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If. You can answer his question a million times I'm not getting into who the candidates are. What do I think of them. When you have to question Do you really think I'm going to answer the question it is who will be the next junior senator from New York. Well talk about it during a reporter roundtable. Plus the battle over gas drilling in the southern tier is about to enter a new phase. This is New York now. Funding for New York now is provided by the New York State Health Insurance Program offering New York State Public employers and employees the Empire plan a plan as great as the Empire State. The New York State Builders Association Research and Education Foundation were dedicated to programs in research studies focused on the residential building industry comm. University University of New York.

More thanks to ongoing investment its all fiber network. Additional funding provided by support for New York website comes from Philips Lytle. This is New York now with your host Susan or better. Hello everybody Hillary Clinton the first first lady to run for elected office in the first female to represent New York as a U.S. senator will be vacating her post to join President elect Obama's Cabinet as secretary of state. Governor David Paterson a Clinton supporter during her presidential bid honored her service Monday in Albany. Somehow after one year of campaigning and eight years of

service that this individual senator Hillary Clinton distinguished herself so to the such an extent that she was widely complimented by the Republican candidate for president John McCain and was then appointed by the winner of that contest President elect Barack Obama as secretary of state after one of the closest ally primaries in history if not the closest in the history of this country. So when you think that she has gotten to a point right now where even the motivation of a lot of your questions comes from our steadfast disciplined service to our state and that it was so outstanding that it makes my decision even that more difficult by New York State law Governor Paterson will appoint her replacement. Will it be a woman a minority an upstate or. I don't expect any hints anytime soon. You can answer his question a million times. I'm not getting into who the candidates are. What do I think of them. When you ask a question Do you really think I'm going to answer it. Clinton is expected to resign right around the date she starts her new role of secretary of state

January 20th giving everyone plenty of time to speculate. Also in the news this week Nassau County Executive and head of the New York State Commission on property tax relief Tom Swazi submitted his final report to the governor. The commission recommends among other things capping the annual school tax increase at 4 percent and consolidating some of the smaller school districts statewide. To help ease the financial burden both on the state. And local schools. There's only three choices going forward. We can either either increase state aid which we are not the position to do obviously because of the economic downturn for the whole economy or we can keep on increasing property taxes which the governor nor I the commission members and 74 percent of people don't think is a good idea. We don't want to keep on seeing property taxes go up which has been the crutch has been relied on all along. Well the third thing we can do is reduce the rate of growth of expense or reduce expenses. And the only way to do that is to have both a property tax cap. And mandate reform so that school districts can have the flexibility to try and reduce some of their costs. Much more on these stories that our reporter roundtable with James mentor of Newsday and Karen DeWitt of New York State

Public Radio Governor Paterson's urgent request for budget cuts has been called unconscionable by advocates for the poor who see the budget as immoral as well as financial document. Here's why. According to Feeding America a national food bank organization the number of Americans stopping at food banks for the very first time has skyrocketed as the economy free falls. This combined with a 20 year stagnation in the welfare grant increase had some advocates seeing red at a press conference just prior to Thanksgiving. I have suffered through 23 years in city of Albany in the Southland taking over of watching an unholy trinity make decisions for this state. That unholy trinity hasn't made a proper decision yet for the people that I serve. I'm outraged by that and I would hope that our general population would be outraged by that.

Also here at the Emanuel Baptist Church in Albany you can find one of hundreds of food pantries across the state most wanted by groups that would be slammed by the Governor Scott's anecdotally we hear that more people than ever before have been waiting in line here for soup baby formula and other staples according to the reverend Deb Jamison if you're poor tightening your belt just isn't an option. If you're a poor New Yorker you don't even have a belt. It means that you might go without food at the end of the month you might not be able to make your rent payment. Or you have to shut your power off for nonpayment. Last year the soup kitchen that Jamieson runs saw an average of 65 people a day. This year that daily average is up to 140 people and it will increase another 25 percent before the end of winter. Last week's Sunni's Rockefeller Institute of Government gathered a few of the stakeholders from New York's Adirondack region to comment on a new report identifying challenges in the four state northern forest region. The question that

