City & State Magazine, October 29, 2014

October 28, 2014

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NOVEMBER IS

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These are examples of the special events during CUNY Month at our 24 colleges, graduate and professional schools.

– Chancellor James B. Milliken

pen houses, admissions and financial aid workshops, sports tournaments, lectures, performances, book talks, and panel discussions—most of them free—with world-class faculty, high-achieving students and honored guests.

NOV. 6-NOV. 16

NOV. 9

A WAKE OR A WEDDING Baruch College Thurs-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 3 p.m. $30-$60

NOV. 11-NOV. 20

VETERANS DAY Exhibition College of Staten Island 2:30-4 p.m.

Free

NOV. 17

WRITING CENTER EVENT: ED HIRSCH Hunter College 7 p.m. Free

NOV. 11

JEFF MADRICK IN CONVERSATION WITH PAUL KRUGMAN The CUNY Graduate Center 6:30 p.m. Free

CUNY GRADUATE EDUCATION PROGRAMS FAIR Lehman College 2-6 p.m. Free

AUTHOR JEFFREY RENARD ALLEN with Leonard Lopate Queens College 7 p.m. $20 or CUNY Student ID

NOV. 13-DEC. 8

NOV. 14

NOV. 16

NOV. 16

THE FACES OF ISLAM Photography Exhibition LaGuardia Community College Free

FINANCING TERRORISM Juan Zarate John Jay College of Criminal Justice 3 p.m. Free

TEDxCUNY Macaulay Honors College 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Free

NOV. 18

NOV. 19

NOV. 20

CONSERVATORY GUITAR ENSEMBLE Brooklyn College 7 p.m. Free

FREEDOM SUMMER Film City College of NY 6 p.m. Free

HOSTOS REPERTORY COMPANY: YOUNG HOSTOS Hostos Community College 7 p.m. Free

NOV. 21

NOV. 21

JOHN LEGUIZAMO: “LATIN HISTORY FOR DUMMIES” College of Staten Island 8 p.m. $36, $30

CUNY GRADUATE STUDIES FAIR Hyatt Grand Central 2-7 p.m. Free

A CHRISTMAS CAROL Borough of Manhattan Community College 1:30 p.m. $25

NOV. 11

NATIONAL ACROBATICS OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA Lehman College 4 p.m. $45-$25, $10 for kids 12 and under

NOV. 20

NOV. 23

NOV. 10

WALTER MOSLEY UNBOUND AND UNRESTRICTED City College of NY 6:30 p.m. Free

THE VOCA PEOPLE Queensborough Community College 3 p.m. $35

NOV. 22

GOTTA DANCE! Kingsborough Community College 8 p.m. $30-$35

NOV. 24

CONTEMPO II Brooklyn College 7 p.m. Free

We Chose CUNY!

Fulbright Scholars Melody Mills, Macaulay Honors College at Baruch College and Prof. Daniel Di Salvo, City College

#cunymonth cuny.edu/cunymonth facebook.com/cunyedu CUNY TV-Channel 75

Great Colleges, Great Deals on Gear at theCUNYstore.com CUNY Month ad City & State.indd 1

10/27/14 12:34 PM

CONTENT S

October 28, 2014 UPFRONT

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CITY

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STATE

A look at some of the state’s lesser-known third-party candidates Why bother running as a Republican in New York City?

By Seth Barron Who botched the state’s implementation of teacher evaluations?

By Ashley Hupfl

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BUFFALO

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PUBLIC PROJECTS FORUM: A recap of City & State’s event

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Protests and wings overshadow gubernatorial debate

By Chris Thompson featuring Health and Hospitals Corporation President Ramanathan Raju, NYC Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler and state Department of Transportation Commissioner Joan McDonald

ON DIVERSITY: Inside City & State’s annual forum on minority-

and women-owned businesses

COVER STORY: ELECTION PREVIEW

25...... Making sense of the statewide races

By Ashley Hupfl

26...... The showdown for the State Senate

By Jon Lentz 30...... Five takeaways from the gubernatorial debate

By Michael Gareth Johnson

SPOTLIGHT: GREEN NEW YORK 32...... Whatever happened to wind power?

By Wilder Fleming

34...... Albany’s energy and environment chairmanships up in the air

By Ashley Hupfl

36...... The realities underlying de Blasio’s emissions reduction goal

By Wilder Fleming

37...... What’s in the water?

By Dan Tevlock

41......

AGENCY FOCUS: NYS Department of Health

A Q & A with Acting Commissioner Howard Zucker...Key issues and agency leaders...Analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission

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54......

SOMOS PREVIEW Politics of the Caribbean

By Gerson Borrero

61 Broadway, Suite 2825 New York, NY 10006 Editorial (212) 894-5417 General (646) 517-2740 Advertising (212) 284-9712 advertising@cityandstateny.com

CITY AND STATE, LLC Chairman Steve Farbman President/CEO Tom Allon tallon@cityandstateny.com

PUBLISHING Publisher Andrew A. Holt aholt@cityandstateny.com Vice President of Advertising Jim Katocin jkatocin@cityandstateny.com Chief of Staff Jasmin Freeman jfreeman@cityandstateny.com Business Development Scott Augustine saugustine@cityandstateny.com Director of Marketing Samantha Diliberti sdiliberti@cityandstateny.com Office Administrator Kyle Renwick krenwick@cityandstateny.com Distribution Czar Dylan Forsberg EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief Morgan Pehme mpehme@cityandstateny.com Managing Editor Michael Johnson mjohnson@cityandstateny.com Albany Bureau Chief Jon Lentz jlentz@cityandstateny.com Albany Reporter Ashley Hupfl ahupfl@cityandstateny.com Buffalo Reporter Chris Thompson cthompson@cityandstateny.com Policy Reporter Wilder Fleming wfleming@cityandstateny.com Associate Editor Helen Eisenbach Columnists Alexis Grenell, Nicole Gelinas, Michael Benjamin, Seth Barron, Jim Heaney, Gerson Borrero, Susan Arbetter PRODUCTION

The inside story of how the conference began

By Howard Jordan

Art Director Guillaume Federighi gfederighi@cityandstateny.com

Public Theater

Graphic Designer Michelle Yang myang@cityandstateny.com

A Q & A with actress Kathleen Chalfant

Marketing Graphic Designer Charles Flores, cflores@cityandstateny.com Web Manager Lydia Eck, leck@cityandstateny.com Illustrator Danilo Agutoli

cit yandstateny.com

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city & state — October 28, 2014

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WHAT, ME WORRY? T

city & state — October 28, 2014

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ruth be told, I’m a little worried about Ebola. Not because I have a hysterical fear of the contagion—from a rational standpoint I am far more concerned about getting hit by a car or dropping dead from overwork than

By Morgan Pehme Editor-in-Chief contracting the virus.

But as willing as I am to accept the expert opinions of medical practitioners who insist the possibility of an outbreak is remote, as an observer of New York government and how it operates, I nonetheless have difficulty stomaching the assurances of Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio that they have everything under control. That’s what happens when you have leaders who have consistently made it clear that their paramount objective in tackling a problem is to manage its optics, rather than to arrive at the optimal solution.

You see, my fear is that in focusing on projecting confidence and refusing to acknowledge error, they will make decisions for their own perceived political benefit that are not the best for the rest of us, as so often happens in government. The difference in this instance, however, is that whereas with most issues the poor choices of our officials take years (if not decades) to punish us, a crisis like Ebola allows no margin for error. It is immune to even the most impressive public posturing.

There is a reason I am genuinely apprehensive, as needlessly alarmist as it makes me feel to be so.

Over his first 10 months in office, Mayor de Blasio has often shown a desire to govern by press release. Unwilling to take off-topic questions or delve into nuance, the mayor seems to give more weight to the stagecraft of his pronouncements than to the degree to which their substance holds up to rigorous scrutiny.

He may have very well learned this approach from Gov. Cuomo. In the governor’s case, the overarching thrust of his administration over the last four years has been to rack up victories—a governing

philosophy that has proven a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it has assured that out of virtually every conflict, every conundrum, the governor has emerged with something to show for his involvement—an accomplishment he can point to as concrete evidence of his effectiveness as a chief executive.

This single-minded determination has made the governor remarkably productive, particularly in the context of an era characterized by partisan impasses and dysfunction. Yet the downside of this tack is that in order for Cuomo to always be able to declare himself a winner in the arena of governance—where most quandaries defy facile resolutions and the wisest course often leads not to the black and white certitude politicians crave but to an unsatisfying gray area—it has been necessary for the governor and his team to constantly redefine victory as whatever it was they were ultimately able to achieve. Thus, what constitutes success is no longer based upon a sober evaluation of what action the problem required, but a political calculation by the governor’s office of what it deemed doable. In this worldview, there is no room for dissent and no tolerance for loose ends: Once the governor declares a mission accomplished, it is accomplished and anything that hints at inadequacy or failure is ignored.

Cuomo’s handling of Ebola’s arrival in New York has already revealed some of the problems inherent in his approach to governing. His desire to dominate the discourse and awe the public with his command of the situation has led him to make bold pronouncements, and then dial them back as soon as the degree to which they were not adequately thought through has come to light. Rather than acknowledging error, however, the administration’s response has been to obfuscate, deny and spin—a mode that has far too often appeared to be its default when it finds itself on its heels.

De Blasio, by contrast, has handled these difficult circumstances far better. Exercising restraint, projecting calm and minimizing his movements to avoid missteps, he has conveyed the right balance of seriousness and comforting assurance. That being said, he has not been forced to make any really hard decisions yet, so it is too early to judge how he will react when faced with a hotter fire.

Fortunately for the moment the virus appears contained, though of course it would be foolhardy at

this early stage to breathe a sigh of relief. The bottom line is that no one knows how this crisis may develop, and it is precisely the fact that it is unknowable that makes it so difficult for politicians, who seek to win each news cycle, to determine how to deal with it.

It is my sincerest hope that my instincts are wrong, and that Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio will selflessly rise to this great challenge, instead of trying to angle for acclaim or point fingers away from themselves. As a parent supremely anxious about the world into which I have brought my child, I feel viscerally that even the cost of partial failure by our leaders is too horrible to contemplate.

Perhaps our greatest consolation should come from the understanding that both the governor and the mayor know all too well that their political futures are on the line here. Though, on the flipside, that may also be greatest reason to worry.

cit yandstateny.com

NYSNA: Caring for ALL New Yorkers

Here in New York City and throughout our state, nurses are uniting to improve care for our patients.

We’re working together to end healthcare inequality and to raise standards so that every New Yorker has access to quality care. Through our union, the New York State Nurses Association, we’re creating a better future for nurses and our patients:

Æ Safe RN Staffing. Having enough nurses at the bedside is key to safe patient care.

In our union contracts and in the legislature, we’re working to ensure that every patient has access to the care of a nurse whenever they need it.

Æ Community Voices. We believe that our communities should have a voice in decisions that

impact their access to care. Healthcare decisions should be based on community needs, not on the bottom line. That’s why we’re advocating to strengthen community voices in care.

Æ Quality Care for ALL. Every patient deserves equal access to quality care regardless of

income, borough, or insurance coverage. We’re working with fellow healthcare unions, patients, community leaders, and elected allies to stop the devastating tide of hospital cuts and closures in underserved communities.

www.nysna.org

nynurses

@nynurses

ALSO RUNNING

MOSTLY UNKNOWN THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATES AIM TO DEFY THE ODDS

By JEFF COLTIN

New York’s election rule allowing parties to cross-endorse candidates has long welcomed third parties to the ballot.

Look no further than Gov. Andrew Cuomo running not just as a Democrat but also on the Working Families, Women’s Equality and Independence party lines. But some candidates, by choice or fate, stand for election only on a third-party ballot line. City & State takes a look at some of these largely unknown aspiring elected officials.

STEVEN COHN

Sapient Party

Governor

The Long Island lawyer advocates for a flat tax and moving Election Day to the weekend. (Sapient, by the way, means wise.)

GEORGINA BOWMAN

Libertarian

NY Senate (District 5)

Suffolk County activist “Gigi” Bowman is campaigning against what she calls “corporatism” in food and medicine.

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ALLEN STEINHARDT

Allen 4 Congress Party

U.S. Congress (NY-5)

The building contractor gunning for Democrat Rep. Gregory Meeks’ seat criticizes how slowly assistance has come to the Superstorm Sandy-ravaged Rockaways.

SCOTT SMITH Send Mr. Smith Party

U.S. Congress (NY-18)

The Goshen teacher has been pushing hard to be included in debates between incumbent Democrat Sean Patrick Maloney and former GOP Rep. Nan Hayworth.

MICHAEL McDERMOTT

city & state — October 28, 2014

Libertarian Party Governor

Eliminate Common Core and stop penalizing the innocent by taking away gun rights, says the former Long Island real estate agent, who raised his profile with some colorful remarks at the recent gubernatorial debate in Buffalo, including calling on voters to “Google industrial hemp. ”

DANIEL CASTRICONE

United Monroe Party

NY Assembly (District 98)

The former Orange County legislator’s United Monroe Party is a response to a contentious annexation dispute between the villages of Monroe and Kiryas Joel.

CRYSTAL COLLINS

Independence Party

NY Senate (District 36)

The Mount Vernon healthcare manager fell to Ruth HasselThompson in the Democratic primary, but she is back with a new party for the general election. cit yandstateny.com

BUFFALO / WESTERN NEW YORK GUIDE Featuring a special New York - Canada Trade Report

Border Ports Bridges Panel

Consul General of Canada John Prato

Mayor Byron Brown

Border Mayor Panel

Brief: Building on the successful launch of its Buffalo bureau, City & State will publish its “Guide to Buffalo/Western New York,” a comprehensive look at the most pressing political and policy issues in Western New York, as well as a report on the important bilateral relationship between New York and Canada. The guide will be inserted into the November 17th print edition of City & State magazine featuring a comprehensive 2014 election preview.

Get your message in front of top New York and Canadian business and government officials with expanded retail distribution! For advertising information contact Andrew Holt at 212-894-5422 or aholt@cityandstateny.com.

Deadline for advertising is November 13th.

Featured Editorial:

Perspectives from Canadian Consul General of Canada in New York John Prato, Montréal Mayor Denis Corderre, U.S. Congressman Brian Higgins, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren, Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster, and other featured officials and personalities.

City & State’s Chris Thompson takes a tour of Buffalo with former Mayor Tony Masiello.

Op-eds from Congressman Chris Collins and Assemblyman Robin Schimminger.

Comprehensive coverage of City & State’s inaugural NY-Canada Summit: Including a deep dive on “The Peace Bridge” and border issues; development and tourism; NY and Canada border mayors’ perspectives on the bilateral relationship.

Increased Distribution of WNY and NY-Canada Guide:

Targeted distribution of the guide to high-traffic hotels, restaurants/bars, train stations and airports in downtown Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse Hand delivery to Buffalo, Syracuse and Rochester City Halls, and County Executive Offices Special first-class mailing to government business leaders in Western NY, Quebec and Ontario Custom E-Blast featuring digital version of guide will be sent to the over 25,000 opt-in City & State First Read subscribers

Special Advertising Rates: WNY and NY-Canada Guide (Specs = 7.5” X 9” 80LB Matte): Official Sponsor – $6,500 Logo on cover, back page advertisement, full page ad or sponsored content within, one week of sponsored content on www.cityandstateny.com.

Full Page Advertisement / Sponsored Content – $4,000 Half Page Advertisement / Sponsored Content – $2,500 Quarter Page Strip Advertisement – $1,500

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COUNCIL WATCH:

NOWHERE TO RUN

SETH BARRON

FEW REPUBLICANS BOTHER WAGING SERIOUS CAMPAIGNS IN DEMOCRAT-DOMINATED NYC

T

city & state — October 28, 2014

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he greatest predictor of electoral success in New York State is incumbency: According to Citizens Union, 97 percent of state legislators were re-elected in 2012. The numbers are even starker in New York City, where almost nobody ever loses. Getting elected to office is practically like a federal judgeship in terms of job security.

General Election Day in New York City, even for people who care about such things, is like a quaint pro forma commemoration of some half-forgotten civic ritual: like a colder version of Flag Day, except neighborhood senior citizens and party hacks are given $200 to fuss over scraps of paper.

The observance of Election Day in the five boroughs remains technically necessary, but increasingly resembles the democratic charade of the world’s totalitarian regimes. Part of the reason for the lopsided nature of our elections is that we are, more or less, a one-party city, save for Staten Island, where Republicans have not yet gone the way of the dinosaurs, as they have for the most part in the other four boroughs. The GOP lost its last Manhattan representatives a decade ago when Assemblyman John Ravitz and State Sen. Roy Goodman left office. There are no GOP elected officials in the Bronx, and the sole holdout in Brooklyn is state Sen. Marty Golden. Frank Padavan was the last Republican holdout in the state Legislature from Queens until he was unseated by Tony Avella in 2010. New York City Councilman Eric Ulrich, the lone GOP elected official from his borough, recently told NY1 that

Maureen Koetz is the Republicans’ long-shot candidate challenging Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

the “Republican Party is on the verge of extinction in Queens County,” where almost none of the incumbent Democratic legislators even have an opponent in the general.

Elsewhere in the city there are Republican challengers occupying ballot lines, but in most if not all cases theirs are essentially symbolic candidacies at best. For instance, Richard Gottfried, who has represented the Manhattan neighborhoods of Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen in the Assembly since 1970, is ostensibly being opposed by attorney Harry DeMell. DeMell has run for a variety of offices, including Nassau County legislator, New York city councilman, congressman and judge.

However, though he is listed on the ballot for this year’s election, his campaign finance committee shows no activity whatsoever, and DeMell did not return numerous calls for an interview.

The state Board of Elections candidate list is replete with these Republican cipher candidacies.

Who would have guessed that the Democratic Assembly nominee Charles Barron, who was term-limited out of the Council last year, is facing opposition from the GOP in the spectral form of Leroy R. Bates Sr.?

Or that perennial central Brooklyn Republican candidate Jonathan H. Anderson is contesting Martin Dilan’s Senate seat? Neither Bates nor Anderson has raised any money for their respective campaigns, and they have no campaign offices or Internet presence to speak of. So whether their candidacies are for the sake of vanity or protest, it is impossible to say.

But technically at least, democracy cit yandstateny.com

“I try to maintain my sense of humor. … It’s not the easiest thing to run as a Republican in Manhattan, especially against long-term incumbencies.”

“Coming out of federal service instead of the state system, I can recognize conflicts of interest plainly,” says Koetz, who argues that New York politicians are so mired in corruption that obvious violations go practically unnoticed. Citing the Speaker’s of-counsel work with the personal injury powerhouse law firm Weitz & Luxenberg as a blatant violation of Section 74 of the state’s Public Officers Law, Koetz elaborates, “You can’t profit from tort awards and be the person blocking tort reform.”

Koetz isn’t exactly measuring the drapes for her district office yet, but she notes that the lower Manhattan district in which she and Silver reside is going through significant demographic change. Young professional families have taken root in Battery Park City and the financial district, turning the area into a kind of “bedroom community” that could perhaps one day raise a Republican into office.

Further uptown, Nick Di iorio is making a vigorous run for U.S. Congress against 20-year veteran Rep. Carolyn

cit yandstateny.com

races that aren’t close, though it is hard to make the case that the media is to blame for the non-competitive nature of most of these general election campaigns.

Dick Dadey, the executive director of the good-government watchdog group Citizens Union, notes, “There are rare instances where incumbency does not protect even bad candidates.”

Even indictment often can’t trump the power of incumbency, as evidenced by state Sen. John Sampson’s victory in the recent Democratic primary, despite the fact that he is currently facing two separate indictments. With other indicted pols like Assemblyman William Scarborough—and perhaps Rep. Michael Grimm—also on the brink of re-election, it makes all but the most jaded of observers wonder whether there is any way to fix such a dysfunctional system.

Seth Barron (@NYCCouncil Watch on Twitter) runs City Council Watch, an investigative website focusing on local New York City politics.

THE ENGINEERS REPORT

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Maloney. Di iorio, a 28-year-old Fordham graduate from Rhode Island, is banking on endorsements from the Republican, Conservative and Independence parties, as well as “the Libertarian Party of Queens,” to catapult him past Maloney, whom he characterizes as “the most ineffective member of the national Legislature.”

Di iorio considers it an insult to the people of the 12th Congressional District that Maloney will not debate him, and that “she is not even running a campaign.” Di iorio claims, “Nobody ever sees Carolyn—she is taking the election for granted”—which, even if true, is not all that unreasonable considering that when Reshma Saujani amassed an impressive $1.3 million four years ago to wage a high-profile challenge of Maloney in the Democratic primary, the popular congresswoman crushed her, garnering 81 percent of the vote. Still, Di iorio harps on the fact that the media has given his campaign hardly any coverage, and thus in his mind is complicit in Maloney being able to get away with assuming victory.

Indeed, we don’t hear a lot about the

Local 15, Building a Great City and Better Communities

Thomas Callahan

President and Business Manager IUOE Local 15 A, B, C, and D. Building this City is what we do. As President and Business Manager of the 5,000 member Local 15, A, B, C and D, our business is jobs. Whether it is above the ground or below it, on a tower crane or in the tunnels, the members of Local 15 work side by side with the other Building Tradesmen to build soundly… to build safely… to build UNION.

Founded in 1936 and still going strong today, Local 15 builds the highways, the bridges, the tunnels, the skyscrapers, housing, schools, airports and subways, just to name a few. We build, we rebuild and we renovate. In essence, we are the infrastructure and foundation of this great City.

For nearly 80 years the skilled, trained, certified and licensed members of Local 15 have helped to build and transform New York.

Cities just don’t happen. They require the creative, skilled hands of engineers and craftsmen nurtured and mentored through education, experience and hands-on training. Our union has been providing that mentoring and training through our Apprenticeship and Training Programs.

Through these programs our members, the majority of which come from the tri-state area and include returning veterans through the “Helmets to Hardhats” Program, are provided the skills that ensure our city and its infrastructure are built to last.

