Oligarchy Tempered By Anarchy
Characterizes State Legislature;
Governor Pataki Deconstructed.

By Henry J. Stern
January 6, 2005

When most people think of the phrase, "New Yorker," they think of a resident of the City of New York.  It is true that we all live in New York State, but the state has never meant that much to most of us.  Its capital is a relatively small city, Albany, sited near the confluence of the Mohawk and the Hudson.  It is not a tourist  destination, particularly in winter.  We used to travel there once a year to protest something or other, and be jollied around by our elected officials.

Our 19th century State Capitol is the worksite of our governor and State Legislature.   Last year, the Brennan Institute for Justice at NYU Law School found the New York State Legislature to be the worst in the United States.  Some of their criteria may be subjective, and we hesitate to sign on to such a quantitative statement about a qualitative matter.  But there should be no doubt that if our Legislature is not at the bottom, it is close to it.  Today, a good-government coalition braved the belly of the beast, going to Albany to demand reform.   We wish them more success than they have had in the past.

The next week should tell us which rules changes will be adopted, and whether they will be cosmetic or substantive.  Today, however, is not the day to trash the Legislature.  They deserve a window of opportunity to see what effect the 2005 rules, if any, will have on the "three men in a room" syndrome, which is Albany's bottom line.

No organization has conducted a similar survey to determine how the first man in that room, our own governor, ranks among his forty-nine colleagues.  Relying on legislative achievement, financial responsibility, and the integrity of the administration as our standards, we find that he is definitely outclassed by Arnold Schwarzenegger (California), Edward Rendell (Pennsylvania), Rod Blagojevich (Illinois), Jennifer Granholm (Michigan), Tom Vilsack (Iowa), and probably by a few dozen other governors whose reputations have not yet reached the Empire State.  He is, however, demonstrably superior to his former neighbors, James McGreevey of New Jersey and John Rowland of Connecticut, who appears to be en route from the state house to the big house.

Born in 1945 and raised in Peekskill, 40 miles up the Hudson, the tall teenager entered Yale College in 1963.  Unlike young George W. Bush, Pataki was not tapped for Skull and Bones.  His Hungarian father and Irish-Italian mother did not provide the lineage considered desirable in those days.   At Yale, Pataki was a year ahead of Bush 43 and a year behind John Kerry, another Bonesman, of whose own lineage his peers may not have been fully aware, or they may have been distracted by his mother's wealth and pedigree.

Pataki came to New York City for Columbia Law School and a job in a law firm, before swimming upstream to Peekskill for parenting, politicking and practicing law.  He was elected mayor of Peekskill in 1982, an assemblyman in 1984, and state senator in 1992, defeating the incumbent Republican, Mary Goodhue, who had brought him to Albany by hiring him as a staff member.   In his first term in the State Senate, he was selected by U.S. Senator Alfonse D'Amato to be the Republican candidate for governor.  D'Amato felt Pataki was the man to beat Governor Mario Cuomo, who was enduring third term fatigue.  It was an inspired choice: Pataki was tall, good-looking, married with young children, and had an Ivy League background.  And he was a pro-choice Catholic, although he didn't make too much of it.  Pataki defeated Cuomo in 1994, Peter Vallone in 1998 and Carl McCall in 2002.  The last two elections were runaways.

Let's start with the good.   The governor is presentable, articulate, affable, well-educated and quite good on the environment. He has a fine family.  He was responsible for passing SONDA, which banned discrimination based on sexual orientation.   He has spared us from unnecessary controversies over flag burning, gay marriage and other hot-button wedge issues.  He deferred to Mayor Giuliani after 9/11, and when Giuliani left office on 12/31, he moved into the situation with vigor.  After the departure of the competent Brad Race, he wisely chose John Cahill to become secretary to the governor (a modest title for a job which is really Chief of Staff). 