Rob Riley and Joe short of the northern forest center set out to answer is this one How do states with rural northern forest regions like New York balance conservation and economic development. After several years and consulting with hundreds of stakeholders in each state Riley in short issued a report on the subject this fall called strategy for economic resurgence in the northern forest. In a nutshell the report urges the four states studied New York Vermont New Hampshire and Maine to market themselves regionally and collaborate on broadband access. Another interesting takeaway although each of the four states studied has very different policies toward development in the northern forests. None of the regions is thriving. Joe short explains why. I think the commonalities I think things that are in need. Barriers to success across the region deal with a couple of things. One is this transition is as Rob alluded to and Tod you picked up on it as well the transition away from a small number or a number of large employers. To a larger

number of small employers and away from a culture where we hear often in New Hampshire how you would finish high school and walk across the street to the mill and get a job and you work there for the rest of your life and retire that culture in the region which was one of the things that tied to the northern forest together has changed. And I think there is now a shift in mindset. It does get to creativity and entrepreneurship. You know there's an need for reinvention here both Todd Shimkus of the Adirondack chambers of commerce and Brian Housel of the Adirondack Council agreed with shorts assessment but had different views on reinvention. The difference made apparent by this exchange about access to broadband service which the Northern farmers report is fully behind on a generic level. The EPA has missed its mandate as per the letter on the park agency act. The two principal. Pillars of that were to do comprehensive planning for the other on that park and that would include both the natural and the economic resources. The second pillar was to

enable local planning to be accomplished. So if we have a hundred three towns and the other on that park only about 19 have at around that park agency approved plans. So there's been a disconnect there. The dilemma is that the cell carriers telecommunications companies are private corporations and they don't share their proprietary information about where they're going to put the next tower. Nor is there a market. That can pay for those services. Instead of waiting for and blaming the telecommunications companies for not walking in and saying geez we see a market we want to develop they should have been proactive they've got a an incredibly great GISS them they can go through and and tell us exactly where we would need to install cell towers to provide that type of service. Each of the four states northern forest regions have several common challenges including declining population high energy costs and stagnant job growth. You can find the report online at this address. Northern forest dot o r g slash economic

dash strategy dot s h t m l. Karen DeWitt of New York State Public Radio and James mentor all of Newsday are joining me here at the medium sized table of political analysis. How are your guns. Good medium sized discussion I guess I guess so but actually it's a pretty outsized discussion because we have big things happening at the Capitol. You want to set it up for us to ask you a very significant development apparently it looks like the Democrats are in control of the Senate for the first time in over 40 years there was a secret deal made with the so-called gang of three the three renegade Democrats who can decide if they want to join the Democrat majority or not. They've got a whole bunch of key leadership posts and committees and now it looks like as far as we know that the Democrats are going to take control but as you can see I'm hedging my bets a little because it's been such a crazy. It's not a handshake deal we should mention. OK. Who gets what. Well the Gang of Three are Ruben díaz Sr.. Carl who is from the Bronx. Carl Kruger who's from Brooklyn and Pedro Spada Jr. who's also from the Bronx. They held out for key committee positions we believe that

Carl Kruger will be the head of the very powerful finance committee which which means Bill stick Koski will not be right. And that's a senator who was in line for that job. And that could affect his re-election two years from now because he was promised that position and he campaigned on that position. SPADA Jr. who has been in the Senate before for a brief stint actually caucused with the Republicans at that time and therefore lost his re-election bid will be the majority leader. But Malcolm Smith will be the temporary president of the Senate and that's the major position in the Senate that trumps the majority leader. OK. Malcolm Smith the past one person namely Senator Joe Bruno in recent memory had both those jobs so this is kind of a different thing where they're kind of splitting it we're not sure what that means. This is remarkable that that Malcolm Smith would give away so much power why this deal is really about the media say they did not want to have chaos on January 7th when the Senate organizes itself. The governor is very concerned about the budget deficit and wants everyone focused on that. And we should point out that David Paterson was in the room when this