Working within both the public and private sectors, our members are the operators and maintenance engineers of heavy construction equipment, the welders, the survey engineers and the shop mechanics. In addition, members of Local 15 hold hundreds of Municipal and Port Authority titles in the Departments of Transportation, Sanitation, Corrections, Environmental Protection, as well the Police and Fire Departments.

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Throughout the five boroughs our members excavate, build, weld and maintain.

We work alongside Con Edison on utility projects and are constantly keeping up with the latest technology such as the training on gas pipe fusion.

In lower Manhattan, we have helped to rebuild the World Trade Center and Fulton Plaza. Our members are working on the Bayonne and Goethals Bridges as well as below ground on the East Side Access and adding an additional subway tunnel on Second Avenue.

On Staten Island, we are widening the expressway and installing a new water siphon from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to St. George.

In Long Island City and on Roosevelt Island, new neighborhoods are being built.

Our local airports are being upgraded and a new training facility for the NYPD is almost completed.

All of these projects and many more, ensure that the infrastructure in your back yard is being done by the skilled men and women of this Local Union and not by untrained, inexperienced labor.

With the ever changing environment in the construction industry, our goals may have changed over the years. However, our commitment to excellence in the quality of craftsmanship provided by our members, remains the same.

city & state — October 28, 2014

flourishes in Brooklyn.

There are a few Republican candidates around the city who, despite rather long odds, are making a game effort at running. Maureen Koetz, a former assistant secretary for installations, environment and logistics for the Air Force, fills the Republican line in New York’s 65th AD, otherwise known as the home district of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who is known as a formidable campaigner, and who is still a force to be reckoned with in Albany despite his troubles in recent years.

Koetz, an amiable technocrat originally from Queens who served her country as a Navy JAG officer, acknowledges that she faces a tough road to victory. “I try to maintain my sense of humor. … It’s not the easiest thing to run as a Republican in Manhattan, especially against longterm incumbencies,” she allows.

Asked why she is bothering to run such an uphill campaign to unseat the Speaker, Koetz points to what she believes is “extreme” corruption on Silver’s part.

S TAT E

CRUNCH TIME

WHO BOTCHED THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TEACHER EVALUATIONS IN NEW YORK?

By ASHLEY HUPFL

city & state — October 28, 2014

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JUDY SANDERS/OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR

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egotiations between Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers to tweak the state’s new teacher evaluation system continued into the final hours of the 2014 legislative session.

A few days before an agreement was reached, Cuomo blamed state education officials, including New York State Education Department Commissioner John King, for the ongoing problems with the teacher evaluations.

“In truth, the reason we’re in this situation is because the Board of Regents and Mr. King didn’t handle it,” Cuomo said at a June press conference in Albany.

“That’s how we got here. These are problems that have developed because of the improper rollout of Common Core, in my opinion. We addressed the issues with the students, and now we’re trying to address the issues with the teachers.”

State education officials have acknowledged that they failed to properly inform and engage parents about the changes to the state’s curriculum. But education insiders and advocates say it was Cuomo who pressured NYSED and the state Board of Regents to implement the teacher evaluations right away, despite calls from activists and state legislators to take a slower approach. The governor’s push to quickly launch new teacher evaluations, these sources said, directly contributed to problems that later emerged.

“There was tremendous pressure from the governor’s office to have it all done immediately across the board, to the point where they put it in their budget recommendation that you would lose your school aid increase,” said an education advocate who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering the governor. “So in that sense, you had a gun to your head to implement this immediately, or you would suffer loss of aid—whether you were ready or not.”

The new evaluations exacerbated the stress and confusion of parents and

Gov. Andrew Cuomo at the launch of the New NY Education Reform Commission in 2012. teachers as they tried to adjust to the major education overhaul. Teachers worried that in addition to having to learn a completely new curriculum and introduce it to their students, their job security depended on their students’ performance on the Common Core-aligned tests—fears that were heightened when only about 30 percent of students passed the English Language Arts exam in 2013, the first year of testing.

On Oct. 22, in the only televised debate of the 2014 gubernatorial race, Cuomo echoed these concerns, saying that new Common Core testing was “chaotic, it’s caused anxiety, it’s caused stress, there’s too much testing, too little learning.”

“Common Core is established by the Board of Regents, which is established by the Legislature. I don’t appoint anyone to the Board of Regents. I had absolutely nothing to do with it,” the governor said.

“The only thing I did do with Common Core was I stopped the grading of Common Core.”

But critics argue that the decision to speed forward on implementing both teacher evaluations and new Common Core standards—each top Cuomo priorities—made it harder for either initiative to succeed.

“There’s no question that the governor is the person who has pushed the teacher evaluation system, rammed it down our schools, despite the fact that everyone knew it was dramatically flawed from the moment he started pushing it through,” said Billy Easton, executive director for the Alliance for Quality Education.

The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2009, under former Gov. David Paterson, New York became one of the first states to voluntarily adopt the Common Core standards, in

order to qualify for $696.6 million in federal funding through the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program. To receive funding, states also had to agree to implement a full teacher evaluation system tied to the Common Core state tests.

When he entered office in 2011, Cuomo was a big proponent of teacher evaluations tied to the Common Core standards. For New York and other states that opted into Race to the Top in the first two rounds, the federal government required a “pilot” teacher evaluation program during the 2013–14 school year, and full implementation, with teacher evaluations tied to the Common Core-aligned tests, in the 2014–15 school year.

New York, which opted to skip over doing a pilot program, began a fullfledged teacher evaluation system during the 2012–13 school year, well ahead of the federal schedule. cit yandstateny.com

S TAT E But as early as 2011, education advocates in New York and state legislators had urged the governor to delay the teacher evaluations, and warned that moving too quickly would create problems with the Common Core standards and the teacher evaluation system. At the time groups such as the New York State School Boards Association, New York State United Teachers and the New York State Council of School Superintendents pushed for at least a one-year delay.

“Going on at the same time you had the rollout—going on faster and earlier than virtually any other state, with the exception of Kentucky—of the Common Core,” the education advocate said. “So not only do you have a rush to implement an unproven evaluation system, but you’re shoehorning a massive and unprecedented overhaul of curriculum and testing.”

Some critics also argued that Cuomo further aggravated the problems by tying the adoption of teacher evaluations at the local level to state and federal education funding.

Although most school districts

complied by instituting teacher evaluations, a few did not. When the Bloomberg administration and the New York City teachers’ union, UFT, failed to reach a deal on a new teacher evaluation system in January 2013, city schools lost about $450 million in state and federal aid.

A month later, in February of 2013, 19 state lawmakers sent a letter to the governor urging him to postpone the teacher evaluation system. “The use of an assessment system based on unproven methods of determining teacher effectiveness is a mistake with potentially disastrous implications,” Assemblyman James Brennan, a Democrat from Brooklyn, said in a statement. “While I share the governor’s commitment to increased accountability in our school system, it is absolutely essential that any review process that determines the employment and compensation of any individual be shown to be accurate and reliable.”

While New York initially chose to move quickly, the federal government has gone in the other direction by allowing flexibility in meeting its requirements. The U.S. Department

of Education has issued letters to states warning that delaying teacher evaluations too long could result in the revocation of Race to the Top dollars, but it wasn’t until last April that Washington became the first state to lose funding for failing to set up teacher evaluations tied to Common Core-aligned state tests.

After many states faced similar struggles, the federal government offered a waiver in June of 2013 to provide states latitude in using student achievement to evaluate teachers. Since then, about 15 states—including New York—have sought at least a one-year delay for employing student scores as a factor in teacher evaluations.

As part of the state budget this year, Cuomo and legislators agreed that new Common Core-aligned tests would not be used until 2022 as a determinant in whether a student passes or fails. At the end of the 2014 legislative session, a compromise was reached that delays for two years the impact of students’ test scores on evaluations for the lowestperforming teachers. The adjustments came after the widespread outcry that followed a dramatic drop in scores in the

first round of Common Core tests.

“The governor wants to own the teacher evaluation system whenever he’s trying to burnish his credentials by saying he’s done something historic,” Easton said. “But it’s full of problems, and he doesn’t want to own any of those problems.”

Earlier this month Cuomo said that despite the recent modifications the current teacher evaluations will again need to be revised next year. The 2012–13 teacher evaluations released in August rated 94 percent of teachers as either “effective” or “highly effective,” while only 31 percent of students statewide grades 3–8 were proficient in English Language Arts and math, based on state tests. Cuomo has said more needs to be done to make the evaluations “meaningful and strong and relevant.”

But now, as he runs for re-election, Cuomo has embraced a slower pace.

While he remains a strong proponent for accountability and the teacher evaluation system, in a recent campaign ad Cuomo says he wants to “disregard student test scores for at least five years … and then only if our children are ready.”

Have you heard?

11

Financial Backbone of Communities Insurance provides New Yorkers with financial security and enables people to live life to the fullest. People would not be able to own a home, drive a car or start a business without insurance. In 2012 alone property and casualty companies paid $32.4 billion in claims.

Economic Driver The industry is a major contributor to New York’s economy contributing $41.6 billion to the gross state product (GSP) in 2011, accounting for 3.6 percent of the GSP. In 2012, the industry provided 190,027 jobs in New York, paid premium taxes totaling $1.3 billion, and held more than $19.3 billion in municipal bonds.

KNOw BETTEr NEw yOrK CONNECTiONs

www.nyia.org

cit yandstateny.com

city & state — October 28, 2014

Giving Back Insurance companies and agents are dedicated to serving their communities. The industry donates financially to a myriad of worthy causes with just one example of these efforts being the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation providing more than $21 million in community grants. Even more importantly, employees dedicate their time to help those in need—whether it’s Meals on Wheels, flood recovery efforts, building a playground or encouraging greater safety—the industry is always looking to make a difference.

B U F FA LO

SHOW OUTSIDE THE SHOW WESTERN NEW YORKERS REACT TO THE GUBERNATORIAL DEBATE HELD IN THEIR BACKYARD

By CHRIS THOMPSON

T

city & state — October 28, 2014

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he sky was black, and the air was acquiring that Buffalo winter chill outside the studio of public television station WNED, where incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his opponents, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins and Libertarian Party nominee Mike McDermott, squared off in their one and only debate this season. But dozens of protesters from all ends of the political spectrum gamely soldiered on, waving banners and signs long after all the candidates, reporters and aides had entered the building.

The most tenacious group was the anti-fracking nonprofit Food & Water Watch, whose 65 activists on hand milled about and shouted slogans to any car that drove by. Some hefted signs that declared, “Water=life” and “Frack is whack.” Unlike the more than 30 other states that have approved the controversial natural gas extraction process, New York State officials have put off the decision whether to greenlight fracking until the state Health Department concludes a long-running study of the process’ possible health and environmental consequences, which Cuomo said during the debate would finally be completed in the next three months.

Nonetheless, the local members of Food & Water Watch weren’t content to passively sit back and wait for the report. “The governor has not taken a stance one way or another, so that’s why we’re here,” said Rita Yelda, Food & Water Watch’s Western New York regional organizer, adding that Buffalo had banned fracking within its city limits. “To show him that everywhere he goes in the state, people opposed to fracking will be there.”

Just 20 feet away, a decidedly different group of protesters lingered against the police barricades erected in front of the studio’s plaza. A loose affiliation of Tea Party supporters waved “Don’t Tread on Me” flags

Gov. Andrew Cuomo angled the race’s sole debate to take place in Buffalo, a region of the state he has worked hard to win over. and signs displaying an image of “The Governor,” a villain from the television show The Walking Dead, along with the caption, “I trust this governor more than Cuomo.”

“It’s everything—the SAFE Act, Common Core, releasing pedophiles into the community, you name it,” said Jim Fisher, who designed and waved the sign along with a T-shirt that bore the image of a minuteman and the phrase “Standing guard for American liberty.” His fellow protester Dawn Fisher was an even more fervent Astorino supporter. “I don’t think Cuomo’s doing anything right by any child in this state—born or unborn,” said Fisher, who was garbed in camouflage pants and boots.

“The Buffalo Billion is a farce! … I’d take my dog over Cuomo.”

It was a far different scene just a few blocks away at Buffalo’s famous Pearl Street Grill & Brewery, where more than 300 of Western New York’s most influential Democrats were nice and warm, watching the debate and chatting between glasses of wine and dishes of pizza, cheese cubes and fruit.

Earlier, more than 110 members of the Carpenters Union Local 276 had rallied outside WNED, hollering their support for Cuomo. Now they were throwing back Jack Daniels on the rocks and waiting for the governor

to wrap up the debate and make an appearance.

“We’re here to support Cuomo for all the construction,” said Daryl Bodewes, who also sits on the Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters. “The Buffalo Billion, the medical corridor—that’s a lot of good jobs.”

“Local labor supports those that support us,” added fellow carpenter Bill Bing. “And we showed that in force tonight!”

In truth, no one paid much attention to the debate—the revelers at the restaurant were too confident in Cuomo’s re-election and too busy drinking. Only a fraction of the crowd sat in the chairs set up for the purpose of watching the debate on the big screen. One of those viewers was Lynn Dearmyer, a member of the Cheektowaga Democratic Committee who unsuccessfully ran for the Erie County Legislature last year. But not even she could sit still after a while.

“Astorino is delusional!” she shouted shortly after the challenger criticized Cuomo’s “radical” abortion views. “Having choice for women is not only important for women but important to the economy. … I literally screamed at the television and walked away.

And everybody clapped when I did.”

When the debate ended and the

flatscreens went dark, the crowd prepared for the governor to show up.

The sound crew checked the levels on the speakers, and 300 people began moving toward the stage, which was cordoned off by a red velvet rope. The governor’s aides began moving back and forth and muttering to themselves, bracing for the moment when Cuomo would emerge from the back of the tavern. Five minutes passed. Then 10, 15, 20 minutes.

Finally the moment arrived. A who’s who of Western New York’s most important Democrats marched onto the stage: Erie County Executive Mark Polancarz, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes, State Sen. Tim Kennedy, Erie County Democratic Committee Chair Jeremy Zellner and Cuomo’s running mate for lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul, who warmed up the crowd. “It wasn’t really a fair fight!” Hochul shouted. “But it felt as good as getting the Buffalo Billion!”

Cuomo took the stage to cheers and flashbulbs. He glad-handed the local pols assembled behind him, but stayed back from the crowd. Finally, turning to his supporters, he had a few words to say. “Let me tell you why I wanted to do this debate in Buffalo,” he said. “It is so clear that Buffalo is on the right track. … The jobs are coming back, the people are coming back. …

Buffalo’s got its mojo back!”

With that and two or three more minutes of remarks, the event was oddly, awkwardly over. Cuomo turned around and went back the way he came, followed by everyone except Zellner, who stuck around to schmooze a bit. The bar was still open, but most people filed out in short order. Some of the union guys giggled as they piled into a truck parked across the street, which was emblazoned with a flashing neon “Cuomo 2014” sign.

And over the public address system, someone announced, “Marvin, I’ve got your wings at the bar.” cit yandstateny.com

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2014 BRIEF:

City & State convenes leaders in State and City government to discuss the tech trajectory of New York City.

THEMES

• Tech Town: How is New York City using technology and data for large scale projects such as Universal Pre-K, Municipal Identification, and large public construction projects managed by city entities and agencies?

• Wired NYC: How is Mayor de Blasio and his administration working to enhance access to high speed internet across the five boroughs?

AGENDA

8:00am Registration and Breakfast 8:45am Opening Remarks by City & State and Co-Hosting Sponsor Representative 9:00am City & State interviews Counsel to Mayor Maya Wiley 9:45am City & State moderates a panel of leaders in government and business on the most pressing issues facing NYC’s tech community.

INVITED PANELISTS: Rachel Haot, Chief Digital Officer, New York State Eileen Cleary, Acting Director, NYC Technology Development Corporation* Minerva Tantoco, Chief Technology Officer, New York City* More Panelists TBA 10:30am City & State’s Policy Reporter Wilder Fleming interviews NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications Commissioner Anne Roest* on DoITT’s work to better coordinate agencies, and how those data sets will be used to enhance City services. * Confirmation Pending For more information on programming and sponsorship contact Jasmin Freeman at 646.442.1662 or Jfreeman@CityandStateNY.com

CITY & STATE’S PUBLIC PROJECTS FORUM

MICHAEL JOHNSON

city & state — October 28, 2014

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ew York’s construction landscape is shifting. State and New York City agencies are investing more in infrastructure projects, leading to more Request for Proposals that call for efficient plans utilizing cutting- edge technologies. On Sept. 30, City & State hosted a Public Projects Forum, co-sponsored by Parsons and IBM, at which three agency heads were interviewed one-on-one about their current and forthcoming projects.

cit yandstateny.com

TAKEAWAYS FROM A DISCUSSION WITH NYC DEPARTMENT OF BUILDINGS COMMISSIONER RICK CHANDLER

By WILDER FLEMING

I

n July Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed Rick Chandler as his Department of Buildings commissioner, charging him to change the agency’s “culture” to be more “customer-friendly” and “efficient.”

Chandler has the credentials: He worked for the DoB between 1987 and 2002, serving at different times as a deputy commissioner in every borough except Staten Island. But the job is notoriously challenging, a relentless balancing act between ensuring that the industry is building safely and up to code while also keeping the path clear for development.

And with the New York Building Congress projecting an unprecedented $37 billion in construction spending in 2015, navigating those channels will be all the more difficult. Perhaps that is why several top candidates reportedly turned de Blasio down before Chandler accepted the position.

Last month City & State hosted Chandler at its Public Projects Forum, where he discussed these challenges and his goals for the department.

“Everyone has a DoB horror story,” said Chandler, who has also worked for the city’s Department of Homeless Services, as well as serving as an assistant vice president for facilities at Hunter College. “It’s about safety first, and after that, it’s about customer service. … It’s not lost on me or my executive staff that if a permit is not issued, there are people in the background waiting. You don’t get to a point of filing an application with cit yandstateny.com

us, in most cases, until there’s been an awful lot of activity behind that. ... It absolutely affects the economy of this city, and it absolutely affects the small businesses, which are very important to this mayor.”

Not only is the agency working to increase staff in the areas perceived to need them most—and to fill positions vacated by those who found private sector wages too tempting— it is also looking to harness modern technologies (some new, others not so much) in the effort to make the building application process smoother and more transparent for developers.

All electronic filings are now processed through the so-called NYC Development Hub in lower Manhattan.

Electronic filings are nothing new, but the agency is still working to expand its capacity to accept drawings and provide feedback virtually.

The DoB is also working on a program to bring tablets to both its development inspection and enforcement divisions.

“We are in the process of working with a company in order to allow us to assign our inspectors in the field and get them to the places they need to be,” Chandler said. “They’re going to be GPS-located at all times, and they’ll have all the forms they need on their computer when they need them, as they go to an inspection—whether it be a site-safety inspection to look at a construction site, or whether they need to take a look at a sign-off for a townhome that’s being renovated so

Black car ownership and operation is an entry into the American Dream of owning your own business and providing for your family. Most drivers are recent immigrants who are first-time small business owners. These more than 19,000 business owners and drivers navigate nearly 200 miles of New York City streets every day.

Whether transporting a family to the airport for a vacation, or making sure that a corporate client makes it to that crucial meeting on time, these men and women are among the safest motorists on the road. Yet, even the best of drivers may eventually get into an accident. That’s when the Black Car Fund steps in to provide full workers’ compensation for them and their families.

The Black Car Fund was created by New York State law in 1999 to provide workers’ compensation insurance to black car operators at no cost to the state, the base operators or the drivers. The Fund has grown to where it is now self-funded and self-administered which enables us to truly look out for the best interests of the drivers. The Fund derives income to provide workers’ compensation insurance from a 2.5% surcharge which is billed and collected by member company bases from their clients and then remitted to the fund. Companies are mandated to become members of The Black Car Fund if they do not own 50% or more of their vehicles and 90% or more of their business is conducted on a non-cash basis.

While the law applies statewide, over 95% of the covered drivers are located in the metropolitan area. Under the progressive and thoughtful direction of its Board of Directors comprised of industry- appointed leaders and appointees by the Governor and other elected leaders, the Black Car Fund has enhanced the benefits it provides for its drivers within its legislative mandate.

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Many years before Vision Zero, the Black Car Fund funded an enhanced driver safety and defensive driver courses to its drivers. The Black Car Fund not only funds the complete cost of the Black Car Safety Institute but even pays affiliated drivers of Fund members $300 to attend the course. This program serves to not only encourage our drivers to remain focused on safety, it ensures they meet the Taxi and Limousine Commission regulated drivers must undergo a safety and defensive driver course every three years to retain their license.

In recent years, under the leadership of Executive Director Ira Goldstein, the Fund has used technology to improve the services that it provides to its member bases and affiliated drivers. The Fund has completely revamped its website to provide more useful and timely information to bases and drivers. http://www.newyorkblackcarfund.org/ The Fund endeavored to ensure all eligible drivers know about their benefits by initiating an aggressive outreach program. The Fund has also launched its own “app” to enable drivers to report a claim as quickly as possible and ensure that the driver is getting medical treatment as soon as possible.

Yes, the Black Car Fund was created to provide workers’ compensation to a class of workers who needed its protections. More and more we serve as a resource and as an advocate for our drivers. We promote safety, common sense regulation and legislation from the City and State for this important industry that is part and parcel of the transportation framework of this great State.

city & state — October 28, 2014

DECODING THE DoB

BLACK CARS – ROAD TO THE AMERICAN DREAM

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that it can be occupied next week.”

Chandler acknowledges that collaborators on a project often lack access to the full scope of information, which can turn a bureaucratic holdup into an exasperating mystery. He anticipates that an app developed as part of the tablet program will help clear up the process.

“It will allow for design professionals, construction professionals and managers, filing representatives and building owners to communicate with us to say, ‘Hey, I’d like to have an inspection; can you tell me when I can get one?’ And our system is expected—and I’m sure we’ll have a few glitches at first; we’re going through some testing now—to give you that real-time information,” Chandler said. “When our inspector makes a comment, or has any kind of feedback about having made his or her visit, their comments will then be fed out to all the stakeholders.”

