Higher education policy moved back into the news last week when the State University of New York’s Chancellor announced an effort to keep increasing the cost of public college tuition.

The Chancellor urged that lawmakers renew legislation, known as SUNY 2020, which (among other things) allows for annual increases in SUNY tuition.  The current law expires in late June of 2016.

SUNY’s argument to allow continued tuition hikes hinges on this statement, “We simply cannot go back to a time when students applied to SUNY without knowing what their tuition rates would be year to year.”

The plan would hike tuition as much as $300 per year.  The plan to continually hike tuition was originally hatched in 2011.  At that time, New York’s fiscal house was still in disorder from the national financial meltdown in 2008-09.

New York, like the rest of the nation, jacked up the cost of going to college to help balance budgets.  But those policies have come at a price – the shift from the state coffers to the bank accounts of students and their families has increased the size of college debt.  Nationwide, student loan debt is currently over $1 trillion and it is estimated to be $2 trillion by 2025.  At New York’s four University Centers, 56% of graduates carry debt averaging over $22,000.

The shift of college costs from the state to students happened in New York as well.  Prior to the 2008 recession, public tuition covered about half of SUNY’s budget.  Since 2008, state support to New York’s public colleges and universities has been slashed by $1.5 billion.  Now, tuition covers more than 60% of SUNY’s budget.

These tuition increases are the result of a so-called “rational tuition” policy.  New York’s law, described by proponents as “rational,” hiked public college tuition each year for five years.  Tuition at SUNY will have increased by over 40% by the time the law expires at the end of June.

The only thing rational about this policy is that it guarantees increases in the cost of attending a public college.  As a result, New York families are paying more – and in some cases adding to an increasing college debt load.

Yet in recent years, the state budget hasn’t faced shortfalls:  Its annual budget has swelled from $132 billion in 2011 to $142 billion today.  That’s right, while the state has spent 8% more than it did at the beginning of the Cuomo Administration, students have been forced to pay more and the state has shortchanged public colleges in the budget.

The SUNY 2020 deal was predicated on the fact that students would pay more, but that the state would promise to maintain its support for SUNY.

Yet, while the state budget swelled by 8%, state support was stagnant.  That stagnant state support does not include the eroding impact of inflation on SUNY’s expenditures.  When inflation is factored in, stagnant state support means a cut – and that cut must be made up with other dollars.

Legislation has passed with overwhelming bipartisan support to close that loophole to make sure that the state adjusts its support for inflation as well as other increases in fixed costs at SUNY.  The tea leaf readers guess that the governor will veto that bill.

If so, he will further undermine whatever credibility SUNY’s plan for additional tuition hikes may have had.

Irrespective of what the governor chooses to do, there is a more basic question: should students have to pay more just to ensure the “peace of mind” knowing that the tuition hikes come at a predictable pace?  Or would they have greater peace of mind knowing that no increases would occur?

The state’s budget has swelled in recent years, the promise in the last tuition deal not to reduce state support was broken, and public college has become less – not more – affordable.

The state should make a new pledge – add support for SUNY, not make the students pay for it.

Governor Cuomo stirred up a hornet’s nest when he decided to use the World Series as a way to raise and spend his campaign warchest.  He chose to use his campaign contributions to pay for his plane ride to Kansas City to watch the first game of the World Series between the Mets and Royals.  His transportation was a private jet owned by the Mets’ owners.

The second event was that the governor was able to obtain a package of tickets to the World Series Games 3 and 4 to be held at Citi Field, the home of the Mets.  The governor offered the tickets at $5,500 each to any deep-pocketed campaign donors, which would allow them to watch the game as well as get some face time with the governor at a reception.  The Mets’ tickets are reportedly available to the public on StubHub for $1,600.  The governor’s campaign would keep the difference.

The second incident generated the most controversy.  One New York City tabloid called it “ticket scalping” (when a purchaser of event tickets turns around and sells them at a huge markup).  The New York Post hammered away at the governor, noting that while the event was within the limits of the state’s campaign finance laws, as Attorney General, Cuomo had gone after ticket scalpers for engaging in a similar practice.

