One To One; NYS Senator Liz Krueger

Hello, I'm Cheryl McCarthy of the City University of New York. Welcome to 1 to 1. Each week we address issues of timely and timeless concern with newsmakers and the journalists who report on them with artists, writers, scientists, educators, social scientists, government leaders. We speak with each, 1 to 1. I'm delighted to welcome State Senator Liz Kruger back to the program. I bet she's happy to be in New York City today and not in Albany, which lately has not been such a happy place. There are plenty of issues for us to discuss that do not involve former State Senator Vito Lopez, but what the allegations and charges against him signify are of great concern for all of us. Welcome.

Thank you, Cheryl. Assemblyman Lopez, as you know, was recently forced out of office because of his long history of sexually harassing his female staffers. Was he just one among maybe several bad apples in the bunch, or is this part of a more pervasive sort of anti-female culture in the State Government in Albany? Well, I'll start with saying, as in almost every other accusation about Albany, most of us are there for the right reasons to try to do the right thing. But you're right, they're absolutely bad apples, and the fact that we learned after the fact that what Vito Lopez had been doing had been going on and on, it appears for years and years based on people coming forward after the story started opening up. I have said for the 11 years I've been going to Albany, and I don't mean upstate New York, and I don't even mean the people of Albany, but the legislative and the House and the Capitol, I feel like I drive three hours north and 35 years back in history when it comes

to the role of women versus men. You know, all capitals have this reality state, federal, that you have elected officials who are the company in a company town, who have an uneven power position in relationship to staff, and bad things can happen because of that. But it's also true, and I have seen it all the years I have been there, and I have tried to do something about it. The observations of particularly young female interns, young women who work there, being exploited, being inappropriately, having demands made on them. And also, in fairness, they're not understanding their role in this and the importance of their saying, no, I'm not going to participate. You know, with all due respect to young women who think how cool to go out to the bars with the legislators, it's not an even playing field.

You're not going to get the great job if you're socializing or dating the legislators. You also should think about not putting yourselves in positions where you can lose control of the situation. That's not excusing anything, Vitale Obas said. He was clearly, clearly, threatening, exploitative. He violated the law, I believe, and I'm just not clear why there are no criminal charges being made. I've heard various theories about the evidence level and the proof and whether people want to go forward. But the fact that he had a chairmanship was in an incredibly powerful position. And too many people knew about this for too long before it exploded. Well, on that along those lines, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver obviously helped cover up some of Lopez's earlier sexual harassment cases.

Is he likely to suffer any serious repercussions for, I don't know that. I'm in the Senate, Sheldon Silver is the majority leader of the Assembly. The members choose who their leaders are. Clearly, from public opinion polls, the public is angry at the way. If 1% according to a significant university, they felt he should step down. But it's not a vote question for the public. It's whether the Assembly members feel that his handling of this situation is a justification enough for them to decide on a new leader, and I'm not in that house. My gut is that Shelley Silver probably survives this. I mean, the truth is the vast majority of his members think on the issues that really count for them that he has been a good leader, even though I hear from many people how disturbed they are about the handling of this situation.

He has come forward and said, serious mistakes were made. I don't think we will see in either house the type of handling of future cases. I wish I could say I don't think there will be future cases, but I'm old enough to realize there will be future cases. I think there will be change procedures and policies and this story will never be exactly replicated. Do you think the Governor has been outspoken enough in his criticism of Silver for covering up low-passes, some people have seemed to feel that? I guess I'm a politician, I've been in office now since 2002, and so the punchline is, whenever you're in office and you need to work together, which means you need to have negotiations, you need to have diplomacy, people mouth off or don't mouth off all the time in ways that somebody doesn't think is appropriate, again, I know that it is the assembly membership who will and do make the decisions about who their leader is.

