Cuny Forum; Politics & Policy in New York State Government: Turmoil and Reform in Albany

Good evening, my name is Bob Liff, and this is the CUNY Forum, a monthly town meeting that brings prominent New Yorkers together with faculty and students of the Edwettie Rogalski Internship Program in Government and Public Affairs. We are entering a dangerous period for those who care about public affairs, an election year and a time of deep fiscal crisis. As New York selected, New York selected leaders try to grapple or try to avoid grappling with a deficit that could reach $30 billion over the next four years, the future of public employees, health care, state parks, clean water, public schools in both the city and state universities hang in the balance. Albany is certainly not alone in facing the fiscal troubles as the state capitals across the nation face a collective budget deficit measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars. New York's economy is so tied in with the continuing global recession that what happens

in California or Greece could drag down bond markets and push up interest rates that make our hail locally even harder to climb. But unlike Washington, Albany and the other states can not simply print money without winning a foul of the Treasury Department anti-counterfitting squads. Governor Patterson, Meyer and one of the deeper routes we've seen as sitting governor in, alternates between prescribing the distasteful medicine he knows is needed to begin to fix Albany's dysfunction and trying to dangle the prospects of better days before voters he's asking to elect him to a full term. But hard times also make for dangerous proposals. We've even seen proposals to divert stimulus funds and some capital funds to cover operating deficits at the MTA, which those of us with a not so long memory of the fiscal crisis of the 1970s remember as a major cause of how deep and how long that crisis was. All of this comes as a cloud of political paralysis continues to blanket Albany with a weakened governor in a fractured state Senate. The only thing we seem to have less of than money is optimism.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? We are joined by four New Yorkers who are part of the public debate over how we get through the current troubles. Professor Zalimba Blair is the chair of the Department of Public Administration at Medgar Evers College. Luke Beitat is a vice president with Georgia Arts Communication, one of the city's premier political consulting firms and my former employer. Adriatic Dovir is the editor of both capital and city hall magazines and Richard Steyer is the editor in chief, is the editor of the chief newspaper, which covers them, which covers public employees and everything it has to do with them. Zalimba, let me start with you. The governor is prescribing medicine, no one really wants to hear about, does he have the political heft to impose that medicine? Well, let me just say, I think it's a brave and excellent decision that Governor Patterson did that come out early and to increase to what we call revenue forecasts and say, listen, here's what we're facing.

It may be escalated a bit, but he knows that this is what we need to do in order to close a budget gap in this time. We're not sure of where stimulus funds will be in the near future, so he says, listen, we have to forecast this and come out and say, no, no more extra spending. So no, the public doesn't want to hear it because it says education cuts, hospital cuts, etc. And these areas are closing, but he has to say, no, this is where we get most of our spending from. This is where we spend most of our funds, so where else are we going to cut at this particular time? That's those are touchy areas for New Yorkers, but I think that those are excellent decisions that Governor Patterson is making. Lupe, his relationship with legislators, and of course he comes out of the legislature are so much less than good. I mean, how does that work itself through? He can't do this stuff without him. Well, that's true. He can't do it without the legislature. I think that one of the problems early on that the governor had is that the governor is so collegial and he is just generally an affable man.

And I think early on he didn't establish himself as the governor. There was reports and stories in the newspapers talked about how people still called him by his first name. They didn't call him governor called him David. And so he had a hard time early on initially. I agree with Dr. Blair, I think that he has made some tough decisions. I think that he's made the right decisions for the state of New York. Unfortunately, there are so many holes in the legislature, more holes than you see in Swiss cheese, if you will, in the legislature. So there, therein lies the problem. The real question is, are there problems that he's facing? Are they, are, of his own doing, of the legislature, the legislature's doing? Or is it both? And that's the real question. Edward, did you travel around with him when he just made his announcement? He seems to be upbeat. Well, I mean, he's a good politician and he can always seem upbeat. There's a lot of reasons for him to potentially not be upbeat, but this is a very difficult

situation that he's facing. And as he pointed out over the course of his campaign swing this weekend, he officially announced that he actually is going through with the run for a full term, with some people thought that maybe he wouldn't, is that 48 out of 50 states have deficits. The economy, it's not a joke, what's going on. The one that was North Dakota and the other one is Alaska. And he made a joke at one point and one of the events over the weekend, that apparently things are going so well. And Alaska, that the governor was able to quit halfway through, but 48 out of 50 states, New York is one of the, is one of the states with one of the biggest budgets in the country. We obviously have a state economy that's based in a large way on Wall Street and the recession has hit Wall Street significantly. That's a lot of tax money that's not coming in. That's a lot of money that then can't be redistributed in a budget and whatever ways. And so the governor has going forward to somehow convince people that he can tell them,

no, I'm not giving you money, I'm not going to help you in all these ways and you should also support me. That's usually not the way it works in politics. It's the other way around. Where people say, here's some money, now come support me. Richard, you've watched this from City Hall, you're watching it now as an editor. Albany is kind of in a kind of a close little universe and the intensity of public employees in particular on the governor, budget cuts take it out of their hide collectively. How does this play itself out? Well, part of the problem is you have a situation where there were deals made last year with the two largest state employee unions under which they agreed to an inferior pension system for their newest hires and in return for that, he guaranteed them no layoffs. So you've got a situation statewide where he doesn't have a hammer to wield against the large employee unions. On the other hand, the cuts that he's threatened for New York City are so severe that the mayor has said that if they go through, he's going to be cutting about 15,000 jobs

here with a lot of them by layoffs rather than simply not replacing employees who leave the payroll. So there's a general feeling that the thinking behind the mayor's budget strategy is that he's going to squeeze the city employee unions hard enough that they will use the considerable influence that they have up in Albany to make legislators come around and to do some of the things that will avoid all this pain falling upon them. The problem is that the legislators feel that the governor is basically doomed and he may be willing to make tough choices politically, but they figure that he's a doomed man. They have a lot better chance of being reelected if they don't follow him in terms of making those hard choices. The elephant in the room, the 800 pound elephant, the 8,000 pound elephant is Andrew Cuomo. How much of gubernatorial politics is driving the dysfunction right now? Although they were dysfunctional before dysfunction was cool.

