Why dont we all demand our tax money be used for a city-wide audit of every school district in the state, then, after rooting out all those people who are taking money from the children through falsification and/or secrecy of performance and budgetary data, distribute the city, state, and federal funds appropriately to each student?

Why not abolish the Department of Education and establish by state-wide election a new, small office at which an independent, non-partisan accounting officer would provide oversight on a full-time, permanent basis and serve the public as the corruption police for any and all claims given by anyone who has proof of education fraud, malpractice, neglect, embezzlement, or any other wrongdoing?. We also need to start thinking about a Hall of Shame for those who believe that the "way it has always been done" is the way to go. It's not, and we can prove it. This statement on the removal of the Big Three in New York State would never be published in the 'mainstream' media - the network television news shows and the printed newspapers. You are reading this because we are on the world wide web, where the actions of those who have traditionally controlled the media can be discussed. Cyberjournalists are the cable TV producers of the 21st century. The Internet, with its' websites, listservs, and blogs, empower and create a global consciousness in seconds. We can now think about the end of dictatorships, false claims, and corruption as we find the right way to channel whistleblower claims that are starting to crowd the Internet. We cannot be stopped.

Betsy Combier

July 30, 2004
Delay, Deadline and Another Court Date on Schools
By AL BAKER, NY TIMES, July 30, 2004

ALBANY, July 29 - Friday is the day by which the state's highest court ordered New York State to come up with a plan to improve education in New York City. But after more than a year of delay and fruitless backroom negotiations, elected officials in Albany have failed to agree on a plan, and all sides agree that the deadline will be missed.

Most lawmakers were not even at work in Albany on Thursday, and state officials said they were preparing for the issue to return next week to court, where the case that led to the Court of Appeals ruling was first lodged in May 1993.

It was 13 months ago that the high court ruled the state had been shortchanging city schoolchildren for decades, depriving them of their constitutional right to a decent education. The court did not try to calculate how many billions of dollars would be needed, giving Albany until Friday to agree on a specific number. Now there is a possibility the judicial branch will simply tell the legislative branch how much to spend.

The roots of the state's failure to agree on a figure are long, and can be explained by a mix of mistrust and self-interest. They extend a ritual of delay that has come to define the triumvirate that has ruled Albany for the last decade, Gov. George E. Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno.

Mr. Pataki fought the case from the beginning, and at one point his lawyers embraced an intermediate court's ruling that the state was obliged to provide no more than an eighth-grade education. When the Court of Appeals ruled against him last year, Mr. Pataki smiled and called the opinion a "historic opportunity" to remake education, a phrase he often repeated.

But political bickering followed, and much of Albany's important business sputtered to a halt.

Democrats treated the court ruling as a jackpot for needy school districts. Republicans insisted existing education money must be spent wisely before adding a penny more. Mr. Pataki spoke of accountability but waited until last week to put his ideas into a bill. Things are so stalled, the matter is now headed back where it began: before the original trial judge, Justice Leland DeGrasse. Meanwhile, some religious leaders are urging people to pray, hoping ethereal powers might fill a void left by politicians.

The next step is likely to be a hearing on Tuesday before Justice DeGrasse, who has indicated he will name special masters or referees to advise him. No one knows how long their work could take; the plaintiffs say about 90 days.

As a practical matter, legislators say they have until Tuesday to deliver a plan to the court, a day after they are set to return to Albany to resume work on the schools issue and a budget that is late for the 20th consecutive year. Even if they go further into August before coming up with a plan, legislators say the court should consider it.

But that remains an open question. "We've never had anything quite like this," said Richard Rifkin, the deputy attorney general for state counsel.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that even though the deadline would be missed, the leaders in Albany still had a kind of operational reprieve based on the calendar and the court date next week. "They're trying very hard, I think, to come up with a solution," the mayor said on Thursday. "So far, that solution has avoided them, but I'm still hopeful that they can come up with something."

