If I were the Commissioner of the NYS Dept. of Education or of the US Dept. of Education, neither of which positions I would actually take if they were offered, which of course they will not be, I would push for the single most needed educational reform across our entire system of education, which is…are you ready? Now read closely…What EVERY SCHOOL SYSTEM in the United States of America needs to do is MANDATE, REQUIRE and INSIST that every student take a course in business math.

Business math? I can hear your jaws dropping. Now please close your mouths and let me tell you why. Then you can tell me how ridiculous an idea that is…which of course it is not.

What do the American people as a whole suffer from which has been written about daily in the newspapers of this country and reported on broadcast stations, etc., etc.? Answer: a lack of understanding the mathematics of the core activities on which our society rests. Not only are most Americans extremely ignorant of the fundamentals of the workings of our banking and tax systems, but they cannot begin to manage the basics of household economics.

99 percent of Americans don’t operate from a family budget. They don’t and many can’t balance their check books. They don’t know their net worth much less how to figure it. They don’t know what it means when they borrow to purchase large items like a car or a house. They don’t know what they are obligating themselves to when they take out a credit card. They don’t know how much money they’ll need to retire on or how long their savings will last.

Some people want to blame the banks, the credit card companies, the mortgage lenders…and yes, there are plenty of unscrupulous people out there who will take advantage of the uneducated public’s ignorance, but the vast…and I mean VAST majority of college graduates don’t know this stuff either.

Problem: If two working adults in a family of four have a combined gross income of $62,400 a year ($600/week a piece) and they want to purchase a house that costs $300,000 with a 5% down payment with an adjustable rate mortgage which increases 1% a year starting at 3%, how many years before they lose the house and have to file for bankruptcy?

Problem: If a single parent with two kids and a $600/week gross income spends $200/week on groceries and eating out, $200/month on cable TV, and $120/month on her cell phone, how soon will she max out her credit card and have to take out a new one?

Problem: If the US Congress passes a federal budget which proposes to spend $1.3 trillion dollars more than projected revenues and the national debt currently stands at $12.3 trillion dollars, how much will each American owe the Chinese government and the rest of the buyers of US debt at the end of the year?

Problem: If the NYS Legislature spends $200 million in “member items” this year, how much will the state’s taxpayers have to cough up to cover that cost…and don’t say $200 million because you haven’t taken into account the following:

1) the cost of the interest that New York is paying because it’s revenues exceed its expenditures, or
2) the cost of administering the expenditures of those member items.

Do you think the legislators hand out bags of money? No, there’s a whole bureaucracy with office space, utilities, computers and copy machines, phone lines and Internet connections, salaries and pension obligations (to skim the surface) that has to exist because your legislator wants you to think that without his/her largess your little league ball field would be a cow pasture.

Not only would I insist that every student takes a course in business math, but I’d incentivize the teachers of that subject by offering bonuses to those teachers who provide some proof that their students have mastered the subject…I’d give students got an ‘A’ if they taught their parents how to balance a checkbook, read their mortgage contract and make up a family budget? What a boost to our economy that would be!

How do our readers rate Gov. Paterson’s budget? Our poll question for the week of January 25 drew mixed responses. 30 percent gave the governor an “A” or a “B” on his 2010-11 budget while 32 percent thought it deserved an “F” and 38 percent scored it a “C” or “D”.

Wine Sales Redux

Last year a proposal by Gov. Paterson to allow wine to be sold in supermarkets was met with a hostile reception from the state’s liquor store owners. They managed to ward off the assault on their revenue. This year the Gov. is back with a slightly revised proposal which seeks to respond to some of the opponents’ criticisms.

In the bill sponsored in the Senate by Liz Krueger, liquor stores would be allowed to stay open longer hours, sell directly to restaurants and other retailers, sell complementary items that they are not allowed to sell today. Further to head off eroding support from the state’s wine industry, the new proposal would dedicate some of the revenues taken in by the licensing fees for stores that want to sell wine directly to promote New York wines.

Vote this week on the home page of the Empire Page on whether you like or dislike the Governor’s revised wine sales proposal.

When a topic shows up in the “Intelligence Report” section of Parade Magazine, that’s a sign that it’s something average citizens are paying attention to. Such we hope is the case for municipal merger movement which is not only on the agenda in some communities in NYS, but apparently also in places like Natchdez, Miss.