They've been dysfunctional, I think, for generations. gubernatorial politics has a lot to do with it, I think, Rich's point is, is right. The legislators see no reason at this point to be allies of the governor because they figure he's not going to be there. There's a government. Democrats, Republicans, whatever they want to be, but especially you'd expect that the governor, a Democratic governor who was the state Senate minority leader, I mean, this is a guy he would guess would have some resonance within the legislature, but he hasn't had it, and it's because politically they're assuming he's a dead man walking. I'd like to jump in and piggyback off a loop at one point. Piggyback off a loop at one point because she made a valid point earlier stating, well, he didn't establish itself as the governor earlier, and I think that's where this all drives. No one trusts his judgment at this particular time, so no, he doesn't have that political weight or that political half, and when he's putting forth these tough decisions to make, everyone is going to say, well, what would Andrew Cuomo do?

What would he do if he was a party party party? But Andrew Cuomo was not saying that's the problem. That's a very, the question I think that Cuomo is going to have to deal with is how long he can continue this game, where everybody knows that he's almost definitely running, but by this point in a year, in a political year, in a campaign year, you expect that the candidate for governor would say, this is how I feel about this issue, or that issue. We've got a budget crisis. You'd guess that if this were an open race, if they, if they were Patterson weren't in the race, Andrew Cuomo, or whoever it was, would be telling us how they would govern the state. Cuomo hasn't been doing that, and I think that's a game that can only go on for so long. Well, it can only go on for so long, but the budget is supposed to be done by April 1st, and it looks at this point as if Andrew Cuomo is not going to state his intentions until sometime in April, and he can just sit and wait in part because the governor has been sabotaging himself to the extent that there isn't going to be any media pressure

growing on Cuomo, as long as there's this focus on whether the governor is doing his job properly, whether he is mishandling relations with the legislature, whether he is the governor that was trying to put that pressure and call out Cuomo and say, tell us what you think. Right. Well, it's sort of an unusual situation in which you have a candidate as opposed to the incumbent pursuing a Rose Garden strategy, in which he's not going to come out and engage, and he doesn't have to because his polls are rock solid. The governor's polls seem to be slipping within his passing day. But here's the thing, his polls are rock solid as Attorney General. Right. But not rock solid as a person running for governor as a candidate. And I have to say, I don't believe that to be the case. I think that once he steps out there, and I think that he knows this, no longer can it be the argument that, well, he doesn't want to see happen again, what happened when McCall was running, that's no longer the case. He can no longer say, well, giving him a nice cushion, a soft cushion to land.

He's announced. He said, the governor said, I'm running. So that can no longer be it. And I have to say that I think that when he steps out as a candidate, candidate Cuomo, then now it's a whole nother ball of wack. And that's true, but it's also something where, if he doesn't declare before these budget deadline passes, that becomes just another arrow in his quiver that he can fire at the governor. But this is someone who is not able to get the legislature to make sure that they're just like what different community groups are going to do. He's really playing the field right now and seeing what different community groups are coming out to say. Exactly. Because I'm watching Cuomo and I'm saying, I see what you're doing. But you also, and don't make the assumption that the budget is going to be done on April 1st. It should have fit really well into Cuomo's political timeline. Right. I mean, we're dealing with New York State where, if they fail to do it, it just creates more of that sense of things are out of control at all, but we need somebody who can fix things.

But there's Andrew Cuomo obligated, I mean, politically and strategically, it's a smart thing he's doing. If you're only looking at this from a political point of view. But as somebody who, you know, presumably wants to lead the state and is going to have these things on his plate, you know, we're not even talking about Rick Lazio, the parent or lead a parent or public candidate for governor, is he under some obligation? I think so, because he owes it to the party, at least I think he owes it to the public as well. It's going to be a good public steward. I think you, you come out and say, what are your plans are, you're sitting on a water chest. What else would you do with it? This is my view. Will you watch that, right? Have you expect him to do the Rose Gordon strategy? I absolutely do because here's the, here's the fact of it. A lot of reporters have been noting that Cuomo hasn't done an interview in years, and that he won't tell us what he's going to do. And it hasn't so far made an impact on this polls.