I'm in the Senate, we seem to change leadership almost on a 24-month schedule. We're a little different than the assembly and we are certainly a more chaotic and perhaps more interesting house because of it, but I would not presume anything about what the Governor should say or not say publicly or privately, again, I think what is really critical is that we do everything we can to make sure A, these things do not continue to happen, B, there is public transparency about what is happening that you don't get to hide from the law or from appropriate behavior because you're an elected official. I've always taken the position that we're supposed to be held to higher standards. I didn't, nobody put a gun to my head and said, you have to be the Senator. I went to the public and I asked them to elect me. I asked the people in my district every two years to give me the right to decide what

laws they're going to live under. It's not even adequate that I think I'm supposed to follow the same laws. I actually think I am supposed to be held to higher standards because there's another 300,000 people in my district who could very well say, I think I could do a better job. And again, Liz is up there voting for the laws. We all have to live under the concept that Liz or Vito Lopez or anyone else would be allowed to get away with something and have it covered up, you know, the public should be mad. The governor recently unveiled his long-promised women's equality act, I think this week. I'm still unclear about how specifically it would change existing state laws to benefit women. Could you give me some examples of how I would change current laws, for instance, on the whole issue of abortion? Certainly. New York state passed a law recognizing a woman's reproductive rights and rights to abortion

in 1977 before any other state, before any other state, before Roe v. Wade's decision by the Supreme Court, which established in federal law our right to make these private medical health care decisions ourselves with in coordination with our health care providers. New York state was the first, but we had a really bad law. We have bad law. The only protection we have to reproductive health in New York state law right now is it says in the criminal code that doctors won't be prosecuted for certain acts. And it doesn't even explain correctly what those acts are. So right now, most people in New York state think we have state law that gives us the right to make these decisions, gives health providers the right to provide these services. When the truth is, we don't have that law.

We have health care providers who are legally at risk when they are performing health care services, recognized under federal law, but not actually codified in New York state law. So one thing that would do is basically the federal law that is protecting women's right to exactly in New York right now. And here's the problem. And it's basically federal court decisions, right? And we don't know whether that federal court decision might get overturned. We're living in a world where people are very, very worried about federal rights for women being overturned by Congress and the courts. We need the right law on the books in New York state. So the Women's Equality Agenda states right there in it, the New York state law will follow Roe v. Wade. And some people go, well, why would you need to put that in law? Because actually our law doesn't follow it now, we just assume that. Our law doesn't say a woman and her doctor can make a decision to end a pregnancy because

of the health or life of the mother. And as a result of that, there are cases all the time encounters all over New York state where women are told there is no one who can provide an abortion even though your health is at risk, your life might be at risk because there are no providers who think they are legally protected. So you hear the horrible stories of the woman from Westchester recently who was in her eighth month of pregnancy, a desperately wanted pregnancy. The doctor said, I think you could die if we don't end this pregnancy. She went in search of a doctor who would provide the service. She had to go to Maryland, states away, days later. She went with her husband, her parents. She couldn't find one in New York. No, she had to leave New York state. And so it was three days later in Maryland where she finally got the procedure, she died

on the table. We'll never see what the procedure had been illegal in New York. The question is, our law was too vague. And so there was no doctor in New York who was willing to take this legal risk. That's horrifying. And I've been working with lawyers and the NYCLU and they've been collecting the cases, the examples. You have counties where the woman is desperate. She needs to have this done. And they're going to district attorneys and saying, can we negotiate now that you promise you won't prosecute this doctor because otherwise this won't be performed? We're not talking about the made-up stories about women deciding, oh, I'm nine months pregnant but I've decided to change my mind. That is fallacy in myth. We're talking about women who very late in their pregnancies realize based on what their doctors told them that they could die and or, you know, create enormous health risks

for New York. And who knew that this would be a problem in New York? Well, isn't it fascinating because I can point out to any number of quote unquote red conservative states who have exactly the law and the books that we're trying to get here in New York? Interesting. I'm going to take a short break, but we'll be back right after this word. Welcome back to One to One. I'm Cheryl McCarthy of the City University of New York and I'm talking with State Senator Liz Kruger. She represents the 28th District of Manhattan, which is primarily on the east side. Hardly a month goes by without another state legislator or state official being brought up on charges indicted, sent to prison, getting out of prison, forced out of public life, forced out of office for some crime, misbehavior or form of corruption. Why do you think this is happening now?