–

Speaking of merging government entities, Gov. Paterson missed a major opportunity to promote consolidation of school districts in his budget. While I support the progressive nature of his $1 billion state-aid cut — putting more of the burden on rich districts, there should have been a provision rewarding districts that either merge or start sharing services. Providing a financial incentive is the win-win way to get district administrators out of their parochial mind-sets. Of course, the public has to rally behind the cause as well, but when they recognize that holding up consolidation means higher school taxes most people will give up the notion that small school districts are better for their children.

Last week we asked our readers to grade the NYS Legislature’s ethics proposal, coming as it did only days after Gov. David Paterson offered his recommendations in his state of the state. Our readers didn’t like the Legislature’s particulars at all. Forty-four percent gave them a failing “F” and 29 percent gave them a “D”. Only 3 percent gave the Legislature an “A”, 12% thought they deserved a “B” and 11% saw the proposals as worthy of a “C”.

The New York Times’ editorial board today sided with the governor, urging him to veto the Legislature’s version of ethics reform and to hold out for:

1) “severely limiting use of campaign money”
2) revising the two-class disclosure requirement that benefits lawyers
3) a plan that places more oversight on the Legislature
4) a non-partisan commission on redistricting, and
5) two Republican proposals — one giving the AG power to enforce campaign finance laws and the other a scheme that would alternative the party affiliation of the board of elections’ special counsel.

This Week’s Poll Question: Grade the Governor

Since our readers seem to enjoy passing out grades, we are asking them this week to grade the governor on his budget which he presented on Tuesday. My guess is that he’ll get passing grades, but with only 10% or so “A’s”.

Congratulations to readMedia (the company I founded in 1985 as Empire Information Services) for signing the Governor’s office for issuances of press releases. The Governor’s press releases will now be part of the 21th century news stream which includes social media and visibility in Google News and Google Alerts.

Of course that also means you can find all of the Governor’s press releases now on the Empire Page.

Hopefully, the Governor and all of the other people running for office in 2010 whether statewide or locally will be smart enough to understand the benefits of using readMedia instead of trying to do this themselves in-house.

Last week we asked our readers whether they care about what disgraced former Governor Eliot Spitzer has to say about NYS politics. First, you may wonder why we asked the question. The answer is simple — Spitzer is trying to interject his voice and some media outlets are listening.

In particular, Alan Chartock, publisher of The Legislative Gazette and chairman of WAMC, wrote that New York needs Spitzer’s “fine mind” more than he needs us. Well the readers of the Empire Page respectfully disagree. 71 percent are not the least bit interested in what Spitzer has to say; 13 percent said it depends on the topic; 9 percent said they might listen if it’s a “slow news day,” and 8% are always interested in what the former AG and former governor has to say.

What do I think? I’d say Prof. Chartock is 100% wrong. Mr. Spitzer needs us to forgive him and allow him to regain some of his stature much more than we need to know his views. In fact, I’d be suspicious that anything Mr. Spitzer says is not an objective impartial statement, but rather an attempt to attract news coverage and make his views wanted.

This Week’s Poll Question

Gov. Paterson outlined his ethics reform plan in his state of the state. This week the majority party leaders of the Senate and Assembly introduced their plan. Thus far, the state’s editorial writers are finding considerable shortcomings in the Legislative leaders’ proposal. Examples:

Albany Times Union: New ethics rules need more work

NY Daily News: A great big nothing: The Legislature’s idea of reform isn’t even a joke

Rochester Democrat & Chronicle: Albany Legislature’s ethics reform proposal needs work

Watertown Daily Times: Ethics plan Little progress in N.Y. legislative proposal

Only the Syracuse Post Standard gives it luke-warm praise: The best thing about the New York Legislature’s ethics reform package is that it has a chance of passing

What do you think? Grade the Dems Ethics plan by voting in this week’s poll question of the week.

That’s the title of Timothy J. Sullivan’s book published by SUNY Press in 2009. I’ll be discussing the book with Susan Arbetter Monday morning on the Capitol Pressroom. Listen live from 11 AM to Noon (Monday thru Friday) or download the program to listen on your I-pod or MP3 player.

Congratulations to Teresa Sayward (NYS Assembly: R,I – Willsboro) for creating a website where people can report on government waste. The URL of the new website is www.stopgovernmentwasteny.com.

The website offers:

• Taxpayers and state employees an on-line mechanism to report known instances of state government waste directly on the website. Users have the ability to remain anonymous,
• Lists of several recent examples uncovered by the media of state government waste, fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars, and
• Outline how government waste leads to higher taxes, a strain on the delivery of essential public services and further erodes public confidence in state government and the men and women serving in it.

