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From Albany, this is the legislative gazette, a weekly half-hour review of New York State
government and politics.
The host is political scientist and syndicated colonist Dr. Alan Charta of the State University.
Hello and welcome to the legislative gazette.
This week on the Gazette we'll look at two controversial rulings by New York's highest
court.
And we'll hear why the State Health Department is preparing for a full-scale publicity
campaign.
The culprit of those Cuomo and the Mafia rumors may have been discovered.
We'll talk about that and about New York State's economy.
We'll also check in on the state's contract negotiation with its two largest unions.
All this, state news, and more.
It's coming up on this week's legislative gazette.
New York State's highest court recently threw out the Public Health Council's ban on
smoking in public places, saying that the Public Health Council overstepped their legal
authority to impose the restrictions.
Paul Rosenthal has more details.
It looks like the fight to ban smoking in public places has gone back to the state legislature,
now at the court of appeals throughout the PhD's smoking regulations.
The court of appeals ruled that the State Health Department's Public Health Council overstepped
its legal authority by imposing a widespread ban on smoking in public places.
Last year, the Health Advisory Council imposed a ban on smoking in state offices, restaurants,
schools, malls, and other public areas.
The suit was brought by a local restaurant tour, two state legislatures, and several businesses
and civic groups.
After two state courts ruled against the ban, the state's highest court supported the
prior decisions throwing out the smoking ban.
Bill Fagel, spokesman for the State Health Department, says they are sorry about the
loss, but some good has come out of the year long fight.
One of those benefits is the increased public awareness and support for a widespread smoking
ban.
When this smoking law thing was that the height of its publicity, we were receiving letters
and phone calls from the public, and they were running, depending upon what time to talk
about.
Anywhere from 4 to 1 to 6 to 1 in favor of the smoking law calls from the public.
Our perception is, while we don't have any real hard statistics to back it up, it's simply
what the response of the public has been to us directly, is that the public really favored
the smoking law, that they felt that time had come for this kind of legislation to be enacted.
They really didn't seem to care who did it.
It was pretty clear that the legislature had decided not to act on it, but now of course
the ball is squarely in the court of the legislature, so we'll have to see what happens.
Fagel says the fight will be brought back to the state legislature, where he hopes public
support will help the fight.
Lester Schull Clapper, lobbyist for the tobacco industry, says the court's ruling was not
on the morals of smoking, rather it was on the governmental structure in New York.
The issues basically that will be for the court were not smoking good or bad.
The issue was an issue of the legislative process and how government works, and what they
really snuffed out was a desire by the executive branch to regulate all facets of our lives,
even though we thought, and the legislature thought, and the legislature had expressed
it, that it was a legislative issue, that the elected people, the issue, shall we say,
was so pervasive in the lives of everyone that it was an issue that should be decided
by the elected representatives of the people, and that's what the court agreed with.
The fight to ban smoking in public places is now back in the legislature, where it has
been argued for over 12 years and never passed by both houses.
For the legislative gazette, I'm Paul Rosenfall.
State prisoners who have aides can be prevented from seeing their spouses.
That's according to a ruling by New York's highest court.
Bruce Robertson has more details.
A recent court of appeals decision ruled that prison inmates can be prevented from joining
in conjugal visits with their spouses if that inmate has aides.
In a four to three ruling, the State's highest court ruled that the Commissioner of
Correction can indeed try to prevent the spread of aides or any other communicable disease
by not allowing prisoners to take part in family reunion programs, whereby inmates spend
the night in trailers on the prison grounds with other family members.
Jim Fletoe, a spokesman for the Corrections Department, explains.
The Commissioner has the right to set reasonable regulations on participation in programs that
programs are a privilege they are not a right.
In the broad issue, in taking that down to a more focused issue, the court said when
you flow from that, that it's a privilege and not a right as long as what the Commissioner
is doing is fair, it's reasonable, it's applied system wide, and there's a rational basis
for doing it.
And there's a penological need for doing it.
The Commissioner may exercise that discretion, focusing it even more.