deal was struck. And we're not exactly sure the full role he played but he was publicly very critical of these three men and made it very clear that he would intervene if he had to as Nelson Rockefeller did in 1965 to break a similar type of log jam in the Senate. This all happened behind closed doors with a governor who was the lieutenant governor who initially campaigned with Spitzer on a platform of reform. Who was it government open government air and say we're going to know everything that happened and that is not the way it's going now is that easy in practice I guess to hear that in the room. It was interesting this meeting was convened we're told by two figures who are not Albany fixture crew Representative Gregory Meeks who is a Democrat from Queens a good friend of Malcolm Smith and also Governor Paterson and Rochester billionaire Tom Gallo sama areas again anybody western New York was represented in the room what does western New York get out of this deal.

Because it doesn't seem like they get much you know most of their the senators are Republican and western New York so I think they're going to be hurt quite a bit. And of course a Long Island is not going to be represented in the same way if this coalition halts. Many people tell me that the reason the twenty nine other senators who are Democrats agreed to this is because. They just simply wanted to get it out of the way. Their feeling is that the Republicans are going to see some retirements later in the year. Democrats will be able to pick up some seats when their majority is larger. They'll be able to dump these three guys and put in charge the people that they really feel should be running the Senate so they see an investment in the long term future. Yes and I think they really didn't have a choice because as Jim said they just couldn't have this drag out where we're facing a 15 billion dollar deficit it would be chaos in January so they had to sort of offer these guys what the Republicans were trying to offer them saying are they're going to give you this well we'll give you this so why don't you stick with us another factor as Governor Paterson does not get

along with the still Senate majority leader Republican Dean Skelos I don't think he had it in I don't know what scale of Yankees that would have been the personality driven gridlock that we've really seen for decades in Albany with all the various combinations of personalities you usually have to have a governor in the member of the opposite party hating each other and then nothing gets done. So what about the relationship between Malcolm Smith and Pedro was Fatah and Governor Paterson. Well that's going to be somewhat problematic because Pedro Spada has angered many Senate Democrats because he previously was aligned with the Republicans. So there is some bad blood between these three people. It's also important to point out that this deal has greatly angered the gay community because Malcolm Smith agreed to Ruben Diaz his request to not bring up the issue of gay marriage in the Senate in the near future. Now the Senate Republicans part of the reason they lost is because Senate Democrats received tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from the gay community.

Money they had not received in the patent rights groups nationally and otherwise giving them money and now they've sort of gone back on that as well as I did a lot here. Add to this the fact that Paige responded doesn't have any seniority in the Senate and that many of the Democrats like Bill stick Koski or Jeff Klein or Eric Schneiderman are going to be they're sort of left in the dust when configured fairly. If you're a loyal Senate Democrat you'd be pretty mad today. Yeah if this thing you know you stuck with Malcolmson if you did all the right things and you're not getting anything for it. And so article prodigal son I guess thought you're right. There are rewards and that's why Smith's aides are telling me that this is really a short term solution that once they pick up some more seats they have more comfortable majority. Then you'll see some changes in the leadership. The key issue here was the budget deficit and the need for Democrats to show because now they control all of state government that they can tackle this big problem having a leadership fight in the Senate was a distraction that

party leaders and Governor Paterson in particular did not want to see. So the distraction is out of the way and we can all concentrate on who Governor Paterson is going to choose to replace Hillary Clinton that we have Riley character you know that has influence of who do you think it's going to be you know it's really hard to say it could be Andrew Cuomo could be an upstate Congress person could be the Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown. Paterson is playing it close to the vest right now Carolyn Maloney. In fact David Paterson said he's not going to be rushed into this decision and one things we found is that these announcements are not made until after the inaugural it could be Tom Swazi from Long Island. It could be someone we're not even thinking of like Caroline Kennedy. Yeah because Clinton does not hide as Clinton is that she's not going to quit until she makes sure she's you know. Would you get that secretary she wants the job. We're out of time but what a week in Albany James in the door of Newsday Karen DeWitt of New York State Public Radio. Thank you very much for parsing it out for us. And now we put it to you. Who would you like to see Governor Paterson choose to replace Senator Hillary Clinton when she leaves to become