Check out the analysis by Tammy Pels of the Citizens’ Budget Commission of the The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) report, Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States.

New York, according to ITEP, has the sixth most “progressive” tax structure in the country, which means that the higher your income the higher a share of that income goes to taxes. While the poor do particularly well in New York and the rich pay through the nose, middle income taxpayers also pay more than their counterparts in the rest of the country. In particular middle income earners pay more in personal income and property taxes.

If you think Gov. Paterson’s proposal that his budget plans include $1 billion in property tax relief will address middle income property owners tax burden, you’d better read the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon’s analysis. He wonders if it can be done.

Anyone who watches Albany closely these days knows that the single most powerful person in state government in New York is the Speaker of the Assembly and not the Governor. (If you don’t understand why that’s the case, ask me.)

However, not even Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has led the Assembly since 1994, is immune from the pressures facing Albany as a result of the world-wide economic downturn which exacerbated Albany’s failure during the past decade to bring state spending in line with receipts. You can see that from Speaker Silver’s reactions to Gov. Paterson’s state of the state and from his remarks to the Assembly at the opening of the 2010 session.

Speaker Silver recognizes that spending must be cut in order to achieve a balanced budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year and beyond. He may want to raise taxes and fees instead, but he knows there is no combination of fees and taxes that can be imposed on the public without engendering the kind of revolt that would threaten the Democratic Party’s hold on Albany.

Silver also recognizes that the public is fed up with the shenanigans displayed by various government officials in recent years and as a result ethics reform of some sort must be enacted in 2010.

Of course the devil is still in the details, but given Silver’s total control over the Assembly, we must assume that both the budget and ethics legislation will reflect Speaker Silver’s views on these issues more so than those of the Governor. If you want to know what the final products on both counts will look like, watch and listen to the Speaker.

In his state of the state address this past week Gov. Paterson included the so-called “good government” groups in the portion of his speech where he lambasted the “chronic and continuing experiences of outside influence and inside decay.” He later clarified his criticsm, explaining that these organizations use their not-for-profit status to hide from the public the names of those who fund them while they often act as political as they groups they criticize.

One way we know that Paterson hit a raw nerve was by the responses his comments engenered. NYPIRG’s Blair Horner told Susan Arbetter on The Capitol Pressroom that Paterson’s comments were inappropriate because he made them during the “state of the state” address and Dick Dadey of Citizens Union told the AP that his organization makes more of their finances public than elected officials do, as if that absolved all such groups from the accusation.

The fact of the matter is that NYPIRG, Citizens Union, Common Cause, League of Women Voters, etc. are SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS as much as the Energy Association, the Business Council or the Medical Society. Our constitution guarantees people the right to organize and to lobby government to address their grievances. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with being a special interest group. What deserves criticism, however, is to pretend that one is NOT a special interest group while demanding that others follow rules than you are not willing to follow yourself. That said it is unlikey that the governor will be able to legislate closer scrutiny of these groups’ finances.

The other thing that Paterson said which I agree with is that the press that covers Albany often treat spokespeople for good government groups as if they were objective, impartial observers. I wonder if some of the people who staff these organizations recognize how often they hide behind their “public interest” label when in fact they are carrying water for political (i.e., partisan) causes. A perfect example is the positions many of these groups have taken on election law reforms to the benefit of the Democratic Party, as discussed the Francis S. Barry’s The Scandal of Reform (Rutgers U. Press, 2009).

Many of these groups claim to speak for very large constituencies that they in fact do NOT represent. Take the “League of Women Voters” as an example. It’s a fine group. My mother was a member. But how is it that any organization can claim to represent or speak for “women voters” as a whole?

I wish someone in the press would analyze LWV’s membership rolls and their policy positions and then tell us who they represent. Are they middle-aged college-educated women from upper middle class backgrounds? Are they young upwardly mobile women from lower middle class backgrounds? Are they primarily non-working women over thirty who are married to doctors and lawyers? Are they largely a self-perpetuating staff-dominated group which gets virtually no input from their members? The press should NOT take the opinions of LWV seriously until LWV tells us who they represent, how they derive their funding and especially how they come to adopt certain policy positions.

Stay tuned for more commentary on the topics raised by the Governor’s state of the state.