It hasn't so far made an impact on, we're talking about Andrew Cuomo, and that's, for those who are working, for those of us who know him going back to his father's gubernatorial administration, to me in a very sharp elbows, he was damaged in the run against, against Cuomo Cole. It's clear to me that he made a decision when he was elected attorney general, that the best politics was good government. And that's why he hasn't done, I mean, he has his people out there doing his, you know, political, political groundwork, but he's, you know, and he's, I think he's done a pretty good job. He's picked, you know, when you return to general, you can pick your fights, everything doesn't flow on your side. And there's no better job in politics, right? Your job is getting bad guys, arresting them, or pressing charges against them, rather, and then having a press conference about it. I mean, there's no better way to have good headlines. And proof of that came at a point when both Lazio and Patterson were challenging him to step into the fray and declare his positions. And rather than say anything on that, he simply announced a lawsuit that was being filed

against Bank of America in terms of some of their impropriety. So you get to have the best of both worlds, you don't have to commit in terms of anything on the budget, and at the same time, you remind people that you're crusading for them against greedy bankers. But come next January, if he is running for governor and is elected governor, he's going to have to deal with this situation. I do think, as you were saying, that people are going to really start asking. And people haven't focused on the budget fight yet, but it's coming now. We're into the beginning of the end game. And as some of these cuts are proposed, the question is, okay, Andrew, what, what would you do? What, how would you do it? And either he's not giving an answer, because he's dodging answers or the answer is upset different groups of people. And that's how potentially his poll numbers start dropping. This is, of course, the other side of the Capitol building is the legislature where you have, you don't even have a majority at all on the Senate right now, you have a plurality

of 31-30 until you have a special election for the months, I see, are they, they can't do anything? You know, unless they come to some agreement across party lines, you know, I mean, it's, it's almost as bad as Washington in terms of Republicans simply saying no. Well, keep in mind that March 16th, which is one of the special election takes places 15 days before the deadline, in terms of when the legislature actually acts, that's at least a week more than they would normally take before applying themselves seriously to dealing with the budget situation. And considering if the same person is let back into the legislature, we know what will, what will happen. But he would have been a fair level of shame and corrupt, I mean, he's a man who's been up there for quite a long time. Well, but if, but if, if, who's there for all the wins, then he will be conversing with the Democrats. I think it's a real question of whether higher amounts are as put as, it, it, file petitions. The Republicans don't want him to conference with them. Right.

Well, but, but you could be a conference of what you still can't get at people, you can't pass bills without 32 votes. Right. So it doesn't matter. Higher amounts are considered and not say anything and still, it doesn't matter if it's 31, 31 or 31, 30 and 1. But how much is the Senate problems damage the governor's ability? I mean, you have to have a willing partner. It takes two to, takes two to tango. I agree with that. I think that the Senate has some serious problems. I mean, it, it says something in, in Albany when the assembly looks like they are just the discipline children and they think because they have a discipline leader, right? Because they have a, and I was just about to say it because they have a discipline leader. He, he says, don't put in the paper, walk it in. She's talking about Sheldon Sheldon Silver, you know, you, he says, walk it in, call me on the phone, we're in conference, nobody leaks anything, nobody says anything. We vote. We go home. How much of that though? I'm sorry. I've also been in agreement with, with the budget with, with the governor, he's, he's seen it.

Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't do it in the paper. He disagrees. You know, the reason, recently, actually, the interesting thing has been that the, that silver has been sharply and publicly disagreeing with governor Patterson. I think maybe one or two. Well, I think two things back. Well, I think, I think also the governor announced that, when the governor announced that there was a new $750 million deficit, Silver said, well, if it's grown that fast in the two weeks since he released his original proposal, obviously, he didn't think the original proposal was very well thought through. And given that silver is practiced at the art of saying nothing, it's significant that he would throw an elbow like that at that point. It tells you that the relationship between them has really deteriorated. And just a couple of weeks before that, they were having a public leaders meeting about the race to the top funding of the federal funding for charter schools, which would have potentially brought a couple hundred million dollars into the state. And Shelley Silver publicly scolded David Patterson as if he were a parent talking to misbehaving five-year-old.

It was really quite stunning. I think, especially when you know that Shelley Silver, to get Shelley Silver to say anything is a real task. And to have him really yell at the governor in public. It wouldn't be as speaking as a former reporter and with two editors, and nothing a reporter likes better than to take shots at editor, that the state Senate's dysfunction is such a good story. Senator, I'm not even dealing, and I think we should talk a little bit about the kind of circus that happened around the New York Times story, the people writing about rumors of a New York Times story that never ran, which was, I think, one of the lowest moments, frankly, in press, except that what the Times did were on wound up being fairly damning. I think what they were, what they were saying was that very, very, very, very, in terms of suggesting that the governor does not have the work ethic that ideally you'd want in chief executive that he's putting in short days, that he seems distracted, that he's shut himself off from many of his advisors, and is counting on two aides who are not people

who are practiced in the art of governing. But the point I wanted to make about Shelley Silver playing who always plays must be a fabulous poker player. I never played poker with demand. But the press function focuses on the Senate and on the governor, and he seems quite happy to be out of the firing law. There's no place Shelley Silver likes to be better than in the background, but actually making things happen in the state. But they voted on a lot of legislation, they passed stuff through the assembly. I mean, it was business as usual, and they got work done in the assembly. The unfortunate thing is that if then it gets to the Senate, it gets to the bottom. I think there's probably a certain exasperation on Shelley's part of what's been happening in the Senate for more than a year, and you have to remember that the governor was involved in the negotiations that led to the deal under which Malcolm Smith became a majority leader, but which also gave prominent roles to people like Montserrat and Aspada and Carl Krueger,

three of the more disreputable people who have ever sat in the Senate, and I don't say that lightly given the history of the Senate, of the recent act, and that's high praise indeed. And so that it's something that you could say that the Senate is a mess, but the governor was sitting there while this was going on, and he had to know that this was going to be problematic. At some point it was going to blow up, and probably at some point he should have realized that Malcolm Smith just didn't have the kind of support that was needed and probably didn't have the capabilities that were needed for him to be an effective majority leader, and that what happened was obviously very strange, but also kind of predictable. But on the other hand, there weren't a lot of choices in front of him. When the Democrats won the control of the state Senate in 2008, they had a couple of renegade Democrats who were threatening to throw the whole thing into disarray unless they got what they wanted.