“Particularly if you’re a small business owner, a restaurateur, you’re investing an enormous amount of money in order to get your restaurant up. You need the cash flow. … [You’re thinking,] ‘The place looks great! Why can’t I open?’ So you have some things that need to get signed off on, but you’re only getting part of the information.

What this system will allow us—or what we think it will allow—is for

NYC Department of Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler is a veteran of the agency.

every person that has a stake in that, especially the restaurateur in this case, to hear what’s happening.”

As with other city agencies such as the NYPD, the Buildings Department is taking advantage of a flood of new available data to identify trends in the application process, which allows staff to better identify problem applicants and other patterns of behavior.

The department will also be helping the mayor with his vision to reduce the

city’s greenhouse emissions 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. Plans involve pouring more resources into auditing energy efficiency compliance in the planning stages and in the field. And a new innovation review board will encourage entrepreneurs to submit new technologies and building materials for evaluation. If they are clearly energy-efficient and pose no danger to the building code, they could well be approved for use.

“If any of you have attempted to write legislation, particularly if it’s related to code, you simply cannot write it for every scenario,” Chandler said. “I know I’ve tried and been very, very frustrated—and so what that means as a design professional is you’re trying to design something and you’re looking at the code, and it simply doesn’t quite match.”

Recent audits by the department have found that nine out of 10 plans for new and renovated office and residential buildings fail to meet the standards of the international conservation energy code, which is part of New York City’s model code system. So far written warnings have been issued to developers, but Chandler says that starting in 2015 the department will begin handing down notices of violation that carry fines.

“We’re in a different era now,” Chandler said. “This is somewhat new to our examiners, and it’s quite new to a lot of the design professionals that are out there. So our system has become somewhat of a de facto educational system for a lot of the design community. … We have to raise objections, and we have to then go over those issues ... and what we’re finding, slowly, slowly, is that the next sets of plans coming in over time are higher and higher quality. … We just have to help the community get there.”

RACING THE SUNSET NYS DOT COMMISH MCDONALD: “DISGRACE” IF DESIGN-BUILD LAW LAPSES

city & state — October 28, 2014

By JON LENTZ

I

t’s still unclear where all of the funding will come from to pay for a new Tappan Zee Bridge, but officials overseeing the project have touted an estimated $1.5 billion in savings thanks to the state’s designbuild law.

But after state lawmakers failed to renew design-build legislation earlier this year, the law is set to expire at

the end of December—and state officials are worried that they will lose a valuable cost-saving tool for road and bridge projects across New York.

“I think it has been a real benefit to the department, a real benefit for the state, and I think it would be a disgrace if it doesn’t get passed,” state New York State Department of Transportation Commissioner Joan

McDonald said at City & State’s Public Projects Forum on Sept. 30.

Before New York passed a designbuild bill in the waning days of 2011, 41 other states already had similar legislation in place. At the time, the design and construction of projects overseen by the state DOT had to be bid out separately. After the state design-build law was enacted, a

contractor could submit a single bid for both the design and construction of designated projects, potentially cutting costs, saving time and spurring innovation.

The law authorized several other state agencies to use design-build, too, including the New York State Thruway Authority, which is overseeing the Tappan Zee Bridge. At the state cit yandstateny.com

NYS DOT Commissioner Joan McDonald said that design-build has helped expedite major transportation projects.

DOT, nine design-build projects have already been awarded, ranging from $15 million to the record-setting $555 million for a new Kosciuszko Bridge connecting Brooklyn and Queens. Another nine are in the works, and four additional projects are

under consideration.

McDonald said that the legislation has helped expedite major transportation projects, which was especially helpful in 2012 when the construction industry was still reeling from the recession.

“In addition to bringing innovation and creativity to the projects and to the industry, it’s held both the department and the industry more accountable,” she said. “When you use best value, which is how you look at a design-build project, it’s not just low bid. It’s price, plus schedule, innovative means and methods— and now what I’m hearing from the contractors is they are looking at how they put their bids and proposals in in a much more thoughtful way.”

Despite these positives, an extension of the legislation was held up this past spring. The renewal would have required that all major design-build projects rely on project labor agreements, which generally result in contractors using union labor. However, upstate developers were concerned about the costs, and the bill stalled.

McDonald said that her department currently determines whether a project labor agreement

will be cost-effective as part of a due diligence study, and that some projects have them while others do not.

“We come up with an assessment of what the potential savings are if a project-labor agreement is included, and if it is a real benefit to the state, we include a PLA, and if it is not, we don’t,” she said. “We have used both.

There is a project labor agreement on the Kosciuszko Bridge, there is one on the Rochester intermodal station upstate, there will be one on the I-390 project in Rochester, but there is not one on the I-190 project in Buffalo.

Depending on what the due diligence shows us, I make a determination and move that forward.”

But with the clock ticking, is the Department of Transportation rushing to get projects moving before the design-build law sunsets?

“That’s why we have nine in the works, and four that we are looking at right now,” McDonald said.

INSURING THE UNINSURABLE

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NYC HHC PRESIDENT RAJU ON HEALTHCARE IN AN ERA OF GREAT CHANGE

ON PREVENTATIVE CARE “One way or another, the taxpayers of this country pay for [healthcare].

That’s why I believe the city, state and federal government need to take that into consideration and fund certain [preventative care] areas so we have a structurally sustainable system.”

ON COST CUTTING “We have to really make our workforce more productive. If a nurse cit yandstateny.com

or a doctor is going to be wasting time and doing non-doctoral, non-nursing functions, that is a loss of productivity … so what we have done is taken the Toyota production system. Basically it is an employee empowerment system to be more productive … where the frontline people come out and say, ‘This is a way we can improve.’ … Cost cutting simply means making your people work more effectively.”

ON TECHNOLOGY “We are all living longer. As a baby boomer I can tell you that I have no interest in dying. I will probably live until I am 95, 98. I will exact every dollar of Medicare from you before I eventually die. … So how can we take care of a large number of people with a limited capacity? It is the telemedicine, the tele-radiology, teleconsults; that is one area that I am

extremely excited about. We have really done [this] for diabetes patients in the past and found it to be very effective. Technology is going to be

very helpful in getting those areas where we are able to reach more people through technology as opposed to traveling from place to place.”

NYC HHC President Ramanathan Raju said increasing productivity is the key to cutting healthcare costs.

city & state — October 28, 2014

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ew York City Health and Hospital Corporation President and Executive Director Ramanathan Raju discussed the changing delivery method for healthcare in the city and the impact the Affordable Care Act is having on New York’s hospitals at City & State’s Public Projects Forum. The following are some highlights from the onstage interview.

AARON ADLER

ON DIVERSITY

F

ive years ago, Minority/Women Owned-Businesses were paid little attention to by New York’s government. State and city officials had modest programs with no goals for allocating contracts and the idea of a chief diversity officer was foreign. But over the past few years M/WBEs have leapt forward in their importance to lawmakers. Landmark legislation has been passed and promises have been made to give more government contracts to M/WBEs. Still, at City & State’s annual On Diversity forum on Oct. 21, which was co-sponsored by BTEA, Verizon, Bradford Construction, the MTA, WDF Inc. and Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan, advocates argued that much more needs to be done to support these businesses. The following section is a recap of that event.

city & state — October 28, 2014

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cit yandstateny.com

BELOW GRADE

COMPTROLLER: LACKLUSTER M/WBE FIGURES AN INCOME INEQUALITY ISSUE

By JON LENTZ

W

omen and minority business owners in New York have been gaining ground on their white male counterparts lately, with a quarter of state government contracts now going to their companies and Gov. Andrew Cuomo setting a new goal this month of awarding 30 percent of all state contracts to minority- or women-owned business enterprises (M/WBEs).

New York City, meanwhile, has been languishing in the single digits,

with just 3.9 percent of city contracts going to M/WBEs in the latest fiscal year.

“I’m a city elected official—you never want to follow the state,” New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer quipped at City & State’s On Diversity conference on Oct. 21, referring to the state’s superior performance in meeting its M/WBE procurement goals. “But if they’re at 30 [percent], and we’re at 3.9—you know what I’m saying?”

The stark disparity between the

M/WBE contracting rates at the city and state levels came up repeatedly during the annual gathering.

Stringer released a report card this month giving the city an overall D grade on M/WBE contracting, noting that his own office only earned a C. But he touted additional steps he has taken to boost M/WBEs, including creating the role of chief diversity officer. And while he declined to assign blame for the city’s lackluster figures to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio or Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio’s

predecessor, Stringer made a point of portraying his own efforts through the lens of income inequality—a top de Blasio priority.

“The more we spend with M/WBEs, the more these firms will hire locally, they will be in other, different communities, and we’ll begin to equalize the disparity in income,” Stringer said. “It starts with growing small businesses that will end up hiring locally—that is what’s at stake.”

“So if we’re going to end income inequality, talk is cheap,” he

city & state — October 28, 2014

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cit yandstateny.com

AARON ADLER

NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer graded the city’s M/WBE procurement performance harshly, even giving his own office a C.

city & state — October 28, 2014

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Louis J. Coletti President & CEO

concluded.

Maria Torres-Springer, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Small Business Services, which oversees the city’s M/WBE program, defended de Blasio’s M/WBE record, emphasizing that the mayor has only been in office for less than a year.

During another panel discussion, she cited de Blasio’s focus on combating inequality and touted the city’s M/WBE team, headed by the mayor’s counsel, Maya Wiley—who also spoke at the conference—while noting that the city’s largest-ever M/ WBE contract was awarded within the last fiscal year. The administration is including an M/WBE component in its affordable housing and post-Sandy rebuilding efforts as well, TorresSpringer said.

“If we look at the record of the de Blasio administration over the past several months, it’s fair to say that we are quite proud of the gains made in this administration, and we also believe there is a profound opportunity to do even more,” she said. “There is no question that this is at the top of the agenda.”

While only time will tell how effective the city’s efforts will be, the de Blasio administration has yet to publicly make M/WBE contracting a priority the same way it is on the state level.

Then-Gov. David Paterson laid the groundwork in 2010 with the passage of key legislation, including a law that raised the cap on awards to such firms and another that created a chief diversity officer, and mandated an in-depth study of contractor hiring to provide the basis for state M/WBE targets.Just a month after Cuomo took office in 2011, he issued an executive order calling for greater participation

of M/WBEs, and announced a target of 20 percent of state contracts going to companies owned by women or minorities, roughly double the current share at the time for state agencies.

In early 2013, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed Local Law 1, New York City’s own legislation aimed at increasing the percentage of contracts each city agency awards to M/WBE firms. However, the share of city contracts going to M/WBEs is now just under 4 percent, a slight increase from the previous year but still short of the 5 percent mark the city hit in 2012, according to the city comptroller’s office.

Although some experts stress the importance of having a chief diversity officer who is dedicated to expanding M/WBE opportunities, Bloomberg never named one, and neither has de Blasio.

Rev. Jacques De Graff, a longtime M/WBE advocate, closed out the conference with a fiery exhortation to public officials to do more, especially at the city level. He said he heard no mention of M/WBEs from de Blasio in the mayor’s inaugural address, in his State of the City or in the speech he gave to mark his first 100 days in office.

“We’re now six quarters into Local Law 1, and billions of dollars were going out the door that we were not involved in,” said De Graff, speaking of the M/WBE community and the city’s M/WBE law passed in 2013. “I know that people try real hard, I know their efforts are sincere, I know that there are impediments—but that’s what they said about Giuliani, that’s what they said about Bloomberg, and I expect better for the communities that gave [de Blasio] 80 or 90 percent of our vote.” cit yandstateny.com

NOPANELISTS BIZ LEFT BEHIND CALL FOR EXPANDED OPPORTUNITIES FOR M/WBEs private sector in regard to promoting diversity. The panelists discussed New York City’s landmark Local Law 1, which was passed in 2013, and what changes could be made to improve it.

The panelists agreed that words must be followed through with action to promote diversity and fairness for all. The following are some choice quotes from their talk: “Many of these small businesses, the owners are true artisans in what they do. So they don’t know how to run a business, and I think that that

Mayor de Blasio’s counsel, Maya Wiley, is spearheading his administration’s M/WBE efforts.

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We value diversity in the workplace and in the marketplace.

In building an increasingly diverse supplier pool, we are able to work toward our goal of offering priority suppliers real procurement opportunities as they arise.

BNY Mellon is pleased to announce on-line registration.

To register, visit www.bnymellon.com/suppliers select the Supplier Profile Form and follow the directions.

2009 Regional Corporation of the Year NY-NJ Minority Supplier Development Council

Diversity paints our world. ©2013 The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation.

cit yandstateny.com

city & state — October 28, 2014

AARON ADLER

I

n one of the panels at City & State’s On Diversity Conference, Claire Scanlon, vice president at BNY Mellon; Carra Wallace, chief diversity officer of the New York State comptroller’s office; Sandra Wilkin, president and CEO of Bradford Construction and Susan Pease Langford, partner at Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan LLP, discussed the economic benefits of promoting womenand minority-owned businesses, and debated the strength and weaknesses of both the public and

“We have a company here, a major corporation that has one of the requirement contracts that we spend millions of dollars with, and we’re also an investor in, and they supply all of the agencies here. So when we ask them, ‘Hey, are you doing business in New York with women? Are you doing business with minorities in New York?’ And when I hear from the women’s organization president that they’re not, it’s a conversation to be had with that CEO and their senior people, and we at the comptroller’s office are beginning

AARON ADLER

is the biggest problem. That’s when they get themselves in trouble, and get themselves involved in what they do, and not running what they do, and that’s what they need—they need that education, they need that training.

Once they get to that point, they’ll have skills to present those capabilities to the corporations and to the agencies.”

—Claire Scanlon, vice president at BNY Mellon

Rev. Jacques De Graff, a leading M/WBE advocate, challenged the de Blasio administration to do more to support these businesses.

22 Metropolitan Transportation Authority “It’s a New Day at the MTA”

Thomas F. Prendergast Chairman & CEO Honorable Fernando Ferrer Vice Chairman Michael J. Garner, MBA

Thomas F. Prendergast Chairman & CEO MTA

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Craig F. Stewart Senior Director, Capital Programs MTA

The Nation’s First Regional Small Business Mentoring Program Prime Construction Contracts up to $3 Million | Small Business Loans up to $900,000 Through the MTA Small Business Mentoring Program (SBMP) industry. Since the inception of the MTA SBMP, $83.4 million in direct prime construction contracts have been awarded to program participants and 41 small business loans have been approved, totaling $4.325 million.

city & state — October 28, 2014

The MTA Small Business Federal Program (SBFP) to $900,000, surety bonding assistance, wrap-up insurance coverage and prime direct construction contracts up to $3 million. Since the inception of MTA SBFP, $32.6 million in direct prime construction contracts have been awarded to program participants and two small business loans have been approved, totaling $315,000.

Small businesses including N

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Craig F. Stewart Senior Director, Capital Programs MTA DIVERSITY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN Honorable John J. Molloy COMMITTEE MEMBERS Honorable John H. Banks III Honorable Robert C. Bickford Honorable Fernando Ferrer Honorable Susan G. Metzger, Ph.D. MTA New York City Transit MTA Long Island Rail Road MTA Metro-North Railroad MTA Bridges and Tunnels MTA Bus Company MTA Capital Construction

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to have those conversations.”

—Carra Wallace, chief diversity officer at the New York City Comptroller’s office

AARON ADLER

“I think the legislation, Local Law 1, 15-A, has really pushed the envelope here. However, I think this still needs to be looked at as to what the net worth means to businesses. One size doesn’t fit all across the country. It is more expensive, frankly, to work in New York than it is in Iowa.”

—Sandra Wilkin, president and CEO of Bradford Construction

Alphonso David, New York State’s deputy secretary for civil rights, is Gov. Cuomo’s point person for his successful M/WBE initiatives.

“A lot of times it really is just a lack of understanding of how to share what their information is, what their expertise is. When you leave the public sector, [private companies] don’t know how to do what the public sector has learned to do, and we actually have to work [with] them to help figure it out, so that the opportunities that they have do become available.”

—Susan Pease Langford, partner at Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan LLP

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If you are an M/W/L/DBE interested in doing work with us, please contact our

city & state — October 28, 2014

M/W/L/DBE & EEO Officer, J. Naomi Glean, at (914)776-8000 or NGlean@wdfinc.net.

cit yandstateny.com

ELEC TION PRE VIEW

2014 ELECTION PREVIEW In a few short days, New Yorkers will go to the polls and pick their representatives from the field of candidates battling to represent them.

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City & State’s election preview for the 2014 general election will not advise you whom to vote for, but it does provide an in-depth perspective on the dynamics in pivotal races across the state.

The three major statewide races—for governor, attorney general and comptroller—have been relatively lackluster affairs, with the Democratic incumbents leading by large margins in the polls. But City & State’s Albany reporter Ashley Hupfl has the inside scoop on what is at play in each race, even if Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Comptroller Tom DiNapoli have little to fear.

city & state — October 28, 2014

To get beyond the attacks and the spin featured in the one and only televised debate in the governor’s race, City & State’s Managing Editor Michael Johnson hones in on its key takeaways.

And City & State’s Albany Bureau Chief Jon Lentz offers his latest analysis of the volatile landscape in the New York State Senate, the one arena that could see a shift in power— either on Nov. 4 or, potentially, well after the votes are counted.

To find out what to watch for on Election Day, read on.

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A trio of Democratic incumbents in New York—Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Comptroller Tom DiNapoli—are widely expected to win re-election next week, but there is more to consider about the three marquee statewide races than just their ultimate outcome.

“Unfortunately, the fact is that [Astorino] does not have money, and he hasn’t been able to do that,” McArdle said. “So he has to resort to the daily effort to get some news coverage.”

GOVERNOR As Election Day nears, by all indications Republican gubernatorial nominee Rob Astorino is significantly trailing Gov. Andrew Cuomo, with a poll released in early October showing the incumbent leading by a commanding 21 points. According to several experts, one reason that Astorino has failed to gain traction throughout the campaign is the lack of a targeted message focused on only a few key issues.

“What you have to do is pick your issues carefully and stay on them so that you gain traction and they resonate with voters, and I would argue one of the things I think Astorino fell into is he played into ‘How do I get into the blogs, how do I get mentioned here?’ every day,” said Bruce Gyory, a Democratic political consultant.

John McArdle, a consultant and former spokesman for the state Senate Republican Conference, agreed, saying that Astorino’s lack of money has forced him to try to get free coverage by chasing the latest news developments.

Cuomo, who has a hulking campaign chest, has been airing a barrage of TV ads against Astorino.

McArdle said a clear, concise message resonates with voters better than following the daily political developments. He cited George Pataki’s successful campaign against Gov. Mario Cuomo in 1994 as an example.

Pataki ran on two issues: cutting taxes and reinstating the death penalty. cit yandstateny.com

ATTORNEY GENERAL John Cahill, the Republican candidate for attorney general, took an early gamble. Cahill, who like Astorino is at a substantial fundraising disadvantage, spent a sizable sum early on in the race, an unorthodox move given that voters typically do not start paying attention to non-presidential races until a few weeks before Election Day. In the latest campaign filing, which covers mid-July through September, Cahill reported spending $1.4 million— an amount exceeded by Schneiderman’s $3.16 million in campaign expenditures but still a relatively hefty sum. During the equivalent filing period four years ago, Schneiderman had spent just $53,000 while his 2010 Republican rival, Dan Donovan, had laid out a little under half a million dollars. (Donovan ultimately lost to Schneiderman by more than 10 points.)

A Quinnipiac poll released in early October found Cahill trailed state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman by 12 points, the smallest of the three statewide races, although another, more recent poll, conducted by Siena College and released on Oct. 22, found a larger gap of 20 points.

“I think it’s a very interesting gamble that Cahill took. If Cahill had waited until now, he would have been so far behind,” Gyory said. “So you get the sense that people—and I would argue myself—have to favor Schneiderman’s election, but people are intrigued that this is a race that could tighten, and the early spending is what did it.”

Cahill spokesman David Catalfamo called the move “important.” He said starting earlier than other campaigns was more cost-effective and that the ads run were not competing with other candidates’ ads, as most candidates had not yet started that phase of their campaigns when Cahill launched his buy.

“In our research Schneiderman was, for an almost four-year incumbent, very unknown among the population, and we had an opportunity to get out early and define [Cahill] and get him known,” Catalfamo said.

Of course, the Schneiderman campaign, which always had a considerable lead in cash, is in a strong position now that Cahill has already exhausted a large portion of his war chest. As of early October Cahill had just $288,595 on hand, while Schneiderman had $4.7 million.

STATE COMPTROLLER Robert Antonacci, the Republican candidate for state comptroller, is the first candidate to sign up for the state’s new pilot program testing whether a system of publicly financed elections, modeled on New York City’s, will work statewide in New York—but his decision to do so is not having much of an impact of the race so far.

Antonacci, the Onondaga County comptroller, is down by more than 20 points in the polls in his race against Democratic incumbent Tom DiNapoli,

who declined to participate in the pilot program and enjoys a huge fundraising advantage.

“I think most observers view the public financing in the [state] comptroller’s race as being very little, very late,” said Evan Stavisky, a Democratic consultant. “So as a result, it shouldn’t have a long-term impact on future discussions of public campaign finance. It’s a very modest program that was done at the very last minute.”

Antonacci so far has been unable to reach the threshold—$200,000 in contributions and small dollar donations from at least 2,000 residents—to actually receive matching funds.

DiNapoli is an ardent proponent of public financing, but blasted the scaledback pilot program as rushed in its formulation and inadequate in meeting the need for reform.

The public financing program was approved by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Legislature in March, but only for the state comptroller’s race this year, as part of a compromise that left many Democrats and Republicans unhappy. A number of Democrats have charged that the pilot was set up from the beginning to fail, a result that would satisfy many Republican and Democratic incumbents in Albany, who never wanted a system that would, at least in theory, make it easier for would-be opponents to field challenges to them, but who had to agree to a compromise measure to keep the mounting pressure for campaign finance reform at bay.