We wish we could stop here, but we have an obligation to our readers to tell the whole story.  Governor Pataki has been an enormous disappointment to those of us who thought he had greater ability than he has shown in the ten long and tiring years he has been governor.  He has been grateful to the man who shrewdly selected him from the back bench, but when loyalty leads to bad decisions on personnel and procurement, the taxpayers are paying a political debt over and over again.  He has never followed up on his initial promises of reform with regard to redistricting or the legislative process. He has not fought for non-partisan districting.  He has spent billions of taxpayer dollars to win support from influential unions, which it turned out he did not need anyway.

He has signed numerous pension sweeteners that will cost the city uncounted millions of dollars in the long run.   To his credit, he has vetoed some of more outrageous proposals that supine legislators approved to ingratiate themselves with particular unions.  He has not dealt with the problem of structural imbalance in the state budget.  He scarcely even talks about it anymore. Like a fat man trying to diet, he has alternated between restraint and indulgence in state spending.
 
He has borrowed billions of dollars through uncontrolled authorities, some well run and some poorly run.This indebtedness does not appear on the state balance sheet (This is the Enron Syndrome of relatively undisclosed off-budget obligations).

One could go on as the Founding Fathers did so eloquently when, in the Declaration of Independence, they enumerated their grievances with King George III.  The founders had a solution — independence.  In our situation, sadly, we are independent de jure, but de facto we appear powerless to change the status quo.  We have elected the officials with whom we are disappointed.  They are chosen in gerrymandered districts under the most pettifogging election law in the United States.  New York State voters are in fact disenfranchised by statutes which make  free choice of public officials almost impossible to achieve.

All five New York City dailies have exhaustively covered the benighted condition of our state government.  The Times has been notable three days in a row ("Pataki Proposes Making Taxes 'Fairer, Simpler'," by Al Baker, ppB1, B6, 1/4; "Pataki's Promises of Change Yielded to Custom," by Michael Cooper, ppB1, B4, 1/5; and today, below), and in 2004 published a lengthy series of editorials, "Fixing Albany."  We have linked to these articles, rather than attempting to paraphrase them here.  You should read the links until you feel like Peter Finch, who, as a TV anchor in the movie Network in 1976, urged people to open their windows and shout: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

Here are links to today's articles and editorials:

• Times: "Governor Pataki Talks the Talk," editorial, A26; "Power of Positive Pataki Demonstrated in Relentlessly Upbeat Annual Address," News Analysis by Michael Cooper, ppB1, B4; "Pataki Proposes Making Taxes 'Fairer, Simpler'," by Al Baker, pB4; Once Again, Resolving Against Reality," Metro Matters, by Joyce Purnick, pB1

• Sun: "For the Birds," editorial, p10; "Governor Proposes New Restrictions on Lobbying Albany," by William E. Hammond Jr., pp1, 4; "Miller: Mayor Too Timid Toward Albany," by Jill Gardiner, p4; "Mayor Gets Good Word on Stadium from Pataki," by Dina Temple-Raston, p4

• Post: "Old man river," editorial, p30; "Same Man, Same Problem," column by E.J. McMahon, p31; "Snoozer of a speech is gov's 'exit' sign," column by Fredric U. Dicker, p9; "Pataki keeps 'sunny' $ide up," by Fredric U. Dicker and Kenneth Lovett, p8

• Newsday: "State of the State: uninspiring; Gov. Pataki's speech is vague about Albany's most pressing matters," editorial, pA36; "A focus on his legacy," by Errol A. Cockfield Jr., ppA16, A43; "Dems blast guv as Mike makes nice," by Bryan Virasami and Dan Janison pA16; Guv: Medicaid changes in air," by Michael Rothfeld, pA43

• News: "George Pataki's rose-colored glasses," editorial, p32; "Gov sees bright side," by Joe Mahoney, p2; "Taking on the tax code," by Joe Mahoney, p14; "Oxford-bound scholars put CUNY on right Rhodes - gov," Joe Mahoney, p14; "Injured vet 'choked up' by applause," by Joe Mahoney, p14

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