“It’s All Politics,” (snarl)

Too many of us view “politics” as synonymous with corruption and malfeasance, the result is low turnout in elections. Social media has learned the lesson: violence, sex, greed gets more clicks than positive news. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a crawl at the bottom of a tv screen, “World to End at 3, stay tuned for details at 5”

Politics, the process by which we govern our state begins Wednesday with the swearing in of the newly elected 150 members of the Assembly and 63 members of the Senate followed by the members electing the leaders of each house, the democrats have over overwhelming majorities in each house and will re-elect leadership: Carl Heastie as Speaker of the Assembly and Andrea Stewart-Cousins as Majority Leader of the Senate. The leadership will assign committees and chairmanship of the committees, seniority is a major factor.

Leadership determines the flow of legislation.

Every day, before the session, the announcement of “conference,” members only, closed meetings, leadership measuring the “temperature” of their delegation, regardless of the debate in conference, if leadership brings the item to the floor the vote will be party line, all Democrats will voting “yes.”

The following week, on January 14th, the Governor will give her State of the State speech. Usually an optimistic speech, highlighting her achievements and in general terms her goals for the session.

At the end of January the governor will release her Preliminary Budget, a 150+ page document laying out her 240 billionish item by item budget, and, perhaps a few non budget items, always controversial (See Pataki v Silver here).

Around March 1 both houses will release “one house budgets” and the budget negotiations will heat up, Ultimately the “three men in a room,” (these days two women, Hochul and Stewart-Cousins and Heastie) will hammer out a budget by the April 1 deadline, or not. If no budget is approved the legislatures will pass week by week “continuing resolutions” to keep the state solvent. The governor is a right of center Democrat from Buffalo and the legislatures left of center Democrats dominated by downstaters, her relationship with the legislatures are, at times, contentious.

A dark hovering cloud is the Trump administration, will Trump and the Congress slash spending thereby creating vast holes in state budgets?

At the top of the legislative agenda is reforming the education funding formula, extremely contentious. The only issue that crosses party lines, more In upcoming posts.

For teacher unions “fixing Tier 6,” actually reducing the full retirement age from 62 to 55, a heavy lift.  The 10,000 Tier 6 members are two plus decades away from retirement, however, the eventual cost will be billions of dollars, how will the “fix” be funded?  Read a report about pensions in Chicago here.

Actuaries compute the cost of pensions, the eventual burden on school districts and the funding issue is complex.

Thousands of bills will be introduced, in the last session 800 passed. The website of the Assembly and the Senate post all the bills introduced, the full text as well as summaries.

As the year progresses the NYC mayoral Democratic primary, June 25, will heat up, and, a year later, a gubernatorial Democratic primary  as well as a November hotly contested election.

There are 700 school districts across the state, teacher union members in every corner of the state and high percentages of teacher union members vote.

School board and school budget elections are in May, in NYC the  city budget plus state funding determines school funding, the city budget is usually finalized in mid June and results of the Ranked Choice Voting  primary in early July.

And the dark clouds of an impending Trump presidency may very well turn into thunder and lightning. 

We may be spending the new year fighting off Trump assaults.

Opposition caucuses banging away at current union leadership is beyond dangerous, as our enemies applaud their efforts. While  the opposition probably will have trouble finding Albany on a map Mulgrew and his team has been at the table in the proverbial  “smoke filled room,” passing a class size reduction bill and preventing eliminating the NYC cap on charter schools.   

Unless you know how to play the game of politics the game will play you.