The question was, is a rational exercise of that prerogative, that discretion on the Commissioner's
part does that include making a decision that people with communicable diseases may not
participate in this particular program?
The court said, yes, that is a reasonable exercise of the Commissioner's discretion to determine
who participates in what program because that participation is a privilege and not a right.
But Fletoe emphasizes that the ruling does not affect normal visits between inmates
and others, the original case began in the Auburn State Prison when an AIDS victim tried
to have access to the trailer for what has become known as conjugal visits.
For the legislative Gazette, this is Bruce Robertson.
The new statewide prescription drug program has been in effect for a few months, but very
few elderly people seem to know about it.
And the State Health Department has been organizing a campaign to get the word out.
Brenda McMahon has more.
The New York has embarked on an education campaign to promote the elderly pharmaceutical
insurance coverage program, otherwise known as Epic.
Epic began several months ago, but to date only 30,000 of the expected 475,000 eligible
seniors have joined up.
To get the word out, the State Department of Health is holding training sessions across
New York State to teach community leaders the facts about Epic.
She's Eldon, spokeswoman for the State Health Department, says they're educating community
leaders and church members who will in turn encourage the thousands of eligible seniors
to join the drug discount program.
Basically, what we're doing is training a whole group of enrollment outreach workers who
can go out into the community that they certainly know better than we at the state level know
to talk with seniors who they may know personally, who have high drug costs, who could benefit
from Epic.
We've been running training sessions ourselves or enrollment sessions ourselves at senior
citizen centers and other locations, but many of the people who could benefit from Epic
are frail elderly who are homebound and can't come out to these sessions.
One of the things that we're hoping that representatives from the Roman Catholic diocese
will be able to do, in some cases, is go into the senior homes and help them fill out
the applications and help them learn about Epic.
The first training session was held in Albany, and the other six sessions will be held
in Syracuse, Rochester, Ogdenburg, Brooklyn, New York City, and Long Island.
Under the prescription program, New York residents 65 or older are eligible for eight if
they're single with an annual income of less than $15,000, or if married with a joint
income of less than 20,000.
Epic is intended for seniors who do not have any insurance coverage, or for those who
believe their insurance coverage is inadequate.
Officers on Medicaid are not eligible for the prescription drug discount.
Applications for the program can be found at any office of the aging.
Zelda says completed applications will be processed, eligibility will be determined, and if approved,
seniors will pay a fee and receive a discount card.
Epic is a direct discount program, and the health department estimates discounts of at
least 60% will be awarded.
For the legislative gazette, this is Brenda McMahon.
Over 150,000 state workers have been negotiating with New York over new contracts.
Paul Rosenthal takes a look at the issues being discussed.
New York State is ending its second week of negotiations with public unions over new
contracts.
During the second week of state contract negotiations, the public employees' federation began
its talks with the state's Office of Employee Relations.
The public employees' federation and the Civil Service Employees Association are negotiating
with New York State to reissue their three-year contracts.
The union's current contracts expire March 1st.
Last week, CSCA presented their agenda to the state, and this week PEF has a list of
demands that range from increased salaries to better health care services.
Some Kermani spokesman for PEF says the union is looking to negotiate for improved sick
time, a leave accrual policy, and better health benefits.
And Kermani says PEF also wants to clear up some ambiguous contract language.
Perhaps the union's most important demand is salary.
Again, Ron Kermani.
Governor Cuomo said last week that he wants state workers fairly capitated as generously
as prudent.
We know the state has the money in its commerce to give us our fair share.
Certainly according to our figures, it's been a 13% increase in total state revenues from
1986 to 1987.
We believe that's certainly accurate.
It's fine post of a healthy state economy.
Our public employees, federation members have made sacrifices over the last three years
of this contract, both economic and otherwise.
And certainly during these rounds of negotiations, we're going to be sitting down on looking
for our fair share this time.
But a spokesman for the state comtroller's office says last year's surplus no longer exists
because it was put toward the state's infrastructure needs.
Contract negotiations for both unions will continue until agreements are made.
The EF represents 57,000 members and CSEA represents over 100,000 state workers.
For the legislative Gazette, I'm Paul Rosenthal.
