newshound

School aid cut by $1.47 million: No major spending cuts proposed so far. This story was published in The Chronicle on March 3rd, 2011.

Goshen, NY – The Goshen school district faces a $1.47 million cut in state aid. But the district’s four schools proposed only $21,295 in spending cuts over last year, leaving student programs untouched but residents fearing tax hikes.

Enrollment for 2011-12 is expected to go up by 27 students.

“Are we going to take into significant account the governor’s words of a 2 percent cap, or are we just going to blow that away?” asked resident Bob Chaffee.

School board president Robert Kimiecik said the board was still listening to department heads about their needs for next year.

“We have not created a summation of all those requirements and requests for the budget at this point,” Kimiecik said. “So it’s very difficult to say if we’re going to be able to stick to the 2 percent, or whether it will be higher or lower.”

Robert Miller, the assistant superintendent for business, said it remains to be seen whether the state legislature will pass Gov. Cuomo’s budget. The governor has threatened to shut down state government if a budget is not passed in early April.

Kimiecik said it was “very likely” the district would dip into its fund balance to the tune of $800,000. That leaves a $648,705 hole in the budget. The school district has seen a $3 million drop in state aid since 2009-10.

Goshen High School Principal Robert Litz proposed cutting more than $180,000 from BOCES by eliminating slots in the occupational education and alternative high school programs. An occupational education slot costs about $10,000 per student, he said, and an alternative high school slot costs about $20,000. Litz said he still has room in the BOCES program even with his proposed cuts, but that it is “very tight.”

“It’s cutting to the very precipice of where you can go where you still have the appropriate slots to put students,” said Litz. “You’re on the cliff.”

He said he is “terrified” of an unexpected spike in enrollments at BOCES. He praised the district’s guidance staff for saving the district thousands of dollars by keeping students enrolled in conventional high school in cases where they are “on the fence” in needing alternative high school.

Litz said he has a buffer of one BOCES slot. If more were needed, he said, the district would have to get creative and find the money somewhere.

“We truly are very, very close to not funding [BOCES] with enough money in order to assure that every student is appropriately placed,” said Litz.

There is no plan to cut staff, he said, and no formal meetings on that part of the budget have yet taken place.

Last year the school board eliminated the positions of two teachers, two librarians and a reading specialist. Superintendent Dan Connor said the district’s administration costs were cut by $275,000 last year by allowing a vacant position to remain empty and by filling one administrative position through an in-house promotion. Goshen Intermediate School Principal Jason Carter said he found $14,500 in savings by reducing copy machine maintenance costs.

Goshen resident George Wile asked, “How is it possible that we’re letting go of people and at the same time handing out increases to those that remain behind?”

The board did not immediately respond.

“We’re letting go of people and giving out raises at the same time, and then we’re saying we don’t have enough money to give a quality education out,” Wile said. “But we keep on giving more and more money in raises. It defies logic.”

“The only answer I can give you to that is it’s part of the negotiation process that takes place,” said Kimiecik. “That is what was negotiated and approved on both sides.”

Later in the meeting, Wile commended the four schools for stretching their budgets, but again questioned the salary increases over budget cuts.

“Noted,” Kimiecik said, his patience visibly worn thin at the second mention of the matter.

Another audience member told the board that the public was owed an explanation into the process of recent contract negotiations between the district and the Goshen Teacher’s Association. The board said it would address his concern at their March 21 meeting.

Connor declined to say when the budget would be released, saying there was still a lot of work to do.

The district is required by state law to release the budget 45 days before the vote, which is on May 17 this year. Kimiecik said a public hearing on the budget will be held on May 3.

“Every department has held the line or cut,” said Connor. “Everybody is coming in lower than they were last year, so we’re really holding the line, all of us are.”

“We are going to try and do the best we can for the community realizing the state of affairs today,” said Kimiecik, referring to the economic slump.

Litz said the budget process is still in its early stages.

“We have not compiled the entire budget yet, so therefore we do not know where we are in terms of a percentage from budget to budget increase,” he said. “It’s a work in progress and of course when it’s absolutely complete and a percentage increase is determined, it still requires the community to support it.”

A postmortem on a congressional race reveals that the Republican’s campaign arsenal was fully stocked. This story was published in Metroland on November 11, 2010.

Democrat Scott Murphy knew the mid-September poll that showed him 17 points ahead of Republican opponent Chris Gibson in New York’s 20th District congressional race was only a mirage. “We had a double-digit lead when no one knew my opponent,” said Murphy after his concession speech on Election Day. “We always knew this would be a close election.”

Actually, Gibson won with a comfortable 10-percent lead over Murphy—too big a margin to be called close. How did a relatively unknown contender gain enough momentum inside of six weeks to capture a decisive victory?

