You’re going to start hearing about the NY State Legislature’s new move to guarantee an on-time budget. And of course, they’ll plaster the word “reform” all over it. The fact that it is merely a ploy to wrest more budgetary control from the governor, for themselves, is not necessarily bad or good, but it’s no reform – it’s a play for power.

The Legislature has authorized a referendum to go before the voters next Election Day that would move the budget due date from April 1 to May 1 and would impose a contingency budget setting spending at the previous year’s level should the parties fail to act on time. It would take away from the governor a great degree of control that the courts have given him in the process and allow the Legislature to force the process into a contingency budget which would make them much more a part of the system.

While Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno will herald the change as legislative action to reform the process, it is merely another example of just how dysfunctional our State government really is. Governor Pataki and governor hopeful Elliot Spitzer quite expectedly are highly critical of the move. It’s an interesting debate – about power, not reform!

My wise friend Henry Stern, in his NYCivic.org online column wrote of the anticipated referendum. “In the interest of a fiscally responsible, balanced budget, it is more sensible to leave authority in one person, a statewide elected official, than to split it up among 212 (150 assemblymembers and 62 senators), each one of whom wants a piece of the action for his or her district. The less authority a person has, the more likely one is to act irresponsibly, since one is such a small part of many.
This principle also applies to lynch mobs.”

I’m not sure I agree with Henry but got a chuckle out of the Legislature/lynch mob analogy. The proposed change might be good; it might not. But we do know it is not an attempt to address what’s really wrong with State government.

After 20 years of late budgets and legislative incompetence where only the leaders mattered, guys like me started yelling that we had the 50th best Legislature of all the states (I really said that first, honest). When the chorus got loud enough and the NYU School of Law’s Brennan Commission made my statement official and proclaimed the NYS Legislature the most dysfunctional in the nation, the Legislature moved into defensive posture and has been promising reform or making small moves that they portray as reform.

Please, don’t get me wrong, small changes – even when some of them are mostly cosmetic – are better than no change at all.

However, until the Legislature is willing to honestly address taking the power away from leadership and giving it back to the duly elected members; the terrible corrupting influence of big buck lobbyists; the archaic self-serving state’s campaign finance laws; and the biggest hustle each decade as the Legislature draws its own lines gerrymandering guarantees to members of lifetime seats and parties and leadership unchallengeable control, reform will remain ethereal.

They‘ll talk about reform; but don’t hold your breath waiting for the real thing. Life is just too cushy and re-election just too easy for any of the legislative members to make waves and really challenge the pathetic status quo. It is only when they are made to feel uncomfortable by the people and the press that they move a little.

We, my dear readers, you and I, are responsible for an on-time budget – not the Legislature. They failed for 20 years until my colleagues and I started yelling, until soccer moms pointed fingers at Assemblymen on the sidelines during Sunday morning games, until they heard loud and clear that we were mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore.
And now, they will take this on-time budget – doing their job for the first time in 20 years – even though they ignored the major financial obligation to address the court-mandated Campaign for Fiscal Equity funding, and call themselves reformers.

And now, under the guise of reform, the Legislature enacts a referendum which in reality is a power grab. We must not be fooled. And we must keep up the pressure to ensure that what we get is real reform and not cosmetic or, even worse, a strengthening of an already too powerful legislative leadership.

When it comes to “Albany Reform,” view the phrase as an oxymoron. Those in power often treat us as if we were the word without the “oxy.”

Those folks in Albany all know the truth.

They know what they have to do.

Now we must demand that they do it.

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Welcome Back, Mets

Last week in my column printed on May 5, but actually written on May 1, I issued a challenge to elected officials to get all the Mets games back on television. I said that government should find appropriate ways to force a settlement to the dispute between Time Warner and Cablevision which has caused a blackout of a majority of Mets games from New York City viewers.

Well, they must have heard me. The dispute has ended and as of Monday the Mets are back on Time Warner. But that does not mean that the fight is over yet.

The same day as I wrote my column, Assemblyman Mike Gianaris announced the introduction of a bill to amend the State’s public service law to impose fines upon regional sports network and cable television companies which discontinue certain programming.

The legislation, which is in its infancy right now, would penalize both parties in such a dispute 10 cents per affected customer per day which would result in daily fines of approximately $240,000 per company. Should an entire six-month season be withheld, the combined total would reach $86.4 million. All fines accrued would be returned to the affected customers in the amount of $6 on their monthly cable bills. The penalty would be larger than the amount of the contract dispute and likely force the companies to at least keep the programming on the air while they negotiate.

Mike, sorry I didn’t credit you last week. But now, let’s see you get Albany leadership to be responsive to the people’s needs and to be sure this does not happen again.
Great minds...

Michael Schenkler can be reached via this contact form.