Because of that firestorm, the governor cancelled his fundraisers.

But the first event raised eyebrows too.  When the governor gets to fly in a private jet to a World Series game, he must avoid violating the state’s ethics laws.  The owners of the Mets have been registered lobbyists and are prohibited from offering gifts to any public official.  The governor got around that prohibition by using his campaign funds to pay for the trip on the owners’ private plan.

Should campaign contributions be used to pay for a personal trip on a private jet to a baseball game?  How can that expenditure be justified?  As far as we know, there was no campaign fundraising involved in the use of the contributions for the trip.

Instead of paying for the trip out of his pocket, the governor was substituting his campaign funds, which reformers believe should be a no-no.

Some argue that the governor should be allowed a perk of going to the World Series.  The governor already gets lots of perks – he has a free mansion, use of the state helicopter, staff support, all paid for by taxpayers.  He also makes a decent salary as governor, $179,000.

Should his campaign contributions pay for his trip to a ball game?

The incidents illuminate just how bad New York State’s campaign financing system is.  It couples the highest campaign contributions limits of any state with limits, with inadequate disclosures, sporadic enforcement, and loopholes that allow elected officials to use their campaign monies in ways that can subsidize their incomes.

Reforms are needed.

The first step is an obvious one and does not put elected officials at a competitive disadvantage.  Restrict the use of campaign contributions to the actual campaigns themselves.  The loophole that swallows current law is that an elected official cannot use campaign contributions for personal use, but can use campaign contributions if the use is related to the holding of public office.  Thus, the governor can argue that flying to a ballgame in Kansas City is part of his job and he can use his campaign contributions to reimburse flying on a private jet owned by individuals who are registered lobbyists.

New York law should be amended to simply state that elected officials can only use their campaign contributions for actual campaign-related activities.

Of course, more needs to be done – lowered contribution limits, expanded disclosures, unique restrictions on those seeking government favors, independent enforcement, and a voluntary system of public financing to provide resources to any New Yorker who wants to run for office, not just those with wealthy friends or connections.

The governor could start by leading by example and pledging to use his campaign funds only for campaigning.  In that way, perhaps he could lead all elected officials down the path toward more comprehensive reforms.

It is a well-established fact that the planet is heating up.  2014 was the hottest year on record and last week, the first prediction of 2015 came out –it wasn’t good news.

According to the scientists at the federal government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the summer months of June, July and August in the Northern Hemisphere saw its highest globally averaged temperature since records began in 1880.  Some have said that it may have been the hottest summer on the planet in over 4,000 years.

NOAA also said record heat was reported across northeastern Africa stretching into the Middle East, part of southeastern Asia, most of the northern half of South America, and parts of central and eastern North America.

That extended heat wave has heated the oceans and has contributed to the large El Niño that powered the hurricane that ravaged the Mexican coast over the weekend and is drenching the south.

The heating up of the planet is turbocharged by the dramatic increases in carbon dioxide generated by human activity.  According to scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Earth is experiencing carbon dioxide levels not seen since prehistoric times and has never seen carbon dioxide levels increase at such a rapid rate.

The NASA scientists predicted that these increases in carbon dioxide will cause “real, significant changes in the Earth system now, not in some distant future climate, and will continue to be felt for centuries to come. We can study these impacts to better understand the way the Earth will respond to future changes, but unless serious actions are taken immediately, we risk the next threshold being a point of no return in mankind’s unintended global-scale geoengineering experiment.”

NASA found that the “global concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – the primary driver of recent climate change – has reached 400 parts per million for the first time in recorded history.”

What is a critical driver in these increases in carbon dioxide?  The burning of fossil fuels.  And the reason that so little is happening to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is that the fossil fuel industry, (made up of oil, gas and coal companies) has done all it can to undermine the science documenting global warming.

In a recent series of articles in the Los Angeles Times, internal documents show that oil company giant Exxon – which once was considered a pioneer in climate change research – began in the 1990s to fund a campaign that questioned climate change.

