Citizens Redistricting Committee

This year, unlike the preceding two years, the Legislature passed an on-time budget, addressed several important issues, including ethics reform and marriage equality, and finished its session before June 30.  Legislative leaders and Governor Cuomo deserve credit for what they accomplished.  However, New Yorkers are right to raise concerns about what was not addressed (redistricting reform, campaign finance, election administration) and how the people’s business was conducted (almost exclusively behind closed doors).

First, the very real accomplishments:

•    Ethics Reform. The Governor negotiated an ethics reform package that contained important reforms that the Legislature has for decades resisted. Under the new law, elected officials will be required to make their financial disclosures public and the information regarding the amounts of legislators’ outside income will no longer be withheld. Legislators will also be required, for the first time, to disclose the clients they have who do business with the state. The law also requires non-profits who lobby the state to disclose those who contribute more than $5,000 and provides for the possible forfeiture of public pension by public officials found guilty of corruption or fraud. It sets up a new, unified commission which has investigatory power over both the Legislature and the Executive on which no elected officials or lobbyists can serve.  The law has complicated provisions regarding the procedure for authorizing an investigation and we will be watching monitoring it very closely, prepared to point out any problems and make recommendations for improvement once it is in effect.

•    On-time budget. The Legislature negotiated and passed a budget by the April 1 deadline, the first on-time budget in several years.

•    Marriage Equality. In response to strong public pressure, the State Senate allowed the issue of marriage equality to come to the floor for a vote, where it passed.

•    Public Financing for Comptroller Election. The Assembly passed a bill that would establish a public matching funds program, similar to New York City’s successful program, for election of the State Comptroller.

But there were some glaring omissions:

•    Campaign Finance Reform. The important issue of campaign finance reform was not addressed this session.  The Governor, after recognizing the importance of campaign finance and promising reform during the campaign, did not introduce a campaign finance reform bill.  There was no discussion and no bills introduced to lower campaign contribution limits or strengthen enforcement of the existing lax laws.  While we worked for passage of the Comptroller’s public financing of elections bill in the Assembly, we were disappointed that it was not even taken up by the State Senate. We’ll work with you to redouble our efforts next year to demand campaign finance reform.  Governor Cuomo has promised campaign finance reform and we must hold him to it.

•    Redistricting Reform. The Legislature failed to address the time-sensitive issue of redistricting reform. The Governor introduced a very good bill to set up an independent redistricting commission. It did not advance in either house. As redistricting takes place once every 10 years, this is an inexcusable missed opportunity to end the shameful practice of political gerrymandering.

•    Election Reform. The Legislature failed to move the primary election date from September to June before adjourning.  Although the state is obligated to move its primary date to comply with the federal MOVE Act, which sets time limits for delivering ballots to members of the armed services overseas, to ensure that they have enough time to cast those ballots, the Legislature took no action.  In fact, election reform was another issue that the Legislature failed to address in any significant way this session. We saw no action on early voting, easing restrictions on absentee voting, same day registration, mandatory recounts, simplifying the ballot or any number of other election reforms – large and small – which would help bring New York’s elections fully into the 21st Century.

•    Flawed Budgeting. New York passed a budget that addressed only half of the relevant financial issues. The Governor and the Senate Majority insisted that only expenses and not revenue was on the table. A budget has two sides. It’s not good or effective governance to take the entire issue of revenue out of the budget process, nor to expect that years of poor budgeting practices can be solved by slashing important programs that New Yorkers need.   We will continue to be a voice for effective governance that addresses all possible solutions to our state’s fiscal challenges.

And there are some very real concerns about how the people’s business was conducted:

•    Lack of transparency. There was an alarming increase in the lack of transparency this legislative session.  New York is famous for its “Three-Men-In-A-Room” system of governance, where all important decisions are made by the legislative leaders and the Governor in private conferences.  This year, all the important issues were resolved by the Governor and the legislative leaders walled off from any pubic scrutiny.

•    Ironclad leadership control. Legislative committees conducted few hearings and virtually all policy discussions took place in the party conferences, conducted privately behind closed doors rather than on the legislative floor.  Public debates were tightly scripted and controlled – even more so than before – to spare legislators the embarrassment of having to explain their votes on controversial issues publicly. Important bills were voted on before legislators even had an opportunity to read them.  We elect our representatives to represent us, not the legislative leadership.  We’ll continue to work to reform the way the Legislature conducts business, so that your representatives can more actively represent your interests.

While we are glad to see the Legislature accomplishing more, we will continue to vociferously push for greater openness and transparency, to allow the public to observe their representatives conducting the public’s business. We will be calling on you in the coming year to join with us in demanding that our leaders take up meaningful campaign finance and election reform and to help create public pressure for non-politicized redistricting.

