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David Paterson
Paterson Praises Cuomo For ‘Extraordinary’ Victory
Jun 24th - 11:12 pm
Former Gov. David Paterson has issued a statement praising his successor (and onetime potential primary opponent), Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for succeeding where he failed in 2009.
Paterson also couldn’t help but give himself a little pat on the back. Here’s his statement.
“What Governor Cuomo has done is nothing short of extraordinary and he deserves a tremendous amount of credit for finally providing
common-sense equality to all New Yorkers. Governor Cuomo has already brought landmark reform through the budget process, a property tax cap, and rational tuition for SUNY and CUNY. And now, he has found a way to bring marriage equality to our state and restore New York’s position as a beacon of civil rights for the nation and the world.”“I want to particularly commend my former Republican senate colleagues – Senators Stephen Saland, James Alesi, Roy McDonald and Mark Grisanti– who acted with courage tonight by voting their conscience. Tonight, I am ecstatic, I am elated, and I am proud to be a New Yorker.”
“Throughout my tenure as Governor and a public servant, I put forward and advocated for a series of reforms aimed at ending discrimination against same-sex couples in New York State. As Senate Minority Leader, I helped the landmark SONDA bill get passed. And upon taking office as Governor, I issued a memorandum directing State agencies to afford recognition to same-sex couples legally married outside of New York to the full extent permitted by law.
“I worked to enact a law that would bring marriage equality to New York. Ultimately, while we were able to get a vote in the senate, that vote failed. But as I said on the Senate floor that day, the night is darkest before the dawn. Tonight, the sun is rising.”
Paterson’s Hindsight On Gay Marriage
May 24th - 12:03 pm
Former Gov. David Paterson was honored last night by the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund for, among other things, his 2009 executive order that barred discrimination against transgender public employees after the Senate failed to pass the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, (AKA GENDA) which is still bottled up in the chamber.
Prior to the awards program at the fundraiser held at the Chelsea Art Museum, which raised some $100,000 for the TLDEF, Paterson spoke to The Advocate’s Julie Bolcer about the current battle to pass same-sex marriage and the failure of the bill to pass on his watch.
“One of the problems two years ago is too many cooks spoil the broth,” he said.
“I thought the biggest problem with the advocates two years ago was they really thought it was going to pass, until they started fighting over who was getting the credit before it passed and then they got themselves mixed up with other issues, like when the senate had a coup, and they wanted a bill put on the floor. Why would you put such a sensitive bill on the floor in the middle of a senate coup?”
“That made no sense, and I think that spelled the beginning of the end, because in the spring of 2009, I thought it was going to pass.”
Paterson said he believes the Democrats will be able to come up with 27 “yes” votes (the current tally stands at 26), and then it will all come down – again – to whether the Republicans want to play ball. The former governor insisted there are five GOP senators who “want to vote for marriage equality”.
The question is: Are they willing to risk the wrath of state Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long to do so?
Paterson said he hasn’t personally lobbied anyone on gay marriage, although he did sign on to a letter with fellow black, Latino and Asian leaders that cast this fight as on par with the civil rights struggles of the past. (The former governor has made that argument plenty of times in the past.
Paterson also spoke admiringly of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s involvement in this effort, saying:
“I think what he’s done, which is extraordinary, is he’s controlling the whole process, which is what I did when I was the minority leader and we passed SONDA, and in retrospect, probably what I should have done two years ago,” said the former state senator from Harlem.”
(On that SONDA claim, I was under the impression that was mostly due to then-Republican Gov. George Pataki’s willingness to sign the bill and put pressure on the Senate Republicans to pass it, which brought him – for the first time – ESPA’s endorsement in his re-election bid back in 2002. Perhaps I’m remembering that incorrectly).
CapTon’s New Host
May 9th - 9:59 am
…OK, it was a one-night-only affair, but Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos killed as a stand-in CapTon host in his LCA show response Saturday night.
Look for cameos from: Deputy Senate Majority Leader Tom Libous, former Gov. David Paterson (billed as a “true titan of NY politics and bitching about how Gov. Andrew Cuomo is getting all the credit for the all-of-nothing budget extender idea that he pioneered), Sen. Marty Golden (barefoot), the IDC members, a fake Ed Koch, and…yours truly.
FUN!
WFP: ‘No Fracking Way’
Apr 22nd - 3:17 pm
Just in time for Earth Day: A missive from the Working Families Party urging supporters to “tell Governor Cuomo and the leaders in Albany that you think hydrofracking should be banned before it has the chance to poison our water.”
