Governor Cuomo and state lawmakers are now into the final week of the fiscal year.  New York’s fiscal year starts on April 1^st.  Given the holidays this year, there is a push to get a budget agreement in place by Thursday, March 29^th.

During the Cuomo tenure the state budget agreement has occurred either by April 1^st or within hours of the deadline.  Getting a budget in place more or less on time has been used by the governor to make the case that he has brought order to chaos in Albany.  Yet last year, the budget was nine days late.  Was last year an aberration or the beginning of a new trend?

New Yorkers will soon see.

Of course, there are other metrics to measure whether chaos besets state government – such as the number of public officials indicted and convicted of corruption, which tells a different story.  But the governor does rightfully get credit for pushing through state budgets that are “on time” or close to it, while keeping spending within growth estimates set by the governor.

This year’s budget, however, is being crafted in the shadow of the tax changes enacted by the Trump Administration and the Republican Congress.  And those tax changes could have a big impact on some New Yorkers.  Thus, how New York’s political leadership reacts to those changes (if at all) is one of the big questions looming over budget talks.  The governor has proposed significant tax changes to respond to the new federal laws, most of which have been untested, and which have not – to date – been publicly debated in Albany.

But the challenges created by Washington are not the only problems the governor and the legislature must tackle.  There are a number of big state issues still under consideration.

First, what will the state do about climate change?  The biggest issue facing the planet is the result of the burning of coal, oil and gas.  New York took an important step forward a few years ago when it became the first state with any appreciable natural gas reserves to ban fracking.  The state has taken some additional steps – some forward and some backward – when it comes to allowing the development of new fossil fuel infrastructure – like pipelines – within New York.  Allowing such construction slows down the movement toward a fossil fuel free future since new pipelines are usually financed in a way that requires decades of use before debts can be paid off.

The world does not have years to wait for an end to the reliance on fossil fuels.

The track record of the Cuomo Administration’s investment strategies when it comes to new renewable power generation is also mixed.  The state has made many promises to push to generate half of its energy from renewable power (solar, wind, geothermal), but so far the investments don’t match the administration’s rhetoric.

The renewable power that the state touts is almost entirely generated by aging hydroelectric plants.  The state generates only one percent of its power from solar, for example.  Other states are doing much better, for example California generates about 10 percent of its electricity from solar; neighboring New Jersey gets nearly four percent of its electric from solar power.

It’s up to the governor to push New York into a national leader in solar power.  His first opportunity is this week, as New York wraps up its budget.  New York needs to invest more in solar power and it needs to do so now.  Will the new budget change that?

Second, will the budget reverse the Cuomo Administration’s cuts to college financial aid programs for struggling low-income students?  Last year, the governor advanced the Excelsior scholarship program, which made State University tuition free for those with incomes up to $125,000 and helped many middle income New Yorkers attend public college.

Yet, he has frozen state support for higher education overall and proposed cuts to programs to help lower income students.  Will the legislature reject the governor’s cuts on programs that are proven to help low-income students and will they reverse the governor’s stagnant support for SUNY?

Third, will anything happen to curtail political corruption?  A top member of the governor’s staff was recently convicted of corruption and the former top Senate and Assembly leaders will be retried for corruption in the next few months.  The governor’s proposed measures would add new ethics oversight, but by entities that are reportable to him, not independent watchdogs.

Given the silence surrounding reform plans, will Albany kick the can again?

Budgets are about meeting the demands of the public.  With limited resources, and faced with unlimited demands, budgets are also the government’s primary tool to set policy priorities.

How Albany answers the budget this year will determine the quality of life for all New Yorkers, not just those who rely on the state for direct public help.

Last week was Sunshine Week; an annual celebration of the benefits of open government and how to safeguard and expand upon current transparency laws.  If the success of a representative democracy hinges on the informed consent of the governed, it is critical that the public know as much as possible about the information used and the processes by which its representatives spend tax dollars and act on policy recommendations.

As we all know, the reason such a week is needed is that our public servants far too frequently mislead the public and make decisions that benefit favored special interests.  That spectacle has dominated the news of the actions taken by the federal government.

Sadly, a recent court case showed the problem of corrupting government to the benefit of hot-wired interests exists in Albany too.

Last week – Sunshine Week – saw the conviction of a former top aide to Governor Cuomo, a man who was once described as “brother” to the governor.

