As usual in New York state state government, key parts of the big two issues were negotiated in secret and passed by both houses with virtually no public debate. According to fiscal watchdog E.J. McMahon, the property tax cap bill could be pretty thoroughly undermined by a separate bill passed almost simultaneously, which permits school districts to borrow their way around the cap.
As for same-sex marriage, it's still unclear to me exactly what the last-minute religious exemptions will and won't do, and ironic that the best analysis I've read so far comes from a blog in Ohio -- with Albany reporters mostly taking the weekend off after all those late-night sessions hanging around to hear what might have happened behind closed doors.
So religious organizations are exempt both from respecting people’s rights AND from paying taxes (which means that gays, in this case, are forced via their taxes to subsidize organizations who lobby against them having a full slate of rights). Nice racket!
Posted by: Brian | June 27, 2011 at 10:42 AM