Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel, representing the congressional district primarily covering Harlem, won yesterday’s primary despite district redraws (occurring once a decade). The 82-year-old Rangel defeated Adriano Espaillat and three other candidates in the congressional primary, with the New York Times calling it “the toughest re-election fight of his career.”

Rangel’s victory gives him the shot at a 22nd term, despite a recent ethics scandal, reports Fox News. Shortly after his 2010 congressional victory, Rangel was the target of a controversy on tax and financial disclosure statements, which included misappropriation of congressional resources. He was ultimately convicted of 11 ethics violations.

Rangel’s new district includes less of Manhattan and additional parts of the Bronx. The redistricting means Rangel’s constituency consists of fewer whites and more Hispanics, reports the Times. 

Rangel, who received the endorsement of Governor Cuomo and Speaker Quinn, credits his incumbency and long career in the district with the victory. The Democratic Rangel faces a favorable chance in the November general election.

—Alissa Fleck

Photo by saebaryo. Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons.

Cuomo seeks to loosen marijuana policies, while some lawmakers call proposal too lenient

By Paul Bisceglio

Get caught with a joint hidden in your pocket in New York and you get a fine. Get caught with a joint tucked behind your ear or lit in your hand and you get arrested. Concealed possession of 25 grams or less of marijuana is a violation, while possession of the same amount in public view is a misdemeanor. Simple distinction, right?

Nope. Consider this: A cop stops you on the street and tells you to empty your pockets, and along with your wallet and keys, out into the open comes the small bag of pot you wanted to smoke at home. Because you followed the cop’s orders, and only because you followed the cop’s orders, you are now subject to a much more severe punishment than when you were whistling down the sidewalk with Mary Jane ensconced by your side.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo started a charge last week to erase this “loophole” in law enforcement, as many officials have called it, by proposing a change in state law that would reduce the penalty of visibly possessing 25 grams or less of marijuana in public to a violation with a fine of up to $100 for first-time violators.

Cuomo maintained that smoking in public should remain an arrestable misdemeanor, but argued that a reduced penalty for visible weed that’s not burning would combat the discriminatory police stop-and-frisk tactics that contributed to the arrest of over 50,000 New Yorkers for possession of small amounts of marijuana last year.

“This is an issue that disproportionately affects young people—they wind up with a permanent stain on their record for something that would otherwise be a violation,” he said when he announced the proposal. “The charge makes it more difficult for them to find a job. Together, we are making New York fairer and safer and ensuring that every New Yorker has access to a justice system that doesn’t discriminate based on age or color.”

The numbers are telling. Cuomo pointed out that 50 percent of those arrested last year were under 25, and less than 10 percent were ever convicted of a crime. 82 percent were either black or Hispanic. When compared to federal government data on drug use showing that whites use marijuana at higher rates than blacks or Hispanics, the likelihood of police discrimination becomes clear.

Supporters see Cuomo’s proposal as a necessary continuation of the decriminalization of concealed marijuana in 1977 that will not only protect unlawfully targeted youths from arrests that harm their education, job and housing prospects, but also free up significant police resources to concentrate on graver crimes.

“The over 50,000 arrests for low-level marijuana possession last year—one out of every seven arrests in New York City—cost the city and state of New York nearly $75 million in police and court costs,” said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, speaking in support of Cuomo’s announcement.

“The simple and fair change proposed by Governor Cuomo will help us redirect significant resources to the most violent criminals and serious crime problems and, frankly, is the right thing to do,” said District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance.
Other officials who endorsed Cuomo’s proposal include City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and State Sen. Daniel Squadron. A major coalition of advocacy groups, including Color of Change, Drug Policy Alliance, VOCAL-NY and the Institute for Juvenile Justice Reform and Alternatives launched an online video campaign following the governor’s announcement in support of the change.

