The Baldeo for Senate Committee is pleased to announce that at a meeting of members and supporters held on Friday, November 2, 2007, the decision was made to file a third party nominating petition in addition to the Democratic Party designating petition on behalf of Albert Baldeo for the 15^th State Senate district in 2008. Additionally, the Baldeo campaign has been encouraged by, and will continue to seek the nomination of the Working Families Party, the Independence Party and other third party lines for the General Election. 

via the New York Post

This is a sad follow-up to the open letter I sent you in November in the exciting, hope-filled hours before a historic landslide victory gave you a popular mandate to carry out the reforms you repeatedly promised you were all about.

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Maybe if you had taken some of my suggestions you could have avoided the disturbing, business-as-usual mess that engulfed and embarrassed our state during the past week - as you desperately abandoned your reform pledges in an unsuccessful effort to get an on-time budget.

Frankly, the price paid for your failure - in terms of the public's money and the severe damage to your reputation - could hardly be higher.

via the New York Daily News

We live in the Age of Addiction. Our nation is addicted to oil. Our people are addicted to junk food. And Albany is addicted to secrecy.

Just ask Eliot Spitzer. The man who promised that Day One: Everything Changes is the latest "reformer" to fall victim to secrecy's sway. Maybe we need a 12-step program instead of elections. Or maybe we need to move Albany to a warm-weather state so sunshine can find its dark and dirty corners.

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When I said it was my opinion he had given into the Legislature's usual scams of secrecy, he shot back: "I'm the governor of the state. I'll be Lyndon Johnson. I'll craft the deals and I'll get the job done. You will write and I will do. That's why you're there and I'm here."

Lyndon Johnson? Wow. Twelve steps may not be enough to cure our new governor.

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Mr. DiNapoli is the Comptroller, despite being having been called “unqualified,” and it is now his burden to prove the critics wrong. Unlike the Governor or the media it is not his technical qualifications that trouble me. Experts can be hired to provide information and advice, although the person doing the hiring must have enough knowledge to evaluate that advice, which often conflicts. My concern with a former member of the Assembly serving as Comptroller is different -- conflict of interest. Our incumbent elected officials, those who work for them, and the small number groups that support them, have become an insular tribe with overlapping interests that conflict with, and have been given priority over, those of most current and all future New Yorkers. As Comptroller, Mr. DiNapoli will oversee three functions -- financial reporting, auditing of state agencies and local governments, and pension administration. In each of those functions, doing an honest job would require him to show, for all to see, who the winners are, and who the losers are.

There's a lot riding on how Eliot Spitzer responds to his first real defeat in a while.

Writes a reader:

"If he's gracious, he gets it. If not, could be an ugly four years."

Hey. How's it going? Everyone settling in nicely now that Pataki's gone? Congrats, too, on adding another Democratic State Senator. Slowly but surely, eh?

Anyhow, I want to talk with you a little bit about this whole Hevesi replacement situation.

See, I like Governor Spitzer. I voted for him. I am hopeful about his agenda to reform the way you guys all do business on the Hudson. I didn't vote for Shelly Silver. I didn't vote for Joe Bruno. Neither of those guys represent me, neither of those guys represent anyone in WNY, and none of them are particularly interested in what goes on out here in the stix, right? I mean, Silver is from the lower east side of Manhattan, and Bruno has a nice horse farm near Saratoga. I don't mind Silver running the Assembly or Bruno running the Senate. After all, they're elected to do so by their membership. What I do mind is that they see themselves as co-Governors of the state along with Spitzer.

Everyone's favorite anonymous pork data collector has assembled yet another giant, useful Excel file, this one arranging both Senate and Assembly member items by Zip Code. That's harder, and more useful, than it sounds.

Click here to download the file.

Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long's opinion article on the need to reform Albany in the New York Post on New Year's Day, best represents the main mission of any politician - say anything the public wants to hear to “stay in power.” After more than a decade of being an insider in the Pataki Administration and reaping its rewards, Long’s reaction to the democratic take over of the executive office is an about turn to the outsider calling for reforms.

Long’s switch reminds one of a fixed wrestling match where the fighters follow a script written to give the public what they want that evening. Same fighters every night, some nights the wrestler wins, some nights he loses, all designed to fool the public. By continuing to have these same leaders and people in office, it robs the state of representatives who believe in what they say, and do what they promise. Long is the first of many who for years grew rich with their friends, courtesy of Albany’s dysfunctional government, who will now join the public outcry for reforms, simply to save their jobs.

Everyone recognizes that bid rigging of cement or traffic light contracts are the work of organized crime. However when elected officials rig our state and city elections to ensure that every incumbent gets reelected, no one calls their deliberate strategy criminal and organized.

Newspaper editorials and good government groups push for individual fixes to our crisis in local government – for example, public financing of state campaigns. But, no one says outright that our right to representative democracy has been hijacked. Local elections have become the “ins” verses the “outs” and the process has been rigged to block any of the “outs” from winning. Our local elections have become so noncompetitive, that, behind public view, most incumbents, regardless of party or reform beliefs, work together as the “ins” to keep the outs “out.”

I you find politics in the least bit entertaining, you ought to watch the long version of WGRZ-TV's(Buffalo) Scott Brown's interview with State Senator Dale Volker (R), and the wild interjection by Volker's aide, J.R. Drexelius.

I prepared a transcript of the exchange because it contains so many interesting tidbits. It's quite interesting how Volker frames his replies.

At a State Senate hearing on the Berger Commission hospital closing report, Channel 2's Scott Brown pulled Volker aside to ask about the possibility that the state legislature, which meets on the 13th in special session, will vote to raise its pay.

When news broke that the incoming Spitzer administration has set up a website for the submission of resumes and ideas, I briefly considered submitting the former. Very briefly. A moment’s reflection made it clear that, even if state wanted to hire me, a return to public service would be bad for my family, my career, my mental health, and even my ability to make a contribution to my community. That is what a 20 year history in government, generally as a policy analyst/city planner, tells me. Based on more positive experiences outside public service, however, I would like to offer my assistance to the incoming Spitzer administration in another way. Any information I have compiled and analyzed, any information I will compile and analyze, and any suggestions I have or will come up with in my spare time are yours, gratis. Absolutely free. That is a suggestion I made to the “ideas” inbox. If someone reading this wants my resume, just fish my e-mail address out of there and ask me for it. If anyone else is interested in a warning about the nature of a public sector career, read on.

Geoff Kelly has a great piece in Buffalo's alt-weekly, Artvoice, reviewing the book “Three Men in a Room”, written by former Democratic State Senator Seymour Lachman.

Combining personal anecdotes, historical background and a dismaying collection of statistics, Lachman makes the case for a sweeping revision of the way state government does business, by means no less dramatic than a state constitutional convention. His account also explains why, after four successful re-election bids, he resigned his seat in disgust in 2004. He had first won the seat in a 1996 special election. What he found in Albany was a legislature whose members had little or no say in crafting legislation; whose members traded obedience to their party and house leaders for perquisites, pork-barrel projects and easy re-election; which was in the sway of powerful, largely unregulated lobbyists; and which routinely failed to accomplish anything of substance, even its most basic responsibility to pass an annual budget on time. In short, he found a government that was controlled almost entirely by three men in a room, who run New York State with little accountability to most New Yorkers. A government, Lachman notes in the book, which in 2002 managed to pass only 4.4 percent of the 16,892 bills legislators introduced—the lowest achievement record of any statehouse in the country.