The specter of the judicial branch drawing up a plan is something education advocates hoped to avoid. A court might tell the state what to pay and when, and might limit its ruling to New York City, whereas the plaintiffs had hoped the plan might deal with the entire state.

"One of the problems in going back to the legal process is there is some uncertainty there," said Michael A. Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the group that brought the lawsuit. "It will take some time. There could be some legal maneuvering, and there will be attempts at delay."

Legislators said that the best they can hope for is to iron out the beginnings of a plan to satisfy the court as soon as possible. Failing in that, Mr. Bruno said, would be an atrocity for more than 700 school districts that begin to set property taxes in mid-August, based on the aid they receive from Albany, in time to send out local bills come September.

In its plan, the Democrat-led Assembly wants to spend more state money on education than either the governor or the Senate, including $3.8 billion for the city. The Republican-led Senate wants to preserve the current formula for divvying up school aid, so that suburban and upstate lawmakers will not be hurt. Its plan is worth about $10 billion, but that includes a plan to give the city permission to borrow $2.8 billion.

Mr. Pataki wants to fix the city's schools with the profits from video lottery terminals, which would provide a $325 million increase to education spending in their first year, an amount the governor's office calls a foundation. That amount would grow to more than $2 billion a year, though opponents say that responding to the court order with such a foundation is too risky for the court to accept.

Analysts in the Assembly Ways and Means committee say the governor's plan would actually decrease the recent pattern of school aid growth. Over the last five years, even with an economic downturn, the bursting of the dot-com bubble and a terrorist attack, all of which contributed to a $12 billion budget deficit last year, education spending in New York has grown by $2.61 billion.

All along, Mr. Silver has rejected the notion of paying for education with a separate, dedicated fund. Instead, he said it should be treated as any other state obligation, like prisons, police officers or health care, and paid for with overall state revenues.

Educators fear a court-imposed solution, with no political support, will be chaotic because it could be challenged all over New York. Already, the Utica school district has filed a similar lawsuit to the New York City case and school districts in Syracuse and Rochester are moving in the same direction.

"No mater what happens," said Senator Michael A. L. Balboni, a Republican from Long Island, "at the end of the day, it is not likely, particularly given the threat of more lawsuits from suburban, upstate and big five school districts throughout the state, that there will be any resolution of this for months, if not years."
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and we guess that Mr. Silver's current consulting fees include some payments from Kodak:

July 30, 2004
In Boston, Some Democrats Prefer to Pay Their Way
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and MICHAEL COOPER

BOSTON, July 29 - New York's Attorney General Eliot Spitzer was eager to attend a party thrown by Citigroup Inc. at Fenway Park this week during the Democratic National Convention. But Mr. Spitzer insisted on paying his own way, writing a $200 check that covered food, drinks and two seats to watch the Red Sox play the Yankees.

With his check, however, Mr. Spitzer distinguished himself from some other New York elected officials who accepted free convention-week gifts that ranged from small keepsakes and tchotchkes to ballgame tickets, performances, parties and hospitality suites. At times the corporate presence was so great that elected officials literally paused for a word for their sponsors.

At one point, for example, the Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver, paused while introducing Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in order to introduce an executive from Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor that sponsored a breakfast Wednesday for the New York delegation.

"On behalf of the New York delegation, thank you Lockheed Martin," Mr. Silver said to a room filled with hundreds of New York officials and delegates.

One New York City Democrat rolled his eyes. "Nader was right!'' he said, referring to Ralph Nader's oft-repeated contention that the major parties have become too influenced by corporate donations.

While the convention is about spotlighting the Democratic Party's candidates for president and vice president, it has also served to highlight the porous nature of New York's ethics laws governing what free gifts lawmakers can accept from corporations doing business with the government. The laws are complicated, and they are different for state, city and federal officials and for executives and legislators.

"I think this convention has been a huge black hole of corporate influence," said Rachel Leon, executive director of Common Cause New York, a non-partisan watchdog group.

In New York State, for example, the law says that legislators may not accept gifts that exceed $75, a seemingly straightforward cutoff. Ms. Leon said that some of the largess given out this week would seem to run afoul of that law.

