PlanetAlbany

"Women for Tedisco"

I see Jim Tedisco's congressional campaign has scheduled a Women for Tedisco rally at noon Saturday at the Saratoga Springs Public Library. That seems a smart move. The GOP candidate (Tedisco) is the favorite in this special election in a majority Republican district. But Democrats will fight to hold on to Kirsten Gillibrand's seat, trying to build on their party's presumed advantages with female voters in a blue state like New York. I heard one of the potential Democratic candidates, former television news reporter Tracy Egan, interviewed on TV the other night, just after they ran a clip of Tedisco saying how he would fight for his constituents. Egan said something like, Well, I wouldn't talk in terms of fighting. That may go over with some dovish female voters, and maybe Tedisco should dial back his intensity a bit, not harping so much on old issues like denying drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. And there are a couple of other women the Democrats might run.

Paterson a hit at FMCC town meeting

The governor, who has been taking heat recently from the press, was a hit with voters this afternoon at a town meeting in the community college on the border of Montgomery and Fulton counties, a rural and considerably Republican area west of the Capital Region.

On the way in, he stopped to chat with some demonstrators from public employee unions protesting budget cuts, and seemed to win them over by saying they won't be the only ones to sacrifice, and that they've sacrificed already (a reference to some pretty non-draconian budget trims he's already pushed through). Inside, in the gym, a Paterson aide estimated there more than 500 people gathered. Among them were Congressman Paul Tonko and Assemblymen McEneny, Lopez, Gordon, Amedore and Butler, along with lots of local officials.

Paterson says he's holding town meetings because of "the most prodigious budget deficit in New York state history," and that those states addressing the budget quickly will do best. In the other camp, he said, are California, which is "nearing bankruptcy" and Massachusetts, which is asking for a federal loan.

The first question is more like a speech from a Johnstown woman named Jan, who says “I’m the middle class." she said she keeps the heat at 56, shops with coupons, rarely eats out, and pays $6,000-$8,000 per year in co-pays for a daughter with medical problems. Meanwhile, she said, rich people get bonuses, the middle class is disappearing  and the governor is proposing higher gas taxes.

Paterson responds, "I can’t think of a more poignant way to express the problems of this state than Janet has."But, he continues, the state has been overspending in prior years, and "Now the revenues have fallen off a cliff and we’re still unable to cut back spending.”

Another questioner complained about the governor's proposal to eliminate STAR rebates. But Paterson responded vigorously.  The STAR program, he says, "was supposed to cut property taxes" but hasn't worked. Instead, he touted his proposal to cap school property tax increases at no more than 4 percent a year.

In talking about the federal stimulus bill and shovel ready sites, the governor said Tonko has suggested making the bridge across the Mohawk River in Amsterdam one of them, which he thought was a good idea. He might want to rethink. That pedestrian bridge, approved in a statewide bond referendum a few years ago, is seen locally as a boondoggle, because people can already walk across the river on a sidewalk on the existing Route 30 bridge.

Another questioner, I think named Frank DeSantis, talks about the need to save money through government consolidation, but laments the failure of voters in 2 referendums in recent years to approve countywide assessing in Fulton County. The only solution, he said, is for the state to mandate it. "Consolidation will never come from the bottom up. It has to come from the top down," says DeSantis. But Paterson says: "Democracy, hopefully works from the bottom up. I agree with you on the end product, and we’ve got to persuade our neighbors. "

Jennifer Pettys, Montgomery county youth bureau director, complained about a proposed gubernatorial budget cut that she said would reduce services to young people, making it more likely they will get in serious trouble after school. Paterson said he hopes federal stimulus money can help with this, and that schools should be open all day.

WVTL radio guru Bob Cudmore, who was moderating the event, asked for a show of hands on the Kirsten Gillibrand appointment to the Senate, and many hands went up, while almost nobody raised a hand in disapproval. "You must be glad you're here and not in Manhattan," Cudmore said to Paterson, an apparent reference to opposition to Gillibrand from that quarter and support for alternative candidates, notably Caroline Kennedy.