Gov. David Paterson began his second state of the state today with a powerful appeal to the legislators and others in attendance to meet the three challenges facing the state — its economy, finances and ethics. He was hard-hitting on the fiscal crisis and ethics reform and offered uplifting words about the state’s economic future. However, his speech would have had a more powerful impact had he talked about the economy first since little in what he is proposing is controversial and waited until the end of the speech to challenge the legislature to address the state’s budgetary problems and the public’s lack of confidence in its elected officials. New York needs a leader who will hold the Legislature’s feet to the fire of change. David Paterson has the vision, but whether he has the fire in his belly (or the political leverage) to make it happen is still in doubt after this speech. The next big test of course will come in a few weeks when he presents his budget. That’s where the metal as they say will hit the road.

2010 will be the most important year in NYS politics in decades, as every major elected office in the state including the entire state Legislature, all 29 members of the House of Representatives, the governor, comptroller, attorney general and both US Senate seats are up for grabs in November.

The longest lasting impact of the 2010 elections will be which party ends up controlling the NYS Senate, as the winner will redraw Legislative and House districts for the remainder of the 2010s. New York’s relative decline in population nationally will cost at least one seat in the House of Representatives. Which incumbents are pitted against each other in 2012 will be determined by re-districting.

If the Democrats win control of the Senate, the Republican Party have trouble raising money and fielding viable candidates for races at all levels for years to come. If the GOP re-takes the Senate, their future looks much, much brighter.

Three major factors will determine the outcome of the battle for Senate control – the national economy, how the sitting Legislature balances the state’s budget this spring and what kind of organizational push the Republicans are able to mount against incumbent Senators.

Democratic candidates in NYS will be impacted if the national economy continues to be weak through the spring and summer of 2010. Compounding such a scenario are the problems the governor and Legislature face in trying to address a $10+ billion budget deficit going into the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

The Legislature has three main options: raise taxes, reduce the state’s payroll, which would anger the public employee unions, and/or reduce aid to localities (Medicaid, schools, etc.). They will make enemies no matter how they try to trim that pie. (Look for incumbents in swing districts to battle party leaders over specifics.)

One outcome of having to make no-win choices could be tension between the teachers’ union and the state’s other public employee unions. That could manifest itself in terms of reduced financial and get-out-the-vote support for some incumbents.

If the Democratic Party cannot run on its accomplishments and if the national economy is weak, the outcome of many races will come down to individual candidates and their election organizations.

The Democratic Party in NYS is largely dependent on the public employee unions with their ability to contribute campaign workers in order to win elections. Because Democratic legislators are so beholden to these unions, I predict they will balance the state budget by raising taxes on “the rich” and reducing aid to localities.

On the other side, despite the emergence of groups like Unshackle Upstate, which represents property and small business owners, there is no equivalent to the public employee unions in terms of get-out-the-vote muscle.

To have a chance, therefore, the Republican Party will have to field candidates who can with integrity convince voters that they will put lowering property taxes ahead of government spending. The Conservative and Independence party lines will be important in some races and as a result of Democratic Party’s large majority in registered voters, the Republicans must win over the majority of independents in order to have a chance.

If Pres. Obama’s stimulus program results in reduced unemployment by the fall, if his energy and healthcare programs move forward, and if tax revenues allow the Legislature to balance the state’s budget without inflicting too much pain on local government, the Democrats will sweep the 2010 elections and will be able to solidify their political control. Stay tuned.

Why would reform groups that had once favored non-partisan municipal elections campaign against the concept when it was put before the voters of NYC in 2003? That was what puzzled Francis S. Barry who served on the commission that developed the referendum. His search for the answer led to “The Scandal of Reform,” a book published by Rutgers University Press in 2009 that helps us understand the role of reform organizations in NY City and NY State politics.

It was my pleasure to interview Barry, who currently serves as Senior Policy and Communications Advisor to Mayor Bloomberg, for the Empire Page. A link to the interview can be found on the home page or in the Improving New York section to the site.

Poll Question of the Week

Last week we asked our readers who will be the Democratic Party’s candidate for the Senate seat currently occupied by Kirsten Gillibrand. Sixty-eight percent believe Gillibrand will be the nominee; 22 percent think it will be former NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson; 8 percent are uncertain and 2 percent like Jonathan Tasini — a recently Empire Page interviewee.

This week we’d like to know who you think the GOP will pick to run in November 2010 for that seat? Will it be Rudy Guiliani, George Pataki or Larchmont Mayor Liz Feld — another person previously interviewed for the Empire Page?

Have a good week and don’t forget to vote in our poll.