Archive for March 2016

THE NATION’S GROWING DRINKING WATER CRISIS

Posted by NYPIRG on March 28, 2016 at 10:12 am

Recent events in Flint, Michigan and here in New York, the troubles in Hoosick Falls, Binghamton, Syracuse, Western New York, and Long Island, have focused public attention on the problems of keeping drinking water clean.

But those problems are not isolated incidents: drinking water problems exist across the nation.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency projects it will cost $384 billion over 20 years just to maintain the nation’s existing drinking water infrastructure. Replacing pipes, treatment plants and other infrastructure, as well as expanding drinking water systems to handle population growth, could cost as much as $1 trillion.

Water infrastructure problems are not the only problem.  As the planet heats up, water shortages will also strain the nation.  According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, 40 out of 50 states expect some level of water shortage in the coming decade.  Droughts, floods, emerging climate change, water quality degradation, and aging infrastructure pose serious challenges to America’s water and wastewater systems.

It was against that backdrop that last week the White House marked “World Water Day” to “raise awareness of water issues” in the United States, and to help “build a sustainable water future through innovative science and technology.”

The United States will need innovative new technologies and management strategies to solve its growing water challenges, including continued population growth, climate change, and aging infrastructure, in the decades ahead.

From Los Angeles to New York, many regions are not only contending with aging, overburdened water facilities—including areas with lead pipes similar to Flint—but are also confronting an enormous backlog of costssevere financial constraints, and difficulty in coordinating action across thousands of individual community water systems.

In the near term, the biggest issue may simply be identifying where the problems exist. Often, water piping systems are more than a century old.  As a result the most important maintenance needs can be difficult to identify, as the risk for widespread leaks and other public health concerns mount over time.

With some of the oldest infrastructure in the nation, the pipes under New York’s cities and towns are failing at an alarming rate: New York City saw 513 water main breaks last year; estimates are that as much as 20 percent of the treated water that enters the New York City’s pipes leak out before it even makes it to the faucet.  In western New York, there were 1,453 water main breaks last year.  The revelations of dangerous lead levels in the drinking water of Flint and in Binghamton underscore the dangers caused by apparent lax oversight and crumbling, century-old infrastructures.   The toxic chemicals found in Hoosick Falls and on Long Island underscore the hazards resulting from weaknesses in health regulation.

The problems will only get worse and the cost of fixing them is already huge. Estimates for fixing New York State’s water system range from $22 billion to $39 billion in costs over the next 20 years.

In response, the state has offered zero- and low-interest loans and grants. The state’s Environmental Facilities Corp. has approved more than $400 million for drinking water projects in the past year.  Lawmakers approved $200 million in additional water funding earlier this year.

But the money is merely a down payment on the billions needed to address the problem.

Obviously, the plans to offer support fall far short of the need and the situation at the local government level is murky at best.  The state needs to step up with a plan that includes aggressive monitoring coupled with big bucks.

Some lawmakers are advancing legislation to require regular, public reporting of water tests.  For example, Senator O’Mara and Assemblywoman Lupardo are advancing legislation to require testing for lead in the drinking water supplies of schools.  Both have had schools in their districts report high lead levels.

While laudable, such reporting is only the first step in a long journey.  The state will need aggressive, public reporting programs and will have to put together a significant financial package – one that may entail a “drinking water bond act.”  A bond act allows the state to borrow money if it is approved by voters.

But the state’s leaders simply cannot ignore this festering problem.  It is time to act.

WILL NEW YORK’S ELECTEDS GET A PAY RAISE?

Posted by NYPIRG on March 21, 2016 at 10:09 am

When it comes to cleaning up Albany, last week’s events indicate that the broom has been put away for now.  Governor Cuomo announced that the ethics issue had fallen off the table of the budget deliberations.  He added that he would make sure it was a top priority in the post-budget session.

We’ll see.

It was the governor, after all, who put the ethics issue in the budget in the first place.  Yet, the governor has done virtually nothing to galvanize public support for his reform package in the two months it was released– despite nearly 90 percent of New Yorkers wanting changes.