2. Party-controlled special elections.

Governor Cuomo had an opportunity to make good on his campaign pledge to change the culture of special interest control in Albany by allowing the voters and not the party bosses to decide who would be each party’s nominee for the 6 Assembly seats that were vacant by early July.  Instead, he prevented the voters from having a voice in choosing the candidates by calling a special election for those seats for September 13.  The Assembly seats that are vacant are those that were filled by Assemblymembers DeStito (Oneida), Hoyt (Buffalo), Townes (Brooklyn), Bing (Manhattan), Pheffer Queens), and Mayersohn (Queens).

Common Cause/NY has long advocated that adherence to our democratic ideals requires that the law should be changed to allow the voters to choose candidates to fill legislative vacancies.  With your help, we’ll continue to fight for this necessary reform.

Please call or write Governor Cuomo and tell him how disappointed you are that he chose the party bosses over the voters by proclaiming special elections.
Call the Governor at (518) 474-8390 or write the Governor at:
The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo
Governor of New York State
NYS State Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12224

3. Redistricting Hearings Set by Legislative Task Force

We’re outraged, but we’re not surprised!

The Legislature has ignored all arguments and calls for independent redistricting.  They’re going forward with the same politicized process where the legislators draw their own district boundaries to suit themselves.  The task force that draws the maps has called a series of 7 public hearings to take place from July through October August.

Because we know that many Common Causers rank independent, non-politicized redistricting as the priority issue for us to address, we want to let you know about ways you can make your voice heard in the redistricting process. We think the Legislature is wrong to ignore the public outcry for independent redistricting but we don’t think anyone should ignore an opportunity to tell them so and to testify regarding how their community should be represented on the new maps, no matter who draws them. The public can testify for 5 minutes regarding how “the new congressional and state legislative districts should be configured” by signing up in advance.

These hearings are the only opportunities which the public will have to testify before the legislative task force announces its maps. Talking points and explanatory materials that help determine how your community should be treated in the redistricting process (including instructions on using Google Maps to help draw a map of your community)  can be found on our redistricting website by clicking here.

Please contact Brian Paul, bpaul@commoncause.org or at 212-691-6421, if you are interested in testifying or want help preparing a local organization to testify.

The schedule of hearings is as follows:

7/19                 Syracuse
7/20                 Rochester
8/4                   Albany
8/10                 Westchester
8/17                 Binghamton
8/18                 Buffalo
9/7                   Queens
9/8                   Bronx
9/20                 Kings
9/21                 Manhattan
10/5                 Long Island (Suffolk)

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Every year, in an unfortunately time-honored tradition, bills dealing with reform are left until the end of the legislative session. As the New York State Legislature enters the final week of its regular legislative session for 2011 – they’re scheduled to adjourn on June 20 – we’re expecting the usual mash-up of behind closed-doors negotiations and horse-trading that leaves many good reform measures in the dust and most members of the Legislature in the dark as to the actual details of the bills they’re voting on. This contrasts dramatically with the close of the legislative session in Connecticut last Wednesday. This press report from last week says it all:

“Unlike past years, the final day of the legislative session was relatively slow. The reason: Most of the important bills had already been debated.  ‘No drama. Just boring,’ [a Democratic legislator] said outside the House chamber. ‘We pretty much finished everything that has to be done, like the budget. Most of the bills we are now running are for the members. In the old days, before the Citizens Election Commission [and public financing of campaigns], the lobbyists were out here trying to get their bills called. If there was ever an illustration of the loss of influence of lobbyists, this is it.’’ Capitol Watch, 6/9/11, Hartford Courant, http://bit.ly/mmcpSj

COMMON CAUSE/NY RELEASES REPORT  “LIFTING THE VEIL”

This past Thursday, we released Lifting the Veil, our analysis of the explosion in grassroots lobbying dollars spent advertising to the public, identifying disturbing trends in spending increase by anonymous grassroots advocacy groups and grading organizations on the level of disclosure in their ads.