Someone's been spreading rumors about Governor Cuomo's links with the mafia.
And it may be a top aid for the New York state Republicans in the state Senate.
David Galetli spoke with Fred Dicker, bureau chief for the New York Post who broke the
story.
Well, what I'm saying in the story, David, is that a well-known Senate figure, this
Senate's top organized crime expert, a guy named Jeremiah McKenna, was the source for some
of the allegations involving mafia activity that appeared in New York magazine early this
month in a well publicized story called Cuomo and those rumors by Nicholas Pellejee.
I think you probably discussed it on the program a few weeks ago, but this was a story
that supposedly ran down the allegations of mafia involvement with the governor.
And in the body of the story, we repeated references to a veteran legislative aide, unnamed,
who the writer, Nicholas Pellejee, was saying was spreading a lot of these stories about
the governor.
And Pellejee said that in pursuing the stories, he had found that they were all fallacious.
Now, subsequent to this, there was a great effort made by me and other people to try to
figure out who was the source who was spreading this.
Now I have in my story today the Senate Crime Committee Chairman, a Republican senator,
Christopher Mega, saying that, yes indeed, he knows who it was, that in fact it was his
top staff person, the counsel to the Senate Crime Committee, this individual by the name
of Jeremiah McKenna.
Under whose orders do you think McKenna was doing this?
That's unclear.
Chris Mega, the senator, who's McKenna's boss, says that he did not, not only did he not
order him to do it, but he was unaware it was being done until after the fact.
I'm trying to find out now to see if McKenna was acting at anybody's direction.
It could be that he was acting out of partisan reasons that he felt as a Republican if he
could get some damaging material out on a Democratic governor who, after all, could be a presidential
candidate that that might be good.
And there may have been some other motivations to the allegations.
I don't know what they are at this point.
Fred Dicker of the New York Post.
New York's teacher certification exam is biased against women and minorities.
At least that's what one organization says.
Bruce Roberts in reports.
The National Teachers Examination discriminates against women and minorities, but exactly where
the bias lies, the New York Public Interest Research Group is not sure.
Blair Horner, test reform project director for Nipurg, says minorities and women fail
the National Teachers Exam at unusually higher rates.
Nipurg looked at the past rates of individuals that, potential teachers that took the test
in March 1987 and June 1987.
We found some startling results, for example, on the National Teachers Exam's general knowledge
test, which people have to pass to become teachers.
Women are twice as likely as men to fail that section.
Even though women generally have higher grades in college, on the general knowledge test,
they score much lower.
They're much more likely to fail.
When you look at the failure rates by race and ethnicity, the information is even more
startling.
For example, the March 1987 general knowledge test of the NTE, over 70% of black teacher
candidates failed.
That means less than 30% passed.
Those kinds of trends are disturbing.
And the fact that we think that there's something in the test construction itself that's
hurt the indies people.
Horner says this also leads to fewer minority teachers in a field that needs its role models.
But Mike Van Ryan, assistant commissioner of higher education services, says the tests
aren't biased.
Van Ryan says the state tested the exam in 1984 when they decided to make the test mandatory
and found that it did not discriminate.
This examination when it was validated in New York state, for use in New York state, did
go through several screens, one of which was that teachers from around the state did examine
the examination, as did college faculty and administrators.
It was viewed from a perspective of racial and ethnic sensitivity.
So when the test was adopted by the region some years ago, it was perceived to be not on
the face of it biased.
Van Ryan says the education department is concerned with Nipergs findings and they're in the process
of getting schools to reevaluate their education programs.
He says the area of concern is the general knowledge section of the exam, which includes math,
science, and the arts.
Nipergs Horner says the educational testing service, the same company that makes the standardized
achievement tests in Princeton, New Jersey, will not release any tests to be studied for
bias.
And so Horner can't pinpoint where the bias is.
Horner suggests that several statewide reforms be instituted.
The state should do an independent study to validate NTE use in New York state.
They should really look at the promises the test maker makes and whether or not this test
really does that.
For example, if they promise that this test is supposed to separate good from bad teachers,
does it do that?
