PlanetAlbany

Best paid teachers produce worst results (updated)

The Business Review is ranking the Albany School District dead last in the Capital Region, but its teachers are No. 1 in pay, with a median salary of more than $70,000 per year. Meanwhile, the district's graduation rate is the area's worst, 47 percent and dropping like a stone, as opposed to 57 percent in Schenectady and 75 percent in Troy. Albany does have excuses, e.g. lots of charter schools skimming off the students with motivated parents, but the numbers are damning nonetheless.

Update: NYSUT is suing the Board of Regents for the first time in almost 40 years because, according to the TU, it objects to "an evaluation system that puts a lot more weight on how a given teacher’s students does [sic] on standardized tests." No doubt many teachers in the Albany district have reason to support their state union's lawsuit.

End of session

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.

The British perspective

Gay marriage is not yet legal in Britain, but an opinion column in the Guardian, the country's leading left-wing paper, declares: "New York must pass the same-sex marriage bill." Writer Hadley Freeman takes a passing shot at New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan's "homophobia" before summing up: "If a film director can be banned from Cannes for making a stupid joke about Hitler and a fashion designer can lose his job for drunkenly blathering about Nazism, then politicians and religious leaders who strive to ensure gay people live lives of inequality should face measures far more stringent." One wonders what those "measures far more stringent" than firing might be. Imprisonment, torture, stoning?

Another likely law

NYS passes complete streets legislation. A mandate I'm more inclined to defend.

Will Senate vote on gay marriage? (updated)

The emerging Big Ugly does not explicitly include a Senate vote on gay marriage, which does not necessarily mean that it won't happen. I just asked a couple of Republicansenators wandering through the Capitol hallways about the likelihood of Gov. Cuomo's Marriage Equality Act being allowed on the floor by Majority Leader Dean Skelso. "I don't know," said Sen, Cathy Young." "I have no idea," said Sen. Kemp Hannon. "We haven't conferenced it." When I objected that the Senate GOP has held conferences on the bill, he replied: "Not on that topic" -- i.e. whether to let it on the floor.

3:4 p.m. update: Sen. Joe Robach also says doesn't know if the marriage bill will reach the floor, but if it does it will be at the very end of session.

2nd update: Republican senators to conference at 4 p.m.

Two other bills likely to be laws

Two other bills passed by both houses in recent days: Restrictions on demonstrations at military funerals. While there are extremely few valid reasons to restrict political speech, the right to bury your son or daughter in peace is one.

Autism insurance reform. Looks like another well-meaning unfunded mandate driving up business costs in New York and giving companies another reason to drop health insurance for their employees.

 

 

Diaz watch

Democratic Sen. Ruben Diaz seems pessimistic about the chances of his Republican colleagues blocking gay marriage in New York, and given the current status of the Marriage Equality Act, lumped into secret end-of-session three-men-in-a-room negotiations on other topics including a property tax cap and NYC rent regulations, where the remaining question is for the Republican leader -- given the paucity of the GOP policy agenda -- What does Dean Skelos want?, Diaz is probably right to be gloomy. (The Big Ugly may be coming together, Liz Benjamin reports.)

But Diaz is finding time to blast his fellow Democrats "for protecting the rich," and has a legislative achievement to his credit: His prostitution bill that passed the Senate in May also passed the Assembly yesterday,although the press release from the Democratic majority in that house does not mention the bill's Senate status.

Kunstler against gay marriage bill

The nonconservative, nonreligious, brilliant writer on land use ("The Geography of Nowhere," "Home From Nowhere"), doom-mongering Saratoga resident Jim Kunstler in this morning's column opposes the Marriage Equality Act currently under consideration by the New York State Senate.

New York's rail stimulus still far from shovel-ready

The Obama and Cuomo administrations have, rightly, directed a considerable amount of federal stimulus dollars into eliminating bottlenecks and otherwise improving rail service. But, as this article from last week's Times Union points out, none of those projects has started in New York because of disputes between the state Department of Transportation and the CSX freight railroad about speed limits and other safety issues.

Scrolling down to the end: "New York state has received more than half a billion dollars in federal high-speed rail money for various projects, ranging from a second track to alleviate a bottleneck between Albany and Schenectady to a fourth track for the Rensselaer Amtrak station and new signals south of Rensselaer. But talks between CSX and the state DOT to allow these projects to proceed have apparently been deadlocked."

Deadlock does not put people to work or make the trains run on time. It would be useful for politicians to notice.

Milstein on track for confirmation (updated, confirmed)

Howard Milstein, Gov. Cuomo's nominee to head the Thruway Authority, looks headed for Senate confirmation. He was unanimously approved today by the transportation and finance committees. I was in the latter, where Milstein disputed the accuracy of this New York Times column which says his Emigrant Mortgage Company was a bad actor in the mortgage meltdown. No senator asked him about that, or about his apparently lousy record as a contributor to the economic health (rather the reverse) of Niagara Falls.

Update: Yup, they just confirmed him on the floor after scanty debate, apparently unanimously.