Originally Posted - December 17, 2006

return home

Albany veterans recall when the Governor and lawmakers waited until virtually the break of dawn on Dec. 18, 1998 to declare they had reached a deal. Mr. Pataki signed off on a 38% pay raise and legislators agreed to establish 100 charter schools in the state. http://www.nysun.com/article/45197

That pretty much says it all. Put enough money on the table and his mercenary facilitators will even rise up against Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. When NYSUT, the teachers union, realized that another pay raise was competing for Assembly loyalties, they commissioned radio ads to enlist public support against charter schools as expensive failures.

At issue are 22,000 low-income children currently on charter school waiting lists, being held back in under performing schools because the adults who care about them do not appreciate who has sold them out to moneyed and influential special interests.

How many tens of thousands of low-income children missed a better safer educational foundation all the years since initial legislation for the first 100 schools was drawn up, to be finally passed in 1998? How many could not find charter school seats because their side had not paid enough to play the political games where winners buy what they need?

Look at the NY's four year graduation rate for minorities. We are 47th out of 49 states providing data. Compare the tax money spent on education in each state. For too many each semester spent in an under performing school is a big investment in a weak and flawed educational foundation upon which these children will build their future.

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/041906ThirdLowest.html
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ewp_08_t01.htm
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_48.htm#10

An informed public will not tolerate most of the routine foolishness that passes for a legislative session year after year in New York. Does anybody deny we would be far better off if our legislators knew they had to account for their actions to an informed public every election cycle? Gov. George Pataki argues the Assembly not only wanted a pay raise to raise the cap on charter schools but to pass tougher sexual predator laws, (in this, one of the bottom 10 states for such laws in the country.) For nine years this has been an annual struggle, each year the legislation passes the state Senate with unanimous bipartisan support, only to be stalled in the Assembly by Speaker Silver before it can be brought to a vote. Each election the Assembly majority re elects Sheldon Silver the powers of Speaker to do such things, trusting that he will.

To borrow from a Capital News 9 article Gov. Pataki brought them here ostensibly to pass a civil confinement bill. For nine years, he's wanted the legislature to pass a bill keeping sexual criminals in custody. For nine years and counting, it's failed. http://www.capitalnews9.com/content/your_news/capital_region/default.asp?ArID=200300

The Democratic controlled state Assembly objected to his bill and called it overreaching. But Pataki charged that. The Democrats were only looking for a pay raise in exchange for their support of his bill, which he refused.

Democrats countered that Pataki was tying their pay raise not just to civil confinement, but to charter schools, which some labor-friendly assemblymen don't want.

Assemblyman Joe Lentol said, "Unfortunately, these times during special session it gets tied up with other issues that the Governor wants to put on the table and that he has an interest in doing besides civil confinement."

Citing the Hudson Journal News Silver, Pataki's nemesis for the last 12 years denied that he even talked to the Governor about pay raises during the negotiations. Further, Silver said Pataki wanted to trade a pay raise for a law to increase the number of charter schools in the state. And he predicted that the Legislature would enact a so-called civil-confinement law next month - after Pataki, a Republican, departs and Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, takes over as Governor. http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061215/NEWS01/612150380/1018/NEWS02

"In 17 days we will have an extreme makeover in this state and I look forward to it," Silver said.

Speaker Silver above denies the pay issue was discussed, but to borrow from the last sentences of an AP article in the Auburnpub.com http://www.auburnpub.com/articles/2006/12/16/news/state/state03.txt

. "After hours of negotiations over a hodgepodge of issues including civil confinement for the most serious sex offenders, huge capital projects in New York City, more charter schools and raises for lawmakers, legislators said they weren't even sure what Pataki wanted in exchange for supporting the first raise for lawmakers in 10 years.

"They keep changing. That's one of the problems," said Silver of Pataki.

If 75% of voters knew enough about our legislative sessions in the Assembly to form an informed opinion about the Assembly Speaker and the Assembly Minority leader, (as opposed to 75% not knowing enough about past Assembly antics and Assembly minority leader and gubernatorial candidate John Faso, to form an opinion about him) guess which one would probably be Assembly Speaker, and which one out of public office.

Consider the legislation that would have been passed sessions ago if more of the media dared to highlight these paradoxical legislative and pay to play the political game (where you win by buying what you want) antics, as they are doing now, and our elected representatives represented an informed public.

If Republicans had committed the resources and effort to informing the general public years ago of their positions and annual struggles, (as they are doing here and now), if both sides had to seriously explain themselves to enlist public support to get legislation passed, we might well have a conservative Republican governor with conservative Republican legislative majorities.

Wednesday, Dec. 13, on the Fred Dicker show on AM590 WROW, Albany Senate Majority leader Joe Bruno, soon to be NY's most powerful Republican, voiced a commitment to enlisting public support to pass legislation to allow 150 to 250 or more charter schools, to allow for civil confinement of criminally mentally ill sex offenders in special psychiatric facilities.

Senate majority leader Bruno and Assembly minority leader James Tedisco need to commit the time and resources to using that media (including local and national radio and TV talk shows, that bypass local media bias to reach a NY audience) which will not censor or spin their message, to inform the public of long fought and on going legislative battles. As representatives they have a duty to inform those they represent of what they are doing to earn that trust, to put both sides before the public, so that they represent an informed public.

Not only their base but also most decent and informed voters (not connected to a winning pay to play agenda) will know how to vote next election. Not only New York state but her women and children in particular stand to be safer and better off for the knowledge. 12-17-06

© 2006 North Country Gazette