The reason, according to the reporting of the LA Times, was that Exxon feared that there might emerge a growing public consensus that would lead to governmental policies that would hurt the company’s finances.  Essentially, Exxon decided to put its corporate profits ahead of scientific research that showed that global warming would hurt the public’s health.

And the oil giant decided to start funding groups that would combat proposals to reduce greenhouse gases.  According to the LA Times, Exxon joined an association of companies from industries linked to fossil fuels, to aggressively fight potential climate change regulations.  The plan was to spend millions of dollars on a disinformation campaign emphasizing scientific uncertainty and underscoring the negative economic impact of such laws on consumers.

Their effort was so successful that in 1997, the U.S. Senate refused to ratify a U.N. treaty committing states to reduce greenhouse gases because restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions “could result in serious harm to the United States economy” — an argument Exxon used repeatedly in its public-relations campaign.

For years, the efforts by the oil, gas and coal companies were successful: significant percentages of Americans did not believe that global warming was real or that human activity was the driving force behind it.  As a result, policies to reduce greenhouse gases were stymied – and the planet heated up.  As the planet has heated up, weather patterns have begun to change and so has public opinion. Those changes have affected voters in each party.

A recent poll of voters found that a “majority of Republicans (56 percent) now believe that there is solid evidence of global warming, up from 47 percent a year ago, joining solid majorities of Democrats (79 percent) and Independents (69 percent).”“Americans who believe there is evidence of global warming are also increasingly confident in their belief, with a record 65 percent saying they are ‘very confident’ in their appraisal.”

Those beliefs have not, as yet, shown up in the public policies of the Congress.  The political strategies of the oil, gas and coal companies are still paying off.  The big question facing the nation is whether public policies will catch up to public opinion – and will they do so before it is too late.

Is it possible that there might be a “perfect storm” which will break Albany’s ethics reform logjam?  New Yorkers should hope so.

Here is some evidence of the growing pressure:

In November, in separate trials, both the former Assembly Speaker and the former Senate Majority Leader face court dates for alleged corruption.  The ongoing legal proceedings should continue to keep Albany’s ethics under the spotlight and may well build up even more pressure for Governor Cuomo to convene a special session devoted to ethics.

In addition, for almost three months the state’s ethics watchdog, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, has been without an executive director.  Having a rudderless ethics watchdog while two of the state’s leading political figures are on trial for corruption will be, at best, lousy optics. And to make it worse, until recently the agency hadn’t posted a job opening announcement for the position.  But last week, they did.  Now the search is on.

A formidable candidate has thrown his hat into the ring:  the former head of the state’s now-defunct lobbying regulator, David Grandeau.  Grandeau was a feared and respected head of the lobbying commission and was dumped as part of the ethics reform package approved in 2007.  Apparently, Grandeau had accumulated far too many enemies, including then-Governor Eliot Spitzer.

But Grandeau has said he will apply for the job,and that should set the standard by which any candidate is judged.  Unless the JCOPE commissioners choose him as the new replacement, they will have a hard time justifying any other choice.  But having Grandeau in the pool should hold JCOPE’s feet to the fire in hiring a new executive director, with the easiest option of just choosing him.

Related to that development, last week a panel reviewing the state’s ethics enforcement held its first, and probably only, public hearing.  The governor and the legislature were supposed to have chosen this commission in 2014 and the group should have reported on their findings by the end of last year.

Despite this legal requirement, in 2014 the governor and the legislative leaders blew off their responsibility, but were forced to act when that glaring failure came to light right after the arrests of the then-Assembly Speaker and Senate Majority Leader.

The members of the commission were chosen last Spring and are supposed to wrap up their work this November.  As part of the law that set up the state’s current ethics regime, a review panel was required to “review and evaluate the activities and performance” of the state’s ethics watchdogs and make “any administrative and legislative recommendations on strengthening the administration and enforcement of the ethics law.”

