Mayorpalooza: Local Officials Have Their Day in Albany

Scarsdale Mayor Carolyn Stevens stepped up to the microphone, looking somewhat exasperated.

Pension costs for public employees in her wealthy village, she said, have increased by two orders of magnitude, from $33,000 in 2003 to $3.5 million this year. Since public pensions are protected by the state constitution, those costs are completely out of the control of local governments once an employee is put on the payroll.

"If the state can't get a handle on those issues," she asked Lt. Gov. Bob Duffy, "how in the world are local municipalities supposed to get a handle on them?"

Stevens was one of dozens of mayors from around the state who flocked to Albany on Monday for the annual winter meeting of the New York Conference of Mayors (NYCOM).The conference is an agenda-setting schmooze-fest, timed to take place just as state budget negotiations reach a critical point.

The list of speakers at the day-long event, which included Duffy, State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb, underscores the influence the group has on policy decisions at the Capitol.

But many local officials are feeling powerless as Gov. Andrew Cuomo seeks to implement a two-percent cap on annual increases in property tax levies.

"Without significant relief from mandates, the tax cap is just going to bankrupt municipalities or lead to very substantial cutbacks in the services that school districts and municipalities all over the state rely on," said Nyack Mayor Richard Kavesh, who did not attend the NYCOM meeting.

Nyack is one of dozens of locales that have passed a resolution authored by NYCOM that expresses opposition to the cap without reform of the pension system and a laundry list of other imposed costs.

Cuomo's proposal includes a provision, which has largely gone unmentioned in news reports and missives by local officials, that would allow the cap to be bucked if 60 percent of voters chose to do so. Richard Bamberger, a top aide to Cuomo, said that the override provision is key to the proposal.

"The whole 'the sky is falling' thing is really just allowing the people to decide if their taxes should go up," Bamberger said, adding that the vast majority of school district budgets are approved each year by more than 60 percent of voters.

But the Cuomo administration did little to quell the fears of local officials when, one day after the NYCOM meeting, it released its first set of recommendations for rolling back onerous mandates.

The report, authored by Cuomo's Mandate Relief Team, calls for legislation that would prohibit new mandates from being passed without state funding attached and require independent analyses of new mandates to determine their true impact on local governments and school districts. But it makes no mention of current mandates that should be repealed and does not identify any immediate cost savings.

"Although we all commend the formation and work of the Mandate Relief Team, there is disappointment that the initial report focused on better managing new mandates or establishing a process of analysis around current mandates rather than specific decisions that can be implemented right now," said Rye Mayor Doug French.

After the NYCOM meeting, French was careful to note that Cuomo has called for "fundamental changes" in the state's spending habits and put the onus squarely on the state legislature for passing the needed reforms.

The mandate team is set to issue further recommendations in the coming months; meanwhile, the property tax cap already has passed the Republican-led Senate and will likely be taken up by the Democrat-dominated Assembly in April, once the state budget is passed.

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Here's a look at what our local lawmakers were up to from Feb. 25 to March 4:

Assemblyman Tom Abinanti (D-Greenburgh) did not introduce any bills.
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Assemblyman Robert Castelli (R- Goldens Bridge) introduced four bills, including a proposal to create an independent body tasked with redrawing legislative districts every 10 years. Currently, lawmakers redraw the map each decade; opponents of the system say that it's rigged to allow gerrymandering by majority parties. Under Castelli's proposal the 14-member commission would be comprised of five Democrats, five Republicans and four people who do not belong to either party.

Another Castelli bill would provide that a police officer in Westchester County could be suspended without pay for only 30 days pending a trial on disciplinary charges.

Castelli on Feb. 23 sent a letter to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger decrying the heckling of an Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient during a Feb. 20 debate at the school. The veteran, Columbia freshman Anthony Maschek, lost a leg after being shot 11 times. He was jeered and called a "racist" when he told the audience "there are bad men out there plotting to kill you." In his letter, Castelli, a Vietnam veteran, implores Bollinger to "open up a dialogue with your students and convey to them that sensitivity about diversity should be extended to all Americans, most especially those heroic enough to risk their lives in the service of this great nation."