There were reasons why Malcolm Smith, why a lot of people felt that he had to be the leader, and so they had to engineer a deal. It's to say, it's similar to what happened with the budget. It's not clear, I think, that there are a whole lot of other options, a whole lot of other routes that somebody could have gone down, and one of the things that might happen to them, Paterson, is that he got stuck with what was probably an impossible situation, and that sucks. That happens in history sometimes, and he's going to take the shots for it. I think that's actually very important. I think what the governor has to start doing to bring it back to him, what he has to start doing is coming out more out on the offense, because he's done things for groups that went quite. He's given parents back to school vouchers, etc. He has to come out and start saying, his policy positions instead of saying, well, you know, I've been a victim of this, I've been a victim of that, etc., and keeping the problems focused on the legislator, and having them drive the show. He has to be that good manager that he has to be part of the problem, as he has been

quick on the trigger on things where he should have been. Isaac was talking about the question of the charter schools, and the governor getting in so late in terms of a proposal on that. There was also the question of the ethics bill. He vetoed the bill that was passed by the legislature, but after promising that he was going to come out with something, I think, back in mid-summer, he didn't bother coming forth with a proposal. No, he was vetoed it a couple weeks ago. He vetoed it only a couple of weeks ago, but it was something that just before they passed it was the point at which he first made an alternative proposal after saying that he was going to offer them a proposal back during the summer. It's a little bit difficult to incorporate the governor's ideas if you're getting something at the last minute after you've gone through these very tortuous negotiations among the group of people who are not inclined to agree on a whole lot, especially when it comes to raining in some of their prerogatives by imposing new ethics. I think that's it.

But to your point, that he needs to start speaking about the issues, I heard him give his stump speech. The candidate's stump speech three times this weekend. On Saturday at Hofstra, where he went to law school, and then in Rochester at a Union Hall, and then on Sunday morning at a diner where he was doing an event. He spoke a lot about his record and what that was not in what the stories, the daily stories that came out afterwards. What was in was that he talked about being a victim, which he did. What was in was that not a lot of people showed up, which is sort of half true. What was in was that not almost no elected officials came, which is true. A big problem in the Patterson is facing is that there is a narrative out there that he is in trouble, that nobody supports him, that he only talks about being black and blind. All those things are true. Look, he said on Saturday afternoon, I'm black, I'm blind, I'm still alive. What more do they want from me? When somebody says that, of course, reporters are going to write it down.

But there were other things to talk about that don't get covered because he can't escape the storyline that he's built for. It's not only, it's not only in his defense, it's not only him, but let's not forget he's now working with like his third string. This isn't his first string team anymore, so he'll burn his gun. All these people are gone. This is not his first string, and let's not forget that the governor cannot read Braille. So this is a man that was really reliant, and while I understand what you're saying about David Johnson, D.J., which at the story was about the new attempt, I personally know D.J., and I have to tell you, he's very smart. He's a very smart guy, and there's something to be said about a guy who is the confidant in a personal level for the governor. He's not the confidant, he's not going to tell him how to bounce the budget. And there's something to be said about a guy who lacks one of his major senses, he feels comfortable at D.J., D.J. Somebody that he feels that he can relax around, when he's having those headaches, and

those headaches are coming because he's, it has to memorize everything. D.J. Drive the car, D.J. Get me where I need to go, D.J. That's what D.J. I will say D.J. is very good at his job. But then and again, it goes to the college, but that's what I'm saying. And so if he was working with his first string press operation or something like that, I think that the story that you're talking about would get out better. You know, the other side of it is, okay, so he can't get good people to be around him. He is hindered by his blindness. At what point do we say, look, we feel sorry for your governor, but you're not. You're not. People aren't going to feel sorry for that long. Well, fine. But it's not working. But it's not working. But it does do has to determine because when we need a governor, the state is in a major crisis. I think more than the New York has encountered for a really long time. And as you said, we were, we were dysfunctional when there was a lot of money around. And there was a lot of money.

And I agree with you. And I think what I'm saying is that all this being said, it's unfortunate that he's not working with his first string because now the narrative doesn't get told. Now the story doesn't get. Can you change that narrative? I mean, can we call a child's a burn? Let me pretend that he doesn't know that. But he doesn't. Yes and I'm a, but the economic situation, multi-billion dollar deficits, each of the next four years, with difficult ways to fill them and look at what happened with Wall Street. People were railing against bonuses. So what do they do? They paid those bonuses and stock options that are redeemable sometime down the line. Stock options are not taxable because they're not income. So there, you know, so now you have the M, you know, you have the MTA who has their special tax it brings in $200 million less. You know, I mean, the old ever ducks in line, I'm billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money. So I mean, you know, are the, is the fiscal crisis, which translates into cuts and services

across the board? I mean, can you, can you provide affordable housing as much? Can you, you know, I have two kids. I have two kids in public schools, both on a state level and on a city level. I'm worried what happens, you know, I mean, the, the, the, the middle school that my, that my 13 year old is in took a $600,000 cut this year, and this is coming next year. But the problem is you've got undoubtedly very tough budget circumstances, but you've got a situation where you had a fiscal crisis in New York City going back 35 years ago and you had a governor at that time, you carry who was very strong and who was very forceful and because of that, got a lot of people to make sacrifices they otherwise might not have made. The problem for this governor is that he seems more like you carry in a second term, the disengaged carry who seemed like he was more intent on enjoying himself with his wife being a leader.