Historically a Republican district, the 20th has 41 percent Republican enrollment and 27 Democratic. Murphy’s predecessor, now-Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, was the first Democrat to be elected to the 20th in recent memory. Murphy won her seat against Republican Jim Tedisco in a special election in 2009 after she vacated it to fill Hillary Clinton’s empty U.S. Senate seat. Tedisco was faulted at the time for running a flawed campaign.

However, Murphy faced a palpable anti-incumbent sentiment in his bid for reelection. While most Democrats running for statewide office went largely unscathed in this regard, Murphy was not so lucky.

“It was difficult to believe until you understood that in the special election there was a number of Republicans that had voted for him and they had obviously deserted him,” said Thilo Ullman, chairman of the Saratoga County Democrats. Ullman said Republican strategists exploited key weaknesses in Murphy’s position. He was a Democrat serving in a Republican district who voted for President Obama’s health-care bill that was unpopular even among some of his peers. Ullman said Murphy’s stance on health care was enough to pull his Republican supporters back to their side of the aisle.

Gibson also had considerable financial backing from the Republican Congressional Committee and associated Republican PACs, including Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and the 60 Plus Association. Together these three PACs spent $1.74 million on Gibson’s campaign.

In September, Salon.com reported that Rove’s American Crossroads PAC is largely funded by billionaires. Ninety-one percent of the $2.6 million raised by American Crossroads in August was gifted by just three people. Prior to August, they had raised $4.7 million, of which 97 percent was donated by four billionaires with ties to various business sectors including the oil and gas industries. Overall, American Crossroads has spent $38 million ($14 million shy of their pledge) on the 2010 midterm elections, all of it going to benefit Republican candidates. American Crossroads gave $447,366 to Gibson’s campaign.

The 60 Plus Organization’s website claims to be a nonpartisan PAC aimed at looking out for seniors’ interests on multiple fronts including health care and social security. However, 100 percent of the $7 million the PAC spent in the 2010 midterm elections went to benefit Republican candidates. The 60 Plus Association seeks to repeal health care and is a member of the Cooler Heads Initiative, a subgroup of the Competitive Enterprise Institute—a Washington-based think tank that opposes climate-change legislation and is funded in part by companies such as Exxon Mobil and Pfizer. The 60 Plus Organization gave $516,437 to Gibson’s campaign.

“The Republicans, very astutely, reserved their main effort for the last few weeks of the campaign,” said Chairman Ullman. “They put the whole machine in gear.” Ullman said that Gibson will toe the Republican line all the way, attempting to repeal health-care reform and extend tax cuts to the wealthy. He noted the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that enabled corporations and unions to donate unlimited sums to PACs who then funnel the money to favored candidates. The ad blitz seen by the Gibson campaign at the end of the 20th race was one case of this decision being played out on the electoral stage, he said. “The barrage of outside paid advertising was an absolute tsunami,” said Ullman. “There was no way any reasonable message could come out of that enormous barrage of ads.”

Indeed, another Siena poll conducted six weeks after the one giving Murphy a 17-point lead showed Murphy trailing Gibson by nine points. “Certainly I’m surprised at the size of the swing,” said Siena pollster Steven Greenberg. However, Greenberg does not attribute Gibson’s win solely to the financial clout of his backers. “There was a very vigorous, active campaign on both sides of the aisle,” said Greenberg. Murphy did, however, face more attack ads than any other member of Congress in this election.

“That’s what campaigns are all about, educating voters,” said Greenberg. “At the start of the campaign Gibson was largely unknown to the majority of voters in the 20th Congressional District and a lot . . . of money was spent on both sides.”

WAMC host and political pundit Alan Chartock had a similar view. He wrote in an e-mail that, while money helps, it didn’t buy the election for either candidate. Quoting the timeworn adage that ties successful politicians to their constituent’s concerns, Chartock concluded that “all politics are local.”

A Republican tidal wave swept the nation Tuesday and carried Democrat Scott Murphy out of office. This story was published in Metroland on November 4th, 2010.

In an election year marked by voter dissatisfaction, the people of New York’s 20th Congressional District ousted Democrat Scott Murphy and replaced him with Republican Chris Gibson. Gibson won 56 percent of the vote while Murphy received only 44 percent.

Although gracious in his concession speech at the Gideon-Putnam hotel, Murphy did say afterward that his campaign was assailed by 2.5 million dollars worth of attack ads, more than any other member of Congress. However, he called on his supporters to get behind Gibson and move forward. “Please stay involved, stay active, and continue to be part of the solution,” he said. He thanked his supporters and opened the bar to all for a much-needed drink. Murphy won his seat against Republican Assemblyman James Tedisco after Kirsten Gillibrand was named by Gov. David Paterson to fill Hillary Clinton’s vacant Senate seat.

Across town, a different party was under way at the Holiday Inn. Waves of Gibson supporters crammed into a large meeting room that, by the end of the night, was standing room only. When an aide stood up onstage at 11:15 and declared that Murphy had just conceded, the room erupted into applause. In a hotel room above them, Murphy and Gibson were having a conversation via telephone.

