple of reporters, female reporters yesterday.
Guess what they were calling him?
Gropes.
That's his name, they don't even bother with it.
He has a terrible reputation now as a result of this.
When he had power, when he was the one of the most powerful Democrats in the state and
he was the head of the Brooklyn Democratic Organization and he could make a judge or he
could make a political candidate, what happened then was he had to be listened to any
had to be protected and I'm sure that's what Shelley Silver was up against.
Listen, these guys have been trading for so long that you better believe that everybody
knows secrets.
So if you don't protect a colleague in this kind of situation, you could be in bad shape.
However, Shelley Silver is one of the smartest than I know.
I truly believe he's not going anywhere.
He made a mistake or it's something that we all think is a mistake because we don't
want taxpayers, our taxpayer money being used to pay off women to protect people who
are potentially corrupt politicians.
So therefore, he was investigated, he was found to be, you know, that it wasn't going
to be seen as criminal and everybody said, okay, get out or face the music.
So then he came back with this thing, he's going to resign later on.
They all said not good enough either now or it's too late.
He had been stripped of all of his positions and everything else in the assembly but he
was still there.
He announces he's going to run for the New York City Council.
Mayor Bloomberg says, and that's not a good idea.
It's time to pack it in.
There's no politician who wants to get anywhere near this guy.
I mean, let's face it, he stinks.
Now Silver is another whole matter.
If you think about it for a second, why would he resign?
The only way he resigns is we don't vote for Silver.
His conference votes for him.
If the conference starts getting so much heat, if somebody gives a settlement on the corner,
you know, thing and somebody looks at him and or her and says, how can you possibly vote
for him?
And it really gets so hot that they start to worry about whether or not they're going
to be reelected, then I think Silver would be in trouble.
But here's the secret that many people don't know.
I like Shelley Silver.
You know, I think he made a mistake and he's said he made a mistake.
I think he's very bright, he's very cany and much of the progressive legislation that
has happened in this state has happened because of Shelley Silver.
So I think all things considered based on everything I know right now and things could
change.
He survives.
And the second part of this is who's going to take his place?
The number two guy in the state assembly is a guy named Denny Farrell.
Who else will like a lot?
He's the head of the Ways and Means Committee.
He's tall.
He's of color.
He's brilliant.
And why, you know, but he's also one other thing.
He's about, I think about 82, 83 years old, something like that.
Maybe older.
And if you take a look, the way Franklin Roosevelt played all the people who wanted to run for
president when he was deciding whether he would run again, he played them all off against
each other, but there was no clear favorite.
I think that's true here too.
The assembly doesn't know who it would put in.
There's some movement by women there who say it should be a woman speaker.
Now I can't disagree with that.
Nevertheless, my bet is he shall he still stays.
Now enter another scandal-clad politician who's decided to jump back in the race, a political
race.
And that's the race for New York City mayor.
We're talking about Anthony Weiner.
Well, that's right.
Anthony Weiner, of course, inexplicably.
He just went nutty and he mailed to women pictures of himself and his underwear.
He's leaving nothing to the imagination.
Of course, it's unfortunate for him that his name happened to be Weiner because the
tabloids will not let off, let it, let it, let it, let it, in fact, there was, as we speak
today, there was a cartoon in one of the tabs which showed all of the people who were running
for mayor, none of whom had distinguished, which is what the big issue is here.
None of these people are doing all that well.
And they're all marching out and the last guy is in his underpants and that's Weiner.
So I think that Weiner faces a hard road to travel here.
I don't see this as something.
He's got a lot of money in the bank from his former congressional days.
So he's got several million dollars that he can spend on a campaign.
But what are you going to say?
All he can keep saying is I made a mistake and that's true.
The part that I find fascinating about this is whether or not people are getting tired
of all the sex gotcha stuff.
If they listen to the New York deli news of the New York Post, they ain't got to write.
You know, there isn't going to be O' Weiner candidacy.
But there is something about a country where 51% of the people of the marriages end in
divorce and more.
And much of that is about sex and gotcha sex.
I got you.
I saw you.
You did this.
You did that.
And people are saying, well, people are people.
So this thing may be overreaching on the part of the tabloids.
And unless somebody else comes into the race, he's got a shot.
He's number two in the polls right now.
Legislative Gazette political observer, Alan Sharton.
You are listening to the legislative Gazette, a program about New York State government and
politics.
I'm David Gissteena.
Governor Cuomo has taken his new tax-free plan for businesses on the road.
He was in New York's Hudson Valley this week, touting his plan to allow new businesses
to operate tax-free on Sunni campuses across the state.
The legislative Gazette's Allison Dunn was there and filed this report.
One day after first introducing the plan at several stops across the state, Cuomo was
back at it Thursday, delivering a speech at the State University of New York at New
Pulse, which would be one of the 64 Sunni campuses state-wide designated as tax-free for
new businesses.