Based upon how the pilot has played out so far, there is reason to believe that those who oppose publicly financed elections might get exactly the result for which they were hoping.

McArdle said that the comptroller’s race this year would show that public financing is “not workable.”

“This race will give [opponents] even more reasons why it shouldn’t happen, and people will not support public campaign financing,” he said. “It’ll be used as an example, as it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t achieve the objects that the advocates are seeking.”

ELEC TION PRE VIEW

IF THE POLLS ARE RIGHT, LITTLE DRAMA IS IN STORE FOR NEW YORK’S THREE STATEWIDE RACES ON ELECTION DAY.

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city & state — October 28, 2014

FOREGONE CONCLUSIONS?

ELEC TION PRE VIEW

THE C&S POLITICAL REPORT

THE SHOWDOWN FOR THE NEW YORK STATE SENATE

By JON LENTZ

W

city & state — October 28, 2014

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ith a week to go until Election Day, the New York State Senate is up for grabs.

After several scandals, a primary upset and a handful of surprising poll results, the number of toss-up races has dwindled. In City & State’s latest analysis, there are 29 state Senate seats that either are either leaning, likely or safely Republican, the same count as the Democrats’ tally. The Republicans would have to win three of the toss-up seats (or two and successfully woo to their column state Sen. Simcha Felder, the wild card Democrat now caucusing with the Republicans) to get to a 32-seat majority; the Democrats would have to do the same.

For months, the landscape seemed to be less muddled. Early this year, the Republicans appeared poised to retain control of the state Senate, thanks to their two-year partnership with the breakaway Independent Democratic Conference.

However, in June the IDC announced a split with the Republicans and a reconciliation with the mainline Democrats, suddenly putting the new coalition in what seemed to be a strong position to seize the majority in November. The decision by two Republican state senators, George Maziarz and Greg Ball, to drop out in the wake of campaign finance irregularities made the Democrats’ odds even better. Then, in the September primary, the GOP took another hit when Republican state Sen. Mark Grisanti lost his primary in Western New York, and he decided to continue running on the Independence Party line, a move that could divide the GOP in the general election and tip the

seat to the Democrats.

But just when the Republicans’ chances looked bleakest, the tide started turning back their way.

David Denenberg, a Nassau County legislator, had a shot at flipping a Senate seat to the Democrats but dropped out of the race in late September after being hit by fraud allegations. Next, in early October, the Siena Research Institute released five polls in battleground state Senate races, and in each one the Republican candidate held at least a double-digit lead over the Democrat. Three firstterm Democratic incumbents— Cecilia Tkaczyk, Terry Gipson and Ted O’Brien—suddenly appeared to be more vulnerable than expected, while two contested Long Island seats looked to be safely Republican.

Now either major party has a tough but plausible path to victory.

For the Democrats, one potential winning combination is Tkaczyk and Gipson holding on, and either stealing Grisanti’s seat or persuading Felder to return to the fold. If the Republicans knock out O’Brien, fend off a challenge to state Sen. Jack Martins, hold on to the seat state Sen. Lee Zeldin is vacating— all entirely likely possibilities— they will still have to win three of the remaining toss-up races, which would be no small feat.

Republicans continue to insist that the political winds are at their back.

Six years into the Obama presidency, Republicans are poised to make significant gains in Washington, possibly even seizing the U.S. Senate, and the national anti-Democratic sentiment could resonate locally.

In New York, having Gov. Andrew Cuomo at the top of the ticket could help Democrats, but his popularity has eroded in some corners of the state, in part because of the passage of the SAFE Act, his landmark gun control legislation. Rob Astorino, Cuomo’s Republican challenger, is trailing significantly in the polls and in fundraising, but some experts argue that he will help Republican Senate candidates more than Carl Paladino did as the party’s nominee four years ago.

Historical trends also favor the GOP. Presidential elections typically boost turnout, which in turn boosts Democratic candidates in New York, and in 2008 and 2012 Barack Obama helped Democrats surge to numerical majorities in the state Senate. But the advantage swings back the other way in non-presidential years, which could help Republicans this cycle.

“Looking at the individual races and the candidates and movement in the nation and the state, I think [Republicans] have been wellpositioned all along, and I think the polls just have reflected what happened, not just recently but for some time now,” said John McArdle, a consultant and former spokesman for the Senate Republicans. “I think that trend will continue, and I’m a believer that [Senate Republican Leader] Dean Skelos can pull it off and get a clean majority, which is 32 votes, following Tuesday’s election.”

Democrats counter that an unprecedented coalition supporting their efforts will be the difference maker. As part of a deal to land the Working Families Party line, Cuomo

joined forces with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and a number of organized labor groups to commit to winning a Democratic majority in the state Senate, with a $10 million target to fund the campaign.

As for the sizable Republican leads in the Siena polls, Democrats say there is still time to gain ground. Only this month has the party ratcheted up its spending, and having a larger campaign war chest this year could make the difference for the Democrats.

“I think you really have to tip your hat to the sagacity of the Senate Republican tacticians for spending early, because they changed the karma of this, where they were perceived as being on the defensive,” said Bruce Gyory, a Democratic consultant, adding that he expected Democratic candidates to close the gaps.

Of course, Albany being Albany, there is no guarantee that control of the upper chamber will be decided on Election Day. From the Four Amigos to the IDC, there is ample precedent for dealmaking and aisle jumping after the votes are in. If there is only a narrow majority, Felder could be the kingmaker. Others could shift their allegiances as well. Looking even further ahead, the possibility of felony convictions—both Republican state Sen. Tom Libous and Democratic state Sen. John Sampson are under indictment—could throw another wrench in the works, potentially leading to a stalemate.

To bring some clarity to all this uncertainty, City & State updated its rundown of the key state Senate races that will determine the balance of power on Election Day. cit yandstateny.com

ELEC TION PRE VIEW

THE LANDSCAPE ELECTION LANDSCAPE

CURRENT LANDSCAPE

Republicans: 28

Safe Republicans: 21

Open Seats (formerly Republican): 2

Likely Republican: 3

Democrat caucusing with Republicans: 1

Lean Republican: 5

Independent Democratic Conference (IDC): 5

Toss-up: 5

Non-aligned Democrats: 2

Lean Democrat: 0

Open seats (Democrat): 1

Likely Democrat: 2

Democrats: 24

Solid Democrat: 27

SAFE REPUBLICAN

Although any formal coalition would not be formed until January 2015, the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) is grouped together with the Senate Democrats following the announcement in June that they would share power come the next legislative session.

LIKELY REPUBLICAN

27

JOHN BONACIC PHILIP BOYLE JOHN DEFRANCISCO HUGH FARLEY PATRICK GALLIVAN JOSEPH GRIFFO ANDREW LANZA WILLIAM LARKIN KENNETH LAVALLE ELIZABETH LITTLE KATHLEEN MARCHIONE MICHAEL NOZZOLIO THOMAS O’MARA MICHAEL RANZENHOFER PATTY RITCHIE JOSEPH ROBACH JAMES SEWARD DEAN SKELOS CATHARINE YOUNG 8TH SENATE DISTRICT (OPEN)

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CARL MARCELLINO (R)

TOM LIBOUS (R)

MARTIN GOLDEN (R)

Marcellino faces an unusual challenge from a fellow Republican in the general election. Sea Cliff Mayor Bruce Kennedy switched parties to run against Marcellino as a Democrat, although the party’s resources are likely going elsewhere on Long Island as Democrats try to pick up a seat or two in other districts in the Republican stronghold.

Marcellino was re-elected with nearly 60 percent of the vote in 2012, and he has over a quarter of a million dollars in campaign funds compared with about $73,000 in Kennedy’s account.

Libous’ seat was considered safe until the No. 2 Senate Republican was indicted on federal charges of lying to the F.B.I. related to him allegedly helping his son, Matthew, who was also indicted, land a lucrative law firm job. Libous, who denies any wrongdoing, easily fended off a primary challenge and now faces a general election battle against Anndrea Starzak, a former Vestal town supervisor. However, the district is solidly Republican, the longtime incumbent has been popular with his Binghamton area constituents, and he has a significant fundraising advantage.

If Democrats were polling better in the handful of toss-up state Senate races, Golden would be a target. But with polls showing tough battles for three first-term Democrats, Bay Ridge Democrats Executive Director James Kemmerer will not be a top priority for a potential pick-up as he seeks to topple Golden.

Golden, one of the few Republicans in elected office in New York City, also picked up the endorsement of 1199 SEIU, despite the union’s commitment to securing a Democratic majority.

The Brooklyn lawmaker, who beat his Democratic opponent in 2012 with 57.7 percent of the vote, had $339,000 on hand in his latest filing, while Kemmerer had just under $7,000.

city & state — October 28, 2014

JOHN FLANAGAN

ELEC TION PRE VIEW

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TOSS-UPS

LEAN REPUBLICAN

62ND SENATE DISTRICT

TED O’BRIEN (D)

JACK MARTINS (R)

TERRY GIPSON (D)

State Sen. George Maziarz’s seat became competitive when the No. 3 Republican announced he would not seek re-election amid a federal probe into his campaign spending.

(Maziarz denies any connection between his decision not to run and the investigation.) North Tonawanda Mayor Robert Ortt (pictured above), a military veteran, took Maziarz’s place on the ballot, and will face off against Niagara Falls School Board Member Johnny Destino, a Republican turned Democrat who was trounced by Maziarz in 2012.

The district has a slight Democratic edge among active voters, but Ortt could overcome that disadvantage with the addition of the Conservative and Independence party lines and his fundraising advantage.

In a Siena poll released earlier this month, state Sen. Ted O’Brien was trailing 25 points behind Republican Rich Funke, a retired television newscaster in Rochester with strong name recognition. Democrats question the poll’s accuracy, especially after Siena’s miss in the Rochester mayor’s race last year. In 2012 O’Brien came from behind to beat former Republican assemblyman Sean Hanna with 52 percent of the vote, although he has far more ground to cover this time around.

Funke has been spending more, but O’Brien is within range on the campaign finance front—especially with some outside help from outside groups wading into the race with independenet expenditures. O’Brien has also landed Gov. Cuomo’s support, which might give him a nice bump.

If the polls are to be trusted, state Sen. Jack Martins has a sizable lead over his Democratic challenger, businessman Adam Haber. Earlier this month a Siena poll had the incumbent up 25 points, while a second poll in late October showed Martins with a smaller but still substantial 15-point lead. Martins, who won re-election in 2012 with 51.8 percent of the vote, has about a quarter of a million dollars in campaign funds. Haber, who has been able to partially self-fund his campaign, has been spending at a similar pace.

Terry Gipson is down 12 points to Republican Sue Serino, according to a Siena poll released early this month, although Democrats are bullish on Gipson, given his strong fundraising and the many hours he has spent on the campaign trail. Gipson was one of several Democrats to win a close contest in 2012, coming out on top in a three-way race with just 43.8 percent of the vote.

Now Republicans are eager to win back the seat, and they have coalesced around Serino, a county legislator. Both candidates have been spending heavily in the race, and outside expenditures could play a significant role, too. Cuomo also endorsed Gipson this month.

KEMP HANNON (R) Hannon, a longtime incumbent who won with 52 percent of the vote in 2012, is among the Long Island lawmakers in recent cycles to be consistently targeted by Democrats, who see an opportunity to capitalize on the changing demographics of his district. But Hannon has nearly $350,000 on hand and has been outspending his Democratic foe, lawyer and former Marine Ethan Irwin, who has about $50,000 in the bank.

city & state — October 28, 2014

3RD SENATE DISTRICT The open seat being vacated by Republican state Sen. Lee Zeldin in Suffolk County was originally a toss-up, and Democrats were on the offensive after pressuring the GOP’s first choice, Anthony Senft, to drop out. But Senft’s replacement, Islip Town Supervisor Tom Croci (pictured), had a commanding 27-point lead in a Siena poll earlier this month, and a more recent poll had him up 25 points. Polling showed Democrat Adrienne Esposito, an environmentalist, with plenty of ground to gain, especially in terms of name recognition. Esposito did land an endorsement by Cuomo, who is popular in the district.

40TH SENATE DISTRICT State Sen. Greg Ball’s decision earlier this year not to run for re-election makes this Hudson Valley contest a toss-up, and the lack of any public polling so far makes it a major question mark.

In 2012 Ball beat Democrat Justin Wagner (pictured) with just 51 percent of the vote, and Wagner has been working hard to win this time around. The Democrat has been outspending his Republican rival, Yorktown Councilman Terrence Murphy, in recent weeks, although outside expenditures are likely to have an impact in this race as well.

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LIKELY DEMOCRAT

SAFE DEMOCRAT NEIL BRESLIN RUBÉN DÍAZ SR. MARTIN MALAVÉ DILAN ADRIANO ESPAILLAT

ELEC TION PRE VIEW

TOSS-UPS

MICHAEL GIANARIS MARK GRISANTI (R)

CECILIA TKACZYK (D)

JOSEPH ADDABBO (D)

Despite his controversial vote for same-sex marriage, Grisanti pulled off a re-election win in 2012 with 50.2 percent of the vote in a three-way race against a Democrat and a Conservative Party candidate.

This year Grisanti lost the Republican primary to attorney Kevin Stocker, but is staying in the race with a longshot bid on the Independence Party line. Add in Conservative Party candidate Tim Gallagher, and the crowded race could end up favoring Democrat Marc Panepinto, the one clear liberal in the mix. Of course, Grisanti has some advantages— Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos endorsed him, and Cuomo has not ruled out following suit— while Panepinto has been dogged by a conviction for collecting fraudulent voter signatures over a decade ago.

After two court rulings and a recount, Tkaczyk beat then Assemblyman George Amedore by just 18 votes in a surprise come-from-behind victory in 2012. Their rematch this year could be just as close, although a Siena poll had Amedore up 10 points in early October. Amedore has been outspending Tkaczyk, and groups like REBNY are bolstering his efforts. But Tkaczyk, who eked out a win in 2012 thanks in part to a Jonathan Soros-backed super PAC, is getting support from the same group again this year.

Cuomo recently endorsed Tkaczyk, although it’s unclear how much it will help given his unpopularity in the district.

Addabbo held on to his Queens district with a surprisingly large 57.6 percent share of the vote in 2012 after a spirited challenge from Republican Eric Ulrich, who has since been re-elected to the New York City Council. The Senate Republicans’ candidate this year is Michael Conigliaro, the manager of a real estate law firm, but he has little name recognition and trails the incumbent on the fundraising front.

The Brooklyn Democrat defected to the GOP shortly after getting elected in 2012. He is guaranteed to win re-election this year, given that he is running unopposed, although it is widely assumed that he will join whichever conference gives him more power—and he himself has said that he will do whatever is best for his constituents. Since it’s a toss-up as to whether Republicans and Democrats will take control, look for Felder to determine what’s best for himself and his district after Election Day.

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TIMOTHY KENNEDY LIZ KRUEGER VELMANETTE MONTGOMERY KEVIN PARKER JOSE PERALTA BILL PERKINS GUSTAVO RIVERA

JAMES SANDERS JOSE M. SERRANO

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DANIEL SQUADRON MALCOLM SMITH TOBY ANN STAVISKY

Latimer gave up his Assembly seat to run for the state Senate in 2012 and beat Republican businessman Bob Cohen in a closely watched race with a comfortable 54.1 percent of the vote. Cohen declined to run again this year, and former Yonkers mayor John Spencer also was recruited by the GOP but ultimately took a pass.

Local Republicans scrambled at the last minute to recruit Joseph Dillon, a communications and political consultant. Dillon has reported spending a similar amount as Latimer so far, but lacks the incumbent’s name recognition.

ANDREA STEWART-COUSINS TONY AVELLA (IDC) DAVID CARLUCCI (IDC) JEFFREY KLEIN (IDC) DIANE SAVINO (IDC) DAVID VALESKY (IDC) 20TH SENATE DISTRICT (OPEN)

city & state — October 28, 2014

SIMCHA FELDER (D/R)

BRAD HOYLMAN

JOHN SAMPSON

GEORGE LATIMER (D)

WILD CARD

RUTH HASSELL-THOMPSON

ELEC TION PRE VIEW

STICK AND MOVE

GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATES AGGRESSIVE IN LONE TELEVISED DEBATE

By MICHAEL GARETH JOHNSON

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo

Republican gubernatorial nominee Rob Astorino

O

ct. 22’s debate between the four candidates appearing on the ballot for governor of New York State left much to be desired as far as giving voters a nuanced understanding of the candidates’ positions and separating fact from fantasy. The hour-long format divided into equal time for all four candidates meant that each of them had relatively few opportunities to answer questions (Gov. Andrew Cuomo only spoke for 11 minutes and 48 seconds in total) and minimized the openings for drama—despite the vigorous efforts of the underdogs, particularly Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino and Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins, to use their sole chance to confront the governor directly on television and try to gain significant ground on the heavily favored incumbent, who is currently leading by more than 20 points according to the latest Siena poll of the race, with the days quickly ticking down to the election.

The following are five takeaways from the debate, which took place at WNED and WBFO studios in Buffalo.

city & state — October 28, 2014

1. CUOMO IS POISED TO WIN RE-ELECTION Front-runners tend not to like debates because there is generally no upside for them. They are the political equivalent of walking through a minefield: Success is not blowing up—not because there are the largest number of voters tuned in of any part of the campaign, but because any misstep will be reported upon and replayed ad nauseum until Election Day. By the

time the clock ran out on this debate, it was clear that Cuomo had successfully tiptoed his way through the minefield.

As the Democratic nominee in a heavily Democratic state with a huge edge in the polls and a much bigger war chest than Astorino, his nearest competitor, it is pretty clear, now that Cuomo has made his way over this last major hurdle, that only a catastrophe on the level of a criminal indictment, an epic gaffe or terrible news on the Ebola front could derail his re-election bid.

2. CUOMO IS NOT AS BAD A DEBATER AS THE EXPERTS SAY The general sentiment among politicos and reporters is that Cuomo is not comfortable in debates and does not like doing them, which is why he agreed to do only one televised debate and insisted on the third party candidates participating to diffuse his Republican opponent’s attacks against him, just like he did

in the 2010 race. Maybe that is true, but in this debate he seemed calm, comfortable and throughly prepared for the litany of attacks Astorino launched at him. Rather than playing defense, the governor was aggressive, steering the conversation to the racial discrimination suit brought by the Department of Housing and Urban Development against Astorino over a zoning battle in Westchester, a topic that ended up dominating the second half hour of the debate, sucking cit yandstateny.com

The Cuomo campaign was certainly holding its breath when the topic of ethics and the Moreland Commission came up. Fortunately for the governor, the stage layout helped him. He deflected the criticism by thanking Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News for the question and then suggesting that he was happy to clear up the “misinformation” surrounding the commission. In his response, he praised Republican Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick, placed the decisions made by the commission at Fitzpatrick’s feet, and then pivoted to play up the passage of the ethics reform bill he agreed to with the Legislature in April that allows DAs greater authority to pursue corruption cases.

Instead of Astorino being able to pounce on the governor’s response right away, the Republican candidate had to wait for responses from Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins and the Libertarian Party’s Mike McDermott, neither of whom directly engaged the ethics issues surrounding Cuomo’s handling of the commission.

It was only a two-minute reprieve, but that span was long enough to dull the chomping-at-the-bit Astorino’s momentum. When he finally got a chance to chime in, Astorino executed a clearly practiced attack charging that Cuomo was “swimming in a cesspool of corruption” and going so far as to say that the governor “very well may be indicted” after the election.

Astorino then confronted Cuomo directly: “Would you like to tell the people of New York whether you’ve been subpoenaed, or if your staff has been subpoenaed?

Once again, Cuomo was helped by the format. He quickly dismissed Astorino’s accusations as false, and then shifted to an attack on Astorino.

When the Republican finally got to speak again, he reiterated his jab at Cuomo about the subpoenas, but Cuomo never answered the question, and the debate moved on. The exchange was definitely the low point of the debate for Cuomo, but it ended up only being about seven minutes of the overall conversation, and Astorino was not able to convert the topic into cit yandstateny.com

4. IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID Perhaps the fundamental reason Astorino is trailing Cuomo in the polls is because he cannot convince voters that Cuomo is doing a bad job on the economy and that he would do better steering it. Though Astorino tried to blast Cuomo, alleging the governor has raised taxes, Cuomo fired back, countering, “Rhetoric is fine. Facts are better.” Cuomo then skewered Astorino for Westchester County having the highest taxes in the nation.

Astorino disputed the substance of that charge, but the back and forth devolved into murkiness, with neither candidate clearly coming out on top in the argument. Ultimately this exchange translated as a win for Cuomo.

Astorino tried to score some points on the economy by full-throatedly backing hydrofracking, pointing to national and state Democrats who agree with this approach, and charging that Cuomo’s inaction on the issue was preventing job creation because he was “politically paralyzed.” Cuomo pushed back by basically saying that hydrofracking was too complicated and should be left to scientists to assess. The governor did make news when he announced that the longawaited state Department of Health report on fracking is due by the end of this year.

5. MORE CANDIDATES: MORE FUN, LESS CONFLICT McDermott called for an investment in industrial hemp (“Google it,” he urged voters). He also said he didn’t take the Tappan Zee Bridge, instead using the Palisades Parkway to take advantage of New Jersey’s cheaper gas. (I am guilty of this as well.)

Hawkins suggested the twoparty system should be replaced with proportional representation based on a vote for party platforms, the system the U.K. and Germany use.

In terms of entertainment value, the debate wasn’t as outlandish as the one four years ago when the candidates on stage included the “Manhattan Madam,” the gripping Jimmy McMillan of Rent Is Too Damn High fame, and Carl Paladino’s disappearance to use the restroom, but McDermott in particular did break up the tension, which is precisely why Cuomo wanted him up there.

Your guide to Latino politics in New York and beyond.

Carmen Yulín Cruz

Mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico

Alejandro Garcia Padilla Governor of Puerto Rico

ELEC TION PRE VIEW

3. MORELAND WAS A BLOW, BUT NOT A KNOCKOUT

the knockout he needed it to be.