And it should be done by some independent entity, Carnegie, or the Teachers' College of
Columbia or SUNY.
But somebody who doesn't have a financial axe to grind on whether or not this test gets
used, first and foremost.
Second thing is the legislature should pass bills that would one, subject the NTE to regular
disclosure like the other standardized admissions tests in New York state, the SAT, the LSCT.
And two, set up an advisory commission to examine allegations of bias in the test construction
itself.
They've just set one up like that for standardized admissions tests and they should do that
also for NTE and other professional exams to ensure that these tests are really testing
the kinds of things that are important to be a good professional in the state of New York.
Horner stresses that NIPERG doesn't want to lower the standards of teachers' exams.
They just want them to be fairer.
For the legislative Gazette in Albany, this is Bruce Robertson.
Does the controversial AIDS education manual breach the establishment clause of the United
States Constitution as it concerns separation of church and state?
At least one upstate school district thinks so.
Rendemic man has more details.
The Bethlehem schools in the capital districts say they're defying the Board of Regents mandate
that the school districts must include religious representatives on their AIDS advisory panel.
According to the recently approved AIDS education manual, each school district must create
a panel to advise the schools on their AIDS education programs.
The mandated panel must include a representative from a religious organization.
But the superintendent of the Bethlehem Central School District, Dr. Leslie Lumis, says the
school board shows not to include any religious representatives on their panel.
Lumis says their legal counsel found that the mandate violates the establishment clause
of separation of church and state.
The key issue was whether a mandatory inclusion of a religious representative violates the separation
of church and state doctorate.
The fact of the matter is that under the existing regulation, the government is requiring the
involvement of religious faith in a state function.
And then he went on to say I cannot recommend that the Board appoint a representative of
a religious organization in compliance with the existing regulation.
So with that recommendation in mind, the Board decided at their meeting on November 18
to constitute the AIDS advisory committee in Bethlehem without a representative from
a religious organization.
But Lumis also emphasizes that the school board doesn't want to cause problems.
He also says they have no plans to take legal action at this point.
We are not taking any further action at this point.
The action we are not taking any further action with regard to the issue of how we have established
our committee.
In other words, the composition of that committee.
We are not pursuing that issue in the least.
Arnold Bloom, spokesman for the State Education Department, says as far as their legal counsel
is concerned, the mandate doesn't breach the establishment clause.
And if necessary, Bloom says the education department will take what he calls appropriate
action.
But Lumis also says he is not just going to drop the issue.
Although the school board wants to cooperate with the education department, they also can
and good conscience put a religious representative on their panel.
One education representative, Lewis Grumit, executive director of the School Board's Association,
says if necessary, his organization will present a supporting brief as a friend of the court
to the Bethlehem School District.
What says this may also affect other school districts who have created the mandatory
AIDS Advisory Panel.
For the Legislative Gazette, this is Brenda McMahon.
Congressional budget talks have been continuing for the last few weeks, and Dave Galetli talks
with Lieutenant Governor Stan Lundin about how the budget agreements will affect New York
State.
This budget compromise will help the some limited degree deal with the fiscal policy situation
at the national level.
It's an extraordinary tale of two extremes.
It's not much substantively.
It really isn't a change in fundamental policy at the federal level.
The $75 billion over two years is made up of more cosmetic than real policy changes.
On the other hand, it's the first time that the president under Reagan's presidency in
the Congress have procedurally sat down and come to any kind of an accommodation.
I think that alone gives some confidence to our foreign trading partners.
The twin deficits, the trade deficit, which means that we're importing so much more than
we're exporting, and the budget deficits have a terribly dampening impact on economic
growth and therefore have an impact on New York.
Our economy at the national level is very fragile at this time, and while we in New York
are doing better than the national average, we're peculiarly impacted by the overall
trend.
What specific areas are you talking about?
We're affected.
Yes.
Well, particularly the financial services industry and those industries that are either
export or import sensitive.
We are seeing massive layoffs on Wall Street because of the market crash following October
19th and a real contraction in the financial services industry, particularly in New York
City, but now we have major banking centers in Buffalo, Albany, and elsewhere in New York
State.