What a latest. That's right. That's right. Then the carry who was laser like focused during the first term, that the governor has not shown the ability to just have that sort of toughness and to be able to communicate it to people and get people to do what needs to be done. Or going back to the narrative, because I think that the press has played plays a very important role in this. Exactly. Can you, can you introduce that kind of substantive concern into this narrative or is the narrative so far along that it's going to be really hard to change it? Well, especially because Cuomo is not feeding the narrative by saying, well, I'm staying hold on. He's not feeding the public behind the scenes. He's not feeding the public. I think that it's possible to change the narrative. It will be very hard. The governor started, the reason why he started his campaign at Hofstra Law School, he went to law school there and he went to nursery school across the street. He grew up and had said, this is a guy, let's remember, he has never run statewide before

really. It's a kind of governor candidate, but there was not much of that campaign. He went through special election for, it's in a secret, right, but running, and then that's not what it was like, right. But in 2006, when he was running, as Ali, it's put to his running name, he didn't campaign in a full way. Well, he's introducing himself to people. Well, he said that he thought that Hillary Clinton was going to get elected president, and he would get the name to the United States. He has the diary of the mouth. That's what the problem that he had last year, he had diary of the mouth, he would open up his mouth and say things, even with the whole Gillibrand, with the Caroline Kennedy thing. He just, you know, he has tuck of the mouth, he needed to stop that. That's a technical time, really. Well, the diary is not kakakakakas, the more jargon I just think, since he has this attitude that I'm not quitting, I'm not quitting, I'm not quitting that every single day he has to just keep talking about the issues, just hammer in on the issues every day. This is what I've done, this is what I'm going to continue to do.

Since how we're going to rectify the budget situation, et cetera, whatever it is, he just has to keep hammering away on those particular issues. I'm curious to see how it was fundraising numbers are. That's good. He said that he was raised a million and a half dollars since, I know what he's done. So I'm curious to see what he has said and what he has said and what I want to see it. That's good for him. Okay. Let me take a question here. Tell us your name and your campus. My name is Lita Davis, I'm a CUNY VA student and I'm here from John Jay. My question, I guess, speaking about diarrhea is about Kirsten Gillibrand because it seems to me that he had a lot of support when he first came in taking over after Spitzer, but do you think that his appointment of Kirsten Gillibrand to the Senate was a turning point where people started to turn a bit against him in his short answer? Yes. But I don't think it's the appointment.

It wasn't the decision to go away. No, it was the circus. It was the circus. It was the circus. Except that we are downstate. I mean, how long has it been since we had a genuinely upstate center? But that's the question. We have New York City. The choice was defensible. It was the matter of basically blasting Caroline Kennedy that I think turned a lot of people off, that it was something that he didn't have to do that, that everyone expected that he was going to select her when he didn't. The smartest thing to do would simply be to make the announcement and say, I chose Gillibrand, I thank Caroline Kennedy for being willing to be considered and let it go with that rather than leaking information saying that she had marital problems, that she really had that last job. And it closed the backlash from the White House as well. Did he leak that or was there, or does he have people acting as free agents underneath it? I don't think they were acting as free agents. I think that these were people who were getting direction from him or someone very close to him and what it didn't turn out well. At that point, he looked at disavow what they would say.

That wasn't the turning point. What do we, everybody thinks about David Patterson that he is just indecisive, doesn't know what he's doing, can't make, can't get anything done. Why do they think that? Because for about two and a half months, we had David Patterson on TV every day, three or four times a day saying, I don't know what I'm going to do. And I picked this one and I picked that one. He told us that he had requested all the people who were interested in being appointed to the Senate seat, fill out these 60-page questionnaires or something, he said, I didn't read them. We had cemented in people's minds that he didn't know what he was doing. And it happened in a correlation, there was no reason that Caroline Kennedy automatically had to be the... That's absolutely true. But if we're going to be, we knew that Hillary Clinton was about a week and a half before Thanksgiving, two weeks before Thanksgiving, when the news leaked that Hillary Clinton was going to maybe be Secretary of State. We did not get an appointment for the Senate seat until the end of January. David Patterson's argument was, what if the Senate didn't confirm Hillary Clinton?

And then I had appointed someone and then we would have had someone who thought that they were going to be Senator, I pulled out the rug from under them, it's sort of a ridiculous argument that the 60 vote or 59 vote democratically or Democratic Senate was not going to confirm Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. That's not what it was. It was that he couldn't make up his mind, he was going in different directions, and he was enjoying a lot of people feel being on TV that much. He could get on TV or in front of any reporter for newspapers or radio, whatever it was to talk about how he didn't know because it was interesting. That's all I was talking about. That's also a notion that you just don't mess with the Kennedys, right? There's that notion that you just don't mess with. And that's the thing that's certainly the courage. I think it was just bad form that was essentially the force that you were talking about. But that's the only thing that is because that Kennedy dynasty that he made her look bad, but that's not what people. I'm from Boston.

I care to less. A lot of people felt like, don't DC. I understand that way. I would care less because we've had a Clinton, we've had the Cuomo's, this is New York. Welcome to New York Caroline, she's sitting on Long Island for a long time, but you know what one irony is that the kind of anonymous sniping that he complies about now, what did you know? She's getting a lot of support. She's getting a lot of support from New York folks. And back to what Bob was saying, the interesting thing about Gillibrin, and I speak as a black woman who's also Latin, also an immigrant, I got to tell you, not a big Gillibrin fan originally, because she wasn't, she didn't really support my ideas and my morals and my ethics and whatever, but I got to give her credit. She's a hard worker, and I really don't like anybody that changes their moral compass quickly. So I really didn't want her to change her opinion on immigration right away. Because if it's something that you've always been believing, you shouldn't be able to change it that quickly.