Opposed to the proposal is the State Senate’s Republican majority, headed by Dean Skelos, who argued that the change would be excessively lenient. “Being able to just walk around with 10 joints in each ear and only getting a violation, I think that’s wrong,” he told reporters. He said the proposal would not pass his chamber in its current form.

On the police’s manipulation of stop-and-frisk tactics to garner arrests, however, Skelos said, “That is wrong. It should be a violation. You’re following the policeman’s order.”

Michelle Dawkins

City & State’s in-depth look at raising the New York State minimum wage

Five days a week Michelle Dawkins wakes up at 2:30 a.m. and drives from her Bronx apartment to begin her shift at JFK Airport, ferrying wheelchair-bound passengers among the airport’s eight terminals. From 4:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Dawkins—whom her co-workers affectionately call “Mother Love”—will make $7.25 an hour, or $58 for the day. If Dawkins, 42, doesn’t require an unpaid sick day, and if the airport needs her for 40 hours each week—which is not always a certainty during the lean fall and winter travel season—she will make $15,080 over the course of a year.

Under a new proposal currently being debated in Albany, Dawkins and the 91,000 other New Yorkers who make the federal minimum wage will see that hourly wage increase by $1.25.

Five more quarters an hour will not be enough to lift Michelle Dawkins out of poverty, take her off food stamps or get her away from Medicaid, but she said it would make a difference. In 2002 she made $13 an hour as a security screener, but she left the job to take care of her mother, who died of breast cancer two years later. In 2005 she made $11 an hour doing the same job she has now, but for a different company.

“I say any bit, even if it’s a quarter more, you’re gonna turn around and see a difference,” she said. “If it went to 10, it would make a world of difference.”

“We could go to restaurants, we could go to movies, we could get an accountant,” she joked.

Minimum-wage jobs are the fastest-growing sector of the state’s economy, and the number of workers making $7.25 an hour jumped dramatically from 6,000 in 2008 to 91,000 by 2011.

But whether Dawkins receives the extra $1.25 per hour, which will cost her employer an additional $2,900 a year, will have very little to do with how badly she wants or needs it—or even with what economists, business owners and voters say they want—and everything to do with politics in Albany.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has staked his legislative session on a policy move with a long history of winning seats for Democrats in tight elections. Senate Republicans won’t touch anything branded job-killing with a ten-foot pole unless they get something in return. And Gov. Andrew Cuomo is not actively championing the bill, a move seemingly designed to keep all the sides playing against one another while he maintains his position as the ultimate referee.

When Speaker Silver introduced Gov. Cuomo before his State of the State Address in January, he used the occasion to announce he would seek an increase in the minimum wage as his major legislative priority for the year. Cuomo later said he was in favor of the increase.

The timing of Silver’s proposal was auspicious—minimum wage is an issue that Democrats use to win campaigns. The proposed minimum-wage hike has the broadest approval of any legislative measure in recent history, with 79 percent of statewide voters and 61 percent of Republicans in favor of an increase.

In an election year in which Republicans in the Senate must hold onto their tenuous majority, Democrats have effectively dared Republicans to let November roll around without voting “Yes” on an issue that has overwhelming popular support.

“Given the state of the economy and the broad-based popularity of the issue, the increase in the minimum wage is something that could affect any race in the state,” said Sen. Mike Gianaris, chairman of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee.

“My preference is to have Senate Republicans follow their typical pattern and buckle to our agenda to avoid a political problem,” he joked darkly. If Republicans didn’t pass it, then Democrats will make the November elections into a referendum on minimum wage, he said.

Dan Cantor, the executive director of the Working Families Party, said advocates are trying to urge individual Republican senators to convince Sen. Majority Leader Dean Skelos to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

“We have to convince Republican senators that this is economically, politically and morally smart,” he said, adding, “If they don’t pass it, then that’s why we
have elections.”

So far, Senate Republicans seem content to take their chances. Skelos has routinely referred to any increase as a “job killer,” and last week the Republicans defeated Democrats’ efforts to attach a minimum-wage amendment to a tax-cut bill.