We're also seeing a little bit of an improvement in some of our export industries around the
state.
As the dollar has a more reasonable relationship to the Japanese, the young, the German,
Mark, and other major currencies, our import sensitive industries haven't been impacted
as much because imports tend to come into this country not only from Japan, but from
Canada whose currency is lower than the American dollar.
And from a lot of the third world countries, such as Mexico, whose economy is in pretty
bad shape and their currency is even lower than the American dollar.
Well, are you optimistic or pessimistic at this point about the entire situation?
Well, the best way I can put it is that I think we're looking at a very fragile economic
situation.
And we're making our plans in New York State based on a very careful, conservative estimate
of economic growth for next year.
We don't believe that the stock market crash necessarily means we're going to fall off
a cliff.
We do think the budget compromise in Washington is a little bit of a help, but it's only
a little bit.
And aggressive action needs to be taken.
By that you mean particularly tax revenues in the state.
We think that tax revenues in New York are likely to be less robust than our next fiscal
year than they are in the current fiscal year, and that our budget should reflect the
fact that the revenue growth we've enjoyed over the last three years will probably not
be experienced during the 1988-89 fiscal year.
We think that it's prudent for New York to base its budget on a cautious estimate because
the national economy is frankly so fraught with difficulty.
So in other words, if it does go well, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
That's right.
We would like nothing better than to see a performance that is actually better than expected
because that means that we could put aside some money as we did last year for capital
construction and highways and housing and areas such as that that are one time major
capital expenditures.
But we think that it's much more prudent to be cautious for the 1988 year.
Lieutenant Governor Stan Lundin, the field of competition began at 34, but it has now
been narrowed down to 12 states competing for Semitech, and New York State is one of
the finalists.
Brenda McMahon has more details.
Semitech stands for Semican-Ductour Manufacturing Technology, and it's a consortium of companies
manufacturing semiconductors.
Semitech was formed to establish a research and development center aimed at improving
the way we manufacture semiconductors.
Semican-Ducting technology is the fastest growing high technology in the country and
the competition for the research center is fierce.
New York State joined with Rensler Polytechnic Institute in Troy to develop the site in
upstate New York.
The proposed site will be at the Rensler Technology Park in North Greenbush.
New York has been working closely with RPI to lure the facility here.
Among the incentives offered is $100 million in state financial support for Semitech.
This money will go toward construction costs, job training, and tax breaks.
RPI and Exchange will offer its engineering expertise and high technology.
The winner of Semitech will receive $250,000 in private and public funds spent by Semitech
for the next six years, and only one-third of the cost of Semitech will come from state
government.
If New York gets Semitech, it will mean a vast influx of new money into the state and
several hundred new white color and construction jobs.
According Semitech will also mean designating upstate New York as one of the most important
industrial areas of high technology.
This will also mean additional revenue and businesses coming to the capital region in
the future.
Overall, proponents say Semitech will give a radical boost to the state's economy and
to its positioning in the field of high technology.
There were originally 100 sites and 34 states competing for Semitech, but the field was narrow
to one site in each of the 12 states, and finalists have to submit a summary of their
sites to the Semitech Committee by December 1.
The site selection date has not yet been set, but New York expects a decision will be
made before the end of the year.
The only other northeastern state chosen as a finalist was Massachusetts, and although
New York says the field of competition is tough, they're optimistic they'll be chosen
for Semitech.
For the legislative Gazette, this is Brenda McMahon.
And that's it for this week's legislative Gazette.
The show is produced by Brenda McMahon.
She had helped this week from Dave Galetli, Bruce Robertson, and Paul Rosenfall.
We hope you enjoyed our show and that you'll tune in again next week for more on what's
happening in and around New York State until next week, I'm Alan Chartock.
The legislative Gazette is a production of WAMC News.
Dr. Alan Chartock is executive producer.
This program is made possible with funds provided by the State University College at New
Pots.
Statewide satellite distribution of this program was made possible by the Lawrence
Group, providing residents throughout New York State with total insurance coverage.