No business tax, no sales tax, no property tax, no franchise fee, and no income tax for
the owner of the company or the employees of the company.
A truly no tax zone.
What do you mean by community?
I mean the Sunni campuses themselves and 200 square feet adjoining a Sunni campus as
a tax-free zone.
He says 55 of the 64 campuses are in upstate New York.
If you have a no tax environment and you're in the state of New York, you have the best
of both worlds, right?
You're not paying any taxes and you're in the state of New York.
What could be better?
He presented his plan called tax-free New York to the legislature Wednesday, as an answer
to creating jobs and making the start-up business environment friendlier in the state to keep
businesses from setting up shop in lower or no tax states.
We also have a 3 million square foot pool for private university space.
We don't want to leave out Marist, otherwise Dennis will be upset.
He refers to President Dennis Murray of Pekipsy-based Marist College.
Jonathan Drapkin is President and CEO of Newberg-based nonprofit planning and policy organization Hudson
Valley Pattern for Progress.
It comes down to, you can't have it both ways.
He can't complain about taxes and then not be willing to do something creative about
it.
He thinks the governor's idea is creative and while he says he likes the plan conceptually,
he awaits the details.
To the degree we had another program like the Empire Zone where we learned people learned
how to manipulate that program.
Hopefully we learned from our mistakes so that when we establish a program like this,
that what is a new company?
What are new employees who are people that will be able to legitimately take advantage
of this, that we've learned from programs that didn't work and therefore as we establish
this one, we tighten up certain components so that this can work the way that the governor
wants it to.
And I think that we've got to accept the fact that we have to do something different.
Again, here's Cuomo.
Entrepreneurship, Miss Academia meets a regional economy in a tax-free environment in
upstate New York.
That's what you want to create and that's what this program does.
Promote entrepreneurship and job creation on higher ed campuses as tax-free communities
and focus on the upstate economy.
And he says his plan is a bold one but something has to change.
We have some of the best universities in the country and we have the best minds in
the country.
And they're coming up with innovations and ideas that are creating businesses and creating
jobs.
Our problem is we lose them literally in the first year, literally in the first year.
Why?
Because once they become a business, they move to a state that has a better tax environment.
And if we can just hold on to the businesses we're creating, it would be a significant
boost to the state.
If you just stop the loss, the hemorrhaging.
As to some concern about existing businesses or localities that are already economically
stressed being left out of the plan, Cuomo says he is already at work reducing taxes,
which benefits them.
For the legislative Gazette, I'm Allison Dunn.
Education was one of the leading topics discussed this week when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
convened his cabinet at the state Capitol in Albany.
The legislative Gazette's Dave Lucas was there and reports high optimism regarding Cuomo's
New York State Master Teacher Program.
The state unemployment numbers that came out last week was great news for the state.
I mean, that was significant progress.
It's a herky-jurky economy.
But those numbers were really, really good news.
And it's about jobs and that's our number one issue.
If we have a number two issue, it's going to be about education.
The governor proposed the master teacher program in his state of the state address in January.
SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimfer says it will provide $15,000 each year for four years to
math and science teachers who mentor new and aspiring teachers.
A $60,000 investment in our best teachers who will make a commitment to really be leaders
in the field.
And in this case, to help novice teachers in their first few years of teaching and
teachers who are learning to teach the pre-service students in our universities be better and
particularly in the STEM fields.
And I think master teacher is a concept that we can roll forward.
We're really focusing today on the STEM fields, but we know that the common core is coming
and it's about English language arts, about math and about science.
So these master teachers will eventually help us across a number of fields.
The FOMO's program is modeled after New York City's Math for America initiative.
It rolls out this fall in the Midhunts and Valley Central New York, the North country and
Western New York and plans call for a statewide launch in 2014.
Billy East, an executive director of Alliance for Quality Education, believes that while
common core is a good idea in terms of raising standards and the quality of the curriculum,
he sees lots of problems with how it's being implemented.
There's far too much emphasis on testing.
You should put a moratorium on the high stakes consequences associated with these tests.
There has not been a nearly enough focus on training, parents, teachers and students about
what the common core is, what the purposes are.
We've been a rush to implementation and we really should take a step back and do it right
because essentially we're creating a backlash against it by the way we're doing it.
This is what the bachelor's in for says the message is clear.
Teachers want to be recognized for excellence.
And so we're going to use the content of Math for America, Math and Science to be the
curriculum for these master teachers and SUNY faculty will actually help develop the curriculum
so that a master teacher can be a mentor teacher to beginning teachers and teachers in the
pre-service pipeline.
So selection is key.
How are we going to determine that?
We're really getting the best teachers.
So we've created a number of hurdles that we think will prove that they present to us
their teaching portfolio, the gains they've made with their classrooms.