Some of our key findings:

• Explosion in grassroots advertising lobbying by third party front groups
• More than 8-fold increase – from $2.2 million in 2008 to $18.8 million in 2010
• Spending this year already on track to match the 2010 numbers, with more than $12 million spent on advertising by May 1.
• Increasing number of coalitions with misleading names, anonymous donors
• The arrival of the Committee to Save NY has shifted the balance of power in Albany
• Recommendations to ensure transparency in public policy discussions

You can see the ads that we grade on our website. [Read the Report & Report Card]

ASSEMBLY PASSES FRACKING MORATORIUM, NOW ON TO SENATE

We’ve released studies detailing the amount of money that the natural gas industry spends lobbying in New York to be able to use the controversial hydraulic-fracturing technique to drill for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale. (See our report, “Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets”). We believe that our state should take the time to be sure that “hydrofracking” won’t harm our water and air before issuing permits.  A.7400/S.5592 calls for a moratorium on hydrofracking until June 2012.  Imposing this sensible moratorium ensures that any threats to New York’s water and the public health of its citizens are fully weighed and more time is provided for the Department of Environmental Conservation to complete the next draft of the supplemental generic environmental impact statement (SGEIS).

The New York State Assembly just passed A7400 with Speaker Sheldon stating that “There is time to do the science. There is time to act with caution and with thoughtfulness. There is time to listen to – and to address – the concerns of all of the stakeholders.” Now its time for the State Senate to follow suit.

Please call your state legislators today and say that you support a moratorium on hydrofracking (State Senate Bill S. 5592- sponsored by David Carlucci ), then let us know how your call went.

ELECTION REFORM

This hasn’t been a year when the Legislature has focused significantly on voting reform, so the Friendly Ballot Act of 2011, A7492-A, is a welcome reform measure.  Common Cause/NY strongly supported the move to optical voting machines – an improvement over the extremely old and outdated lever machines. However some improvements to the way elections are conducted would easily help ameliorate the problems some faced at the polls last year.

Given the awareness and press coverage of the difficulties, we expected more effort to address those problems. One of our election reform priorities this session recently introduced in the legislature was the Voter Friendly Ballot Act of 2011. This bill would make straightforward, common sense changes  to the ballot in order to make them easier to read and use.  Unfortunately, it’s a one-house bill, i.e., it has no sponsor in the State Senate, which makes it harder to pass. Another bill we supported – S.5256(Carlucci)/A7740 (Kavanagh) – would allow future eligible voters to register to vote beginning at age 16 and provides for the promotion of student voter registration and preregistration in high schools. (You can argue that there aren’t too many years where voting or election reform has been a focus, but the last two years did see more bills moving forward and more debate on issues we support such as Early Voting and No-Excuse Absentee Ballots.)

We hope with just over a week left in this legislative session that the legislature will act quickly to pass both of these bills. We’ll be watching to see if either bill gains support in the last-minute bill mash-up that is the end of session.  We will provide you with updates as we move forward about our legislative election reform priorities and hope you will work with us to continue to call on our legislators to strengthen our election protection laws and enhance and increase voter engagement.

ETHICS BILL PASSES ASSEMBLY AND STATE SENATE

On Monday, the Governor’s Ethics Bill passed the State Senate and passed the Assembly with only 1 dissenting vote. Now, it goes to the Governor for his signature before becoming law. Joel Miller, (R-Poughkeepsie) was the sole “no” vote in the Assembly.

GOOD VIEWING: INTERESTING VIDEO CLIPS

Last week was a particularly busy one, where we participated in 2 interesting public events:

Executive Director Susan Lerner testified on redistricting at a public forum held in Albany on Tuesday, June 7.  You can watch video clips of her comments here and the  discussion in response to the questions posed to her by Senators Gianaris, Oppenheimer and Diaz here.

On June 8, Common Cause/NY and The Center for New York City Affairs at Milano The New School co-sponsored a lively debate entitled: Public Pensions: What’s the Real Story?  Participating in the lively debate moderated by journalist Errol Louis, NY1 News were Richard Ravitch, former NY lieutenant governor, Michael Mulgrew, president, United Federation of Teachers, E.J. McMahon, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute,  and Ross Eisenbrey, vice president, Economic Policy Institute. You can watch a video of the panel by clicking here.

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Exciting news!  This afternoon we’re standing with Governor Cuomo and the legislative leaders as they announce a new ethics reform bill. Last year, we strongly opposed the ethics bill passed by the Legislature because we felt it just wasn’t strong enough.  This year’s proposal is better.  It’s an historic first step towards comprehensive and meaningful ethics oversight.  It gets over two big hurdles, reforms  that the Senate Majority swore they’d never agree to: disclosure of legislator’s outside income and ethics investigations conducted by someone other than a body legislators are part of.  Good things in the proposal:

What’s good in the bill

1. Ethics investigatory oversight is handled by one unitary body, the new Joint Commission on Public Ethics.

2. For the first time, the Legislature has agreed to oversight by a body outside of the Legislature itself.  We have been trying, literally for decades, to move ethics oversight out of a committee made up of, or containing, legislators themselves.  Legislators, lobbyists and party officials are prohibited from serving on JCOPE and for a black-out period of 5 years after loosing that status.