Reviewing the state’s ethics law changes is important, and that importance is not an academic one.  Over the past years, New York has been plagued by an unending series of investigation, controversies, and scandals concerning state public officials.  Yet, the state’s leading ethics watchdogs have been largely on the sidelines.  And while there may be explanations for this apparent inactivity, the public deserves to know why.  And if the ethics watchdogs have been paralyzed by weaknesses in state law, or lack of resources, or political paralysis, the public deserves to know that too.

The public’s deepening cynicism and growing anger has been well-documented.  In a recent poll, 90 percent of New Yorkers think corruption is a serious problem in state government and that it has gotten worse over the past few years.

It also appears that New York’s ethics laws are weak when compared to the nation.  While it is always difficult to compare states, New York performs badly in such comparisons.  In a recent comparison of state ethics laws, New York’s ethics enforcement received a grade of “F.”

When reformers first called on Governor Cuomo to call a special session devoted to ethics, he said no.  Now, however, there have been media reports that the governor and legislative leaders are considering a special session devoted to phasing-in $15 minimum wage in exchange for a possible tax cut aimed at businesses.

If that special session happens, New Yorkers should demand action on ethics.  If that happens, Albany’s logjam could be broken.

Recently, a National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine report identified a huge problem in health care:  the failures of health care providers to quickly and accurately identify a patient’s diagnosis.  The report estimated that most patients will experience at least one wrong or delayed diagnosis over their lifetime.

In many cases that delay can have no serious consequence, in others the consequence can be deadly.  For example, a delay in identifying a cancer can tip the scales from being easily treatable to catastrophic.

Diagnostic errors make up the leading type of malpractice lawsuits and are almost twice as likely as other claims to have resulted in a patient’s death.

The report, “Improving Diagnosis in Health Care,” is the latest in a series issued by the Institute of Medicine that has examined medicine’s failures in protecting patients.  A report done fifteen years ago, “To Err is Human,” found that tens of thousands of patients are killed each year due to negligent health care.

Sadly, too little has been done to respond to these reports.  The most recent report argues that in the case of improving diagnoses, improvements are difficult to make.  The report stated that there is no good way to monitor diagnostic errors, or of how often they lead to serious consequences.

The report does make recommendations – urging better teamwork and communication between health providers.  The report also urges that patients look out for themselves.  The lead author writes, “patients are central to the solution.”

Yet, most patients do little to look out for their own interests.  They rely on the judgment of their providers – the doctors, nurses and other health care professionals – to treat them.  Patients, and the general public, are at best dimly aware of the dangers of inadequate or negligent care.  A few of those harmed seek compensation in court, but the vast majority of those who suffer from poor quality care assume it is the result of bad luck, not bad care.

The Institute of Medicine has done tremendous work in highlighted the silent dangers resulting from poor quality health care.  It is the government’s responsibility to respond.  After all, it is the government which licenses health care professionals and which pays for most of the bills through public programs such as Medicare.  Unfortunately, too little has been done.

In fact, in last year’s budget the governor proposed to eliminate one of the state’s programs to make it easier for the public to review the backgrounds of their doctors.  That website, nydoctorprofile.com, was spared as a result of support in the legislature.

But instead of merely maintaining an inadequate status quo, state government should be aggressively boosting its efforts to protect patients.  Here are four steps that the governor should include in his upcoming budget plan:

1. Improve the doctorprofile website. The state’s website (nydoctorprofile.com) allows the public to easily examine a doctor’s background.  The website has not been improved since it first went online 15 years ago.  The state should modernize the website and require that a notice be posted in all health facilities to notify patients of its existence.
2. Overhaul the state’s program for tracking medical mistakes. The state requires that hospitals report medical mistakes to the Health Department.  But the program is viewed as a failure and does little to strengthen the state’s oversight of the quality of care delivered in hospitals.  The state should beef up its mandatory reporting system and sanction those hospitals which fail to do so.
3. Strengthen the state’s program for sanctioning poor quality providers. Health care providers are licensed to practice by the state, but the state has been criticized as doing too little to actively monitor those working in New York.
4. Require periodic recertification of doctors to ensure that they are maintaining their medical skills.

Those steps would begin to move New York in the right direction – toward protecting patients.