The aide, Joseph Percoco, was convicted in federal court of three felonies including solicitation of bribes and gratuities in connection with a “low-show” job given to his wife by an energy company with a proposed Hudson Valley power plant seeking various approvals from the Cuomo administration.  According to the conviction, Mr. Percoco got nearly $300,000 in bribes through the scheme.  He received another $35,000 from a Syracuse development firm to successfully override a government decision to protect labor union members.

In addition to the Percoco conviction, the head of the Syracuse development firm was convicted as well. The jury deadlocked over whether the Hudson Valley energy company knowingly broke the law.

The court proceedings and evidence laid bare serious flaws in the way the Cuomo Administration operates.  According to the testimony, when Mr. Percoco left government service to run Governor Cuomo’s 2014 re-election campaign, he used his old government office to do so, which is illegal. The trial also offered testimony that a lobbyist conducted government business with a number of high-ranking Administration officials through private emails – not through government email addresses – in an apparent attempt to avoid the state’s openness laws celebrated during Sunshine Week.

Of course, such high-level corruption taints the Administration and strongly suggests that the way it runs its internal operations is done to minimize public scrutiny, not maximize it.  One clear take away is that the state’s ethics oversight and openness laws were simply insufficient to curb such behaviors – a total overhaul is needed.

But the trial also raises other disturbing issues.  If a corrupt official was at the center of two controversial decisions, should those decisions be reviewed?

In the Syracuse case, the trial revealed that Mr. Percoco helped to remove a potentially-costly labor union agreement requirement from an Inner Harbor parking lot project in Syracuse and helped free up funds for work completed on the Central New York Film Hub.

In the Hudson Valley energy plant case, prosecutors argued that Mr. Percoco received bribes to help in the construction of a natural-gas power plant located in the mid-Hudson Valley.  That plant, whose construction is nearly complete, has been controversial and opposed by many local residents, environmental groups and public officials.

Opponents now make the reasonable argument that if the deal was underpinned by corruption as evidenced by the Percoco conviction, the state must stop the construction and review regulatory decisions in an open manner the steps that allowed the construction to move ahead.  They have a point and Albany must listen to them.

The Percoco conviction should serve as a wakeup call to the governor and the legislature that they must act to curb corruption at all levels of government, even in the offices of the governor himself.  It should also act as a spur to force review of both the Hudson Valley case and the Syracuse decision to ensure that labor, environmental, or health standards were not ignored.

It’s long past time that New York State and local governments comply with the highest standards of openness and public accountability.  Next year’s Sunshine Week should be a celebration of advances in good government in Albany, not another week of disgrace.

Last weekend was the seventh anniversary of the disaster at the Japanese nuclear power plant located in Fukushima.  On March 11, 2011, an earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean that spawned a huge tsunami.  The quake itself caused considerable damage to the Japanese islands near the center of the quake, but the tsunami’s impact was catastrophic.

The waves caused by the earthquake hit the Fukushima area with such force that over one million buildings were partially or completely destroyed and about 19,000 residents were killed.

At the same time, eleven reactors at four nuclear power plants in the region were forced to shut down.  However, the tsunami disabled the emergency generators that would have provided power to control and operate the pumps necessary to cool the superheated reactors.  The insufficient cooling led to three nuclear meltdowns, hydrogen-air explosions, and the release of radioactive material during the next few days after the tsunami hit.

The result of this disaster forced tens of thousands of Japanese to relocate from the area and the uncontrolled release of radioactive materials into the area and the Pacific Ocean.

The power plants in Fukushima are of the same design as some in New York State, which are located on Lake Ontario.  While no one would expect the same scenario to occur, those plants have been the focus of state policies in recent years.

The plants, built in the 1960s, have exceeded their expected useful lifetimes.  Generally, plants of that design and era are expected to be used for roughly 40 or so years.  Yet those plants continue to operate under a deal negotiated largely outside of public view.

In the summer of 2016, negotiators from the Cuomo Administration and the plant owners agreed to a multi-billion dollar bailout of the plants – which were slated for closure.  At that time, the state did not reveal the estimated costs, but subsequent analyses estimated that the costs could run anywhere from $2.9 billion to $7.6 billion over a 12-year period.  The negotiation contained no new safety requirements for the plants, just a guarantee that virtually all New Yorkers would be required to pay to make the nuke plants profitable – whether they received power from the plants or not – to keep them open.