But Melissa Ryan, the executive director of the state's legislative ethics committee, said that there is an exemption in the law for entertainment and meals if they are given during a political event.

Ms. Ryan said she could not say whether a baseball game could be considered a political event when it takes place in a city where a convention is taking place, nor whether a corporation could pick up the tab. In many cases, she said, lawmakers will ask for an advisory opinion before attending an event, but Ms. Ryan also could not say if anyone asked for such an opinion.

"Everything is very fact specific," Ms. Ryan said. "But the one thing that I can say that does apply to a lot of convention events, political events, is that beverages and entertainment are generally not considered gifts ."

In Albany, state ethics rules are enforced by separate entities. Ms. Ryan's committee focuses on the actions of lawmakers. The lobbyists are monitored by the state's Temporary Commission on Lobbying.

In this case, while corporations and officials have billed events around the convention as parties, and breakfasts, the bill is often picked up by businesses that want things from government.

A state official said that the lobbying commission has already sent letters out to three companies - Eastman Kodak, KeySpan and Citigroup Inc. - asking for information about the events they sponsored here in Boston. If they are deemed to be lobbying, the companies would be required to file a disclosure form with the state, or risk being fined.

Citigroup Inc. said through a spokeswoman that it carefully followed the letter of the law when it planned its event, and that it would file a disclosure form with the lobbying commission.

Leah Johnson, the spokeswoman, said that free tickets were given to some elected officials, but that the face value of the ticket was under the cutoff amount. But she said that the company viewed the free food and drinks as a second event, so there was no issue of a combined value.

Citigroup lobbied the state this year to weigh in on one bill that would have required financial institutions to get permission from consumers before sharing private personal information, and on another bill that would have forced banks to identify the locations of their call centers, according to data filed with the lobbying commission.

Eastman Kodak sponsored a delegation reception to honor Mr. Silver at the start of the convention. Invitations were embossed with the Kodak logo. Mr. Silver's spokeswoman did not comment on the Kodak event.

For Mr. Spitzer, the easiest way to avoid any appearance of conflict is to pay the bill with his campaign account, an aide said.

When Mr. Spitzer, for example, was asked to sponsor Thursday's breakfast for the delegation, he invited Al Franken, the humorist, to speak, and paid for all of the food and beverages without asking for corporate assistance.

"Our policy is to never accept a gift from anyone for any value," said Darren Dopp, an aide to Mr. Spitzer.
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NY Times Editorial July 30, 2004:

July 25, 2004
New York's Fake Legislature

The most galling part of watching the New York Legislature in action is the sight of thousands of students innocently touring the State Capitol. Their teachers are usually telling them about how democracy works, how Teddy Roosevelt and Al Smith once roamed these very halls, how Mr. Bill becomes Mr. Law in Albany. In reality, what these crowds of young people see is men and women on public salaries, going through the motions. The whole place might as well be made out of cardboard.

As a report released last week from the Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U. School of Law has documented, New York's Capitol houses a Potemkin legislature. The Capitol's splendid chambers are for show; voting is automatic once a legislator swipes a card or waves at a clerk at the beginning of each putative workday. Legislation that goes to the floor always passes - always - because the leader in each house has more power than most dictators. The other 210 members either follow their leaders or watch their backs.

Public debate is rare. When Assembly members began a verbal exchange on the floor last month about the horrors of junk food versus the joys of chocolate, the moment was viewed by Albany veterans as an extremely good day for democracy.

It is not hyperbole to say that New York's Legislature is one of the least democratic in the country. The Brennan Center has done the math and suggested changes in the rules that would help. Here are a few of their numbers, with a little explanation about how New York's strange legislative beast really works.

The Busywork of Bill-Making

New York's legislators do not actually enact many laws. They do, however, introduce more bills than any other state legislature in the Union. Two years ago, 16,892 bills were introduced in New York's two houses. That's almost twice as many as in the Illinois General Assembly, which ranks second. But how many of Albany's bills actually become law? About 4 percent, the third-lowest percentage in the country. (Illinois may have started out with only half as many proposals, but it managed to enact 746 laws compared with 693 in New York.)