Said the governor: "I live in Manhattan. People in Manhattan are going to have to get over it." This, like many of Patrerson's remarks, drew applause and laughter. He went on to say that Gillibrand "was as qualified as anyone else," and had the additional political advantages of being a woman from upstate.

A farmer says he’s likely the last generation to run his airy farm, and that property taxes are his third largest expense, after feed and labor. Paterson says agribusiness funding is going up, and cutting transportation costs and energy use with more reliance on local food sources is the way to go.

Someone asked about tourism, and he replied “I can’t give as positive an answer as I would like,” because it's been hurt by the economic downturn.

Cudmore said his listeners think Paterson would look better without a beard. "I never really learned how to use a razor," replied the legally blind governor. "I assure you, If started shaving, I will kill myself.”

He got a standing ovation when he started, and another one at the end, about an hour and 15 minutes later. Then he did a quick news conference. Where can people go who have lost jobs in traditional industies like tanneries? asked a local reporter. Paterson, continuing to sound well prepared and on the ball, responded that FMCC provides training for people to install solar panels.

 

Dopp hearing scheduled

The state Commission on Public Integrity posted on its Web site today notice of a March 11 hearing on the case of Darren Dopp, Eliot Spitzer's communications director who was ousted in the Troopergate brouhaha. The notice says the hearing is to determine whether Dopp violated the state Public Officers Law, and that the commission has determined there is reasonable cause to believe that Dopp did intentionally violate that law. Dopp has denied any wrongdoing. The document also states the commission has reasonable cause to believe that other senior Spitzer officials violated the law, namely Preston Felton, Richard Baum and William Howard.

Rockwell Kent at state museum

There's a bit of socialist realism about some of the art of Rockwell Kent, who left almost 900 pieces to the Soviet Union when he died in 1971 a few years after winning that country's International Lenin Prize. But, as the current exhibit at the New York State Museum shows, he also did ads for Rolls-Royce. More to the point, this commie produced more interesting art than the Nelson Rockefeller-beloved abstract painters whose works clutter up the Empire State Plaza Concourse, where thousands of state workers and visitors hurry by them every day without a glance. There's a fine arctic light in "Highways," for example, a scene of snowy by-ways in Greenland that was painted over four years in the 1930s. Kent spent a lot of time in remote places, but also lived in Vermont before settling down on a farm in northern New York, and there are some nice warmer landscapes of rural scenes. The collection is on loan from the North Country, the Plattsburgh state university art museum. I think Kent would have liked it being displayed for free there and now at the state museum in Albany. It's in the museum's temporary exhibit space to the right as you go in, where they've had some good shows in recent years - including one in 2007-08 of American bronze sculpture that included two busts by Augustus Saint-Gaudens of the Civil War military commanders William T. Sherman and David Farragut. The Rockwell Kent show is on display until May 17.

A textbook case of media bias

To its credit, The Times Union has been running some highly critical comments from readers about its front page story today, apparently the first of a series, titled  "Scouts' dishonor." The online subhed says: "Despite a proclaimed love of the environment, the Boy Scouts of America is clear-cutting and logging to raise cash." While there are a few feeble attempts at balance in the long story, its anti-logging prejudice is very clear and very stupid. It does not address the fact that the Boy Scouts, like the lumber companies in the Adirondacks, are sitting on a lot of of land that would otherwise be developed. And it's a lot better for the environment and the economy for loggers to cut down the trees and carpenters and paper mill workers to derive their livelihood from them, than for summer homes and condos to be built there for the likes of Hearst Company executives. As some of the commenters say, the Boy Scouts with their politically incorrect stand against gay scoutmasters make a natural target for liberal attacks, and this story plays into every stereotype about media bias.