Eduardo Bhatia

President of Senate of Puerto Rico

Under the direction of guest editor Gerson Borrero, former editor of El Diario de la Prensa, City & State launched “The Road to SOMOS”, featuring 12 weeks of Latino political and policy coverage in the weeks leading to the 2014 SOMOS conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico this November.

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“BREVES DE EL CAMINO A SOMOS”: As part of “The Road to SOMOS”, City & State’s First Read presented “Breves de el Camino a SOMOS”, a weekly e-newsletter that briefs readers on important Latino news and issues.

CITY & STATE’S SPECIAL PRINT PREVIEW City & State’s magazine will feature four “The Road to SOMOS” sections. An October special preview guide to the 2014 SOMOS Conference will outline everything you need to know in advance of the conference.

CITY & STATE SOMOS HUB: City & State will launch the “City & State SOMOS Hub” at the Condado Hilton Plaza in Old San Juan. The SOMOS Hub will feature live stream interviews with business and government leaders attending SOMOS as well as daily City & State TV coverage of SOMOS panel discussions.

CITY & STATE COCKTAIL RECEPTION SOMOS attendees are invited to attend the City & State Cocktail Reception featuring special guest speakers and live City & State TV interviews.

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city & state — October 28, 2014

up the time Astorino could have used to hammer away at Cuomo’s vulnerabilities, such as the ongoing federal probe of the disbanding of the Moreland Commission.

S P OT L I G H T: G R E E N N Y

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO WIND?

By WILDER FLEMING

A

city & state — October 28, 2014

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nyone paying attention to New York’s renewable energy sector will have noticed the emphasis placed on solar power by state government in the past few years. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s NYSun program—a $1.5 billion, 10year commitment—has provided a reassuring bedrock for the industry, luring companies to the state with incentives, and encouraging businesses and residents to get in on the action as well. The idea is to shepherd the fledgling solar market to a selfsustaining place, and advocates and entrepreneurs alike are encouraged by what they see as a solid commitment to the technology from the governor’s office.

But just as solar appears set to take off in the state, wind power seems to have faded from the discourse, at least the one driven by state press releases. New York’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)—the program that funds statewide renewable energy projects, including wind—is a decade old and set to expire at the end of 2015. As of yet, no replacement program has been announced.

“Over the course of time they’ve both gotten boosts, but in the last three years solar has seen more attention,” said Anne Reynolds, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, a nonprofit located in Albany.

“If you go back before that, the RPS has led to a good amount of wind being built. … As we get closer and closer to 2015 and people know the program is running out, they are unwilling to take the development risks.”

Unlike solar, wind is considered a large-scale renewable in New York.

Wind farms can generate power on a regional level; the largest in the state, Maple Ridge Wind Farm, has

a 321-megawatt capacity. (A typical coal-burning power plant is anywhere between 300 and 700 megawatts; 500 megawatts is enough to power around 175,000 homes.) By comparison, the largest photovoltaic array on the East Coast, the Long Island Solar Farm, is 32 megawatts. (In other, usually sunnier parts of the world, some solar farms

reach 300 megawatt capacities, and two 500-megawatt plants are under construction in California.)

Over 1,650 megawatts of wind power have been brought online in the state during the life of the RPS. Nearly 300 megawatts of solar have been installed since the NY-Sun program began in 2012, but that number is projected to

increase to around 3,500 megawatts over the next decade.

The emphasis of solar power in New York is not primarily farm-based in the way that wind is, however.

Rather, the emphasis is on distributed generation—smaller-scale installations across a range of private residences, businesses and public buildings that will

cit yandstateny.com

cit yandstateny.com

New York Energy Reform:

From Innovation to Execution By: Edward Krapels

Since the Dutch founded New York almost four centuries ago, the state has been a center of commerce and competition. New York is synonymous with innovation, competition, and the myriad benefits of commerce. It is no coincidence that Thomas Edison – with a lab in New Jersey – created the electricity industry in lower Manhattan. True to entrepreneurial form, the power business grew chaotically in its first decades. Then, inevitably, the terrible twins of monopolization and regulation descended upon the industry and stifled innovation for decades.

S P OT L I G H T: G R E E N N Y

left by the soon-to-expire RPS. Reynolds says the NYSERDA proposal does not include any funding for large-scale renewables after 2016, but notes that in August the PSC’s staff recommended that the responsibility for purchasing such renewables shift from the Authority to utilities like Con Edison and the Long Island Power Authority—a move she supports. All other states with Renewable Portfolio Standards already place this burden on the utilities, according to Reynolds.

The target of the current RPS is for New York State to receive 30 percent of its power from renewable energy sources—hydro, wind, solar, biofuel or fuel cells—by 2015. That number is currently at 24 percent, with some 17 percent provided by long-established hydropower dams. Wind provides a little over 2.5 percent of the state’s electricity.

By comparison Texas receives 20 percent of its power from wind.

Transmission lines running from upstate New York—where the winds are stronger—to downstate—where the bulk of the population resides—are nearing capacity. (Running new overland transmission lines poses its own host of problems because of private land ownership conflicts.) Still, analysts say there is room to at least double the current upstate wind stock. But perhaps more important, there is deep and as yet untapped potential off the coast of Long Island.

“If we have an aggressive wind policy—and by aggressive we mean aggressive like the NY-Sun policy— and if we move now, we could get about 20 percent of our energy downstate from offshore wind by 2020,” Dix said. “We could scale up to like 4,000 megawatts.

That’s huge, but that is going to require a bold commitment by Cuomo.”

Europe currently boasts 6.5 gigawatts of online offshore wind power—that’s 65,000 megawatts. The United States, by contrast, is way behind.

“We need to seize that opportunity or we’re going to get left behind for sure, because other states like Rhode Island and Massachusetts are leading the way,” said Dix, pointing out that wind also serves as a hedge against fluctuating fuel prices—a serious problem during harsh winters.

Currently, Deepwater Wind LLC, a Rhode Island-based company, is seeking a contract with the Long Island Power Authority to build a $1 billion, 210-megawatt offshore wind farm 30 miles east of Montauk. The Authority is expected to make a decision by the end of this year.

Until now.

New ideas about innovation – spurred by dissatisfaction with the energy industry’s status quo and pressure from the high-tech sector – are now roiling the power industry, especially in New York, with Governor Cuomo’s “Energy Highway” initiative, and chief regulator Audrey Zibelman’s “Renewed Energy Vision” reform canon. Taken together, these policy enterprises are going to change New York, and (because it is New York), the world.

One source of change is new ideas in electrical transmission. New York City and Long Island are famously paying among the highest power prices in the world for only one reason: not enough transmission was built, and thus there is congestion. That congestion has cost southern New York scores of billions of dollars over the decades.

New innovations in transmission, including development of buried high voltage direct current lines into the metro area, promise to finally bring relief from ultrahigh prices. Transmission projects result in millions of dollars in ratepayer savings.

For example, according to ICF International, the Neptune Line has saved Long Island ratepayers nearly $1 billion since becoming operational in 2007. Moreover, new transmission will not only destroy high priced “load pockets,” projects like the Neptune Line help bring clean energy to market.

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The region’s electric power infrastructure is at a turning point between talking about infrastructure and regulatory reform, and executing on both. Cataclysmic events like Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Irene not only revealed that we must strengthen the system to resist and recover from external shocks and stressors, but also provided the pivot on which to make the turn towards innovation.

Absent innovations in new power infrastructure, the region will face real challenges in meeting clean energy demand, sustainability and resilience goals, and lowering electric rates. It is time to execute. The innovators are ready. Finance is ready. But regulatory hurdles remain our paramount roadblock.

If regulatory leaders create a transmission-friendly environment and encourage issuance of generation and transmission RFPs, these steps will eliminate today’s impediments to energy advancements. An effective regulatory and procurement framework promises to usher in an era of clean, affordable, and reliable electric power.

Edward Krapels, Founder and CEO, Anbaric Anbaric is an independent transmission and microgrid development company with more than $5 billion in infrastructure projects currently under development throughout the United States. Building on the success of the Neptune Line, Anbaric has proposed the Poseidon Line; Anbaric is also developing the Green Line and Grand Isle Intertie in New England.

city & state — October 28, 2014

help decentralize the power grid—a key consideration in the governor’s Reforming the Energy Vision initiative, which is currently being handled by the state Public Service Commission. Small wind turbines, of course, can be installed on private properties as well, but just as solar is an obvious choice for distributed generation, wind is a more obvious candidate for utility-scale power plants.

“From our point of view we absolutely need both,” said Reynolds, pointing out the necessity for a diverse power supply and the greater overall resiliency in the face of natural disasters that comes from myriad decentralized power sources.

At a recent conference hosted by the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, Reynolds says that Richard Kauffman, chair of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, assured the audience there would be a new RPS with a new target for the percentage of New York’s energy that should come from renewables, but did not elaborate on what the plan would look like. A NYSERDA spokesperson confirmed Kauffman’s remarks, adding, “Additional details are not available at this time.”

“It’s a fundamentally different business model between solar and wind,” said Bruce Bailey, president and CEO of AWS Truepower, a clean energy consulting firm based in Albany. “With the solar cities of the world, transactions are done on a landowner or a building owner-basis—third party financing and maintenance and installation—and they’re completed in very incremental segments. … For a wind developer, all of their development risks are longterm—they take years.”

The NY-Sun program grew out of the so-called Customer-Sited Tier of the RPS in 2012—the section devoted to distributed generation—but as of yet no comparable wind driver has materialized from the RPS’ main tier, which is devoted to large-scale renewables.

“The response from the state is that they’re working on it,” said Lisa Dix, senior New York representative for the Sierra Club. “That’s the best I’ve got.” Dix says the Sierra Club has long advocated for a wind program to parallel the NY-Sun initiative.

In September, NYSERDA released a 10-year, $5 billion proposal at the behest of the Public Service Commission for a program that will “work in coordination with other State efforts to advance cleaner, more resilient, and more affordable energy infrastructure.” Dix says this Clean Energy Fund plan will explore a new program to bridge the gap

S P OT L I G H T: G R E E N N Y

POWER OUTAGE

ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT CHAIRMANSHIPS IN SENATE AND ASSEMBLY UP FOR GRABS

By ASHLEY HUPFL

A

city & state — October 28, 2014

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s New York grapples with important environmental and energy issues, it is uncertain who the lawmakers chairing key committees in the state Legislature pertaining to these areas will be come 2015, following a series of high-profile departures that have created several vacancies.

While the picture is clearer in the Assembly, where Democrats hold a vast majority and tend to promote members based on seniority, the tableau in the Senate is far fuzzier, as it will be shaped by the results in a number of contentious races and potentially by postelection powersharing deals.

“We haven’t seen this level of cloudiness around this issue in a long time, and I think that speaks volumes about the unpredictable outcome of the elections,” Dan Hendrick, spokesman for the New York League of Conservation Voters, said. “There’s been so many departures, and we don’t know who’s going to end up running the Senate. So it even makes speculation difficult, because so much is in play in the election. I think everyone is waiting to see what happens in November.”

Currently state Sen. Mark Grisanti is the chair of the Environmental Conservation Committee and outgoing state Sen. George Maziarz chairs the Energy and Telecommunications Committee.

Grisanti, a Republican, is running for reelection on the Independence Party ballot line after being defeated in the GOP primary in September. Even if he wins and Republicans maintain control of the Senate, his chairmanship could still be in jeopardy should other Senate Republicans pursue the post.

Political observers say there are too many variables to know for certain who will ultimately get which chair, though they floated the names of

likely contenders. Multiple sources told City & State that if the Democrats gain control of the Senate, Sen. Kevin Parker is most likely to become chair of the Energy and Telecommunications Committee.

“I’ve heard him talk. He’s very, very verbal and knowledgeable on energy issues,” said Jerry Kremer, chair of the energy advocacy coalition New York AREA. “If the Democrats were to take the majority, he’d definitely be the right person to be in it.”

It is more difficult to pinpoint who would become the committee’s chair if Republicans maintain control of the Senate, political insiders say.

“There’s a lot of folks in the Republican majority who are leaving this year, and the most senior people are already in the most senior committees,” said Christopher Goeken, director of public policy and governmental relations at the New York League of Conservation Voters.

With fewer senior Republican senators remaining in office, a more junior senator could step into the chairmanship. One possibility mentioned to City & State as chair of Energy and Telecommunications by several unrelated sources was state Sen. Tom O’Mara, a pro-hydrofracking senator from the Southern Tier who entered the Senate in 2010.

O’Mara, who prior to his election to the Senate was the ranking member in the Assembly on the Energy Committee, is regarded as wellversed on energy issues. His father, John O’Mara, served as chairman of the New York State Public Service Commission under Gov. George Pataki.

Maziarz, who despite being a Republican was awarded the Energy committee chairmanship by the thenDemocratic Majority Conference in the wake of the 2009 Senate coup,

was considered a powerhouse senator in Western New York and a trusted voice on energy policy. Despite the influence he has wielded, however, ultimately the governor is who drives energy policy, according to insiders.

“The governor’s office tends to initiate a lot of the big ideas on energy.

Not that the Senate and the Legislature can’t and doesn’t as well … but often the energy chairs, whoever that may be, work closely with the governor— and that relationship is definitely a part of the equation,” Hendrick said.

Kremer said Maziarz often worked closely with Gov. Andrew Cuomo on energy issues, even though the two disagreed on key issues like whether to permit fracking and continue the operation of Indian Point, a nuclear power plant in the Hudson Valley. “[Maziarz’s] shoes will be tough to fill. He mastered the subject. He could balance upstate and downstate.

He truly was a guy that understood all the issues. They’re going to need somebody very, very good—it’s not just a question of filling a position,” Kremer said. “They’re really going to have someone who is open to ideas and is willing to be part of a dialogue.

That’s very critical.”

Energy is an area in which the governor has been very active, appointing in January 2013 the state’s first ever energy czar, Richard Kauffman, and spearheading a number of major initiatives like a $1 billion Green Bank to spur “the cleantech economy.” Just last month Cuomo announced a deal with the company SolarCity to build a 1.2 million squarefoot solar panel factory in Buffalo.

The state will invest $759 million in support of the project.

“The governor’s going ahead with Reforming the Energy Vision, the Clean Energy Fund, there’s a lot of activities with Green Bank. We’re talking about significant amounts of

funding that’s been dedicated to clean energy, and it would be interesting to see if the new chair would want to wade into that debate,” said Conor Bambrick, air and energy director at Environmental Advocates of New York. “I think it will be very interesting how the new chair, or chairs, take a look at all the activities going on sort of outside the Legislature’s purview when it comes to energy issues right now.”

In the Assembly, Robert Sweeney, the chair of the Environmental Conservation since 2007, is not seeking re-election. One political insider said there is likely to be a large committee shake-up after the election, so it is hard to predict who will ultimately replace Sweeney.

Several sources brought up Assemblyman Steve Englebright as a likely pick to take over as chair.

Englebright has the seniority to make him a possible option for the chairmanship and has showed an interest in environmental issues over the years. In addition, he is from the suburbs like the three previous chairs: Sweeney, then-Assemblyman Tom DiNapoli (both of whom represented Long Island, like Englebright) and former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky.

Another possibility being floated is Manhattan Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, who currently chairs the Higher Education Committee. She has greater seniority than Englebright, but does not seem as likely a candidate, an observer said.

The Assembly chair shuffle could also lead to a change in the Energy Committee. Assemblywoman Amy Paulin has only served as chair since January 2013, when she replaced Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, and sources told City & State she may be looking to lead a more prominent committee, though they would not speculate as to which chairmanship she might seek. cit yandstateny.com

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city & state — October 28, 2014

By embracing policy and technological innovation, this initiative will drive improved energy productivity, create jobs and strengthen local economies. That’s worth working for, and we stand ready to roll up our sleeves.

S P OT L I G H T: G R E E N N Y city & state — October 28, 2014

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BEST-LAID PLANS

IS DE BLASIO’S CARBON REDUCTION PLAN FEASIBLE?

By WILDER FLEMING

I

n September Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan aimed at cutting New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2050, a goal echoed by the City Council, which recently held a hearing on a bill that would encode it in law. But what will it actually take to achieve such an ambitious end?

Two things must be taken into account first: To start with, New York City is already more energy-efficient than most communities, due to the fact that it is denser than most communities because of its high density.

“Even though most of the land sits under single-family homes, most of the people live in multi-family dwellings where one person’s floor is another person’s ceiling,” said Steven Cohen, executive director of Columbia’s Earth Institute. “So even though these are old buildings that are not particularly energyefficient, we still use less energy because of the fact that we’re not heating as many exterior walls in the winter. … We also tend to be outside in communal spaces more than in other parts of the country; even our interior lighting is lower.”

Second, about three-quarters of the city’s energy is generated from its buildings—a far higher percentage than in most places, since walking and public transportation are the preferred modes of transit for many people— which is why the first phase of the de Blasio administration’s plan involves retrofitting public structures with more efficient heating, cooling and power systems, incentivizing the private sector to do the same with its own properties, and installing 100 megawatts worth of solar panels across 300 buildings over the next decade.

The city has already reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 19 percent compared with its 2005 levels, primarily by switching from coal and dirtier heating oils to cleaner-burning oils and natural gas. But “The majority of these reductions are the result of non-replicable ‘low-hanging fruit’ ... which is why we saw the need for the mayor’s new sweeping green

buildings plan,” said Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for the city’s Office of Managment and Budget.

Still, the city’s goal cannot be achieved through retrofitting buildings alone.

“To get to 80 percent reductions, we need to talk about renewable energy,” Cohen said. “By 2050 the assumption is that you would be off the internal combustion engine and on to electric cars. Without that I do not think you could get to those levels of reduction.”

At a recent City Council hearing Environmental Committee Chair Donovan Richards was joined by Councilman Costa Constantinides— who introduced the bill complementing the mayor’s plan—and Councilmen Brad Lander and Rory Lancman. Their first order of business was to question Bill Goldstein, the mayor’s senior advisor on recovery, resiliency and infrastructure, and Dan Zarrilli, head of the city’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency, along with two energy program directors from the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. Although enthusiastic about the policy, the Council members did not shy away from the obvious difficulties inherent in executing it.

“It’s great to have the administration

here and so aggressively working on this,” Lander said. “At the same time I think it’s important that we flag just how big of a job this is. … The challenge before us might be bigger than we are.”

Lander appeared skeptical that private sector building owners will voluntarily retrofit their properties at a rate conforming with the plan’s targets, even if offered incentives to do so. Zarrilli assured him that there would be greater outreach to small building owners than there has been in the past, and said his office has not ruled out making the retrofits mandatory at some point.

“In the past we’ve seen inadequate enforcement on just about every issue across the board,” Richards said.

Zarrilli, pointing out that the city’s air is cleaner than it has been in 50 years, emphasized the necessity of rigorous interim targets and goals.

The mayor has come under criticism of late from some environmental advocates for failing so far to find a new director for the Office of LongTerm Planning and Sustainability—the office charged with coordinating the city’s sustainability efforts across all departments—and for which Zarrilli is currently the acting head.

In a separate interview with City

The People’s Climate March in New York City on Sept. 21.

& State, Zarrilli pointed out that OLTPS and the Office of Recovery and Resiliency were actually one unit until this spring. So while the search continues for a new director of OLTPS, Zarrilli is essentially continuing in a leadership role he has served in since the Bloomberg administration.

“We’re firing on all cylinders,” he said. “We’re doubling the number of staff that we have focused on climate change issues both on the resiliency side and now with the work on the sustainability side. So there really is so much more commitment coming now in terms of staff and resources and implementation coming down the pike.”

Transportation is clearly the next piece of the puzzle, but Zarrilli said his office has been so focused on the buildings plan that it will not be announcing a policy in this area until the spring.

Cohen contends that technology is not yet where it needs to be in the renewable energy sector for the city to reach its emissions reduction goal.

Energy stVorage, for instance, must be improved upon if the city is to wean itself off fossil fuels entirely. Power sources such as wind and solar are effective when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, but to make them consistently available, energy needs to be saved for rainy days as well. And solar panels are also far less efficient at gathering power from sunlight than they could be.

“In the end there needs to be some transformative technology that we don’t have yet,” said Cohen, noting that the application of nanotechnology to solar cells should make them progressively smaller. “If the solar receptor was, say, the size of a window rather than the size of your roof, suddenly you start seeing the possibility of people using those technologies to generate more and more of their home energy. When you get to that, then an 80 percent reduction is really quite feasible.” He added, “When I was in graduate school, the computer I used was the size of my living room, and it had less computing power than my iPhone.” cit yandstateny.com

S P OT L I G H T: G R E E N N Y

WHAT’S IN THE WATER? STATE AGENCY’S FAILURE TO FOLLOW SEWAGE POLLUTION LAW PROVOKES QUESTIONS

By DAN TELVOCK from INVESTIGATIVE POST

E

cit yandstateny.com

As well as not apprising the public of overflows in a timely manner, the DEC’s spreadsheet lacks some key information.

DISCLOSURE LACKS DETAILS

NO ALERTS Cuomo signed the legislation, supported by at least 18 environmental groups, to great fanfare. The excitement did not last long, however, as criticism of the state’s execution of the initiative began within a month of the law going into effect in May 2013.

“There’s been zero support from the administration in making sure the Department of Environmental Conservation had the staffing in place to actually do this,” Proulx said.

For starters, there are no public notifications issued within the fourhour window.

DEC officials said they would release draft regulations for a text and email public alert system by the fall of 2013. That has not happened either.

Most recently, on Oct. 28, the DEC issued a report announcing that “full use of the NY-Alert system is expected in early 2015.”

For now, the only way the public can find out about sewer overflows is from a spreadsheet that is updated weekly on the DEC website, which undercuts the intent of the law to notify people within four hours.

Marc Gerstman, the DEC’s executive deputy director, said the agency does not want to develop an alert system that becomes an undue burden to sewage system operators.

“We have been working to get information from more than 400 previously unregulated entities. That is a substantial undertaking,” he said.

Elizabeth Moran, a water and natural resources associate for Environmental Advocates of New York, said the volume of each overflow is a critical detail that helps the public understand the extent of the pollution.

