....September 7, 3:58 AM
 
 
   
NYS Is All Mucked Up; Reject Ada Smith

By MICHAEL SCHENKLER

On the editorial page of this paper – page 6 – you will see the Tribune’s Primary Day endorsements. We carefully consider the options in each race and tell our readers who we feel will best serve the people. The readers then have the obligation to draw their own conclusions, go to the polls on September 12 (6 a.m. to 9 p.m.) and cast their votes.

Our government executives and our legislative representatives are selected through a process of free and open elections. What a marvelous concept! What a laudable principle.



DEMOCRACY

It is a concept refined through centuries. The earliest forms of democracy originated with primitive groups in prehistoric times. The Ancient Greeks coining of the word “democracy” in the fifth century BC, and the first recorded signs of a council or assembly led us to Athenian Democracy and a clearly recorded direct democratic system. The seeds of representative democracy are found in the Roman Republic as it entered the Middle Ages. The English Parliament and the writing of the Magna Carta in 1265 was a giant step in establishing representative democracy as it is known today. With the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the following year’s enactment of the English Bill of Rights, many of the basic tenets of our system were codified. And less than a century later across a broad ocean, the United States and our wonderful system was born.

The system has served us well on a local and national level for well over two centuries.

However, it is a system which we have managed to tarnish with those things man manages to use to muck up most of what is pure; money, corruption, power, ego and greed have put the flaws into our democratic system.



ALL MUCKED UP

Much of what we focus on each Election or Primary Day is dealing with the muck-ups. As we have explained frequently in this column and reiterate in our endorsement editorial this week, in New York State, we are more mucked up than anywhere else.

There is one specific race where the worst of what ails Albany, our State and system is poised to waltz to re-election

If you live in the 10th Senatorial District running through much of Southeast Queens to southern Forest Hills, you can make a statement that you’ve had enough. And even though she is likely to get re-elected, you should send her a message.

In the 10th Senatorial District, lives a lady named Ada Smith.



BIGGEST MUCK UP OF ALL

However, Smith is no lady.

Two weeks ago, after a trial in Albany City Court, Senator Ada Smith was found guilty of assaulting a former staff member by throwing a cup of hot coffee on her and pulling a wig from her head. Smith was fined and will have to attend anger management classes and reimburse her victim’s medical bills.

Following her arrest on this crime, Smith was stripped of a $9,500 annual stipend and the use of a state car due to her “consistent pattern of inappropriate conduct.” And what a pattern it is.

Nevertheless, the same powers that stripped her – in this case Senate Minority Leader and Lieutenant Governor heir apparent David Patterson — publicly endorsed her for reelection. The Queens Democratic organization, in spite of the fact that a number of Southeast Queens heavyweight Dems told this writer the Smith must go, gave Smith their nod.

Now we don’t believe that either Senate leadership, her colleagues, her staff, or the Queens Dem organization want her back in Albany, but the system has become so incumbent-friendly and corrupt that no one could figure out who could beat her.

How could you beat a convicted Smith, who is currently under investigation for a separate incident in which another aide alleges that she threw a cell phone at her which struck her?

How do you beat Smith, who in 2004 was fined $200 in Albany City Court for failing to obey a direct order from police when she sped past a security checkpoint in the Capitol complex?

Although she was cleared by the state, her ex-chief of staff has claimed that she made racist remarks and fired him because he was gay. Another former staff member accused her in of threatening him with a meat cleaver. How do you beat her?

Others have come forward with similar stories since 1998, when in Brooklyn, she had to be subdued with mace after allegedly biting a policeman following a traffic altercation. But she is an incumbent and likely to be returned to office?

Nicknamed the “Wild Woman of Albany,” convicted of abusive behavior towards staff and uniformed officers, required to attend anger management counselling sessions and moreover, Ada Smith is not a good Senator.

She has been part of the Albany failure for years.

We don’t know her opponent Shirley Huntley, however by reputation and record she appears to be far preferable to Smith.

We do know that Ada Smith has failed the people – she has time and again failed to act like a person. She is symbolic of all that is wrong with Albany but has chosen not to only abuse the people behind closed doors, Smith has come out and done it in the light of day and has been caught.

However, the deck is stacked in her favor. Nevertheless, Smith deserves to hear your voice.

Tell her what you think.

Michael Schenkler can be reached via this contact form.

 
 
NYS Legislature Hits City For $1Billion In Pension Costs

By HENRY STERN

Year after year, the New York State Legislature passes bills that increase pensions and enhance retirement benefits for employees of the City of New York. Although these laws mandate substantial additional expenditures by the City, the State makes no contribution to their cost.

The cumulative cost of Albany’s largesse will reach the 10- figure mark ($1,000,000,000) within the foreseeable future, all to be billed to local taxpayers.

These pension bills are the biggest financial blow the state has dealt the city since the Assembly repealed the commuter income tax on May 17, 1999. That blunder has already cost the city about $3 billion, and the loss mounts with prosperity and inflation each year. As luck would have it, the same person is responsible for both events, although some of the blame should be shared by the sheep.

Occasionally Gov. George Pataki signs these bills, and sometimes he vetoes them. His veto will be overridden if two men, the Speaker of the Assembly and the Majority Leader of the Senate, decide to do so.

All the pension sweeteners are passed at the request of public employee unions, who are the largest political contributors in Albany. Bipartisan in their self interest, the unions support incumbents in both parties. Along with other lobbyists, they consistently buy tickets to Albany fundraisers regularly held by candidates, most of whom are assured of re-election, who face little or no opposition. And the bills provide benefits which the unions were unable to receive through the collective bargaining process with the city.

The sordid situation of the state’s craven elected officials in both parties catering to politically powerful public employee unions and unilaterally imposing hundreds of millions of dollars of pension obligations on city taxpayers is contemptible. But how can we expect any more from a legislature whose members are largely bovines and whose leaders are foxes who exploit their public offices for substantial personal economic advantage for themselves and their relatives.

It is these officials, responsible for enacting laws and protecting the public, who instead use their power to secure themselves against competition, impede ballot access, gerrymander districts, spend millions of taxpayer dollars mailing pictures of themselves to their constituencies, hide member items in what is surely illegal secrecy, and kowtow to the lobbyists who for many years have kept them in food and drink, so they need not dip into their $140 allowance for every day the legislature is in session, ($244 a day when they do business in pricey New York City), added to the $9,000 - 41,000 they receive for committee assignments or leadership positions, added to their base salaries of $79,500 (which they vigorously demand be increased); added to the undisclosed outside income they receive from law practice (no matter how active or inactive they may be), or from real estate, business income (no matter whether they actually work); added to whatever expenses can be paid for by their campaign funds. That was a long sentence, but it takes many words to describe the income they receive legitimately.

It should be made clear, however, that these officials are not evil people. They have constructed a system to make themselves impregnable. Their elected courtiers dance attendance on them for fear of isolation and irrelevance. But they are not fanatics, not violent and they can be reasonable if they care to be. They are, however, more suited to operating a Middle East bazaar than the New York State Legislature, even if it is “the most dysfunctional in the nation,” as the Brennan Commission report has found.

The question of what, if anything, can be done about the open sewer close to where the Mohawk meets the Hudson is the primary local political issue which faces us today.

Starquest@NYCivic.org

Not4Publication.com by Dom Nunziato
Michael Schenkler can be reached via this contact form.