Sex and scandal sell

I'm getting some links today from alloveralbany.com to a post from last Friday morning regarding Kirsten Gillibrand's ancestry. For a much more thorough and entertaining view of Gillibrand's "dynastic baggage" check out this entry from Brooklyn blogger Gatemouth, who is I think a former aide to Sen. Marty Connor. It is, however, thoroughly unfair to a certain unnamed (by him) state senator from Albany who appears to be Howard Nolan, who is OK in my book.

You can't be too cynical

When I first read this story at the end of last week, about some resistance by North Country high school coaches to a plan to trim games and costs, I thought the resisters were crazy. Public schools have been expanding sports programs in the last decade, thus increasing transportation and other costs, and so trying to scale back those expenses in the face of a potential tsunami of budget cuts looked like common sense. But reading stories like this one in the Times this morning and this one in the Gazette, about how (as the Times headline said) the federal "Stimulus Plan Would Provide Flood of Aid to Education," I'm not so sure. While Albany has been distracted by a senatorial appointment, indictment and other brouhahas, lobbyists have been plugging away at one broad talking point: Let's use the federal stimulus package, maybe with an income tax hike on the rich, to keep business as usual for us. Gov. Paterson has proposed cuts but precious few structural reforms (which the special interests often object to even more than cuts) to contain costs. He's said he wants a budget passed by the end of February, but we still haven't seen the promised program bill to enact cost-containment provisions of the Suozzi commission report on controlling property taxes (I have a call in to the governor's press office on that). Lobbyists, legislators and maybe now the governor appear to be counting on a combination of federal money and the same old smoke and mirrors to hold things together for another year or two, without the need for drastic cuts or reform. That's the way things have worked for decades in Albany, they would tell you, and will likely continue to work. And who's to say they're wrong?

Church and state

The Rev. Duane Motley, executive director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, is one of the very few lobbyists at the Capitol for socially conservative causes. We were chatting today about a couple of fallen Republicans: John Sweeney, the congressman toppled by Kirsten Gillibrand in large part because of failings in his personal life (which propelled her in three years from being a political nobody to the U.S. Senate); and Joe Bruno, the former state Senate majority leader indicted Friday on charges of collecting $3.2 million in graft. "Power corrupts," quoth Motley.

I had a separate conversation today with a Roman Catholic layman, active in the Albany Diocese, who is also a state official. He referred to a flurry of posts in this space a week-and-a-half ago that was prompted by Bishop Howard Hubbard's church closing plan, and defended the bishop. I told him I'd been laying off Hubbard lately, after my wife told me the blog was getting too Catholic.

Taking care of business

I was hanging around Jim Tedisco's office today, waiting for him to emerge for a news conference, and got chatting with a health-care lobbyist on a more serious mission. The lobbyist's boss was in a room meeting with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. The boss and lobbyist were aiming to avert the governor's proposed budget cuts, and their weapon was the coming federal stimulus package, which they want used for that purpose. That should take care of things for a couple of years, the lobbyist said, and meanwhile legislators could work on "thoughtful" reforms to the system.

Jobs for Tedisco

At a news conference on the Capitol steps announcing his congressional candidacy, Jim Tedisco said his top priority was "jobs, jobs, jobs." He also echoed President Obama's "Yes we can" catch-phrase and vowed to reach out across party lines. But he had some harsh words for Gov. Paterson, who he said "is going down a very slippery slope right now" and urged him to "Tear down that wall of secrecy" and stop governing through the Albany stand-by of "three men in a room."

Just before he went out, Tedisco was greeted by Pete Grannis, a former Democratic assemblyman from Manhattan who now runs the state Department of Environmental Conservation. That's a big district, Grannis said to Tedisco. I said to Grannis, you went statewide. No, Grannis said, "I got my job handed to me. He's got to run for it," and Tedisco agreed.

One interesting side note at Tedisco's news conference: He was talking about the Republican Assembly minority, which he leads and will continue to lead  while running for Congress, and how it lost one member in the last election. That was Tom Kirwan, a maverick former cop from the Hudson Valley. But he only lost, Tedisco said, because "he wouldn't let us run a campaign for him," referring to the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee. Tedisco said Kirwan himself now acknowledges that.