3. Financial disclosures  by  legislators’ and other elected officials are improved and, for the first time, will be posted on the official website without redacting the income figures.

4. For the first time, legislators and other officials must report their and their firms’ clients and customers doing business with, seeking or receiving grants or contracts from, or lobbying state government.

5. A new searchable database will be set up identifying any individual or company that has dealings with any state agency.

6. The definition of lobbying is expanded and business relationships between lobbyists and state officials have to be disclosed.

7.  Groups that lobby  – including coalitions such as The Committee to Save NY and New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness – will have to disclose all donors who give them more than $5,000.

8. The bill requires that regulations governing disclosure of independent campaign expenditures have to be issued

8. The bill sets up a strong and fair pension forfeiture proceeding that allows the state to recapture the pension of officials convicted of public corruption.

9. There’s a review process built into the bill, so that we’ll have an opportunity to improve the parts of the new scheme that aren’t working as well as expected.

Things we’ll want to watch:

We’ll need to keep a watchful eye on how the new commission functions, so that, as part of a required review process, we can properly address any issues with its novel structure after we see how it works.

1. The new ethics commission has unusual provisions memorializing the role of political party-affiliations in appointments and voting to take action. Some of these provisions are similar to those recently adopted in Connecticut; some are novel. We’ll be watching to see how this works and to work to change it if it seems to result in delaying or blocking investigations from moving forward.  Already, an editorial board has raised questions about this structure: http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion/a-new-ethics-bill-better-but-flawed/11986/.

2. The bill contains a small “down payment” on campaign finance reform. We need to push for comprehensive campaign finance reform that includes lowering campaign finance contribution limits, a way to introduce publicly financed elections at the state level, and real enforcement provisions and a mechanism for insuring strong enforcement.

3.  Redistricting reform remains to be tackled and we’ll be working with the Governor and our good government colleagues to make one final push for reform this legislative session and then to draw fair maps and monitor the process, working to move it towards a better, less partisan result.

So, why support a bill that’s very good, but could be better?  Well, if we wait for the perfect bill, we won’t ever achieve reform. This proposal has a lot of strong provisions, and is certainly better than last year’s ethics bill, which we opposed. This proposal gets us over the 2 biggest hurdles that stopped ethics reform until now.   If it’s adopted, we’ll have a worthwhile foundation to work with, instead of always facing the big battle of getting any disclosure of outside income and elected officials’ clients or convincing the Legislature that it should allow oversight by a body that doesn’t have legislators sitting on it.  That’s real progress and worth celebrating. while we gear up to maintain our strong watchdog role with the new JCOPE.

We’ll need to keep a watchful eye on how the new commission functions, so that, as part of a required review process, we can properly address any issues with its novel structure after we see how it works.

Interactive Redistricting Forum

Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 7, you’ll have an opportunity to tell state legislators what you think the state should do about redistricting reform. We know from the surveys, comments and phone calls we’ve gotten from you, that many of you believe that redistricting reform is the most important reform we can accomplish this year. The forum, which will be held in Albany and starts at 12:30 p.m. is interactive, a new format which the Senate Democrats tried out successfully last month.  That means you can participate from your home or office, watch through the internet and send in your comments via email., Twitter, Livestream or Facebook to participate in a real-time public conversation about the redistricting bill that’s pending in the Legislature.

Despite overwhelming public support, neither house of the Legislature has held hearings or moved the Redistricting Reform Act of 2011, S.3419/A5388, forward.  We are concerned that no hearing has been held on this important and reform bill, even though the vast majority of legislators pledged to support it during last year’s election.

To break the Albany logjam, supporters of the bill will convene their own interactive redistricting forum broadcast live over the Internet via Twitter, LiveStream and Facebook to engage the public, good government groups, and academic experts in an effort to break the logjam. While Common Cause/NY is strictly non-partisan, we have agreed to participate in this effort, sponsored by the Senate Minority Caucus, in order to show that the public is engaged by – and cares about – redistricting reform.

To encourage real-time online participation through new media and social networking tools, forum organizers will:

• Stream video and audio in real time which can be viewed on their LiveStream channel;
• Broadcast live updates on Facebook, LiveStream Chat and Twitter, and live photostreaming to TwitPic; and
• Accept real time questions from the public to be used by Senators during the forum via@NYSenDems and the hashtags #NYRedistricting and #NYSenate.

To watch the forum live online, please visit http://www.livestream.com/NYSenDems.

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