Have our lawmakers become more corrupt or are they just being outed more? That's a great question. I always feel like I'm the last to know when one of these exposés happen. And so I actually don't know whether it's worse now or there's a historical trend where they're, you go through phases where you catch a lot of bad guys, I mean, we're New Yorkers, Tammany Hall. We have a history of rough and tough politics and some corruption. I think actually one of the reasons we're seeing quite a few legislators being indicted at this point is we have very aggressive federal prosecutors who have made commitments to go after political crime. Some people say that's not fair. Again, I think that's fine. As I just said to you earlier, we're supposed to be held to hire standards. That means that we should be being watched, they should be transparency.

And personally, I'd like everybody to get caught who's going to be caught, get a new group of legislators in who understand their responsibility and move forward. I have a big agenda of things I would like to accomplish for the state of New York. And to be truthful, when everybody's busy being indicted, talking about who's being indicted, suspecting each other of wearing wires, of course, apparently now we do wear wires against each other. It is very hard to do the people's business. So I want them gone any way possible. Do you support the establishment of a commission to investigate corruption in Albany? There's some been some talk about that. You know, we theory have Jacob, which was created at the Ethics Commission for the Legislature. I've been disappointed in how they've been handling things. So my question is, what would be the mandate of the new commission? I know that the attorney general has been asking for the authority to be involved in criminal

investigations of the legislature. He can't now because he doesn't have the authority. He's the law, he's the highest lawyer in the state. He has law enforcement authority on violations of other state laws. I don't understand why the governor is not giving the attorney general the authority to play that role. I'm not pro or con any individual commission. I haven't seen the details of a specific proposal, but I guess my question is, we keep moving the deck chairs on what the commissions are or are not. I'm not sure a new one is the answer. Maybe new legislation to strengthen the model that we created in J-Cope, maybe we would. Who's on J-Cope, are those legislators who sit on it? No, but they are appointed by, and actually that's one of the problems with the J-Cope model we have now.

The way it was structured in the law and I never supported it when the bill was written or passed was that there's a combination formula where the Republicans can veto an investigation going forward. The Democrats can veto an investigation going forward. The governor's office can veto. When you all have the ability to stop it and stop it seriously, it seems to me that's an obvious thing we need to fix. For all of the more than 30 years that I've lived in New York, there have been repeated calls for reform in Albany with its campaign spending reform getting rid of the three men in a room system for coming up with a budget and for passing laws, deciding which laws would get passed. Have you in the 11, you've been in the Senate 11 years? Have you witnessed any meaningful reforms in that time? Yes. Instead of because you talked about 30 years and when I ran for office, that was my list of like, oh, that's what we need to do.

And foolish me, I thought we could get it done in a couple of years. So we have changed on the process of how bills come to the floor and the ability to vote on them minimally. We have had much more transparency in that we now televise committee hearings, televise what happens on the floor of the legislature. You can look up on the internet, hearings, votes of your legislators. You couldn't even find out how I voted on bills when I first started, unless you called them my office and asked, isn't that ridiculous, you're trying to track votes on thousands of bills by 212 legislators? Well now, if you have computer access, you can find that information. So definitely there's more transparency. And I think there is a perception that we have an obligation as a legislature to do more of our business in public. But it's still three men in a room or now four men in a room because we have a confusing dual leadership in the Senate.

It's still most of the serious work gets done behind the scenes. We have a very, I think, unusual model with Governor Cuomo that he doesn't like to release one of his bills or pieces of legislation until he thinks the whole deal is done. So there's little ability for the public to know about legislation before I'm surprised it hits you. I would prefer he had a much more open process in the legislative development process. But there have been improvements. Again, maybe one of the reasons we're seeing some more of the corruption and exposure is because there is more public input. When I first got there 11 years ago, I was angry that nobody seemed to know what goes on in Albany at all. And therefore you can get away with lots because nobody was even looking now between the creation of political blogs where there are new cycles every 24 minutes instead of every 24 hours.