The safety records of the plants came under new scrutiny in a report issued last week by the Alliance for a Green Economy, an upstate New York nuclear watchdog organization.  The report analyzed recent inspection reports and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) documents and identified three issues of concern:

• The group identified regulatory violations without penalties: 18 violations of Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations were reported between March 2017 and February 2018 for the four Upstate reactors, but no penalties or fines were assessed.
• The group identified examples of weakened regulations at the request of nuclear operators. For example, at the request of one of the plant’s owners, the National Regulatory Commission changed the requirement for what constitutes an “unusual event” regarding Lake Ontario flooding. As we all know, there had been extensive flooding last year in the Lake Ontario area.
• Lastly, the group identified missed deadlines for fixing known safety and maintenance issues: one plant near Oswego does not have a containment vessel likely to be able to contain the pressure and radiation released by a meltdown and installation of a required vent has been delayed; the plant’s owner is behind schedule for fixing numerous maintenance issues.

New York State should learn the lessons of the dangers of relying on nuclear power and follow the path set by California: move to shut down these aging facilities, and instead move toward greater reliance on solar, wind and geothermal power.  Those power generators have been starved of adequate support since so much of the state’s wealth is tied up in propping up the Lake Ontario plants.  New York energy efficiency programs are anemic and lag far behind neighboring states and currently solar only generates about 1 percent of the power for the state.  Instead of mandating that New Yorkers subsidize aging, inefficient, 20^th century nuclear plants, that money should be redirected to 21^st century conservation and renewable energy programs.

New York State’s long running corruption crisis continues to this day.  For each of the first seven months of this year, a new high-profile corruption case goes to trial.  Last week the first of those cases went to the jury for deliberations and in the second case, a trial was averted when a former legislator pleaded guilty.

Quite a week.

In the guilty plea case a former state Senator from Niagara (George Maziarz) admitted to the criminal misuse of his campaign funds by illegally steering them into the pocket of an aide.  Maziarz will pay a fine, but the misdemeanor plea avoids jail time.

In the first trial a top aide to the governor is facing decades in the slammer if convicted (of course everyone is innocent until proven guilty).  And while the jury deliberates over whether he violated federal bribery laws, the evidence and testimony in the trial revealed serious ethical questions over how the Cuomo Administration monitors ethics.  Here are a few of those questions:

According to testimony and evidence presented at the trial the governor’s aide, while outside of government service and running the governor’s re-election campaign, was able to keep his government security card to gain access to the executive chamber and appears to have been able to use his old office, including conducting business on the executive office telephone.

Question: Who approved this decision and was the state’s ethics watchdog (the Joint Commission on Public Ethics) consulted about this arrangement?

According to testimony and evidence presented at the trial, the aide was allowed to have an outside consulting business while running the campaign and, apparently was still deeply involved in government decision-making.  Legal advice on ethics issues was given to him while he was employed outside of government by an Administration official.

Question: Was JCOPE consulted on this arrangement?

According to testimony at the trial, then-gubernatorial candidate Cuomo, who was also the incumbent Attorney General, traveled on a donor’s personal jet for his gubernatorial campaign.

Question: Did the state’s ethics watchdog at that time, the Commission on Public Integrity, approve this travel?

According to testimony at the trial, a top Administration official vetted campaign contributions made to the governor from political appointees and others seeking government contracts.  That official also, reportedly on her own time, vetted campaign contributions for the governor’s re-election campaign.  According to the New York Times, nearly $900,000 in campaign contributions were made by political appointees during that period.

Question:  How is it possible that despite the vetting of contributions by the Administration, such money was raised in apparent conflict with the Administration’s executive order to prohibit such a practice?

According to testimony and evidence presented at the trial, $125,000 in campaign contributions were directed by an outside lobbyist, working with a company seeking to do business with the state, to the governor’s re-election campaign through a network of limited liability companies.  According to the evidence, at least some of those contributions were disguised by being sent from related LLCs, whose names did not contain the name of the parent company.

Question: How was this decision and how were these donations vetted by the Administration?

According to testimony and evidence presented at the trial, an outside lobbyist regularly communicated with top Administration officials through their private email accounts.  Contained in those emails were decisions that directly impacted public policies.

Question: Why was it that so many high ranking officials were allowed to conduct business through personal emails?

While the governor’s former top aide’s case is before the jury, the verdict is in on the way New York State conducts its political business: its deeply flawed system directly raises the risk of corruption.  And that increased risk of corruption led last week to another conviction, adding to the dozens so far.  And it is a system that will continue to be on trial deep into this summer.

Regardless of the verdicts in these trials, the current system is failing to produce integrity in government.  New Yorkers deserve only the highest ethical conduct from elected and appointed officials.