secretary of state. List your preference at WMATA dot org slash New York now. Now results a few weeks ago we asked Where did you place the majority of the blame for the failure of the November 18th special session of the people who responded majority leader Dean Skelos received the most votes with 33 percent followed by special interests and Governor Paterson with eighteen point five percent each. The rest were evenly divided among the Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver campaign finance laws and Jim to disco. A hearing to narrow down the issues the DC will consider adding to its generic environmental impact statement for gas drilling took place at SUNY Oneonta this week where about 300 citizens from the southern tier came to share their hopes and their concerns about gas drilling and the money it could generate. As you might expect reaction was all over the map. Dave Parker would love to see them drill for natural gas on his property. He owns about 150 acres of land in was to New York and is the co-founder of the Worcester

natural gas exploration coalition. What he doesn't want the constant quote party line from environmentalists that drilling can't be done safely. We as a coalition and the other coalitions are being proactive citizens not complaining about what can't be done. We're we're we're going forward to protect ourselves. I saw you when you were aggravated by some of the comments that you heard. What was what was gotten under skin. This is the same rhetoric over and over and over about the birds and the bees. What's what's the straw that broke the camel's back for you. The kid on the one when the woman came in with the young child on her back. They're broke. Really. If the gentleness of next three words show big. I would have carried him into my back when I'm invited of to speak. The lady who got under Parker's skin was Kate more sickly of Walton. She and her family moved to a Delaware County organic farm four years ago. She says gas drilling is the

wrong answer for the southern tier. No matter how carefully the GEC regulates it I just don't think there is doing it properly I think we've made some huge mistakes in the last 30 years and it's time for us to let sit back and give some real respect to the environment and what it can do for us and what it can do against us in this area has seen two hundred and 500 year floods in the last 10 years and that they've been major they've had major impacts on our environment. And so I think the people here also have a great respect for what you know what we can't see the things that we cannot measure. You know the things that our children will gain benefit from and the things that the Native Americans knew how to respect and we washed them completely out of this area and now the oil and gas companies are preparing to wash us out as well. More sickly and others are demanding the DC start from scratch by developing a brand new impact statement for high powered gas drilling rather than simply supplementing an old statement. The southern tier of New York looks pretty much the same as it did 5 or 10 or 20 years ago when land here was dirt cheap. In fact this is the area that former Governor Eliot Spitzer compared to Appalachian back in

2006 when he was running for office. But something has changed since then and land here isn't quite as cheap as it was now under all these farms creeks and silos. So it's 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that can now be profitably extracted using tons of water directed at fractures in the shale in a process called hydro fracking that gas could mean billions of dollars for the state local communities individual landowners and oil and gas drilling companies. This modern gold mine is called the Marcellus Shale and it runs from Tennessee north to New York's Southern tier right around Oneonta where not coincidentally Tuesday's D.C. hearing took place. Our goal here is to is to listen in and get comments from the people that live in the areas where this activity may take place to hear their concerns and to gather their comments so that we can.

Develop a good scope and a good supplemental environmental impact statement and the DC got an earful after asking citizens to comment either on stage or in writing. About 30 people queued up to make comments during a hearing moderated by administrative law judge Richard Whistler. I will be presiding at this evening's legislative hearing which for the record is being held on Tuesday December the 2nd. Two thousand eight in the hunt Union ballroom on the campus of SUNY on the on to one gentleman who wanted to speak but had to leave before he was called. Was Richard average of OT doe. He and his family live on a hilly 100 50 acre plot of land that his daughter will one day inherit. Your daughter Caitlin is with you tell tell us why she's here. Well she's here because first of all I have a point later on that I have to drop her off. So she has to be in town and she's also she's going to be inheriting the property she should know what's going on. God forbid one day she has to make decisions on her own. So a little bit of information is useful. And at this stage of the game we don't know what's happening so we're just hearing as a wait and see in a wait and see mode.