At the same time, a commission appointed by the governor, the legislative leaders, and the courts, is examining whether New York’s public officials deserve a pay raise. That commission will hold a hearing this week to allow for public comment on pay raises.

New York pays its state lawmakers comparatively well: the governor gets the third highest salary in the country (Tennessee pays the most) and our legislature gets the third highest salary (behind California and Pennsylvania).  So what’s the argument for pay increases?

The argument stems from the fact that state elected officials haven’t had a pay increase since 1999, which is a long time.  And when that decision was made, then-Governor Pataki linked his approval of pay increases to non-related policy changes—that is, horse trading for lawmaker pay.  The pay raise before that one was also linked to policies.

This time around, the governor and the legislature agreed to create a commission to review salaries.  They gave it the power to hike pay without additional legislative approval.  However, the governor and the legislature will still be able to roll back the pay raise if they choose.

The commission idea makes sense – lawmakers shouldn’t have to face linkages between appropriate pay and policies advanced by the governor.

It only makes sense, however, if the commission is independent and relies on objective analyses conducted in a public manner.  Whether this commission meets those standards remains to be seen.  The majority of the pay raise commissioners are picked by the governor and the legislative leaders.

New Yorkers have seen far too many commissions that serve at the beck and call of the political establishment.  Time will tell if this commission is free to follow its objective analysis.

Also, given Albany’s seemingly unending series of political scandals, how will a pay raise sit with the public who has to pay for it?  As mentioned earlier, the governor and the legislature have decided to drop (at least for now) the issue of ethics reform.  And the reason that ethics reform is on the table is the direct result of the arrests and convictions of the state’s top legislative leaders.  And these convictions followed dozens of other instances in which lawmakers behaved badly; conduct that doesn’t seem to be abating.

How will the public feel about a pay raise for Albany when the governor and the legislature are not tackling the biggest scandals in New York modern political history?

My guess is that New Yorkers will not be happy.

Of course, that does not argue that public officials don’t deserve a pay raise, that’s up to the commission to independently and publicly discuss.  However, if the governor and the legislature can’t agree on cleaning out Albany’s political stables, then the public has every right to be angry.

The pay commission does not have authority to make changes on key ethics reforms – like limiting the outside employment income of elected officials – but it can create some pressure to keep the governor and the legislature focused on doing their jobs and fixing Albany.

The commissioners can promise to release their recommendations well in advance of this November’s elections, but after the legislative session ends in June.  In that way, the public can hold candidates for office accountable.  If they have truly improved Albany’s ethical climate, defending a pay raise would be relatively easy.

Failing to substantially reform ethics, on the other hand, would make a pay raise indefensible.

The commission must remember who picks up the tab for governmental salaries and who has had to endure years of broken promises to reform Albany.  They deserve a say.

DARK CLOUDS OVER SUNSHINE WEEK

Posted by NYPIRG on March 14, 2016 at 10:01 am

Sunday marked the beginning of “Sunshine Week,” a week in which the nation focuses its attention on government openness.  The “Week” makes it clear that it is important to maintain an open government, in order to ensure the proper relationship between public officials and the citizens they are pledged to serve.

The critical tool for holding policymakers accountable, as well as ensuring that the public is educated on policymaking, is the Freedom of Information Law.  The Law operates on one basic concept – that government information should be accessible to the public.  Without a strong open access law, it is virtually impossible for the public to adequately participate in, and monitor, governmental decision making.

Weaker laws can result in public officials losing their way.  It was one year ago, that the Cuomo Administration was called out for its policy of requiring the deletion of state governmental emails after 90 days.

At first, the governor’s office argued that the policy was simply due to technological limitations.  When faced with the fact that the federal government – which has far more emails than New York – now has a seven year retention policy, the justification has changed.

But the Administration did not back off and the policy went into place.  Later last year, the governor vetoed two bills that were designed to make it easier for the public to get access to government records.

One bill would have required that state agencies not drag their feet on disclosing information to the public; another raised the likelihood of penalties if the agencies wrongfully denied the public access to public information.

Both proposals were advanced by the state agency responsible for ensuring government openness – the Committee on Open Government.  Both proposals were part of the agency’s annual analysis examining what should be done to improve governmental accountability.