In the months after Silver announced the proposed wage hike, lobbyists and economists opposed to the bill mobilized to amplify Skelos’ argument. The Business Council of New York State, which shares members with the Committee to Save New York, the group that spent $22 million lobbying on behalf of Cuomo’s budget this year and last year, released a statement calling the proposed wage hike “unconscionable,” arguing it would result in “lost jobs and a reduction in training opportunities for low-income employees.”

Opponents like Nicole Gelinas, a policy analyst for the conservative Manhattan Institute and the Business Council, cite a 2008 economics paper coauthored by economists from Cornell and American University that tied increases in the state’s minimum wage to lost jobs for poor and lower-skilled workers.

“It could cost 29,000 jobs, and only 20 percent of the benefits would go to workers working in poor households,” Gelinas said.

According to Gelinas, a follow-up study by the same economists issued in January demonstrates that “the biggest effect is on lower-skilled workers and younger workers. If you raise the minimum wage, it does hit a lot of the smaller businesses. They decide ‘We’ll do more of this work ourselves.’ ”

To read the full article at City & State click here.

By Alan S. Chartock

Andrew Cuomo has chosen his candidate for lieutenant governor. He is Bob Duffy, the mayor of Rochester, and a virtual unknown “who-he?” to most New Yorkers.

If one knows the Cuomos and the way they think, which is politically, you had better believe that they have specific criteria for who becomes the number two person in the administration. First and foremost, they need someone they can trust. When Papa Mario ran, he was saddled with Al Del Bello, and that didn’t work out. Del Bello quit in disgust. Mario had great success with his subsequent lieutenant governor, Stan Lundine, a former mayor of Jamestown. Lundine was a decent man but he was about as far removed from the magical rhetoric of Mario as any politician might be. Mario never had to worry about who was holding a knife at his back.

In selecting Bob Duffy as his running mate, Cuomo has chosen a man with conservative (for a Democrat) credentials, a man who was a cop, a man who has tangled with the unions. Let the message go forth: “I, Andrew Cuomo, know that there are tough times ahead and I will choose a man who knows how to operate in tough times.”

If you take a look at the new book of Cuomo positions, “The New York Agenda: A Plan for Action,” you will find some other clues as to why he chose Duffy. One of Cuomo’s most important agenda items is education, and Duffy is a guy who believes in mayoral control of the schools. When the state of education in New York City was in chaos, Mike Bloomberg came along and took control of the schools. He appointed Chancellor Joel Klein, who has managed to change the culture of New York schools for the better. Clearly, the Cuomos have always sought the same thing. Under the State constitution, they can’t have it because the education function goes to the Assembly-controlled New York State Board of Regents. It could well be that part of the Duffy appeal is that he represents what Andrew wants to do with education.

Another way to look at the Duffy selection is to examine whom Cuomo did not appoint. Spitzer thought it sent a good message to appoint someone of color to the number two job. That’s how we got Paterson, a good man saddled with multiple albatrosses around his neck. While Andrew didn’t appoint a person of color, he was smart enough to have a whole phalanx of African-American politicians ready to endorse his selection. Nor did he choose a woman. You may remember that George Pataki appointed Betsy McCaughey as his lieutenant governor and chaos ensued. Maybe Andrew remembered that if that relationship soured he might have had to defend himself against an inevitable, albeit unfair, charge of sexism. In any case, he didn’t do it and he hasn’t taken any substantial heat for his choice.

Cuomo has made it plain that a big part of our budget problem is that we are spending too much because we have too many levels of government. Up to now, that was a luxury we thought we could afford. My bet is that Duffy will be a lead negotiator in combining these governmental entities, including the extraordinary number of school districts in the state.

In any case, Andrew selected Duffy and he seems to have gotten away with it without ruffling feathers. Chalk one up for team Cuomo.