What about the other 16,199 bills that did not make it into law? Most are for the record only. Some bills are meant to allow legislators to boast to voters (in state-paid mailings) that they "tried" to do something for them. Other bills are meant to convince Albany's flush lobbyists that a legislator did enough to earn a nice, fat campaign contribution.

All these bills do accomplish one thing, however. They waste reams of paper and hours of time and overtime and an unbelievable amount of money, considering the final product. To do all that extra work, Albany's legislators apparently need a lot of people - more than any other state legislature in the country. Last year, for example, New York had 3,428 people on the Legislature's payroll. Pennsylvania was in second place with 2,947 and California came in third with 2,359. In 2001, the New York Legislature cost the taxpayers $197 million or about $333,000 per actual law.

Obviously, a lot of legislative ideas deserve a swift death, and there is serious work that requires skilled staff members. Even though the lawmakers have not passed a budget on time in two decades, the budget bills still need to be put together by experts. But sometimes the budget is virtually the only legislation of substance that survives. An accounting of bills enacted in 2001 shows that few had statewide impact. (One did ban drivers from talking on hand-held cellphones, even though that change apparently is still news to a lot of New York motorists.) In general the new laws were narrow, pegged to some very parochial need. Many offered tax breaks to churches, synagogues and, in one case, to anyone in the business of handling manure. Others tweaked the state legal code: podiatrists won the right to be certified as acupuncturists, for example, and loitering on school buses was prohibited.

Perhaps the statistic that speaks loudest about the meaninglessness of a legislator's job is the number of bills defeated on the floors of the Assembly and Senate - a whopping zero. And nobody can remember the last time an amendment to a bill was added on the floor. Joseph Bruno, the Senate majority leader, and Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, decide which bills make it to the floor of their respective chambers, and their blessing makes the legislation invulnerable. Whatever hits the floor is a done deal. For example, from 1997 to 2001, the Senate approved 7,109 bills and defeated none. The Assembly, in a three-year period, passed 4,365 bills and defeated none. It is a record that the Kremlin of yore could admire.

Committees Everywhere


In a normal, modern legislature, the committee is where bills are drafted, after research by the staff, public hearings and consultations with the experts. New York's committees are not normal or modern. They are set up to rubber-stamp bills drafted in the many backrooms of the State Capitol. Most committee meetings last less than a few minutes. They are so brief that when the Brennan Center tried to find records for committee meetings in the Senate, they were told such documents mostly do not exist. Votes are recorded; that's about it.

Still, New York's Legislature has a lot of committees. The Senate has 32 - more than the upper houses of any other state except Mississippi. The Assembly has 37, ranking third for number of committees in the nation's lower houses. Experts say that having too many committees is not good; it leads to overlap and forces members to run from one meeting to another rather than do real work on legislation. At this point, that doesn't matter in Albany, of course. The legislators are hardly involved in the process anyway. The committee staff does the legislation, and the staff works for Mr. Bruno or Mr. Silver, not for the committee members.

Lawmakers in other states find public hearings provide a good chance to get input from state residents on legislation they are considering - even if they complain that sitting through them takes a lot of time. No problem in Albany. In a five-year period, the Brennan Center found that the Assembly committees held only 10 hearings on matters that inspired major laws. The Senate's many committees held nine such hearings. Committee chairmen who do hold hearings - like Assemblyman Richard Brodsky of Westchester, who has been vigorously pursuing missteps by state authorities - are generally considered by their colleagues to be publicity hounds or spoilers trying to make everybody else look bad.

The real reason Albany has so many committees is to provide patronage for Mr. Bruno and Mr. Silver, who dispense the chairmanships to grateful soldiers in their respective armies. Committee chairmen get bonuses of $9,000 or more to add to their salary of $79,500 for what is essentially a part-time job.

