I wandered around a mostly deserted Siena College Sunday afternoon, despite the yellow tape put up to keep pedestrians out of the center of campus, where lots of trees and branches are down in the wake of Thursday's ice storm. The college, like many other institutions, will be closed Monday, and the storm has even managed to shut down its Web site. Driving north on Route 9, traffic lights were out at some major intersections in Albany and Saratoga counties.
Jim Tedisco, who sees himself as upstate's last remaining champion in state leadership, put out a news release Friday saying he's taken in his 93-year-old mother who had lost power in Rotterdam. Tedisco frequently refers to his mother at press events as being affected by high property taxes and other woes, so it's good to see the Assembly minority leader coming to her rescue. But he also took the occasion to renew his call "for creation of a statewide program to assist the most vulnerable in the event of an emergency. ... Tedisco called for passage of his legislation, Assembly Bill A.5806, which would establish a 'State Emergency Assistance Database' (S.E.A.D.). The measure would require, rather than authorize, County governments to maintain a registry of disabled persons to be used for disaster preparedness, and to include senior citizens within the S.E.A.D. registry."
That sounds to me like an unfunded mandate, which politicians are always denouncing in the abstract before endorsing in the particular. I couldn't see anything in the bill's language, summary or press release about its fiscal impact. Tedisco likes to paint himself as a fiscal conservative, and compared to the majority party leaders, maybe he is. But that ain't saying much. He opposed Gov. Paterson's budget plan in November, and has always been much stronger on cutting taxes than spending. He did come out for abolishing member items, which is something, and it also works as a political tactic because Assembly Republicans generally get less pork than their Democratic counterparts. But Tedisco's proposals fall far short of what is needed to close budget gaps, and he would be foolish to lead his members into alliance with big-spending Senate Republicans against the governor. Paterson is likely no more of a true fiscal conservative than his predecessors Spitzer, Pataki and Cuomo. Even if he was one, that wouldn't make all his budget-cutting proposals good ideas. But all governors have to maintain some connection to the real world. They can't let reality be permanently defined by the demands of lobbyists and legislative leaders. Tedisco should get real, too.
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