The law requires plant operators to report the volumes, but the DEC has failed to disclose most of that data.

For example, only 14 percent of the 2,294 sewer overflows reported since the law went into effect include the volume.

“It is pretty disconcerting,” Moran said of the omission.

A DEC spokeswoman pointed out that the law says sewer operators are expected to report these details “to the extent knowable with existing systems and models.”

Yet in many instances the plant engineer does not know the volume at the time the overflow is reported, according to agency officials. In such cases plant operators have five additional days to report the volume to the DEC. The agency generally does not update the spreadsheet to reflect that information, however, making it impossible to determine if the operators are complying with the law.

All the overflows disclosed by the DEC come from separated sanitary sewer systems, of which there are about 440 throughout the state. These systems carry sewage and stormwater in separate pipes. Under normal circumstances, the raw sewage is eventually treated, but the stormwater is always discharged into local waterways. These systems overflow for various reasons, including heavy rain and snowmelt, cracked sewer pipes that allow stormwater to infiltrate and illegal roof downspout connections.

But there is another type of sewer overflow that is not disclosed.

COMBINED SEWER OVERFLOWS There are about 60 combined sewer systems, mostly in cities, that take both raw sewage and stormwater into one pipe to a treatment plant.

Combined sewer systems spew billions more gallons of raw sewage and stormwater into creeks, rivers and lakes throughout the state. The overflows, called CSOs, often happen during moderate rainfall or snowmelt that overtaxes the system.

Neither the DEC nor most operators of combined sewer systems report these overflows to the public within four hours, as the law requires.

Dan Shapley, a water quality program manager for Hudson Riverkeeper, said New York City’s combined sewer system dumps about 28 billion gallons of sewage overflows into local waterways each year.

Buffalo’s combined system annually dumps between 1.75 billion and 4 billion gallons of sewage overflows into local waterways.

“CSOs are a huge source of sewage and pathogens in the water where people are swimming and boating,” Shapley said. “It was very plain language in the law that CSOs be included.”

DEC officials said they only require a sewage plant operator to report combined sewer overflows if the plant has the capability to detect and measure the discharges. Most do not, the DEC said.

Regardless, some remain hopeful that the DEC will ultimately follow the letter of the law once it finally launches the mandated public alert system.

“We will be making sure this next phase really provides genuinely useful information to the public,” Shapley said.

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city & state — October 28, 2014

ach year the aging sewer infrastructure in New York’s cities, towns and villages dumps billions of gallons of raw sewage mixed with dirty stormwater into local waterways.

These overflows close beaches, kill fish and wildlife, and sicken scores of people each year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“No one swims in their toilet,” said Assemblyman Sean Ryan, D-Buffalo.

“We don’t want to swim in waterways that are contaminated.”

In an attempt to provide immediate notification to New York residents about this public health threat, two years ago Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the Sewage Pollution Right to Know Act into law.

“New Yorkers have a right to know when potentially harmful untreated sewage is discharged into waterways in their communities,” Cuomo said in August 2012.

But the state Department of Environmental Conservation is not following the law. Seventeen months after the legislation was enacted, New Yorkers still do not “know if they are swimming, boating or fishing in raw sewage,” Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said in a prepared statement.

The law requires municipal sewage plants to notify the DEC within two hours of an overflow. Public notification, including the location and volume of the overflow, is required within four hours via email or some other form of communication.

The law also requires the reporting of overflows from both combined and separated sanitary sewer systems throughout the state. The DEC has failed to satisfy these mandates.

“The spirit of this law was the tracking and the disclosure, and the way it has been implemented has been incomplete and inaccurate,” said Travis Proulx, communications director for Environmental Advocates of New York.

SPOTLIGHT: GREEN NY

THE ROUNDTABLE movement on hydrofracking will depend on whether those in power consider it a priority. That’s why the formation of a Democratic majority coalition after November is so vital.

CONGRESSMAN PAUL TONKO, ENERGY AND COMMERCE COMMITTEE

STATE SENATOR TONY AVELLA VICE-CHAIR, SENATE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION COMMITTEE

city & state —O c to b e r 2 8, 2014

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Q: What will be your top environmental priority in 2015?

TA: Hydrofracking is the single most important environmental issue to face New Yorkers in the last 100 years. First for 2015, I am going to fight to pass the moratorium on hydrofracking—Senate Bill S.4236-B (Avella-Sweeney)— which would prohibit horizontal drilling and high-volume hydrofracking for three years.

However, the end goal is to protect our families, our communities and our future, and not just for the next three years. This can only be accomplished with a full ban. Senate Bill S.673 (Avella-Colton) would completely ban hydrofracking, along with prohibiting the acceptance, disposal and/or processing of any fluid used in the hydrofracking process.

The next priority for 2015 must be passing the Child Safe Products Act, which would ban certain toxic chemicals in our children’s toys and other children’s products.

Q: It’s unclear whether the Democrats or Republicans will be in power in the state Senate next year. What impact could control of the Senate have in terms of what is on the environmental agenda and what passes?

TA: The environmental agenda will reflect the agenda of whichever party holds the majority come November.

While my main concern is the hydrofracking moratorium, with a long-term eye on the ban, any

STATE SENATOR MARK GRISANTI CHAIRMAN, SENATE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION COMMITTEE Q: What will be your top environmental priority in 2015, if you are re-elected?

MG: My top priority in 2015 will be to address and reform New York’s Brownfield Program. Since I have served in the Senate I have often been the lone voice in the Legislature calling for this program to be addressed. We are now at a point where developers are fearful of entering the program because there may not be one by the time their project is completed. We must address this issue with utmost urgency in 2015.

Q: It’s unclear whether the Democrats or Republicans will be in power in the state Senate next year. What impact could control of the Senate have in terms of what is on the environmental agenda and what passes?

MG: No matter who controls the Senate in 2015, the issues facing New York’s environment will be the same. I plan on being here in 2015 chairing the Senate Committee on Environmental Conservation and I will continue to work with both sides on issues, trying to build a middle ground.

Q: What were the driving forces behind the investment in clean tech in the Capital Region? How can this success be replicated elsewhere?

PT: It is a desire to improve our communities—both economically and environmentally—that drives us to make those investments. To stay on top, you have to innovate, and you have to respond to new situations. We are well positioned to benefit from the investments we have made here in the Capital Region of New York, especially in clean energy and nanotechnology.

Our success is going to inspire similar changes in other states. In addition, the new carbon pollution rules that the EPA is working on are going to push other states forward on the path to clean energy.

Innovative industry leaders, a worldclass system of universities and research institutes, and aggressive policies from state leaders that address the risks of climate change and reap the benefits of greater energy security have made New York a leader in clean energy.

The same potential can be replicated throughout the nation by focusing on private-public partnerships, investing in education, research and development, and by applying the “can-do” attitude that made this nation great and keeps us moving forward.

Q: What are New York’s top environmental priorities, and how should they be addressed?

PT: New Yorkers always have placed a priority on environmental issues.

Clean water, clean air and healthy, safe

communities are the basis for a good quality of life and for a vibrant, healthy economy. The environment, in the broadest terms, supports agriculture, manufacturing, recreation and tourism.

This is not just about pollution controls.

It is also about making investments in infrastructure—water and sewage treatment, flood control and clean energy. And it is about innovation— finding new ways to achieve greater environmental quality at lower cost.

The state is making great strides in this regard, but I believe the federal government must play a stronger role in assisting state and local governments with these investments.

Q: How is the federal government investing in renewable technologies?

How will these efforts affect New York? What more needs to be done?

PT: The federal government continues to support basic and applied research and development, and it provides funds to universities, independent research institutes and to start-up businesses to enable them to develop new products and refine existing technologies. It also partners with established firms to develop and deploy new energy technologies through the system of national laboratories associated with the Department of Energy and with the Department of Defense.

In addition, the federal government has often used its purchasing power to help new businesses get established by using their products to make federal buildings and facilities more energyefficient, thereby creating jobs and saving taxpayers money.

New York’s universities and our innovative energy firms continue to be very competitive and very successful in securing federal funds and contracts to support their work. A stronger policy signal in favor of renewable energy would help to transition us to more renewable energy, faster. I also believe that tax reform, done right, could be a big boost for clean energy manufacturing here in the United States. There are still many opportunities, and I am committed to building on our success and expanding our partnership with the federal government. cit yandstateny.com

Q: What role will the Council play in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050?

DR: The City Council will be instrumental in supporting aggressive policies that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Last month we released a legislative agenda to combat climate change. This climate-centered package includes plans to reduce emissions by 80 percent, expand green job opportunities for the unemployed, enforce building efficiency, push low carbon transportation and improve air and quality of life by reducing environmental related disparities.

Q: What else needs to be done to prepare the city for the future, and what is being done about it from the Council’s perspective?

DR: This is a really exciting year legislatively for the Committee on Environmental Protection.

There has been strong interest from the Council, the leadership and the mayoral administration to make up lost time and honestly tackle the challenges posed by climate change and our unfortunate reliance upon fossil fuels. The Council will once again be supporting bold initiatives and allocating funding to enforce them.

Seventy-five percent of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings. Obviously, any measures to promote sustainability must include our top offenders. The deadline to phase out the use of No. 6 and eventually No. 4 heating oils is quickly approaching.

Developers and building owners must include energy efficiency measures for new construction and retrofitting citywide, in addition to utilizing cleaner heating options such as No. 2 oil and geothermal energy, among others. We will also require that building operators be trained in the maintenance of energyefficient buildings. cit yandstateny.com

Q: OnForce Solar is partnering with Bronx Community College to create a technology hub that will train a local workforce with the skills needed to work in the solar industry and give start-ups room to grow.

Are there any other budding green initiatives you’d like to talk about?

DR: This is truly a promising time for providers of renewable sources of energy. Environment New York, an advocacy group, has been organizing with 500 solar businesses—including more than 30 from New York—to urge President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency to promote the use of clean, renewable energy. Additionally, there are plans to pilot the use of solar in both our housing stock and municipal buildings. Earlier this month I had the opportunity to join Mayor de Blasio as we marked the installation of solar panels on a high school in the Bronx.

As part of the administration’s green buildings initiative, the transition from fossil fuels—beginning with city-owned buildings—is a major part of New York City’s plan to reduce carbon emissions. I see this push for efficiency as a blossoming employment opportunity for those interested in being a part of the green economy. From energy compliance and auditing to more efficient waste management through recycling and composting, more New Yorkers will reap the economic benefits.

I have also introduced legislation to further expand the number of parking lots with electric vehicle charging stations so that it becomes more convenient to own and operate electric vehicles throughout the city. Additionally, I am still working to tackle the final frontier in poor indoor air quality—smoking.

Too many New Yorkers living in multiunit dwellings are needlessly exposed to dangerous compounds through shared ventilation systems. There is no safe level of exposure to cigarette smoke, and I look forward to having conversations with my colleagues, the administration, related agencies and other stakeholders to create a comprehensively greener New York City.

SPOTLIGHT: GREEN NY

A NEW YORK ENERGY SOLUTION

West Point Transmission, a proposed 1000-MW underwater power cable, will bring power generated in northern and western New York to electricity consumers in the New York City area in the absence of Indian Point and strengthen New York’s existing power grid.

West Point Transmission would bring: • New York energy for New Yorkers • More reliable energy infrastructure in New York State • More New York jobs • More power to fuel economic growth • Minimal land use and scenic impacts • Access to clean energy sources upstate

Warren

Niagara

ALBANY

39

ATHENS

BUCHANAN NEW YORK CITY

About PowerBridge: West Point is a project of PowerBridge, LLC, the operates the Neptune Regional Transmission System and the Hudson Transmission Project, two high voltage underwater power cables, each providing 660 MW of transmission capacity respectively to Long Island and New York City.

Learn more about West Point Transmission by visiting:

www.westpointproject.com

www.powerbridge.us

city & state —O c to b e r 2 8, 2014

NYC COUNCILMAN DONOVAN RICHARDS, CHAIR, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION COMMITTEE

The Council is also looking to pass a number of bills, which will include revisions to the New York City Air Pollution Control Code to strengthen existing air quality initiatives and regulate new sources of air pollution to further improve the city’s overall air quality. The city’s aging infrastructure also poses certain challenges, but through the innovative integration of green and grey infrastructure, we can certainly build a resilient New York.

SPOTLIGHT: GREEN NY

40

SCORECARD THE PLAYERS THE STATE Gov. Andrew Cuomo kicked off his Reforming the Energy Vision initiative in 2014, and committed nearly $1 billion to the NY-Sun solar power program. Joe Martens, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, oversees all environmental concerns in the state, including the ongoing hydrofracking review, while New York State Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) Chairman Richard Kauffman, Cuomo’s “energy czar”, develops the state’s clean energy initiatives, including the $1 billion Green Bank. Gil Quiniones is president and CEO of the New York Power Authority, the country’s largest state electric utility, which is

also exploring opportunities for wind energy off the coast of the Rockaways.

Robert Sweeney is the outgoing chair of the Assembly Committee on Environmental Conservation, while Mark Grisanti chairs the corresponding committee in the Senate. Sen. Tony Avella of Queens has long been an outspoken opponent of hydrofracking in New York. Kate Burson is Kauffman’s chief of staff, and Tom Congdon is Cuomo’s assistant secretary for energy.

THE CITY Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced a commitment to New York City reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 compared with its 2005 levels.

The mayor’s Senior Advisor Bill Goldstein, Resiliency and Recovery Director Daniel Zarrilli and Housing Recovery Director Amy Peterson are kicking off the initiative with a vigorous effort to retrofit city buildings to cut their carbon output. In the City Council, Costa Constantinides has authored legislation that would codify the mayor’s plan into law, while Environmental Protection Committee Chair Donovan Richards spearheaded a recent Council hearing on what it is going to take to meet the goal. Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Emily Lloyd is concerned with preserving the city’s drinkable water and joins Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia in aiming to expand waste-to-

energy programs in New York.

THE ADVOCATES Marcia Bystryn is executive director of the New York League of Conservation Voters based in New York City, while Peter Iwanowicz directs Environmental Advocates of New York in Albany. Anne Reynolds heads up the Alliance for Clean Energy, also out of Albany, which promotes renewable energy and energy efficiency. Lisa Dix is the Sierra Club’s senior New York representative, while Frances Beinecke serves as president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Adrienne Esposito, a Democratic senate candidate on Long Island, is also the director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment.

city & state — October 28, 2014

THE ISSUES BROWNFIELD AND SUPERFUND PROGRAMS The state’s Brownfield Cleanup Program, an economic development initiative that incentivizes developers to clean up and build upon postindustrial and other polluted sites, was set to expire at the end of 2015, before the sunset was extended to March 31, 2017, by the state Legislature at the end of the session in June. Though Gov. Cuomo approved the last-minute extension, he said reform of the program— long criticized by environmentalists for yielding an inadequate return on the investment of public dollars and its failure to touch disadvantaged communities—was “long overdue.”

New York’s Superfund program, which is aimed solely at cleaning up the most toxic places in the state, was extended through March 2017 as well, and its bonding authority was increased.

HYDROFRACKING The question of whether to allow hydraulic fracturing in New York

again took center stage this campaign season. In June New York’s highest court ruled that municipalities have the right to locally ban the shale gas drilling practice, and the topic heated up from there. In the governor’s race, Republican Rob Astorino is in favor of fracking, Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins is opposed, and Cuomo is predictably delaying weighing in on the issue one way or the other until after the elections are over.

The revelation earlier this month that a 2011 federal water study commissioned by the Cuomo administration as part of its ongoing fracking review was edited by state officials before publication only added fuel to the debate. Cuomo now says the long-awaited review will be completed by the end of the year, but it would not be the first time a deadline for the fracking review would have come and gone if it is missed.

GREEN BANK It is closing in on two years since in his 2013 State of the State Address Cuomo first announced New York’s “Green

Bank,” a governmental lending institution tasked with sparking private sector investment in renewable energy projects. The bank’s first transactions were finally announced this month.

The state says the tentative agreements will spur investments totaling more than $800 million and are expected

to mitigate 575,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually—the equivalent of removing 120,000 cars from the road. The Green Bank is in advanced negotiations with big lenders like Deutsche Bank and Bank of America Merrill Lynch to expand its renewable tech-lending capabilities.

BY THE NUMBERS: ENERGY CONSUMPTION While New York was the eighth-largest state in terms of energy consumption in 2011, per capita it had the second-lowest energy consumption after Rhode Island, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The widespread embrace of mass transportation and efficient energy use as a by-product of New York City’s high population density are both partially responsible for this phenomenon.

New York’s current Renewable Portfolio Standard requires that 30 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable energy resources by the end of 2015, the same year the program is set to expire. The state is behind on this goal, however. As of 2013, some 23 percent of the state’s electricity came from renewables, 17 percent of which is accounted for by traditional hydropower generation.

Close to 11 percent of the energy used for the state’s electricity, transportation, spatial heating and industrial needs is generated by hydropower, wind, solar, geothermal or biomass power sources.

(SOURCES: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION; NYSERDA; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY)

cit yandstateny.com

AGENCY FOCUS

AG E N C Y FO C U S : N Y S D O H

AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO NEW YORK STATE’S AGENCIES AND AUTHORITIES

SPOTLIGHT ON:

41 NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

cit yandstateny.com

city & state — October 28, 2014

T

he New York State Department of Health is charged with protecting, improving and promoting the health and well-being of all New Yorkers.

The state Department of Health has overseen dramatic changes in the state’s healthcare system in recent years, including the passage of the federal Affordable Care Act and development of the state’s own healthcare exchange website—New York State of Health. The $8 billion federal Medicaid waiver the state received in April is certain to spur further changes to the state’s healthcare system.

NYS DOH now faces the daunting task of implementing a comprehensive and safe medical marijuana program and completing the years-long health review that will ultimately decide whether high-volume hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) will be allowed in New York. The agency is also addressing growing concerns about Ebola and Enterovirus D68.

City & State’s comprehensive “user’s guide” to NYS DOH provides a snapshot of how the agency gets things done.

Included in the following pages is a Q&A with Acting Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, a rundown of the principal players in the state agency and key issues facing it, as well as an analysis of the agency’s fiscal outlook by the Citizens Budget Commission.

AG E N C Y FO C U S : N Y S D O H

COMMISSIONER Q&A

HOWARD ZUCKER Acting Commissioner New York State Department of Health

city & state — October 28, 2014

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City & State: You were appointed acting commissioner last April.

What are the major challenges you face in this role?

Howard Zucker: I’m honored that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has given me the opportunity to serve. Being acting commissioner of health has provided me the opportunity to help guide policy around our mission to protect, improve and promote the health, productivity and well-being of all New Yorkers. It also builds upon my previous role as first deputy commissioner of health, in which I worked closely with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and other entities on strategies to provide the best possible health outcomes in the most efficient manner for New Yorkers. Our efforts have recently resulted in national accreditation from the Public Health Accreditation Board. This honor confirms what we’ve known all along: that DOH is doing an excellent job of protecting and promoting public health. New York is the sixth state health department to be accredited and is the largest state so far.

C&S: Has there been any progress in regard to who will be named the next state DOH commissioner?

HZ: The governor decides on his cabinet appointments. In the interim, serving as acting commissioner has provided a valuable opportunity for me to help advance initiatives that are making a real difference in the health and lives of New Yorkers.

Several of our initiatives have become national models for success. For instance, Gov. Cuomo’s end of the

AIDS epidemic plan will decrease new HIV infections so the number of people living with HIV in New York State will be reduced for the first time.

The end of the epidemic in New York will occur when the total number of new HIV infections has fallen below the number of HIV-related deaths.

Our health insurance exchange, New York State of Health, enrolled nearly one million people in its first year.

And our State Health Information for New York, SHIN-NY, is helping to connect healthcare providers’ access to electronic health information to improve care and make healthcare more efficient for all who opt in to the system.

C&S: Recently there has been a lot of concern about the rise of Ebola and Enterovirus D68. What do you do at the Health Department to make sure the public is informed of these risks, while containing public fear? [Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted before the first case of Ebola in New York was reported.]

HZ: DOH works with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health departments to provide guidance and support for emergency preparedness planning and drills to help facilities and counties prepare for a wide array of health emergencies, including natural and man-made disasters and containing the spread of infectious diseases. This is referred to as “all-hazards” planning.

Regarding Ebola, DOH’s work group meets at least weekly to help

hospitals and other healthcare providers prepare to treat an Ebola patient. DOH and local health departments also provide guidance for anyone who may have had an exposure to the virus while traveling in West Africa, and depending on the circumstances may monitor such persons for illness for 21 days after their possible exposure. DOH will help to ensure that an adequate supply of appropriate equipment is available for treatment of any patients.

DOH’s role with Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) is largely to monitor the spread of the virus throughout New York State through testing done at DOH’s Wadsworth laboratory, the only laboratory in the state that can test for D68. DOH also monitors daily emergency department visits for respiratory illness and asthma in children. In addition, DOH provides information to the public about how to prevent the spread of EV-D68.

As with any infectious disease, DOH provides guidance and information on infection control protocols and procedures to protect the health and safety of healthcare workers, patients, visitors and the general public. Additionally, DOH provides advisories and alerts to local health departments and healthcare providers to heighten awareness of possible cases, request reporting of any suspect cases and reiterate infection control procedures.

C&S: What goals and role will the state Department of Health have while the state rolls out its medical marijuana program?

HZ: DOH is moving forward aggressively to develop and implement a comprehensive, safe and effective medical marijuana program that meets the needs of New Yorkers.

To ensure the health and safety of patients, the Compassionate Care Act requires DOH to develop regulations to create the process for certifying patients, registering practitioners and licensing manufacturers. At the request of Gov. Cuomo, DOH is exploring mechanisms that may accelerate access to medical marijuana for children suffering from epilepsy.

DOH recently requested a federal waiver to allow New York to import cannabidiol from other states for use by children with refractory epilepsy that is unresponsive to conventional therapies as an interim measure while New York’s program is being implemented.

C&S: What can you say about the ongoing public health impact study on hydrofracking?