The labor-backed party is asking backed to sign an “emergency petition” in favor of a hydrofracking ban in the wake of the well blowout Tuesday night in Bradford County, Pennsylvania that caused a massive leak of wastewater and forced the evacuation of seven families.
(For the record, the well’s operator, the Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy, said efforts to seal the leak have been successful. The firm nevertheless ceased all drilling operations in the Keystone State, West Virginia and Ohio following the blowout, for which a cause – other than the amorphous “equipment failure” – has not yet been determined).
“This is hardly the first time questions have been raised about fracking,” WFP spokesman TJ Helmstetter wrote in the email. ”
Still, the gas industry is working overtime to bring fracking into New York. ‘Drill first, ask questions later” is their motto.’”
“…Our allies in Albany and around the state, led by Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, are doing everything they can within the legislative process to prevent fracking before it starts.”
“We won’t sugarcoat it: It will take serious leadership to extend the moratorium, let alone get a permanent ban. That’s why we need you in the fight and spreading the word.”
Thanks to former Gov. David Paterson’s executive order, there is a temporary hydrofracking moratorium in place that has been extended by Cuomo to last until the DEC weighs in with its supplemental GEIS sometime this summer.
Shah To Address GNYHA Annual Meeting
Apr 21st - 12:46 pm
State Health Commissioner Nirav Shah will speak at the Greater New York Hospital Association’s annual meeting in NYC next Thursday, the organization announced today.
Shah will be joined by Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard Medical School professor and staff writer for The New Yorker who will discuss “overcoming the cost and complexity of health care” – two topics that are a frequent focus of his writing.
Shah will be talking about “the changing face of health care in the context of the recently enacted New York State budget,” which dovetails nicely into the topic of GNYHA President Ken Raske’s speech: “How hospitals must do more with less in an era of fiscal austerity and unprecedented health care reform.”
GNYHA, as you’ll recall, was invited by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to participate in the Medicaid Redesign Task Force along with its health care workers union partner, SEIU 1199.
This was widely hailed as a very shrewd political move by Cuomo, who successfully neutralized two of the most hard-hitting special interests from the annual budget battle by turning them into allies instead of combatants.
Both 1199 and GNYHA ended up getting something in exchange for signing off on Medicaid reforms. The union saw a living wage for home health care workers while the hospitals got the creation of a medical indemnity fund for neurologically impaired infants that is expected to dramatically reduce their insurance costs in the long term.
Mr. Fix-It
Apr 11th - 1:58 pm
Newsweek is running an on-line feature on advice from 20 experts on how to fix “broken” governments, which includes everyone from Mayor Bloomberg (who thinks LIFO repeal is the next big thing) to DN owner/publisher Mort Zuckerman to ex-Obama administration Budget Director Peter Orszag.
And clocking in at No. 11: David Paterson, former governor of the great state of New York. His proposal to save government: “Real pension accounting. ”
“Controversial accounting standards have allowed state pension funds to appear more solvent than they are,” Paterson argues. “The effect: delaying the day of reckoning, making state fiscal crises much worse than needed.”
“The blame should not be put on public workers: we should not treat the product of a lifetime of work as partisan jujitsu. Congress can solve this problem by prohibiting states from estimating pension growth beyond the last three years of actual pension growth or state revenue growth.”
“Overestimating returns, which has landed 48 states in huge deficits, would then cease.”
If I remember correctly, GOP state comptroller contender Harry Wilson argued that the pension numbers being presented by his Democratic opponent, incumbent Tom DiNapoli, were overly optimistic.
DiNapoli refuted that…and he also won in a squeaker last fall.
Senate GOP Fires First Salvo Against Executive Extender Power
Apr 5th - 6:06 pm
A key component of the Senate GOP’s lawsuit against the prisoner counting change included in the 2010-2011 budget is a challenge to the way that switch was made – through a budget extender bill sent to the Legislature by then-Gov. David Paterson and passed by the Legislature last summer.
The pertinent passage of the suit starts on P. 16. It argues, in short, that the governor does not have the power to enact policy through an emergency extender, which – until Paterson – was traditionally used to keep government running in the absence of a budget deal.
The suit alleges the budget bill that included the prisoner counting change was “enacted unconstitutionally in that it usurped the State Legislature’s power under Article III, Section I.”
“By reason of that usurption and by reason that the sole alternative was to vote against the continuity of State government, members of the Legislature were deprived of their powers under Article III,” the suit continues.
“In this situation, the then-governor became omnipotent and the members of the state Legislature constitutionally helpless as it had no power to remove the purely legislative, non-appropriation language from the Article VII bills.”