So selection is key.
Then not every great teacher is really ready to be a mentor teacher.
So we really need to give teachers the professional development they need so that they know how
to help beginning teachers.
And these mentor teachers, these master teachers will then help further design the professional
development for the beginning teachers.
Billy Easton agrees that master teacher programs are a proven effective strategy.
We have to see how this program works, how it's actually rolled out.
There's been some emphasis on this as the competition between teachers which is not an effective
idea.
But the idea of mentoring and the research on that is strong.
It's something that if it worked well, should be done on a much larger scale.
Applications will be available in July.
The first round of master teachers will be announced in September.
SUNY New Paltz, SUNY Plattsburg, Buffalo State and SUNY Courtland will host the first four
groups of master teachers.
The program will be administered through SUNY System Administration and be fully funded
through the Governor's office.
For the legislative Gazette, I'm Dave Lucas.
You are listening to the legislative Gazette, a program about New York State government and
politics.
I'm David Gissteen.
Agriculture is one of the most dynamic and innovative economic sectors in New York State,
but one of the challenges is property taxes.
Agriculture is a land intensive industry, so rising property taxes can mean much higher
costs for farmers.
And taxes have been rising, thanks mostly to increases in the production value of farmland.
The innovation trails, Joanna Richards reports.
When I arrive at John Peck's Deary Farm, he comes out of his small barn to meet me.
Behind him, about 30 barn cats maneuver around and sometimes under 60 melt cows.
The Peck Homestead Farm in the town of Champion in Jefferson County has been run by the Peck
family for about 200 years.
And now Peck says he's as close as one year away from potentially selling off his herd
or renting some of his land to a larger operation.
And that's because his expenses are going up.
Peck says part of that is taxes.
This farm pays in taxes now close between the two parcels, close to $20,000 a year in
taxes, school, town, county, fire district, and it affects a lot because we're a small
farm.
Peck says his taxes have gone up between $7,000 and $8,000 in the last 10 years.
This is why.
Farmers in the state of New York can choose how the land is assessed, either like regular
homeowners based on local market conditions, or using a state assessment of their crop production
capabilities, how they actually use their land.
The state's assessment uses a really complicated formula that relies on data from the USDA about
crop sales, as well as a rating system based on farmland soil types.
By in large, the state's calculations reduce farmland values for taxation purposes.
State law also caps the amount of farmers land value can go up per year at 10%.
But recently, many farmers have been hitting that limit every year.
This trend in land values is linked to rising prices for corn and soybeans driven by erratic
weather patterns and demand for ethanol.
The economic orthodoxy is, if farmers can make more money selling their crops, their land
value also increases and so does their tax bill.
But Jay Madison, the agricultural coordinator for Jefferson County, says most farmers aren't
making more money on their corn and soybeans.
Corn and soybeans are a big part of the feed that the farmers have to feed their cows.
And so the feed prices have been going up dramatically as well.
Madison says most dairy farms grow some of their feed and buy the rest.
That can amount to a double whammy for farmers, who are paying more for their stock feed and
paying more in taxes as their land increases and assessed value.
Peck says it's tempting many farmers to sell.
Some legislators are proposing a solution.
Assemblyman Ken Blankenbush, a Republican from Black River in Jefferson County, and many
of his colleagues want to lower the cap on rising agricultural land values from 10% to
2% each year.
Blankenbush says this would help put the brakes on tax increases for New York's challenged
farmers where.
The average property tax per farm acre is $26.21.
The national average is $6.75.
So when our farmers are competing with other farmers in other states, there's a distinct
disadvantage.
Blankenbush and county agricultural coordinator Madison say everyone should care about boosting
small farms in the state.
Farmers spend more of their income in their local communities than most other industries
and they help to preserve green space.
But for Peck, the dairy farmer, the issue is more personal.
This farm is the only place he's ever lived.
He points to a 19th century stone house where he was born, then to a similar home about a
mile down the road where he lives now.
He says there's no better place to raise children.
Keeping his farm in business isn't just about making a living.
It's about preserving a way of life.
200 years of this farm being in the family is a probably kill my mother who's still alive
and I don't know if it would kill me.
In champion, I'm Joanna Richards for the Innovation Trail.
That was the Innovation Trail's Joanna Richards reporting.
Here for the Innovation Trail comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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 1-800-323-926-Dew.
That's 1-800-323-926-Dew.
Ask for program number 1321 or just listen or podcast on the web at www.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 Gissteen.
Statewide distribution for the Legislative Gazette is made possible by New York State United
teachers representing professionals in education and health care online at nysut.org
And Nisqaasso, the New York State Coalition against Sexual Assault, working to support
men in their decisions to end sexual violence with the My Strength is not for hurting
campaign online at nyscasay.org.