HZ: Work on the public health review is continuing. The process will continue until I conclude that the review is fully informed, comprehensive and best serves the health and safety interests of the citizens of New York.

C&S: Is there anything you’d like to be asked about that you haven’t been yet?

HZ: I want to add that everyone should get a flu shot this season and continue to look on DOH’s website for information on the best ways to be healthy. cit yandstateny.com

Now there’s a better way to help keep New Yorkers healthy. And help keep health care costs down.

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Empire BlueCross is reinventing how health care works

To learn more about innovations in health care from Empire BlueCross, go to blog.makinghealthcarereformwork.com. city & state — October 28, 2014

Some of the most important work doctors do happens between appointments.

But the standard fee-for-service model doesn’t pay for it. We created Enhanced Personal Health Care to do more than pay for doctor visits. It pays for positive results. Plus, our technology gives doctors the tools and information they need to better manage health, avoid redundant care, and help your employees and their families stay healthier, happier and more productive.

Services provided by Empire HealthChoice HMO, Inc. and/or Empire HealthChoice Assurance, Inc., independent licensees of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Serving residents and businesses in the 28 eastern and southeastern counties of New York State. cit yandstateny.com 35055NYEENEBC Rev. 10/14

AG E N C Y FO C U S : N Y S D O H city & state — October 28, 2014

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LEADERSHIP

DAN O’CONNELL Director, Health AIDS Institute

JILL TAYLOR Director, Wadsworth Center

JASON HELGERSON Medicaid Director, State of New York

YVONNE GRAHAM Director, Office of Health Disparities Prevention

Dan O’Connell is the director of the department’s Health AIDS Institute. Over the past 27 years he has served in a variety of positions within the Institute, including the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, the Substance Abuse Initiative, and the Bureau of HIV Counseling and Testing.

For many years O’Connell was deputy director and then director of the Division of HIV Prevention. Just prior to being appointed as the AIDS Institute director in 2013, O’Connell was the Institute’s deputy director for HIV, STD and hepatitis C prevention and epidemiology, where in addition to disease-specific programs he also oversaw initiatives for LGBT and drug user health. He is now responsible for overall Institute-wide management and policy development, and has recently led efforts to implement New York’s revised HIV and surveillance law as well as both HIV and HCV testing laws, enacting a comprehensive modernization of the state’s STD control statute, and facilitating initial discussions and planning that resulted in a governor-endorsed effort to bring HIV below epidemic levels in the state by 2020. In addition, he chairs the New York State’s Interagency Task Force on HIV/AIDS, is an executive committee member of the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors and has been an invited presenter at numerous meetings nationwide, including for the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/ AIDS. O’Connell’s work in hepatitis was recently recognized by the White House during its World Hepatitis Day observance.

As deputy director since September 2005, interim director since August 2012 and director since May 2014, Dr. Jill Taylor is guiding the Wadsworth Center’s future research directions and advancing its mission in population health. As the only research-intensive public health laboratory in the nation, the Wadsworth Center strives to set the standards to which other public health laboratories aspire. As a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the CDC’s Office of Infectious Diseases, Taylor also contributes to policy discussions at the national level. Day-to-day she ensures the efficient management of the Wadsworth Center by working closely with senior administrative and scientific staff in the laboratories, as well as with executive staff within the Health Department. Taylor first joined the Wadsworth Center in 1986 as a research affiliate in a laboratory focused on research on vaccinia virus. In 1990 she joined Virogenetics, where she was responsible for the successful development of three poxvirus-based recombinant vaccine vectors for veterinary use. She rejoined Wadsworth in 1999 as director of the Viral Genotyping Laboratory, where she oversaw clinical research studies of HIV drug resistance and hepatitis C virus.

In 2002 she was appointed director of a newly formed clinical virology program, where she assumed broad responsibility for introducing molecular technologies to ensure responsiveness to the state’s changing public health needs, with particular emphasis on influenza virus.

Jason Helgerson became New York’s Medicaid director on Jan. 5, 2011. With an annual budget in excess of $54 billion, New York’s Medicaid programprovidesvitalhealthcareservicestoover 5.3 million New Yorkers. As a clinical associate professor at the State University of New York at Albany, School of Public Health, Helgerson also serves as the executive director for New York’s Medicaid Redesign Team. In this capacity he leads Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s effort to reshape the state’s Medicaid program so as to lower costs and improve healthcare quality.

Prior to arriving in New York, Helgerson was Wisconsin’s Medicaid director. The principal project sponsor for BadgerCare Plus, former Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle’s signature healthcare initiative, Helgerson administered the nationally recognized program for children and families—through which 98 percent of Wisconsin residents have access to affordable healthcare, including all children—among other programs. From February 2005 to March 2007 Helgerson served as executive assistant/policy director to the secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services (DHFS). Prior to joining DHFS, he served as the executive assistant for the Wisconsin Department of Revenue. Jason served as the senior education policy advisor for Mayor Ron Gonzales of the City of San Jose, Calif., before joining the Doyle administration.

Yvonne Graham is an associate commissioner with New York State Department of Health, and serves as director of the Office of Health Disparities Prevention, where she is responsible for working with Health Department programs to ensure that everyone—regardless of ethnic or racial background or the community in which they live—has access to the resources and services they need to be healthy. Prior to assuming this role, Graham was the deputy borough president of Brooklyn, where she served for 10 years alongside Borough President Marty Markowitz, with primary responsibility for health policy and all human services.

Among her major accomplishments are: the co-founding of the Brooklyn Health Disparities Center, which is working to reduce health disparities among minorities and new immigrants through clinical and community-based research, education, outreach and training; the Brooklyn Community Transformation Coalition, established to respond to the structural and systemic factors that undermine wellbeing; the Brooklyn Public Health Funding Task force, which advocates for equity in funding for healthcare; and the Brooklyn Young Women’s Leadership Initiative, which serves as a pipeline for women’s advancement. Graham also founded and was executive director of the Caribbean Women’s Health Association (CWHA), a community-based organization that provides comprehensive, culturally sensitive healthcare, as well as immigration and social support services to diverse communities. During her tenure Graham grew CWHA’s budget from $82,000 in the early years to $6.5 million. She is a registered nurse. cit yandstateny.com

GUTHRIE BIRKHEAD Deputy Commissioner, Office of Public Health, New York State Department of Health

DAVID HERNANDEZ Director, Health Facility Management Group

Donna Frescatore is executive director of NY State of Health, the state’s official Health Plan Marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act. Frescatore has over 25 years of experience designing and administering public and private health insurance programs. Prior to being executive director of NY State of Health, she was assistant deputy secretary of health in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Office.

She has also served as the state’s Medicaid director and deputy commissioner of the Office of Health Insurance Programs at the state Health Department. She began her state career in the Department of Civil Service, where she was responsible for purchasing benefits for the more than one million employees and retirees of state and local governments enrolled in the New York State Employees Health Insurance Program.

Dan Sheppard is the state Health Department’s deputy commissioner for the Office of Primary Care and Health Systems Management (OPCHSM). The office oversees New York’s healthcare facilities and providers, and ensures access to high quality, affordable and equitable healthcare services for all state residents. OPCHSM’s core functions include healthcare policy and standards development; data analysis and health services research; healthcare facility planning, financing and licensure; healthcare workforce development; oversight of graduate medical education; and implementation of federal and state healthcare system reform. As deputy commissioner, Sheppard is responsible for managing more than 800 staff members in central offices and three regional offices across the state, and overseeing the licensure, certification, surveillance and compliance of more than 7,000 healthcare providers. Sheppard also oversees the establishment of policies and regulations to assist the healthcare system transition toward clinically integrated, patient-centered models of care that emphasize primary care and prevention.

Prior to joining the department, Sheppard served as deputy budget director with the state Division of the Budget.

Dr. Guthrie Birkhead, the deputy commissioner responsible for all public health programs at the New York State Department of Health, is DOH’s chief public health physician, and directs the Office of Public Health. He is responsible for over 2,000 staff members, an annual budget of over $2 billion and more than 100 discrete public health program areas.

In 2007 and again in 2012 Birkhead led the development of the state’s public health improvement plan, the Prevention Agenda Toward the Healthiest State. He is also leading DOH’s efforts at performance management/quality improvement, introducing quality improvement approaches to public health programs.

Birkhead is the author and co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, and is a professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health, University at Albany.

David Hernandez is the director of the Health Facility Management Group for the state Department of Health. He oversees, advises and supports patient care, research, capital construction and fiscal management of the five departmentoperated healthcare facilities. This includes management and policy direction for Helen Hayes Rehabilitation Hospital and the New York State Veterans Nursing Homes at Batavia, Montrose, Oxford and St. Albans. As director Hernandez works closely with the administrators and chief executive officers of these facilities to enhance and assess the effectiveness of programs in clinical, research and education. He also serves as representative and liaison for the facilities with federal and state agencies on many fronts, including grant funding, program operations and construction. He previously served as deputy director for administration and chief financial officer for the New York State Capital District Psychiatric Center for eight years.

TERENCE O’LEARY Director, Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement

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Terence O’Leary serves as the director of the New York State Department of Health’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement (BNE), which is charged with enforcing New York State’s controlled substance laws. BNE investigators, located in six regional offices, annually conduct approximately 1,000 investigations into the violations of New York State’s Controlled Substance Act. BNE also oversees New York State’s Official Prescription Program, providing all forge-proof prescription pads to all medical practitioners throughout the state as well as administering New York State’s Prescription Monitoring Program Registry. BNE also issues over 1,300 licenses annually to institutions, pharmacies, manufacturers and distributors conducting various activities with controlled substances.

O’Leary assisted in drafting legislation on behalf of the Governor’s Office and Department of Health, including I-STOP/Prescription Drug Reform legislation, heroin/opioid laws of 2014 and the New York State Compassionate Care Act authorizing the medical use of marijuana in New York State. As director O’Leary oversees the implementation of I-STOP legislation, the updated Prescription Monitoring Program Registry and the implementation of New York State’s Medical Marijuana Program. From 2001 through 2011 he served as an assistant district attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office, where he was assigned to the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New York.

AG E N C Y FO C U S : N Y S D O H

DAN SHEPPARD Deputy Commissioner, Office of Primary Care and Health Systems Management

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city & state — October 28, 2014

DONNA FRESCATORE Executive Director, NY State of Health

AG E N C Y FO C U S : N Y S D O H

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INITIATIVES I-STOP The state Health Department’s Internet System for Tracking O v e r - Pr e s c r i b i n g , or I-STOP, went into effect in August 2013 and requires prescribers of Schedule II, III and IV controlled substances—such as Adderall, Oxycodone, Ambien and Valium— to consult an online prescription monitoring program that provides practitioners with direct, secure access to view dispensed controlled substance abuse histories for their patients. This allows medical professionals to detect and prevent abuse or non-medical use of prescription drugs. Doctors can see all controlled substances dispensed in the state and reported by a pharmacy or dispenser for the previous six months. The program also aims to identify and stop “doctor shopping,” which occurs when a patient obtains controlled substances from multiple healthcare practitioners without the prescribers’ knowledge of the other prescriptions.

State officials said there were more than 89,000 heroin and prescription opioid treatment admissions in 2013, up from 64,000 in 2004. In addition, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed new legislation last June that grants the Department of Health’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement expanded access to criminal histories to aid investigations of prescribers and dispensers believed to be engaging in illegal prescriptions. The law also increases the penalties for the criminal sale of a controlled substance by a pharmacist or practitioner by making the crime a class C felony.

city & state — October 28, 2014

HYDROFRACKING New York has had a moratorium on highvolume hydraulic fracturing, the controversial method for drilling natural gas, for the past six years while the state Department of Environmental Conservation conducts a long-running review of hydrofracking’s potential health effects. That review will ultimately determine whether hydrofracking will be allowed in the state. The DEC’s review cannot be completed without a separate Department of Health analysis, which was started in September 2012. Gov. Andrew Cuomo inherited the health review when he took office in 2011. Then–Health Commissioner Nirav Shah said in 2013 that the review would only take weeks, but more than a year later the review still remains open and Shah has since stepped down from his position. Howard Zucker, the acting state health commissioner, has largely remained silent on the review’s progress. Fracking has become a highly politicized issue, and Cuomo is now known to have changed his scheduling habits—announcing appearances at the last minute and often having no public schedule—in an effort to avoid anti-fracking activists showing up at his events. Cuomo said in the recent gubernatorial debate that the review is now due to be completed by the end of the year— presumably after Election Day.

MEDICAL MARIJUANA In June New York became the 23rd state to legalize medical marijuana, although it is one of several states to ban the use in smokable form.

Patients may use a vaporizer or an oil base. New York State patients are eligible if they suffer from HIV or AIDS, cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord nerve damage, epilepsy, inflammatory bowel disease, neuropathies and Huntington’s disease. Medical marijuana can also be prescribed to patients with the following symptoms: cachexia or wasting syndrome, severe or chronic pain, severe nausea and severe or persistent muscle spasms. Regulations allow a maximum of a 30-day supply of medical marijuana only, and minors are permitted to use marijuana-based oils under the supervision of an authorized adult only. The state is now charged with implementing the program, which is not expected to be up and running until 2016. New York State must still choose and regulate the 20 venders that will be allowed to sell and grow medical marijuana. The state will also be carefully monitoring for any abuse of the system, and has the authority to shut the program down if it proves problematic. The state recently requested federal permission to import out-of-state medical marijuana for children and young adults with epilepsy who need immediate relief.

MEDICAID WAIVER Last April Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that New York had reached an agreement with the federal government for a Medicaid waiver that will allow the state to reinvest $8 billion in federal savings generated by the state’s Medicaid Redesign Team’s reforms. The state first applied for the funding in 2012 after the Medicaid Redesign Team implemented a series of reforms estimated to save the federal government $17.1 billion over five years. Under the agreement $500 million would be allotted for short-term assistance to keep hospitals and other providers operating while reforms take place; $6.42 billion for “Delivery System Reform Incentive Payments” (DSRIP), which aim to reduce avoidable hospital use through delivery system reform; and the remaining $1.08 billion would be allocated for other Medicaid Redesign purposes—such as investments in long-term care, workforce and enhanced health services. The funding does not provide direct aid to hospitals but goes toward broader reform of the state’s healthcare system. The DSRIP program specifically aims to achieve a 25 percent reduction in avoidable hospital stays over five years.

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By ELIZABETH WYNER and ELIZABETH LYNAM from the CITIZENS BUDGET COMMISSION

T

he mission of the New York State Department of Health (DOH) is to promote the health of all New Yorkers. DOH’s staff of 5,239 oversees all public health programs in the state. It faces two challenges: continuing to expand access to healthcare under the federal Affordable Care Act, or ACA; and controlling costs in the $58 billion Medicaid program, the largest in the nation.

IMPLEMENTING ACA

A

key goal of the ACA was to promote access to healthcare by expanding health insurance coverage. As part of the implementation of the ACA, New York established a health insurance exchange, known as the New York State of Health, for individuals and small businesses to enroll in a health insurance plan. It was launched on Oct. 1, 2013, with 16 private insurers offering individual plans, 10 private insurers offering small business plans, and public insurance offered through Medicaid.

The exchange was successful in expanding health insurance enrollment—about 961,000 New Yorkers secured coverage. The greatest number, about 525,000, enrolled in Medicaid. New Medicaid enrollees fall into two categories: the newly eligible from program expansion and the previously eligible for whom the exchange expedited enrollment. About 87 percent of new Medicaid enrollees were already eligible under existing program rules. Because of New York’s already generous Medicaid eligibility standards, only single and childless

adults with incomes between 100 percent and 138 percent of the poverty line—about 68,000 people—were enrolled as a result of expansion; for these individuals, the state will receive 100 percent of the funding needed to cover the cost of care from the federal government, compared with the 50 percent funding match for those eligible under existing guidelines.

Among the 371,000 purchasers of private coverage, 74 percent received the federal subsidies authorized under the ACA, and the remainder purchased private insurance without needing

federal financial assistance. About 65,000 were children newly enrolled in the Child Health Plus program, for which the state receives enhanced federal funding.

The Division of Budget projects that Medicaid enrollment will increase from 5.2 million to 6.0 million from fiscal years 2015 to 2018. Given Medicaid’s rapidly growing enrollment, providing the large population with care in a cost-effective manner will be an increasingly important issue.

AG E N C Y FO C U S : N Y S D O H

NYS DOH BUDGET ANALYSIS

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NY Medicaid Enrollment State, Fiscal Years 2007–18 Medicaid Enrollment (in Millions)

6 5 4

3.6

3.7

4.1

4.4

4.5

4.8

5.1

5.8

6.0

6.0

6.0

1

3.6

2

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

0

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city & state — October 28, 2014

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AG E N C Y FO C U S : N Y S D O H

CONTROLLING MEDICAID COSTS

Magazine Print Spotlight On

NEW YORK’S INFRASTRUCTURE

EDUCATE, INFLUENCE AND ADVOCATE NY’S LEADERS IN BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT WITH THIS TARGETED ANNUAL FEATURE!

GOVERNMENT ROUNDTABLE: TOM MADISON Executive Director, NYS Thruway Authority DANIEL ZARRILLI Director, NYC Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency

48

SEN. JOE ROBACH Chair, NY Senate Transportation Committee REP. JERRY NADLER Subcommittee on Highways / Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials

New York’s $58 billion Medicaid program is the largest and one of the most expensive per person in the nation. In federal fiscal year 2012, the most recent year for which there is comparable data, New York’s Medicaid spending was $2,815 per capita, nearly twice the national average, and the highest among all of the states. Spending per beneficiary averaged $9,833 in New York, the second highest, compared with $6,413 in the U.S. New York’s large Medicaid program also grew rapidly, with the state’s share increasing 6 percent on average annually between Fiscal Years 2000 and 2009. With the implementation of a series of reforms recommended by the Medicaid Redesign Team, a stakeholders group convened in 2011 by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the rate of growth has slowed to 4 percent.

“Managed care for all” is a cornerstone of the cost containment plan on the well-tested theory that if providers better coordinated care and have incentives to reduce unnecessary services, the total cost of care will

be reduced. Although almost all (96 percent as of December 2012) of the non-elderly, non-disabled Medicaid population has been enrolled in managed care, new plans must be developed and expanded to manage care for the most costly segments of the population, the elderly and disabled.

Because the federal government’s stake in New York’s Medicaid program is high, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved an investment of $8 billion of federal funds in the New York healthcare system to support managed care and payment reform over the next five years. In order to qualify for federal funds, providers are required to join in large networks under lead agencies that are required to meet stringent performance targets. The overarching goal is to use federal funds to transition to a pay-for-performance system and improve the quality of care by reducing avoidable hospital admissions by 25 percent. DOH will select the projects funded under the waiver and monitor implementation to assess whether the goal of providing more cost effective care is met.

Elizabeth Wyner is a health policy associate. Elizabeth Lynam is vice president and director of state studies with the Citizens Budget Commission.

EDITORIAL FEATURES: NY’S GATEWAYS: With Governor Cuomo’s plan to renew and revitalize NY’s “gateways”, including suburban airports such as Stewart International, City & State takes a look at the various projects already underway and upcoming, as well as the details on the new design competition announced by Governor Cuomo.

Medicaid Spending: New York versus National Average, Federal Fiscal Year 2012 US

city & state — October 28, 2014

MTA CAPITAL CALL?: After the State’s reservations about the MTA’s Capital plan and the questions about long term funding sustainability moving forward, City & State takes a look at the possibility of any new funding streams and how the MTA may re-prioritize some projects based on budget shortfalls.

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THE ROAD TO SOMOS / EL C A MINO A SOMOS

THE ROAD TO SOMOS / EL C A MINO A SOMOS

CUOMO’S CARIBBEAN TRIP WAS POLITICAL. SO WHAT?

49 GERSON BORRERO

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Gov. Cuomo shakes hands with Danilo Medina, the president of the Dominican Republic, during his recent trip to Santo Domingo.

skipping out on the event—a move many observers dubbed a snub of the Latino community. The fact is, at that time the governor didn’t have anything new to add to what was already being discussed or dealt with in Albany, and thus opted to not attend. When I was reporting that piece, Assemblyman Félix Ortiz, who chairs SOMOS, told me on the record that the governor had called him the day before he was to appear and informed him of his decision not to do so. Ortiz wasn’t insulted. He

understood. Others didn’t.

As a result of some of the negative publicity that ensued, there was serious talk in Cuomoland about the governor taking a trip to Puerto Rico to make amends. On several occasions in early and mid-2014—including a week or so before the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City—a trip to the island was discussed internally by the administration, according to a well-placed source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

So while the trip last week has

generally been criticized and vilified by the tag team of Republican gubernatorial nominee Rob Astorino and Bronx Democratic State Sen. Rubén Díaz Sr., and has provided good quotes and some fun for political reporters, fundamentally those criticisms were baseless.

Full disclosure here for those who don’t already know: I, as City & State’s representative, along with colega Zack Fink, NY1’s Albany reporter, were the two reporters originally invited to join the governor for the Dominican

city & state — October 28, 2014

t seems that Andrew Cuomo can’t catch a break in some circles.

“Ah,” you say. Seriously, the sitting governor of New York decides to take a political trip to the Caribbean and, of course, somehow his critics and leading opponent in the Nov. 4 election find this condemnable.

Palo si boga, palo si no is what we call this in Español—“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” for the monolingual readers.

I’m not shilling for the governor here. The man has more than his share of limpia sacos (lackies) around him and in the Democratic Party to do that; he doesn’t need me. It’s just that from the moment I received the heads-up call from a top Cuomo aide confirming the trip to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, I was told—without asking—that “it’s a political trip.”

To put this Caribbean trip in context, I wrote a column a few days after last November’s SOMOS conference about the governor

THE ROAD TO SOMOS / EL C A MINO A SOMOS

Republic leg of the whirlwind lessthan-24-hour trip. We initially were also asked to do the very challenging job of pool reporting while in the D.R. Zack and the extremely talented technical whiz and photographer Davide Cannaviccio did a great job. I, on the other hand, because of an unforeseen and unexpected development that changed what we had agreed to, fell short. Eso es lechuga para otra ensalada. (That’s a story for another column).

