Now that the 2018 legislative session is in the rear view mirror, what should New Yorkers think?

Back in March, Governor Cuomo and the Legislature were able to hammer out a budget agreement on time and which addressed a state deficit of billions of dollars. That agreement more or less kept the status quo in place.  For example, proposals by the governor to cut financial aid programs for low-income college students were rejected.  The most notable achievement was the governor’s success in establishing an alternative tax system that would offset some of the negative consequences of the federal tax law changes—though questions about whether it will pass muster with the IRS and be accepted by businesses in New York are still unanswered.

Close on the heels of finalizing the budget, the governor also forced a reunification of the two Democratic factions in the state Senate.

Yet once the budget was complete, the governor set the legislative bar low by announcing that he expected little to get accomplished during the remainder of the session.  And his prophecy was right.

When lawmakers wrapped up the session last week, the finale ended with a fizzle, not a sizzle.  Typically, at the end of the session hundreds of bills are approved and that was once again the case.  But there is usually an agreement put together by legislative leaders and the governor that includes some big ticket initiatives – particularly in election years like 2018 – but this year there was no such agreement.

Largely that was the result of gridlock in the Senate.  The razor thin one seat Republican majority evaporated when one Senate Republican reported for military duty and was unavailable for the last weeks of the session.

And while some may cheer when little is accomplished in Albany, most New Yorkers expect our representatives to go to the state Capitol to solve problems – to the greatest extent possible.  When the session fizzles that work doesn’t get done.

As a result, some localities may see tax revenues drop off and the City of New York’s program to have cameras identify car speeders near schools will be unplugged.  In short, unless lawmakers return – and there are noises that they may do that – important work will be left undone.

One of the most obvious failures is that nothing was accomplished to reduce the risk of political corruption in New York.  Ironically, during the last week of session, two high profile corruption trials began: one the retrial of the former Senate Majority Leader and the second around the governor’s signature economic development project, the so-called “Buffalo Billion.”

But if you were walking the halls of the Capitol in the waning days of the session, you wouldn’t have known it.  There were no high-level negotiations.  Governor Cuomo, who organized a bus tour to push his gun control plan, was silent on what should be done to combat the incredible corruption crime wave that has gripped New York.

Each house of the Legislature passed reform bills, but ones that did not match the other house’s bills, thus ensuring the flawed status quo.

The inaction in Albany is in stunning contrast to the revelations coming out of the corruption trials.  The Buffalo Billion case, and a trial from earlier this year, shows the myriad ways Cuomo administration officials have circumvented laws requiring that records be preserved, and communications handed over for public scrutiny. The trials have documented that, outside of federal prosecutors issuing subpoenas for those records, there’s almost no recourse when state officials destroy or refuse to release records to the citizens who pay their salaries.

As one defense attorney stated this week, “You will learn that there is a New York state law called FOIL, Freedom of Information Law.”  Evading it, he said, “was almost sport in New York state government.”

“Sport” in state government is ignoring New York laws that ensure public accountability!  This “sport” contributes to the secrecy that shrouds too much of governmental decision-making.  It is this secrecy that has raised the risk of corruption.  And corruption is what New Yorkers have seen.

Unfortunately, what New Yorkers have not seen is action to address the too frequent scandals and corruption in their state government.  If lawmakers return, responding to the corruption crisis must be at the top of the “must do” list.  Otherwise, voters will get their chance to react on Election Day this November.

Not satisfied with taking away health insurance coverage for over 3 million Americans, last week the Trump Administration said it wanted to take away coverage from more.  While Americans have been distracted by the scandals, investigations, and policy flip flops, the Administration and its allies in the Congress have never been deterred from one deadly mission – to strip away health insurance coverage from millions of Americans.

Most recently, the Administration announced that it will not defend the Affordable Care Act against the latest legal challenge to its constitutionality.  As a result, new challenges to the law may succeed before the courts in a way they had not in past.

It’s clear that the Administration will do all it can to further strip away health insurance coverage from more millions of Americans.

Health insurance is the protection that most of us have from debilitating disease and financial ruin.  For example, cancer.  For cancer patients and their families, the cost of fighting cancer may mean choices that could lead to huge debts under the best of circumstances.  While some individuals diagnosed with cancer have meaningful and adequate health insurance to cover most of the cost of treatment, the uninsured and an increasing number of privately insured individuals face the prospect of crippling out-of-pocket costs. Financial barriers that delay treatment for cancer can mean the difference between life and death.