That to me says then, you're just a politician, you're not a statesman, you're just a politician. Or you can look on the flip side that now she's been traveling throughout the state and now that she's filled in all the community group's views. Yes sir. My question goes back to Governor Paterson. Give us your name and campus please. My name is Arsalan Akhtar, I'm from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and being a BA. And my question is, how does the lack of support from the National Democratic Party hurt? Is the governor and how does that affect Cuomo's announcement? Is he waiting for that support and he's seen that the governor is getting any support? Does that... Not just the National Democratic Party, but the White House. Right, the White House. In particular, President came down himself and told not to run. Well, technically the President did not come down himself and tell him that during the same day. And that's the last one. He sent a vessel. He sent a New Yorker. He sent a New Yorker. Yeah, he sent a New Yorker to tell. He sent a Brooklyn, I don't know. How much damage did the... I suppose a gas bar, the White House intervention in supposedly telling the governor you

should step aside? Well one of the interesting reeds that came off of that the news that came out last fall that that had happened was the question of who had told the media that that happened. Was it the White House because they were annoyed that Patterson had said no to them or was it Patterson because he thought that putting this out there that the White House had asked him not to run. He said, no, I'm going to stand my ground, was better for him. It's hard to see how the White House telling you to get out of the race and making that a national story would be a good thing. But I think it hurts him that he... It just adds to this. It's another... It's another way to scale. I've heard one state official theorized and he's not saying this based on anything he knows for a fact that the governor complained so loudly and so frequently about this White House snub that eventually somebody who was not sworn to secrecy decided to call the New York Times and let him know about it so that the governor indirectly was the source

of the leak that led to that being front page. Well you could look at it a couple of ways. You could look at it as, well, you know, president is the leader of the Democratic Party. He had the right to do it to do that and so everyone thought it was over for Patterson after that. And, you know, he got a confirmation from the court state, you know, his lieutenant governor got his pick and so all of a sudden it was, well, you don't quit and I'm not going to quit just because someone told me to get out of the race and so I'm not going to do it then I'm not going to do it now and so I'm going to keep moving along. No, there isn't any reason for him to quit and you could argue that it's unseemly for the White House to be trying to clear the way whether it's for Andrew Cuomo, Warford, Kirsten Gillibrand that people should be able to run, that it's great to say that we'd like to the United Party, but, you know, it's some, it is supposed to be a Democratic process and if somebody has a plausible claim to the job and to the nomination, they shouldn't be run off. Is it unseemly for that to do it or unseemly for them to get caught doing it? Well, I mean, the other part of that is that before that had happened, you had had both

Charlie Wrangle and Carmichael suggesting that there was going to be a racial backlash against Cuomo if he ran so that if anything, what Obama did balance the scales a little bit, that it was no longer a question of placing the onus on Cuomo in terms of that, that it was saying you could make an argument either way, ultimately, candidates ought to be able to rise and fall on the merits of their arguments and their records rather than on the question of whether you've got a black challenging a white or a white. To if that's okay, then the president, your answer in the question, the president shouldn't have sent somebody to come and tell the governor to step in. I don't know that there's anything wrong with quietly said it's once it becomes a public campaign. I don't have one said he can do whatever he wants once once the pressure starts becoming like this public issue that I think is, but the White House has gotten involved in local races much more in the lack the Barack Obama's White House, I should say, than it previous White House is in a public way that they've gotten involved with this with David Patterson.

It's May, they forced Steve Israel to leave the Senate race. They didn't call a rado. They're doing it in Pennsylvania or the Senate candidate. They want to impress that like Republicans, Republicans always look for unity, but it's part of the reason that Republicans very often are not all that interesting. But every time that they've done it, they've gotten a bad press head out of it. And look, I mean, I don't think that anybody would say that the first year of the Obama administration was a gleaming success. And this is one of the things that was weighing them down, both it was taking up a lot of time. And it was constantly people have a lot of bad opinions about what they were doing. Let me take another question. Hello. My name is Constance Jean-Gertes. I'm actually an undergrad from Queensborough Community College. My question, too, is now that the Wall Street executives have turned their bonuses into stock options, where does Patterson plan to get that money that was due other than raising tuition? Well, I mean, other than raising tuition, clearly tuition is not going to cover a very significant part of an $8 billion, $6 billion budget gap of tuition is a million dollars.

I mean, they aren't, they aren't talking about raising certain taxes, they're talking about raising the MPA tax on the highest income people. There's a tax on soda, taxing sugar, taxing sugar, but these really are not huge revenue producers. I mean, you know, the largest expenditures, I mean, are for labor or for debt service. You know, I remember you borrow all this money, but paying the money, paying off the bondholders is an expense. That comes out of your expense budget, paying the bondholders. Those are things that you, he's got really limited options. He does and anybody, anybody else, who won the estate, whoever, whoever it's in his position is going to have a limited option about what to do. There isn't money, there is not money, we're in big trouble. But yet, I mean, you made the point about the governor cuts this deal with the state union

saying, I'm not going to do layoffs by allowing me to, what's the term to cut the pensions for the unborn, for the new employees. But yet, I'm trying to be polite, much of my language, stuff rolls downhill and, you know, it's rolling downhill to us in the city. And so we don't have, you know, we're a creation of the state, the state voted tomorrow to do away with New York City, we wouldn't exist. And how much of this are we going to feel? I mean, part of the problem is you have a situation where you need sacrifice for more parties concerned. The point where you run into trouble is if you're telling one part of the state you've got to take a much bigger hit than the other part of the state. And that is happening both in terms of what potentially would happen as far as employee layoffs went to New York City as opposed to other parts of the state would also happen in terms of the MTA tax and the way that he's looking to restructure it.