The suit concludes that a “dispute exists” over the governor’s constitutional authority to force the Legislature to pass non-revenue items in a revenue bill and this “requires a judicial determination of the score of non-apportionment or non-revenue lanuague in Article VII bills.”
So, if the Senate GOP wins this suit, it could theorectically rob Cuomo of his most powerful tool in future budget battles.
I’m sure the governor is probably going to have something to say about this. But remember: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver predicted as much….just sayin’.
Goodbye, June O’Neill
Mar 17th - 11:29 am
Veteran New York Democratic operative/activist June O’Neill is stepping entirely off the political stage, giving up all her remaining duties in both the state and local organizations she once headed, The Watertown Times reports.
According to the paper, O’Neill – pictured her with her state chair replacement, Jay Jacobs – is leaving her position as state Executive Committee chairwoman and also from her post as vice chair of the St. Lawrence Democratic Party. More from the story:
“The move will come as a surprise to no one; Mrs. O’Neill, a Morley resident, is open about her desire to retire and spend more time with her family.”
“…There’s no word yet on who will replace her at the state party, but the rumor mill has also swirled about the potential departure of Jay Jacobs, Mrs. O’Neill’s counterpart at the party.”
O’Neill once worked for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo. Given her history with the Cuomo family, there was some speculation very early on that O’Neill might be brought back to re-take the reins from Jacobs, who was seen as a David Paterson loyalist, particularly after Tom Suozzi’s surprise loss to Republican Ed Mangano in the 2009 Nassau County executive race.
O’Neill was tapped by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer as part of an upstate-downstate team to head the state party. Her downstate counterpart, Dave Pollak, was forced out shortly after Paterson replaced Spitzer three years ago today.
Jacobs was tapped by Paterson to replace O’Neill, who moved down to head the executive committee. Instead of ousting Jacobs, Cuomo chose to supplement him with an on-again/off-again loyalist, Charlie King, as party executive director – a post the former LG and AG contender took on during the 2010 campaign.
Jacobs has been diligently trying to pay down the state party’s debt and also acting in conjuction with King as an attack dog, lambasting Republicans at all levels of government as the administration’s surrogate.
Paterson Traded Senate Resources For LG Run in ’06
Mar 17th - 8:47 am
During a recent wide-ranging interview, former Gov. David Paterson offered a new explanation for why he had agreed to run as then-gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer’s lieutentant governor in 2006.
(Since this is the third anniversary of Paterson’s swearing-in as New York’s first black governor following Spitzer’s demise, it seems particularly appropriate to mark the date with this post).
Paterson said his decision to depart his post as Senate minority leader was motivated by the fact that he believed the Senate Republicans had “figured out my game” in 2004, adding: “They knew how I beat them, and I didn’t think I could do it again.”
The former governor said he had taken his limited resources that year and “pretended” to push candidates in far more districts than he actually could afford to fight for.
“But really, I picked out three or four seats I thought I could win and put all the money in those areas and was very successful,” Paterson explained.
“And I knew that they would make the adjustment in 2006 and we were going to have a lot of resources to win…and I knew that I could exchange my candidacy for lieutenant governor to get those resources, and it was successful. That’s why I changed courses.”
There’s only one problem with this: While it’s true that Spitzer pushed very hard to help the Democrats in their quest to wrest the Senate from GOP hands and poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into that effort, they didn’t actually succeed until 2008 – and we all know how that turned out in the end.
In the rest of this clip, Paterson, who was interviewed for The Common Good by former state Democratic Party Chairman Dave Pollak, is at his charming and comic best as he tells the story of learning he was about to ascend to be governor of New York and how he broke that news to his father, Basil, and his wife, Michelle.
Cuomo Wants To Extend Unemployment Benefits
Mar 3rd - 3:10 pm
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has submitted a bill that will enable some 166,000 unemployed New Yorkers to received extended federally-funded unemployment insurance benefits through the rest of the year.
Without this legislation, the state would forfeit approximately $620 million in federal cash, according to the governor’s office.
Back in May 2009, then-Gov. David Paterson signed an unemployment insurance extender that add another 13 weeks to jobless benefits, bringing the total to a potential 72 weeks. That allowed the state to tap into $645 million worth of federal funding.
Last December, Congress extended the federal program by an additional year. Cuomo’s legislation will now amend state law to allow New York to qualify for the additional third year of the program.
“Federally-funded unemployment insurance benefits are crucial for New York’s recovery,” Cuomo said in a press release.
“Extending this program will give unemployed New Yorkers vital relief as they continue their efforts to enter the workforce and will help build a stronger economy for the entire state.”
UPDATE: The bill is below. The bill memo is here.
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