More generally, even those with coverage face uncertainties; roughly 20 percent of people under age 65 with health insurance nonetheless reported having problems paying their medical bills over the last year. By comparison, more than half of people without insurance said the same.

For years, a huge problem in America was the rapid increase in the numbers of people without health care coverage.  In the 1960s, the nation developed Medicare, health insurance for those over the age of 65 and Medicaid, health insurance for the poor.

In the 1990s, the President and the Congress expanded coverage to help cover all those under the age of 18.  Yet, despite the fact that near-universal coverage existed for those under the age of 18, those over the age of 65, and the poor, the number of Americans without coverage continued to swell, peaking at about 50 million ten years ago.

For the rest of the advanced nations of the world, it was inconceivable that such a situation existed.  Western Europe, Canada, Japan and others have health care coverage for all of their citizens.  As a result, despite spending far more on health care than any other nation on Earth, the United States had more uninsured, incredibly uneven health care quality, and a mediocre life expectancy compared with other developed, wealthy nations.

Former President Obama and the Congress agreed to legislation than attempted to address that problem.  The solution that they came up with had a modest impact on the spiraling cost of health care, but did cut in half the number of Americans that lacked health insurance.

You could argue their solution – one which essentially expanded the number of Medicaid-eligible Americans and offered subsidies to help others who were required purchase health insurance – was inadequate to the task, but no one could argue that they did not try.

For years, Republicans argued that they could do it better.  They argued that if they were granted control of the White House and the Congress, they would repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something better.  We now know that their pledge was pure fiction.  They had no plan to replace the ACA with anything.  All they wanted to do was repeal.

It is also now clear that President Trump, who as a candidate consistently said that he would fix the health insurance system and make it better, wasn’t telling the truth.  In a stunningly callous series of decisions, the President did all he could to deny health insurance for 3 million primarily low and moderate income Americans.   And now he is trying to do that to more.

To strip away people’s health insurance coverage with no alternative is indefensible and will cost many more Americans dearly.  Without coverage, sick people delay care, which can lead to even more devastating health consequences.  And those serious illnesses can cost those individuals and their families their financial security as well.

It started three and a half years ago with a news report from the Investigative Post, a Buffalo-based media outlet.  In its review of the so-called “Buffalo Billion” economic development programs, the Investigative Post identified an incredible clause in one of the state’s bid offerings that would allow spending on construction projects.

The Investigative Post found that in the state’s request for proposals to develop facilities to build a solar manufacturing plant there was a requirement that limited the pool of respondents to those based in Buffalo who have been in business for at least 50 years.  That’s correct; the company had to be in business in Buffalo for 50 years.

More Investigative Post research revealed that only one company could meet the criteria – LP Ciminelli, whose president, Louis Ciminelli, is one of Governor Cuomo’s biggest campaign contributors, having donated nearly $100,000 to the governor’s campaigns during his two races for governor.  While a big donor, the company was considered a legitimate contender given its work in the area for many years.

Once exposed, the state argued that the proposal’s 50 year requirement was just a typo, which should have said 15 years.  The state revised the bid request, yet the company – LP Ciminelli – won the contract anyway.  But the state’s decision-making process triggered interest by federal prosecutors examining corruption in New York State government.  LP Ciminelli earned more than $20 million in fees to manage the project, which involved the state spending $750 million to build and equip the solar plant.

Two years ago, federal prosecutors – headed by then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara – brought charges against the company and key New York State economic development officials.  In addition to the Buffalo case, the feds also charged that corrupt activities occurred in state economic development decisions in Syracuse and the mid-Hudson Valley.

The trial addressing the Syracuse and mid-Hudson Valley cases came earlier this year and led to the convictions of a former top aide to Governor Cuomo, a close ally of the governor’s, and some business executives.  The Buffalo case starts up this week.

Prosecutors contend that the then-head of the State University of New York’s Polytechnic Institute, with the help of the governor’s close associate Todd Howe, favored the Buffalo developers in a corrupt scam to award them hundreds of millions of dollars in state contracts for the solar plant.  Howe has pleaded guilty and admitted to accepting payments from the businessmen in exchange for influence over the awarding of the contracts.

The upcoming “Buffalo Billion” trial will focus on the allegations that the state’s contracts were rigged to benefit certain companies, those which happened to donate big bucks to the governor’s elections campaigns.  Of course, those charged – except for Howe the lobbyist and an executive at LP Ciminelli, who have pled guilty – are presumed innocent and there have been no allegations that the governor was involved in the wrongdoing.

Yet, the crimes identified in the first case and the ones alleged in the upcoming case, shine a light on what can only be described as serious ethical and financial oversight weaknesses in how the state awards billions of taxpayer dollars.