Gibson’s win was largely based on his platform of lowering taxes and an ad blitz that even former President Bill Clinton couldn’t overcome while stumping for Murphy on Monday. A Siena poll conducted in mid- September showed Murphy with a 17-point lead over Gibson. The latest, released on October 26th, showed Gibson with a nine-point lead.

“The Gibson campaign has certainly been more successful in creating a negative view of Murphy than the Murphy campaign has been in trying to create a negative image of Gibson,” said Seina pollster Steven Greenberg.

Many polling stations in Saratoga County reported a turnout of more than 50 percent with more than two hours left to vote. Mary Suda, chairwoman of the 22nd voting district, compared the turnout to that of the presidential election in 2008. “It was more than just a regular midterm election,” she said.

As the election draws near, attorney general candidates look to define themselves with upstate voters. This story was first published in Metroland on October 21st, 2010.

Last week, Democrat Eric Schneiderman spoke in Albany to a crowd of about 30 supporters and union representatives as part of his bid to become New York’s next attorney general.

Schneiderman, a progressive who helped reform the Rockefeller drug laws while in the Senate, received the endorsement of three union representatives and is endorsed by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Schneiderman’s opponent, Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, who has the Republican nomination and the endorsement of both New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Mayor Ed Koch, has attacked Schneiderman for being close to unions. Both Cuomo and Carl Paladino have said they will take an ax to the budget and that they will likely look for hefty concessions from unions. At the rally, Schneiderman said he didn’t think union workers were looking for special treatment, but that they wanted to be part of a practical solution.

While some see Schneiderman’s agenda as a little more progressive than Cuomo’s, Schneiderman said that their relationship, should both be elected, would be one of cooperation.

“My positions are nearly identical to those taken by Attorney General Cuomo,” said Schneiderman in an e-mail. “I look forward to working with the new governor to reform our state government, protect a woman’s right to choose, and get illegal guns off our streets.”

Meanwhile, Donovan has come under attack for his relationship with Wall Street. The New York Times recently reported that one in every four dollars in Donovan’s campaign coffers came from a single multibillion dollar hedge fund, headed by a man who is a leading and influential defender of Wall Street’s status quo. Donovan has said that he does not want to be the “sherriff of Wall Street,” and Schneiderman attacked him for that.

In an interview, Donovan told Reuters that addressing Wall Street will take caution and that many cases brought against alleged wrongdoing on Wall Street had been overturned.

Donovan’s campaign is painting Schneiderman as an Albany insider who will do nothing to change Albany’s dysfunction.

Donovan has outlined a three-pronged approach to cleaning up Albany. First, he plans on securing unilateral jurisdiction of corruption cases for the attorney general’s office. He also wants to increase the transparency of member items, through which legislators dole out money to nonprofits and other constituents. Lastly, he said he would require legislators to disclose their outside income from any work not related to their legislative duties. “Our public has no confidence when a legislator is voting on a bill, or debating a bill on the floor, whether or not they are representing the interests of the people who elected them, or the interests of their employer or client,” Donovan said in an interview with WMHT.

Schneiderman’s stance on ethics reform revolves around launching public corruption initiatives and being an advocate for public financing of campaigns. Schneiderman has the endorsement of nonpartisan citizen’s groups such as Citizen Action of New York, of which he is a member. Schneiderman also plans to build on initiatives started by Andrew Cuomo, such as “Project Sunlight,” that seek to shed more light on member items in the legislature.

Schneiderman has also announced his intention to go after corporations who conduct hydrofracking in New York state—a procedure that involves injecting a cocktail of chemicals into the earth to break up and release natural gas for collection.

However, the attorney general’s office is also tasked with defending New York state in the inevitable lawsuits that environmental groups will bring once the Department of Environmental Conservation releases its long-awaited environmental impact statement on the practice and the moratorium on hydrofracking is lifted or relaxed. A considerable amount of bureaucratic flexibility will be required of Schneiderman, should he be elected, to defend the state from environmental litigation related to hydrofracking while opposing it himself.

Donovan’s spokesperson released a statement that characterized hydrofracking as an “opportunity” for New York, but one that needs to be undertaken “safely and properly.”

Schneiderman has recently come out in favor of a controversial gun-control strategy known as “microstamping,” which involves marking every firearm manufactured with a microscopic imprint, enabling law enforcement to track any bullet fired back to the weapon. Schneiderman also has the endorsement of Albany’s first ward councilman and gun-control activist Dominick Calsolaro.

Before the race for attorney general, Donovan supported a microstamping bill sponsored by Schneiderman, who he knew could be a potential opponent in the future. Donovan also touts his experience prosecuting gun crimes as the district attorney in Staten Island.

There is concern amongst both parties that their candidates are well-known only in small circles in New York City and do not have much presence upstate. Some fear the election may well be decided by downstate voters.