Back to the Cuomo trip.

As has already been reported, Gov. Cuomo was accompanied by state Sens.

Adriano Espaillat and José Peralta, New York City Councilman Ydanis Rodríguez and former Assemblyman Guillermo Linares—who is expected to be elected on Nov. 4 to the same seat he vacated in 2012, and whose daughter, Mayra, the now-convicted Gabriela Rosa beat to succeed him— when the governor met with current Dominican Republic President Danilo Medina and former Presidents Hipólito Mejía and Leonel Fernández.

By meeting with these three Dominican political leaders, Cuomo

was able to avoid the appearance of having a preference for the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD) [Dominican Liberation Party] or the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD) [Dominican Revolutionary Party].

Both Medina and Fernández are members of the PLD—though political insiders inform me that there is some rivalry between the two, and most think that Fernández is running a shadow presidency that undermines Medina. On the other side, Mejía, quite a character in Dominican politics, was elected as the candidate of the PRD, but recently split from the PRD and formed the Partido Revolucionario Moderno (PRM) [Modern Revolutionary Party].

Are you still with me?

Of even greater political significance is that by meeting with all three presidents, Cuomo demonstrated respect and understanding for the internal politics of the D.R. and acknowledged the views of Dominicans in New York, who overwhelmingly favored the PRD in their homeland’s last elections. Also added to Cuomo’s

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city & state — October 28, 2014

Print. Mail. Win.

itinerary was a meeting with the PRD’s current leader and an already declared candidate for president in 2016, Miguel Vargas Maldonado, which demonstrates that Cuomo was getting all the intel he needed to avoid any potential political minefields he could otherwise have found himself walking into during the few hours he spent in Santo Domingo.

At the Palacio Nacional, which houses the Dominican Republic’s executive branch, there were conversations in private between the governor and President Medina about trade agreements into which New York State and the Dominican Republic could possibly enter. However, at the press conference afterward, Cuomo made it clear that he would depend on the efforts of the state’s Dominican legislators to lead the fight for these initiatives. In other words, if these electeds want the governor’s overture to spawn results that will benefit Dominicans stateside and back home, they will have to work it.

The small press contingent left Santo Domingo aboard the governor’s private plane. Yup, we hitched a ride for the

one-hour flight to San Juan. Yes, we did talk with the governor, but it was off the record.

The governor’s visit to Puerto Rico was even shorter than the breakneck Dominican stop. Cuomo met in private for about an hour with Gov. Alejandro García Padilla at La Fortaleza, the P.R.’s equivalent of the Palacio Nacional. Then the two politicos, accompanied by Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr., Félix Ortiz and Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo walked the streets of El Viejo San Juan that took them to Hotel El Convento, where the political event was held.

There was no pretense in the hall.

This was an unequivocal show of support for Cuomo’s re-election by the island’s governor and the local Democratic Party.

These political trips can be unpredictable. This could’ve turned out to be a stinker for Gov. Cuomo. Instead, he received embraces from the elected officials of two of the most politically active Latino communities in New York State. Still, it remains to be seen if those abrazos in the D.R. and P.R. will translate to votes on el cuatro de noviembre.

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HOWARD JORDAN

F

or Puerto Ricans in the white marble halls of Albany, our time had finally come.

There I sat in New York State Assembly Speaker Mel Miller’s office at 270 Broadway on a chilly afternoon on March 1987. I was among a group of Puerto Rican legislators discussing the SOMOS Uno (We Are One) conference. This was to be a statewide gathering of Puerto Ricans and Latinos that would finally put our community on the map. For years, the Latino community had been referred to by the mainstream media as “a sleeping giant,” only to be largely ignored and cast aside. This group of pioneering Assembly members— Angelo Del Toro (who died in December 1994), Héctor Díaz, José E. Serrano, along with me (representing Bronx Assemblyman José Rivera)— were discussing with Speaker Miller and his communications director, Eric Schneiderman, details of the formulation and organization of what would emerge as the premier annual expression of Latino influence in New York State: the SOMOS El Futuro conference.

Speaker Mel Miller was clearly receptive to the idea. For years, he had heard Puerto Rican legislators privately complain about the underrepresentation of Latinos

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among elected officials, in state government jobs and within the circles of power. “If we work together, this is one way we can help the Puerto Rican community,” Miller remarked. Within a year, one of the largest Latino legislative caucuses in the country was born.

As time has passed, the origins and motivations for the conference have been recast from those of the wellintentioned Assembly members who came together on that day to, at times, deceit, manipulation and political intrigue. One interpretation is that SOMOS was a deliberate strategy by Albany power brokers to weaken the Black and Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus (BPRLC), now called the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, by splintering the Puerto Ricans from this organization that was rapidly becoming more “militant” in its approach to challenging then-Gov. Mario Cuomo and the Albany power elite. Truth be told, BPRLC was never the “militant” group that revisionists have invented. It was, in fact, in many respects just as conformist in its approach as what later became the SOMOS El Futuro group.

The expansion of SOMOS El Futuro beyond its genesis in New York State to Puerto Rico has largely been attributed to political friction that emerged in 1988 as a result of Puerto Rico Gov. Rafael Hernández Colón’s decision to endorse Michael Dukakis in the Democratic primary for President, whereas New York City’s Puerto Rican legislators supported Rev. Jesse Jackson. Gov. Colón sought to repair this fissure with the stateside Puerto Rican community, making nice by offering to sponsor the conference on the island and cover its initial expenses.

Regardless of whether you

believe this account, the SOMOS El Futuro Task Force was undoubtedly the brainchild of East Harlem Assemblyman Angelo Del Toro, who was then chair of the New York State Assembly’s Social Services committee, in conjunction with Bronx Assemblyman Héctor Díaz, who provided Del Toro with assistance and support in this endeavor. Del Toro had previously held the chairmanship of the BPRLC because he enjoyed the support of two influential AfricanAmerican legislators: Deputy Speaker Arthur Eve (D-Buffalo), whose father was Dominican, and Assemblyman Al Vann (D-Brooklyn), who was the former chair of the group but saw backing Del Toro as his opportunity to do “our Latin thing.”

East Harlem State Senator Olga Méndez, (who died on July 29, 2009), the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the New York Senate and to a state Legislature anywhere in the United States, had already abandoned the BPRLC because she perceived that Puerto Ricans were being treated as junior partners in these multiracial legislative caucuses.

Del Toro came up with an innovative

idea, which he later explained to me.

The BPRLC was composed largely of black and Puerto Rican legislators, with limited white participation.

The state’s gerrymandered districts tended to segregate districts in the state between either black/Latino or white majorities, and even if you were a white legislator with a large AfricanAmerican constituency, rarely were you an integral part of the Caucus.

But what if, Del Toro envisioned, the Puerto Rican/Hispanic Legislative Task Force—since Latinos are an ethnicity and not a race—would allow white legislators to become exoticized “Latinos”—people of color—a distinction they could not receive from the black caucus?

Under Del Toro’s original formulation, if 15 percent or more of the constituents of an Assembly or Senate district were Latino, the Assembly member or Senator who represented it was automatically eligible to be a member of the Task Force. Among those who were accepted as an “honorary Latino” according to this criterion was Italian Assemblyman Vito Lopez of Brooklyn.

Former Assemblyman Angelo Del Toro, Harry Jordan, former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals Sol Wachtler, former Assembly Speaker Mel Miller, and this article’s author, Howard Jordan.

THE ROAD TO SOMOS / EL C A MINO A SOMOS

SOMOS EL FUTURO AND THE FORGOTTEN PROMISE OF LATINO EMPOWERMENT

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city & state — October 28, 2014

A DREAM DEFERRED

THE ROAD TO SOMOS / EL C A MINO A SOMOS city & state — October 28, 2014

52

This conception of a more expansive Puerto Rican/Latino Legislative Task Force worked like a charm, and the first SOMOS conference was a resounding success.

It drew thousands of people from across the state, along with Puerto Rican politicos enjoying the support of white and black legislators looking to embrace this growing demographic.

But 27 years after its inception, what has happened to this would-be “political juggernaut” that offered so much promise for Latino political empowerment in the state of New York?

Intra-group divisions, corporatization and self-interest have at times replaced what began as a purposeful, poignant political agenda and a mass mobilization of Latinos to demand proportionate power in Albany and their rightful piece of the pie from the elite chambers of government.

Following its triumphant start, SOMOS emerged as a template for empowering Latino legislators not just in New York State but across the country; however, soon thereafter, in 1989, intra-Latino warfare erupted.

Robert Calderin, the first executive director of the SOMOS conference and a member of Assemblyman Díaz’s staff, along with a group of private businessmen of questionable reputations, attempted a coup to wrest control of the conference from Del Toro in order to privatize it and generate a profit from its operation.

The ensuing battle nearly destroyed the budding conference. Del Toro held his ground and appealed for intervention from Speaker Miller, who, based on death threats made against Del Toro, offered the assemblyman state police protection and exerted his considerable influence to recognize the Del Toro faction as the only legitimate representative of the SOMOS conference.

But the damage was already done. For the rest of the decade, the SOMOS conference was never the same. Interest in the conference diminished, and it devolved into one of the many conferences where baile, botella, y barraja (dancing, drinking and gambling) are the unofficial agenda. Attendance dwindled and, as time has passed, the SOMOS conference has become little more than a post–Election Day political junket.

Our nuevo political leaders now seem more comfortable hobnobbing with Gov. Andrew Cuomo than insisting he pass the financial

assistance component of the DREAM Act or immigration reform, or challenging police brutality or mass incarceration in communities of color. They endorse meaningless or trifling actions and activities within the Latino community, giving them the SOMOS El Futuro brand in a form of marketing, while delivering few real resources or results to the people they represent. More troubling is how these Latino politicians hypocritically propose legislation knowing full well they lack the necessary support to turn these proposals into law.

Perhaps the most recent expression of this accommodationist posture is the embrace by Latino legislators of Gov. Cuomo on his recent campaign trip to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Kneeling before the political throne of King Cuomo they bowed their heads in surrender with not even a pretense of opposition to some of the anti-Latino policies preserved and advanced by the increasingly conservative governor.

These emissaries of SOMOS El Futuro were so castrated politically that they even permitted Puerto Rico’s governor, Alejandro García-Padilla, to take the liberty of endorsing Cuomo on behalf of all Puerto Ricans in New York State. Talk about the blind leading the blind. The SOMOS legislators in essence have faded into irrelevancy.

Straight after his general election victory last year, Mayor de Blasio attended the conference in Puerto Rico pledging his support to the Latino community, all the while ignoring the Campaign for Fair Latino Representation’s protestations that the mayor had inadequate Latino representation within his own administration in City Hall.

Many of our Latino legislators, while more prepared academically than their previous counterparts, lack the community connection of their forerunners and are removed from the day-to-day realities of our barrios. Some are second-generation legislators, anointed by political machines that were never linked to the community’s struggles in the first place. The constant complaint heard in our community is that “No tienen corazón” (“They lack heart”). So disenchanted have community folks become with SOMOS El Futuro that when asked whether they will attend this year’s conference, some jokingly remark, “No, thank you. I don’t drink.” Others say SOMOS El Futuro (We Are the Future) has evolved into “SOMOS Ninguno” (We Are Nobody).

This accommodating class of electeds is made up of so many compradors that even a homophobic, pro-life senator like Rubén Díaz Sr. has demonstrated more heart than the rest of his Democratic colleagues. In protest, the controversial Bronx pol chose to break with banana republic politics and endorsed Cuomo’s Republican opponent, Rob Astorino.

He thereby openly rejected the subservient politics of his son, Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr., who, as co-chair of the 2014 Cuomo re-election team, opted to stay the course of blind allegiance to the Democratic party.

In this cavern of darkness a glimmer of hope still exists in the SOMOS youth student programs that prepare young people for leadership positions and train them in the process of good government. But these efforts pale in the broader context of legislators sun-bathing in Puerto Rico, dancing salsa, and chanting “SOMOS leal” (“We are loyal”) in blind allegiance to the Democratic permanent government that controls our state’s capital.

One need only hark back to the 2012 conference when the Civil Service Employees Association and major unions were taken aback by the cowardly posture of the Latino legislators and pulled out of the conference, accusing many of the lawmakers of “betrayal” for not supporting their legitimate demands for pension reform. Who came to the rescue and offered to cover the $72,000 conference funding shortfall? Gov. Cuomo and former Mayor Bloomberg—demonstrating once again who are the “white ventriloquists” pulling the strings of these SOMOS legislators.

So what happened to the original cast of political leaders I spoke about at the outset of this piece who orchestrated the creation of this Puerto Rican/Latino institution?

Mel Miller was removed from office on a federal fraud conviction, which was overturned on appeal.

Eric Schneiderman went on to become a state senator and is currently New York State’s attorney general. José E. Serrano was elected in 1990 to represent what is now the 15th Congressional District in the South Bronx, the poorest district in the United States. Twenty-four years later he is still in office. Héctor Díaz went on to become the Bronx County Clerk, retired, and today is the president of Acacia, a network

of Latino-focused health providers with more than $160 million in annual revenues. José Rivera, whom I represented at that historic meeting, is in his second stretch as an assemblyman. At one point he was chair of the state Legislature’s Black and Puerto Rican Caucus, the president of the Black and Latino Caucus of the New York City Council and chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party, a position he held for six years.

When I reflect on that meeting we held in Speaker Miller’s office on that memorable day 27 years ago and the sense of hope that it represented, I cannot help but express my profound disappointment in what SOMOS has become. The potential power that was in the palm of our hands has faded into oblivion and by every yardstick the Latino community is in a serious political and financial crisis.

Can SOMOS El Futuro be salvaged and return to its noble beginnings?

Does the upcoming conference in Puerto Rico next month offer hope?

Change would require the legislators who spearhead SOMOS, like Brooklyn Assemblyman Félix Ortiz, to re-engage the conference in the politics of protest and to adopt an oppositional resistance strategy that challenges the citadels of power, rather than embracing them.

Our legislators must become more than they are at current, and zealously take up the defense of the grassroots Latinos stuck at the bottom of New York State’s economic well. To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, our Latino leadership, if they are devoted to the empowerment of our barrios, must let “the power of love overrule the love of power.”

Can this be done?

Sí, se puede.

Howard Jordan is an educator, attorney, journalist and political activist. He is a tenured professor in the Public Policy and Law Unit of the Behavioral & Social Sciences Department at Hostos Community College in the South Bronx.

In the late 1980s and ’90s he served as legislative assistant to former Gov. Mario Cuomo’s Advisory Committee on Hispanic Affairs and later as executive director of the New York State Assembly Task Force on Immigration, a 25-Assembly member commission addressing regional immigration issues.

He is also the host of The Jordan Journal, a radio show that airs Fridays from 3–5 p.m. on WBAI 99.5 FM. cit yandstateny.com

NICOLE GELINAS

T

money to avoid a crash. So they park it in our sky.

2. Pumped-up public pension funds. A record-breaking stock market as well as high private equity and real estate returns have pushed the value of the city and state pensions funds to all-time highs. That’s good for now. But in the long run it delays the city and state from coming to terms with the fact that absent a permanent asset bubble, they cannot afford the pledges they have made to future retirees.

3. Bailed-out budgets. Though Wall Street has 15 percent fewer jobs than before the financial crisis, it has enjoyed record profits in three of the past five years. Those profits have pushed up state and local income taxes, turning budget deficits into surpluses for Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio. Without a record-busting Wall Street, de Blasio would not have committed billions of dollars in back pay to teachers in the future. If and when interest rates rise, though, de Blasio will have to lay off workers and cut programs to pay for what he now owes.

4. The Fed has allowed New York to borrow more for public infrastructure. Gotham and the MTA have each borrowed record amounts of money for capital programs. They’ve

been able to borrow so much only because interest rates are so low.

Though potholes persist and subways are crowded, they’d be even worse without this D.C.-funded break.

5. The Fed has brought more global tourists to New York. New York has seen record tourism since 2008 with the biggest growth coming from China, Brazil and other emerging markets. The Fed’s cheap money has helped create a global upper middle class. People who aren’t quite rich enough to buy a luxury apartment here still want to spend a week here.

Big-spending foreign tourists have created jobs in hotels, restaurants and in the arts, and the hotel workers’ strong union has ensured that many of these private sector jobs are middle class jobs.

So what’s the verdict? In the private sector, the Fed has made it a little easier to get a job in New York, but a lot harder to get an apartment. In the public realm, it’s given New York a grace period on bills it will eventually have to pay—or cut.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

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o keep the economy from falling into depression, the Federal Reserve has done things no central bank has done before. But how have these policies affected New York?

The Fed’s main policies are twofold: First, it has kept interest rates at nearzero; second, it has conjured up money to buy trillions of dollars of mortgages and Treasury bonds. With this action, the Fed is indirectly serving as lender to homeowners and to the U.S. government, further keeping interest rates down.

The reasoning behind these moves

is that more Americans owe money than are owed money. If you can get a cheaper rate on your mortgage, your car note, your student loans and your credit cards, you’ll be less likely to default on the money you owe—and more likely to borrow more to buy a car or pay for a law-school degree.

Plus, cheap money allows banks and investors to borrow to speculate in housing, stock and other asset markets, pushing the prices of those assets up and making everyone feel richer and more likely to spend.

So more borrowing keeps the economy going. But what are the reallife effects—good and bad? Herewith are five ways in which Fed policy has changed Gotham, for better or for worse: 1. Empty luxury condos. One57, 432 Park, the renovated Plaza: Manhattan is no longer just home to the rich but home to the absent rich’s money. Citing Census data, the Times reported that half of apartments between Fifth and Park in the 50s and 60s are empty most of the time. Luxury tower construction has displaced neat stores and upended quality of life. But New York wouldn’t see such demand for new towers if it weren’t for zero interest rates. By pushing up stock and bond markets, cheap money has made the world’s rich not only richer but also confused about where to put their

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city & state — October 28, 2014

The Must-Read Morning Roundup of New York Politics and Government

PUBLIC THEATER S

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ince her breakout role

solution during the Iraq War. A couple of times I was offered some Law & Order episodes early on that seemed to be in the same way not helpful—although I’ve been on Law & Order quite a lot, and it’s a wonderful show.

on Broadway in Angels in America, the actress Kathleen Chalfant has given life to a wide range of compelling characters on stage and screen.

Perhaps her most celebrated role was as a cancer patient in the Off Broadway play Wit, and she has become a recognizable figure in films such as Kinsey and television shows including House of Cards and the new Showtime series The Affair.

City & State Albany Bureau Chief Jon Lentz spoke with Chalfant about her support for Green Party candidates Howie Hawkins and Brian Jones, her disappointment with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and how hard it was to play Ronald Reagan.

C&S: You’ve had any number of politically oriented roles. You played Ethel Rosenberg, among other roles, in Angels in America, and you were Nancy Reagan in Larry Kramer’s Just Say No— KC: I’ve actually played Nancy Reagan twice and Ronald Reagan once. And I have to say that playing Ronald Reagan was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

city & state — October 28, 2014

The following is an edited transcript.

City & State: You are supporting the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins, who is running for governor of New York, and his running mate, Brian Jones. Why? Kathleen Chalfant: The person I know best on the ticket is Brian Jones, who is the candidate for lieutenant governor. Brian and I have done a fair amount of what I like to call rabble-rousing, human rights work of one sort or another, together in New York in the last few years. That’s my immediate connection to the ticket.

My reason for supporting the ticket actively is that I think it’s important at this time that there be an alternative on the left to the mainstream Democratic Party, because it seems to me that Gov. Cuomo has moved, certainly, far to the right of his father, and seems to be leaning right from the progressive parts of his announced positions. And I’m particularly concerned about the issue of fracking. I’m afraid that if there is no significant anti-fracking pressure, that [Cuomo] will bow to the rather fierce forces arrayed on the side of fracking—an activity which I think will do no good to

A Q&A WITH

KATHLEEN CHALFANT anyone. At the very least, we can stipulate that there is no shortage of natural gas in the United States.

Brian is also a teacher, and very much opposed to the Common Core testing regime that our public schools have fallen under in the last few years. I’m from California, so I went to the California public school system, and graduated from it in 1962, from kindergarten through the 12th grade. It was one of the great educational institutions in the world, as was the New York public school system.

To have watched all these years the public school system in the country be under attack, because people have forgotten that all of the children belong to all of us, it seems to me that school choice is an extremely shortsighted and unpatriotic way of educating our children, because the public school systems were where the best of America was nurtured.

C&S: You have been in a number of performances with political themes or overtones, notably Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, which sparked public discussion about HIV and AIDS. Do your own political views come into play at all in your acting?

KC: Yes, they do. When you’re a working actor, it’s sometimes difficult to exercise your principles. It’s not so much in the theater, since nobody gets paid in the theater anyway. But in the movies and television and sometimes doing things like commercials, I have now— because I’m old and have worked for a long time and have Social Security and two pensions—the luxury to turn things down if I feel they’re in conflict with my political views.

I, for instance, never auditioned for the show 24 because I thought that it was part of the problem and not part of the

C&S: Really?

KC: Yes, because I was having a hard time finding my way into the character, because for someone of my generation— I’ll be 70 in January—Ronald Reagan was the beginning of all of the drift to the right in American politics, starting with tax reform that was the beginning of the dismantling of the public school system, and a lot of other things. So I had serious political differences with Ronald Reagan, and so trying to be Ronald Reagan was very hard. And I realized that I was looking at it from the outside, and so I started looking at YouTube video of Ronald Reagan, who was, his politics aside, quite a nice man! Everybody liked him. And he liked himself. That’s what I had to discover in playing Ronald Reagan, that no matter what I thought of his politics, he thought he was swell. That was the thing I had to do. In that same play, I was playing Queen Elizabeth I and Hitler, but still, Ronald Reagan was the hardest one.

To read the full text of this interview, including Chalfant’s most rewarding political role, go to cityandstateny .com.

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ALEJANDRO GARCÍA PADILLA Governor of Puerto Rico

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