These glaring weaknesses cry out for a legislative response.  Thus, in the seven remaining days of the state legislative session, the governor and the legislature must act to restore public confidence in how the state doles out the public’s money, to protect taxpayers and ensure economic development spending is based on the merits, not rewarding connected insiders.

The first step is to enhance the power of the separately-elected state Comptroller to review state contracting decisions.  In the early days of the Cuomo Administration, the governor successfully advanced initiatives that cut back on the Comptroller’s oversight role in this area.  It is clear that his powers should be restored and strengthened.

Second, the governor and lawmakers should agree on legislation to create a “database of deals” to identify the recipient of every taxpayer subsidy for economic development and describe the details of contracts and job creation goals.  Third, they should agree to ban “pay to play” by sharply limiting campaign contributions from businesses that get state contracts.  And lastly, there should be an agreement to close the “LLC loophole” that allows contributors to pour an unlimited amount of money into political campaigns.

Neither Governor Cuomo nor legislative leaders seem to hoping for anything of consequence to get done in the seven days left in the legislative session, despite a long list of unfinished business.  Acting to prevent government corruption should be something that must get done.

The science is clear:  Human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels – oil, coal and gas – is heating up the planet in ways that have never been seen in recorded history.  According to the third U.S. National Climate Assessment, “Global climate is changing and this is apparent across the United States in a wide range of observations.  The global warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human activities, predominantly the burning of fossil fuels.”

As the planet heats up, more of it will become uninhabitable.  The majority of the adverse effects of climate change are, and will continue to be, experienced by poor and low-income people around the world.

A report on the global human impact of climate change published by the Global Humanitarian Forum in 2009, projected more than 300,000 deaths and about $125 billion in economic losses each year, and indicated that most climate change-induced mortality is due to worsening floods, droughts, and violence in developing countries.

These are the people who have contributed the least to global warming.

In our affluent nation, the impacts are real, but in the short run are less devastating.  Yet even in the United States, the signs are unmistakable.  Infrastructure is being damaged by sea level rise, heavy downpours, and extreme heat.  These damages are projected to increase with continued climate change.

The rising average temperatures were documented in a report released last week.  The report examined the average summer temperature trend in U.S. cities from the years 1970 through 2016. Summers are trending hotter for 92 percent of the cities analyzed, with locations in Texas and the Mountain region of the West experiencing the most warming since 1970.

The report used data released by the National Centers for Environmental Information, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal government agency.  The report found average temperature increases for the city of Buffalo, 1.7 degrees, for New York City 0.6 degrees and for the city of Albany a whopping 3.3 degrees.

This is a reminder that even as increasing greenhouse gases raise global temperatures, warming will not be uniform across all areas. Nonetheless, hotter summers raise the risk of heat-related illnesses, such as dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke.

Yet one year ago, President Donald Trump pledged to withdraw the United States from the world’s effort to curb global warming, the Paris climate agreement.  President Trump described the pact, signed by each and every other nation on Earth, as “an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.”

Despite the compelling scientific evidence that climate change is primarily the result of human activity, and the terrible toll it is taking on humans, other species, and the environment, what led the President Trump to withdraw from Paris?

One can start with willful ignorance; the scientific evidence is overwhelming and the President has chosen to ignore it, likely for political reasons.  Perhaps it was the funding by the fossil fuel industry targeted at influencing the President’s campaign, the transition into the presidency, and the beginning of his administration.

As a practical measure, there is no way for the U.S. — or any other country who signed it — to withdraw from Paris until four years after it went into effect.  Thus, the process of withdrawal can only begin the day after the 2020 U.S. presidential elections.

But there is no doubt that in the meantime, the U.S. federal government will not act to comply with the Paris Agreement.  Thus at best, little will be done by the U.S. during the next few years, at worst the Administration will accelerate the damage caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

Action will need to come at the local and state levels, with decisions by states, cities and institutions to go to net zero emissions.  Of course those pledges must be matched with realistic plans and durable resource-allocation decisions.

And the public must support those efforts and do all it can to make the Trump Administration and its allies pay a political price for their reckless decisions to exacerbate the damage to the world’s climate; decisions that will cost people across the globe their lives, will increase misery for millions, and may harm the fabric of life on earth.

Climate change is an existential threat to life on Earth.  But the challenges aren’t insurmountable—we know how to get to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.  The rest of the world is moving forward.  The U.S. is indispensable to those efforts.  But for now, the leadership will have to come from the grassroots, local and state government levels.