There's much more attention to what's going on in Albany, which I, in fact, I think is one of the things that creates public anger because they're actually seeing what's going on. But I do think that it's really angry. But I think that actually is forging some changes in the culture. The state assembly recently passed a law that would legalize marijuana for medical uses, which it has done before, but the law always died in the Senate. Any chance of the Senate passing at this time? I'm a co-sponsor of that legislation. Whether I believe it has been said that enough people have publicly committed to voting for this bill, that it would pass the Senate if it was brought to the floor. So here's the rub. Will it come to the floor of the Senate for a vote? The problem there is, and it is a fundamental one, that the only bills that come to the floor of the Senate for a vote are bills where Dean Scallows, the Republican majority leader and Jeff Klein, the independent conference in coalition with the Republican majority

leader, who is also a co-majority leader, they both have to agree for a bill to come to the floor. So I don't know whether it will come to the floor or not, it doesn't seem to be movement to do that. I also don't know whether the governor has signaled whether he supports citing that bill because of course you need a bill to pass both houses and then a governor to sign the bill. There's another marijuana bill involving the lowering of the penalty to try to address the stopping fist problems of the city where young people are told to empty their pockets, a marijuana cigarette is found, and then they face a criminal charge. I think that is critical to pass this year. There has been no signal that the Republican Senate will bring that bill to the floor either. I think it's completely outrageous that we can't even pass that bill. I've got to step farther, I'm introducing a bill to regulate and legalize marijuana.

Period, period. Right, not just for medical. Don, period stop criminalizing this. I support the medical marijuana bill, but I also see states who have passed them open up a whole new set of issues for themselves of defining new crimes, new accusations that you faked your need. You know what, alcohol is not so good for everybody, but it's legal. Marijuana is not so good for everybody, but you go to jail. I just don't think our state should even have these laws. Several other states have had public referendums and legalized California through its legislative process has almost legalized. I seriously believe that it's time for the state of New York to just say enough. We have a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of real social problems. I don't believe marijuana use is one of them, and we should get it off our criminal books. It's hard to believe that New York City residents will be electing a new mayor only five

months from now. Is there a candidate you're leaning toward at this point? No, I have not made any endorsements for mayor. I know most of the candidates, obviously I'm a progressive Democrat, so with all due respect to the Republicans, I don't think I'm looking at any of them as my candidate, but no, I'm fascinated, I'm watching, I'm listening. We were saying before the show, I think there's been about 50 public forums already where some combination of the mayor of candidates have got up in rooms and talked about their positions on different issues, and I don't think I've ever seen that before in previous years, no granted, we've had mayor bloomer for so long, maybe we just forgot what life like ever, like before, but I think it's so interesting that if the public wishes, there are so many opportunities for them to learn where the different candidates are on different issues. So I'm still watching, listening, and who knows where I'll go yet. To move on to a really serious political issue, there's been a lot of covetching about

the new bike sharing system that went into effect 10 days ago, and I gather has already attracted 100,000 riders. What's your opinion of the city bike program? Biking in general, the expansion of biking in the city of New York is one of the most interesting things for me to have watched over the 11-year period I've been in politics. I sort of joke, it's the third rail of politics at this point. People love it. People hate it, ultimately the bike share question is a similar question to lots of others in my district, on the east side of Manhattan. It's a land use fight. We have so many people trying to live and work on the head of a pin that somebody's always getting pushed off of it in some way, or doesn't feel that they have the ability to use our land as they wish. So I listen to my constituents say, I love the bikes, I love the bike lanes, I love bike share. I listen to my constituents tell me that they can't drive down the streets because they are so in fear of hitting a bicycle, and they don't know what the rules are now and what

places they're allowed to be. I hear pedestrians screaming, now I have to duck the bikes and the drivers. So it's a little bit like the cowboys and ranchers range wars, right, of the 1800s. Why can't we all be friends? Why can't we all work it out? Ultimately we have to. Got to do get out. We've got to do get out, but I think we are going through some real learning curve and structural fights because we are very much changing the use of sidewalks and roads in the city of New York, and there's a lot of pressures in all directions. Well we're going to have to end this interview with that issue. I want to thank Senator Liz Kruger for joining me today. If you'd like more information, check out her website at nycentit.gov slash senator slash Liz dash Kruger for the City University of New York and one to one, I'm Cheryl McCarthy.

If there are any people you'd like to hear from or topics you'd like us to explore, please let us know. You can write to me at Q&E TV 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, 10016, or you can go to the website at cuny.tv and click on contact us. I look forward to hearing from you.