You also have one specific question that you've come prepared to ask and that is I would like to know about the well spacing units. My concern is that the current guidelines is are we 40 acre well spacing 1 Welp or 40 acres which when you do the math the 16 wells per square mile. Drilling density was one of several concerns echoed in the hall other concerns included the possible danger of chemicals used in hydro fracking. The amount of water the technology requires and where that water would go once it's been used. John Hall CO is with the independent Oil and Gas Association of New York. The volume of water in a scale of industrial work. Is miniscule at small compared to power production it's small compared to recreation. So in a scale of total volume of water used for not one not that large as an industry. Attorney Glenn Noto came to the hearing representing the town of New Lisbon which imposed a temporary moratorium on issuing drilling permits. We want to make sure that the regulations or or adequate. And

we want to make sure also that there is enough for enforcement. Where. Concerned that with the across the board budget cuts in the state that the DC might not have enough trained inspectors to monitor all the well sites and to monitor the you know the whole process. A common concern and one we put to State Senator James Seward whose address to the crowd included a request for adequate regulation of ground and surface water that takes staffing. Would you personally support D.C. staffing levels to such an extent that there would be enough people to do that. Well we can do that through D.C. staffing or any kind of independent verification. If this gas drilling proceeds in the Marcellus Shale region we're going to be receiving additional revenues at the state level. And I think that a portion of those revenues should be dedicated to beefing up the staffing levels so that we can adequately regulate this activity.

Other issues mentioned at the hearing the hard sell felt by landowners contacted by gas drilling companies. The generic boilerplate leases some are being asked to sign and even the DC wasn't above a shot or two. First. I want to say. Did you see that. I am waiting here and believe that there are many indications that you're not going to see that or look going to heaven when the price of natural gas is high like it was back in the summer around $13 there is much more money to be made from drilling the shale deposit currently. The price of gas is much lower around $6 and 40 cents so the pressure to lease mineral rights has eased slightly. The DC will accept written comments through December 15th about natural gas drilling you're welcome to send your comments to this address. Attention scope comments Bureau of oil and gas regulation New York State DC division of Mineral Resources six twenty five Broadway third floor Albany New

York 1 2 2 3 3 dash 6 5 0 0. Finally we leave you with some video of a special ceremony honoring a U.S. senator from New York who went on to become secretary of state. No it isn't Hillary Clinton but Martin Van Buren the former president's birthday is December 5th. And in honor of that President Bush sent a wreath to land his honor all candor hope was secretary of state and President Andrew Jackson's administration beginning in 1829. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next week on New York now. Funding for New York now is provided by the New York State Health Insurance Program offering New York State Public employers and employees the employer plan a plan as great as

the Empire State. The New York State Builders Association Research and Education Foundation were dedicated to training educational programs and research studies focused on the residential building industry. For more information visit Misbah dot com. United University professions represents thirty three thousand academic and professional faculty on all state operated campuses of the State University of New York. U-V is the union that makes uni work. More morning are going next generation technology. Thanks to the rise and ongoing investment in its all fiber network the rise in files for voice Internet and video service this additional funding provided by wy Niti support for New York nows website comes from Philips Lytle. Hi I'm Susan are better with this week's New York now poll question. This week we asked who would you like to see

Governor Paterson choose to replace Senator Hillary Clinton when she leaves to become secretary of state. Cast your vote and read her comments on my blog at New York nails Web site tell me why I'm h t dot org slash New York. Now I would love to hear from you or e-mail me and why now. And join me for the results of this week's call. Next time on New York now.