–
Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

By Alan S. Chartock

Andrew Cuomo is positioning himself to be president of the United States. His chances of getting there will be infinitely increased if he is able to turn Albany into a calmer, less venal, more reflective and genuinely representative place.

Cuomo must win the Legislature’s confidence and at the same time convince the people that he really is going to clean things up. He’ll need to be perceived as being “good” and “likeable” as opposed to “tough guy Andy.” His friends at the radical right wing New York Post know that and they’re spreading around his picture, with his kids and his girlfriend and an atypical smile on his face. Old man Hearst would be proud.

To succeed, Cuomo has to reserve all the perks of being a strong executive. The more power he cedes to the Legislature, the weaker he becomes. He has to toughen the ethics rules. The less double-dealing and inside trading the legislative leaders can get away with and the more truly transparent the process is, the more powerful Cuomo will be. That’s why David Paterson vetoed the quarter-of-a-loaf ethics law that the Legislature was able to dupe the so-called “good government groups” into endorsing. That’s why Cuomo is opposed to allowing the Regents (owned by the Assembly, which is owned by the teachers union) to have the sole say as to who gets a charter school. He appoints the members of the SUNY Board of Trustees and he is not about to relinquish that influence to the legislative chieftains.

Of course, the members of the Legislature know full well that they need Cuomo at the top of the ticket, otherwise they will lose their marginal members. On the other hand, Cuomo knows that he can’t be perceived as being in bed with them. That means a diminution of power for the leaders and their associated lobbyists. He is telling anyone who wants to run on his coattails that they will have to pledge to support reform. Interestingly, he is painting himself not only as a candidate of reform, but as a candidate of bi-partisan reform. He is signaling to those Democrats who want to preserve the old order that he is not above making deals with their mutually exclusive Republican enemies in order to achieve reform.

Andrew has come a long way and he holds great promise. If he wants to go all the way to the White House and to uphold his anointed title as “son of Mario,” he will have to insist that apportionment be done fairly and that gerrymandering be relegated to the past. He will have to put a dent in the power of the institutionalized lobbyists. He will have to do more than the commendable talk his father was famous for, and translate his platform into actions. If I were Shelly Silver, I’d give up a lot to make Cuomo comfortable. Three-quarters of a loaf is better than none should be Silver’s thinking—otherwise he may just end up with none.

–
Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

Carol Ann Rinzler
East Side

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.

To the Editor:
Allow me to add to “Albany Out of Order” (July 2). There would have been no gridlock in the first place had someone initiated amending the State Constitution to allow the governor the right to call for a special election if a vacancy occurs for United States senator, comptroller, attorney general or lieutenant governor. The governor does this already when a seat in Congress or the Legislature becomes vacant. Any lieutenant governor can cast the tie-breaking vote in a State Senate session, avoiding gridlock. A special election would allow voters, rather than the legislature, to choose which will select one of their own as a replacement.
Another reform should include passage of a balanced budget on April 1, with adequate time for reporters, good government groups, ordinary citizens and members of the legislature to read the fine print before adoption, rather than the usual midnight vote behind closed doors.
It is time for a return to limited government, accompanied by a minimal amount of confiscatory taxation to support only essential services, along with pay-as-you-go budgeting; means testing for all government assistance programs; balanced budgets; actual surpluses; and down payments to reduce long-term debt for all levels of government.
Introduce a law requiring all members of the legislature who hold down a second job to report information about both income and hours worked.
In 1812, Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry signed a redistricting bill allowing his party to rig the drawing of district boundaries in their favor. This practice is commonly known as gerrymandering. After the 2010 census, remove the redistricting power from the governor, senate and assembly leadership. Have the League of Women voters or some other impartial group redraw district boundaries to prevent incumbents of both parties from stacking the deck in their favor.
I hope the Our Town editorial board in 2010 will remember this year’s mediocre record and endorse challengers to the current group of incumbents.

Larry Penner
Great Neck, Long Island

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.