Failing to Read the Fine Print


The Citizens Budget Commission sent letters earlier this month to all members of the Legislature, pleading with them to insist on having three full days to review the budget. New York's budget, due on April 1, is habitually late. Allowing three more days for legislators, staff members and especially the public to study the budget will not make much difference in the long run.

The goal of the letter was to head off the usual scene in Albany when legislators wind up voting to commit the entire state - all 19 million people - to a budget that is basically still wrapped in plastic. The State Constitution requires a three-day "aging process" for any bill, but it made a loophole for emergencies. So, as anybody who knows governments could have predicted, there are now a lot of emergencies in Albany.

The emergencies have grown so routine, in fact, that over a five-year period, almost 27 percent of the bills that were passed in at least one chamber came hot, often literally, off the Capitol presses. After almost seven months of backroom negotiations by Gov. George E. Pataki, Mr. Bruno and Mr. Silver, it would be unconscionable for these three to argue that this year's $100 billion budget must be passed right away. Another three days will not matter in a rigged system like Albany's.

But it will give the public interest groups a chance to see what horrors are being committed in the name of urgency. And of course, that's one of the reasons the leaders prefer to see the budget documents pass unread.

Changing the Autocratic Rules

Perhaps the worst part of this long list of failings is that New York's Legislature could improve its performance - and its standing among legislatures in this country - fairly easily. The people who make the rules, mainly Mr. Bruno and Mr. Silver, could simply change them. The Brennan Center study has come up with a good working list of improvements that could be made at the beginning of the next legislative session. The center's authors are handing out the list now because they want voters to start demanding that their local representatives push for changes that could make them more than figureheads in Albany. It's a good list, and one every voter should bring along when preparing to meet the candidates this fall.

• Put an end to empty-seat voting. The Assembly should junk its EZ-voting machines, which allow members or sometimes even someone on their staff to swipe their cards every morning and thus vote yes automatically until the close of business. The Senate, where a member can walk in, wave at the front desk and then leave for the day, will merely have to change the rules. No other state allows such nonsense.

• Make it easier for legislators to bring bills to the floor. Right now, if a bill is on the Senate calendar scheduled for debate, Mr. Bruno need only add a star next to it to put the legislation in limbo indefinitely. Mr. Silver has much the same power, just achieved more indirectly.

• Convene conference committees more often to iron out differences in bills from both houses. That would cut down on the passage of mock bills that die of inaction because they are passed in different versions by the two chambers - Albany's favorite way of getting the credit without actually passing the law.

• Limit bills to 20 for each member of the Assembly and 30 for each senator. It's time to focus on what matters, not what fills the air, the member's newsletter and the campaign treasury.

• Assign no member to more than three standing committees. These should be real legislative committees that have actual power and responsibility for passing serious legislation. (Check California for an example of how it can work.) Minutes and attendance should be taken by a stenographer and proxy voting should be prohibited. The fact that none of that exists now raises a question: if these legislators are not on the floor and they are not burdened by long committee meetings, where are they? Do voters need some version of a parolee's anklet for their elected representatives?

• Require that all legislation sent to the floor be accompanied by a committee report of some depth. If no decent report is attached to the bill, members on the floor should start challenging the sponsor for details. As the idea catches hold, perhaps some members will begin to realize that it is actually possible to vote no when your party proposes a real stinker of a bill.

• Allow each committee to hire and fire its own professional staff. This is basic; the committees will never work properly without some financial independence.

The Brennan Center report concludes that on most important counts, New York has the worst legislature in the country - one that deprives the public of any real representation, because legislators obey their leaders more than voters. The people have almost no access to the real process of lawmaking, which goes on behind closed doors among the two leaders and the governor. And it is inefficient. We have only to look at this year's stalled budget to see a glaring example of inefficient autocracy.

Mr. Bruno and Mr. Silver, who could change these suffocating rules, were dismissive of the very idea. Mr. Bruno called the proposals "third world country stuff." Clearly New York's leaders need to get around more - especially to other statehouses in the United States.