So it would fall much more heavily on New York City as opposed to other parts of the state which use MTA rail lines. Yeah, but arguably, Rockland should not necessarily, which has, you know, a tiny portion of the MTA, right? A trip should Rockland pay the same tax that we do where we're much more dependent on them. I'm a New York City boy. So I mean, if you're going to tax somebody, why not tax the suburbs? But I understand the argument because the same argument happens in schools. I mean, Long Island schools have been disproportionately funded compared to New York City schools. And now you have the control of the state Senate depends on those Long Island Democratic senators. I mean, Craig Johnson just came out, it was a Democratic Senate from Long Island, said that the governor shouldn't run. I mean, these guys are fighting for their political life and for the political life of the Democratic, you know, but there are certain charges, whatever it is. Where it's obvious that the city is getting screwed on revenue sharing, the city is losing

$650 million, I believe it is over a two-year period, by having all of its revenue sharing money withheld by the state. Every other county, 57 other counties throughout the state are losing between 2% and 5% of what they would be entitled to under revenue sharing. So you've got 100 on one end, 2% to 5% on the other. How are you going to sell that? How are you going to convince people that that's fair? Well, I mean, I would assume what the governor was doing is assuming, is he making a political judgment? Is he making a budgetary judgment? He may be making a political judgment that just like the mayor figures all the unions are going to get up on their high horse because you're talking about layoffs that if you're talking about all this revenue sharing being cut so that the city has to lay people off that that's going to get the unions to lean all over both the assembly and the Senate. I don't know. I mean, only the governor knows what he's thinking, but obviously doesn't stack up as being fair to New York City. Well, it's not a question of fair in a way, right? There just isn't money. And so, yes, New York City is going to get cut. You can't ask for five pounds of flesh from one party and ask for three ounces of

flesh from every other party that's at the table. And but the argument that he would make is that New York City has more to give. And so you can, I mean, we have, and I'm talking documented people, we have eight million. Right. But you know, we probably have about 10.5. We don't have it. We don't have it in New York. They have cut to the bone we are now in the marrow. We don't have it. Everybody is relying on New York City. It's not fair. And truthfully, some of these these congressional districts upstate, we can do away with them all together. All we need to do is take our prisoners, bring them back down state. We can get rid of those congressional districts. We can save money right there because they don't even exist without our, without our prisoners. Now we're getting into service policy issues. That's a state policy issue. Right. Right. I just think that I'm going back to education because where they're filled, where they're saying they're going to fill it now in Long Island and places

up like that Westchester County, et cetera. I mean, we've been disproportionately funded in New York City. So they have to cut underfunded. They have to cut Long Island now. They have to. They have to. Like he said, there's no more money. So well, so you're going to take it from a dose particular budget. So I think those guys get it fine for their political lives because their job is to get reelected. But, you know, the governor has to cut somewhere and plus to go on back to the demographic makes sure that he's accounting for where these other people are going to go, all the people he has to cut, nursing homes, Medicare, social security. That's the only other place that he's going to cut from funds. But that's unfortunate. But it's unfortunate. But people are going to live out there. Absolutely. They're pensions. So where else is he going to cut? Fred Johnson and those who I, I understand why they're doing what they're doing, but it's not fair because I do agree with you. There's no money. And everybody has relied on New York City for so long that we are there. The cupboard is there.

Right. And if you're looking for responsible government, then I don't think that Albany is the place of funds. And there it is. It's difficult to do a budget. In the beginning of recession, doing a recession, the end of a recession is difficult to do a budget. Period. But doing a recession is difficult. And he's just failing to run in a tough time. Yes, ma'am. Good evening. I'm a student at John Jay, a public administration BA. And I was wondering, since Albany is essentially a world away from New York City, if you could give us some insight into how these budget cuts are affecting rural New York. Are they experiencing already as much as we have experienced? I don't know. Come in. Well, wait. Well, wait. I don't know. Well, what do I do? I don't know. Yeah, I do. I'm sorry. Well, what are you doing? some positive development and that rationalizing prisons and you know because you know prisons have been a jobs program for a lot of for a lot of smaller communities and it gets into the issue that the upstate people insist on counting the prisoners who are largely downstate when you do when you go to

redistricting which this report will be in this right one particular thing that's affecting because I happen to be working on this in my private life is state parks we have never closed a state park since are you ready for this since the first state park in the country was created in Niagara Falls State Park in 1885 we didn't close parks in the Great Depression I just like to throw that fact I learned that fact but we didn't close state parks in the Great Depression we're now looking to close 35 state parks cut back state parks 57 state parks base water point and Queens the River Bank Park up in West Harlem we're not going to close it but there's going to be cutbacks so I mean a lot of that and parks are tourism in a lot of rural counties they're jobs in a lot of rural counties I mean so that's just one thing I happen to know about I don't know if anybody's a world I stood in Rochester on Saturday afternoon again at the Patterson well but in Rochester just just to question that up