Castelli held public hearings on the state budget on March 3 and March 4 in Bedford Hills.
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Assemblywoman Sandy Galef (D-Ossining) introduced two bills. One would allow contiguous towns to enter into purchasing agreements to buy and share highway equipment. The agreements would have to be approved by the town boards.

At the request of Putnam County officials, Galef also introduced a bill that would allow the county to extend its current four-percent sales tax until Nov. 30, 2013.
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Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee (D-Suffern) introduced one bill, which would provide that the income of a child under 18 be disregarded for the purpose of determining a household's eligibility for child care subsidies.
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Assemblyman Steve Katz (R-Yorktown) did not introduce any bills.

Katz will hold a town hall meeting at the Yorktown Fire House on March 10 at 6:30 p.m.
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Assemblyman George Latimer (D-Rye) did not introduce any bills.
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Assemblywoman Amy Paulin (D-Scarsdale) did not introduce any bills.

A proposal by Paulin to limit Medicaid reimbursements for Cesarean sections was adopted by Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Medicaid Redesign Team, which last week issued its first set of recommendations for reining in health care costs. According to Paulin, 34 percent of women who gave birth in New York in 2007 did so via C-section; the World Health Organization recommends a C-section rate no higher than 15 percent. If the state rate were reduced to 15 percent, the assemblywoman said, the state would save more than $31.5 million. C-sections can result in a variety of complications for the mother and baby.
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Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski (D-New City) introduced one bill, which would allow local governments and school districts to enter into cooperative agreements in order to provide cheaper administrative services, such as employee payroll and insurance. The proposal also would lower health insurance premiums for municipal employees whose insurance plans offer wellness programs.
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Sen. Greg Ball (R-Patterson) did not introduce any bills.

Ball held a "veterans open house" at his district office in Brewster on March 5. Veterans were invited to come and share their concerns about post-traumatic stress disorder, homelessness, unemployment and other issues. The event was held in anticipation of Ball's March 14 Veterans Hill Day, an advocacy event at the Capitol in Albany.

In the Feb. 28 edition of his Legislative Report video series, Ball talks to Neil Pollack of the Anderson Center for Autism in Dutchess County, as well as two parents of children with autism and food allergies.
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Sen. David Carlucci (D-Clarkstown) introduced two local bills which would increase to 36 months the maximum term for payment of delinquent taxes in Rockland County and would end the requirement in Orangetown that all public libaries must receive equal funding.

The senator also introduced "Lauren's Law," which would require anyone who does not want to register as an organ donor to opt out by checking a box on a driver's license application. Currently, people who want to donate organs must opt in. The bill is named after Lauren Shields, a 10-year-old girl who received a life-saving heart transplant.
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Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer (D-Port Chester) introduced nine bills, including a proposal that would treat corporations and their 50 percent or more owned subsidiaries as single entities for the purposes of campaign contribution limits. Under current law subsidiaries are treated as separate from their parent corporations. The limit for corporate contributions is $5,000.

Oppenheimer also wants the state to create a property tax credit of up to $375 for disabled people and raise, from $5,000 to $6,000, the maximum claim that can be made by crime victims before they must prove that denial of a claim would cause "financial difficulty."

Another bill would extend, from six months to 15 months, the period that local governments have to draft a plan for consolidation after a public vote to dissolve or consolidate municipalities.

Oppenheimer on Feb. 28 held a round-table with school officials from across Westchester that focused on teacher/principal evaluation practices. The forum also featured State Education Department Senior Deputy Commissioner John King. Oppenheimer is advocating for a proposal that would allow school districts to retain evaluation methods that have been successful.
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Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) did not introduce any bills.

The senator and County Legislator John Nonna will hold a town hall meeting on March 12 at the Mount Pleasant Public Library from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.