Both bills passed the legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support.  But both were vetoed by the governor.

Why?  The governor argued that there were technical defects in the bills.  The governor followed up with an executive order requiring that state agencies respond more quickly to FOIL requests.
Unfortunately, the governor’s executive order does nothing to ensure openness by local governments (also covered by FOIL) and does nothing to punish state agencies that ignore the FOIL.

The governor vetoed those bills saying that he would not agree to any legislation that did not comprehensively overhaul the state’s Freedom of Information Law.  In short, he was saying that it was his way or there was no way.

This session the governor proposed legislation that he said would comprehensively improve public access to its own government.  Last week, a coalition of civic groups sent a letter to the governor and the legislative leaders identifying instances in which the governor’s proposed legislation would weaken the Freedom of Information Law, not strengthen it.

For example, the bill makes it harder for citizens to obtain attorneys fees in the event that they are successful in taking a state agency to court for failing to appropriately disclosure public records.

Pledging to make New York’s notoriously secretive state government more open has become a staple of promises by candidates for public office.  In his 2010 campaign book, “Clean Up Albany,” then-candidate Andrew Cuomo pledged “to make the State government the most transparent and accountable in history.”

It turns out that that pledge remains unfulfilled.  Let’s hope that this “Sunshine Week” stimulates Albany’s leaders to throw open the windows of state government, not keep the curtains closed.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION DEBATE STARTS TO HEAT UP

Posted by NYPIRG on March 7, 2016 at 9:01 am

Buried in Governor Cuomo’s $154 billion state budget plan is an appropriation of $1 million to establish a commission to consider the possibility of a state constitutional convention.  The governor’s commission, if approved, would be charged with developing a blueprint for the process of running a constitutional convention, if one is called by the voters in 2017.

New Yorkers get an opportunity every 20 years to decide whether they wish to convene a constitutional convention.  The goal of a convention would be to make changes to the state’s current constitution.  The next vote to decide whether to convene a convention is in November 2017.

Since the first constitution was written in 1777, New York has chosen to significantly rewrite it on eight occasions.  The Constitution in effect today was produced by the convention in 1894, with significant changes resulting from the 1938 convention.  While there have been amendments to the Constitution since then, the basic structure of it has not undergone a comprehensive updating, and currently there are provisions that are simply ignored as invalid under federal law.

Voters turned down opportunities to convene a convention in 1957, 1977, and again in 1997. In the last vote in 1997, 63% of voters said no.   The next constitutionally mandated vote is in 2017.

The possibility of additional changes occurred in 1967, when as a result of federal court decisions on voting rights and reapportionment that invalidated New York constitutional provisions, state lawmakers put a referendum on the 1965 ballot to call a convention.    The referendum was approved by voters, but the product of that 1967 convention was voted down.

In November, 2017, the public votes on whether to hold a convention.  If the majority of votes cast on the convention question are “yes,” then the process continues.  If the majority votes no on convening a convention, no convention happens and the “road” to a convention ends.

If voters choose to convene a convention, in November, 2018 voters then choose delegates to that convention.  204 delegates are chosen by voters; 3 delegates for each of the state’s 63 senate districts and 15 selected statewide.

The convention, consisting of its delegates, would begin its deliberations the first Tuesday of April 2019 and continues until work is completed.

As the convention begins, the delegates will likely organize themselves to consider changes to the Constitution, such as creating committees to examine specific areas of the constitution (e.g., environmental policies).  The commission proposal in this year’s budget could help by doing the preparatory work that the delegates would need to begin their work in earnest.

If delegates have thoughtful, independent, and fair plans ready to go, they will be able to move quickly.  The absence of such planning will ensure a more drawn out process.

At the convention, the delegates would decide on which changes they agree should be part of a new Constitution.

Whatever changes emerge from the convention is then sent to the voters for final approval. New Yorkers go to the polls the following November (2019 at the earliest) to approve or reject the changes.  If rejected, the Constitution does not change.

Will history repeat itself in 2017 with voters giving the convention idea thumbs down?  If not, the work done by the governor’s commission could be very helpful.  Lawmakers should support it.

If you want more details on the convention process, go to http://www.nypirg.org/goodgov/concon/.