no I use a couple that's why I see and there was a woman she's a member of the assembly her name is Susan John she's been in the assembly for 20 years and so you would think that she has a good view of how New York State government works and she banged the podium and said we cannot allow New York City to get away with getting all of our money that's what she said so I know that to everybody that that's the feeling out there absolutely bashing is a great I will say this before I moved to New York City I did work for now mayor of Buffalo New York which is by and brown and so I was not there with the with the governor who was not there no he was not that's a whole not the story but you know in Buffalo oh yeah people love to Bash New York City doesn't matter what you said you can say we can sit up here and talk and pontificate and say oh no and on about how the cupboards are bare they're just not bare to Buffalo and I will say as a as a city it's actually the the second largest area you know

in New York State is the county of Erie they have nothing they there's nothing well I also think that rural areas their social policy is what is where hammers them every time you know they they they want certain issues to be you know to come out more than their own education right for rural counties I want to build another question but rural counties obviously have a lot less to draw yeah to fight budget cuts I mean rural counties you know we have assets in New York City whatever however many problems we have we have a much greater ability to produce more money than Franklin County does you know at the park closings I think that we're likely if some of them are scaled back it will be in areas where there is more of a constituency to fight for them yes sir give your tell us your name and your campus please all right John Doreles from BMCC my question is how many seats are there in the New York Senate and it was the Senate you're 62 seats in the New York Senate 150 in the assembly

what's your order leader of the Senate the power right now is known as the conference leader his name is John right right John Johnson thank you we can handle that one yeah I don't know I thought you're going to go let me give us another one yeah tomorrow President Obama is going to give a televised debate trying to fix the turmoil and health care form debate do you think Patterson would take a cue from that if things go well and would he benefit from having Democrats and Republicans sit down together and tell by debate about the budget cuts they do they do do often what they call leaders meetings which are meeting of the governor the leader of the state Senate the majority leader the top Democrat in the state Senate the top Republican in the state Senate the top Democrat in the assembly and the top

Republican three-minute room it's now five-minute room and it's still all met exactly but so they do do those and sometimes they open them and it was at I don't know if it would make things better because it was at I think the last one that they did publicly that that incident happened where Shelley Silva was yelling at the governor so maybe doing an out in front of everybody made it where there's also the Montserrat ejection hearing it which one of the participants became angry enough that he yelled it another one with whom he was having a dispute bleep you and bleep your bitch allegedly okay particular senator has had a number of temper issues yes ma'am hi good evening my name is um Tawana Roberts and I'm an undergrad at John G. College and it have a comment and a question actually to recap the statement that you made about there's basically no money I think that everyone is looking for this like magical rainbow it's gonna lead to a pot of gold to solve the problems but I think that everyone has to consider that no one wants their programs or

anything to be cut and I'm going back to this statement that you made about the MTA tax they're considering cutting Metro card for students around the city what do you think his future plans is to correct that because they're not if you look at it you know generally they're not many parents that can afford to send multiple kids that they have to school you know I think that the legislature is going to restore that I think that there's no way that that doesn't get restored because you're absolutely correct there's I mean I can hardly afford a Metro card you know I mean they're they're so expensive and what you end up doing not only the parents won't be able to put multiple children through the subway but also it deters those children that are on the on the border that may or may not go to school may or may not finish and complete those children well go and so you you actually are are hurting New York City's how much it confines students today a particular local

district area so that's I covered many many budgets reaching and I were together covering many budgets in City Hall and every every budget the mayor would propose cutting libraries cutting culturals knowing cutting hot sauce and well not so much cutting copper but there were things that they would pose knowing that the council was gonna be yeah and it's always sound that to me because I think that cutting student Metro cards was ludicrous a social policy unless you want to add you know turn style jumping to the Olympics that you know I mean kids have got to get to school and you know I mean just think I have two kids that would be you know adding what the hundred two hundred dollars a month to my you know personal bill or 80 bucks reach kid you know to get to and from school it falls under the heading of a motherhood issue and usually that type of thing winds up getting restored very often it's put out there in the first place because an agency like the MTA is looking for help and they figure if they give you a worst-case scenario that they're more

likely to get help then if they give you something that nobody is going to miss it that much if it's cut out of the MTA's but you think that you didn't have itself as a whole nother that's a whole nother show because the reason why the anti is in so much trouble and it's actually really instructive as we think about what's going to happen going forward the M.T. is in a lot of trouble because it has I think the fifth largest debt in the nation yeah why does it have that debt it's because bad choices were made in years past about funding it so they're paying more if they didn't if their debt could get wiped away the M.T. would be fine but instead we're paying still for money that was spent in the 80s and the 90s and that's what's pulling everything down in addition to the fact that as even when times were good in the 90s the state in the city started pulling back the funding that they gave to the M.T. so the M.T. is actually public transportation is not something that's supposed to be self sustainable but because the government made bad choices the state and the city government both even when money was around we now have an M.T. that's in major

trouble and when and now there's not money around to take care of it it's really frightening when you think that that's the decisions that that's the type of decision that was made when when we have money now when we look at a situation where we don't have money what's going to happen and I don't think I mean the the the student at the student Metro cards might have been a negotiating I don't think that we're going to see a lot of parks that come to get put back on the table with funding I don't think that a lot of the cuts that have been proposed are actually going to be scaled back because again there's no way to go one of the things that is problematic that Isaac was referring to in terms of those cuts they were originally implemented by Governor Mario Cuomo in terms of reducing the M.T. funding if you've got a Democrat doing that it becomes very easy for a Republican governor who followed him to do the same thing Richard got to cut you off I'm getting a high sign I'm cut off and I never missed deadline thank you all and we'll see you next time in the CUNY forum thank you you