What's Happening All Over

By Henry J. Stern
May 5, 2005


A Word to the Wise About the Weather

The climate and air quality in New York has been quite good this week.  We urge you to enjoy it while it lasts.  Spend as much time as you can outdoors, because the interval between winter and summer is not that long, especially if you deduct the rainy and cloudy days.

 
Is Freedom Tower Safe?  Can it Ever Be?
 
The controversy over the safety of the proposed Freedom Tower is puzzling.  If the police had objections to the proposed design, should they not have been expressed earlier in the design process?  If they were expressed and were ignored, then who was it who ignored the warnings?  The public controversy and resulting delay has a negative impact on other downtown development, as Patrick D. Healy and Charles V. Bagli discuss in an article starting on A1 and jumping to B8 of today's Times, headed "Pataki and Bloomberg Endorse Changes in Ground Zero Tower."
 
The unanswered question, because it is unasked, is how many businesses will rent space in a building that has twice been the target of terrorist attacks?  In a troubled world, which employer will take that risk?  When it opened in 1973, the World Trade Center was hard to fill with commercial tenants, so much of the space was occupied by state agencies.  Over the years, economic expansion brought in more private tenants, which displaced the state employees to office buildings which were non-iconic but practical.  It is unfortunate that renting may be affected by anxiety. But it is also understandable.  In the absence of the technology to create a force shield around Freedom Tower, it is likely that fears, justified or not, may linger for some time.
 
 
Large Elephant and Elephant-in-Waiting v.
Mid-Size Elephant and Mid-Size Donkey
 
Just when you thought Albany had hit bottom, a dispute between the governor and the Legislature has complicated relations between Pataki, on one side, and Bruno and Silver, on the other.  A Court of Appeals ruling last year enhanced the power of the executive vis-à-vis the legislative branch.  To undo that ruling, the Senate and Assembly want to amend the State Constitution, just as constitutional amendments are occasionally proposed in Congress by members dissatisfied with decisions by SCOTUS (the Supreme Court of the United States, not to be confused with POTUS, which is obvious, or FLOTUS, the first lady).   Attorney General Spitzer agrees with Governor Pataki on this issue, which evens the struggle at two on two, one elephant and one donkey on each team.  This is called bi-partisanship
 
The proposed Constitutional amendment is described in a Times article today by Al Baker, at the top of B1, then jumping to B6. The headline is misleading: "Legislature Votes to Hold Referendum on On-Time Budgets."  The late budget is not the real issue; the budget will be on time whenever the parties agree on it.  The legislators' proposal is a power grab by the Senate and Assembly, although in fairness they are trying to regain what judges, some of whom were appointed by the governor, took away.

In the interest of a fiscally responsible, balanced budget, it is more sensible to leave authority in one person, a statewide elected official, than to split it up among 212 (150 assemblymembers and 62 senators), each one of whom wants a piece of the action for his or her district.  The less authority a person has, the more likely one is to act irresponsibly, since one is such a small part of many.  This principle also applies to lynch mobs.

 
Padded Public Pensions Pave Pacific Port's Promenade to Poorhouse
 
The perilous financial condition of the state is illustrated in a Post column yesterday by Nicole Gelinas, "NY's Coming Crackup: Pension-fund time bombs."  This is like the risk at the World Trade Center site, but more financial than physical. The tale begins with the resignation of the mayor of San Diego, California, and the city's imploding finances.  We strongly recommend this article to you. It is easier to read it than to have to live it.
 
Ms. Gelinas' basic point is that impending liabilities for municipal employee pensions will be impossible for future generations to meet.  We join in warning that the Third Fiscal Crisis may come sooner rather than later. The city's fortunes depend too much on the performance of the stock market.  But that summary does not do the Gelinas column full justice.  Read it and scream at craven public officials, from both parties, who mortgage the future for votes today, in an awesome display of financial irresponsibility.  The fiscal time-bomb that has been created could be worse than the gerrymandering, logrolling, pork barrel payoff culture that now pervades Albany.

The dilemma, now faced by the states of California and New York (with its Ponzi-like pyramid of debt-incurring authorities), deals with recurring fiscal obligations that steadily become more difficult for taxpayers to meet.  You read it here, in 2005.   Governor Schwarzenegger should remember the last scene of Terminator I (1984), where a Mexican boy takes a picture of an American boy and his mother on the road to Mexico, seeking safety from the impending cataclysm.  Twenty-one years later, playing a new role, he must try to prevent another kind of disaster.  But no one, except a handful of public Cassandras and powerless bloggers, seems to be willing to make the attempt.

 
Public Officials Courteous as Reformers Visit Albany
 
Tuesday, May 3, was Reform Day in Albany, and along with about two hundred fellow travelers, we bussed and trekked to the Legislative Office Building to hear speeches, and then visit legislators to lobby them or their staff on the need for open meetings, freedom of information, floor votes on bills, no empty-seat voting, and a number of other good causes that had been sought unsuccessfully for years.  2005 has shown some movement on these issues as a result of newspaper and civic pressure.  Power and control of the process, however, remain with the Senate majority leader and the Assembly speaker, who are not evil people but are nonetheless disinclined to share their power with anyone else, including their own members, any more than absolutely necessary.
 
One of the ways to simulate reform, a verb which one associates with simulated sex on the movie screen, is to pass a reform bill in one house, secure in the knowledge that it will be defeated in the other.  That way each party can say that they voted for a bill to end a particularly pernicious practice, but will remain secure in the knowledge that the bill will not be enacted.  This requires a level of cooperation between the parties, but gentlemen always seem to work together when their perquisites are endangered.  The charade of the one-house bill can fool people for years, especially since, as Phineas T. Barnum so aptly observed, "There's a sucker born every minute."
 
Every party leader in the Legislature addressed the visiting reformers except Senator Bruno, who apparently was indisposed.  Speaker Silver agreed to come at the last minute, and read off an impressive list of reforms which he said the Assembly had enacted.  There is no question that progress has been made, but the underlying issue is, as it was in the City Council where I served from 1974 to 1983, whether the members do as the leaders demand out of fear of losing jobs, not having their bills, and not receiving their district's share of pork.  Remember, however, that one man's pork is another man's bacon, and legislators are elected, in part, for the purpose of bringing home the bacon.
 
The underlying evil of gerrymandering and the need for constitutional abridgement and reform have not been advanced in this session.  There are four or five weeks to go, and as the visitors, many of whom strongly resembled peace demonstrators, made their way back to the buses for the long ride home, there was abundant good spirit about the valiant effort that had been made, but little confidence that the hearts of the Pharoahs who rule the Legislature had been softened to any significant degree.   Perhaps the plague of political defeat would win their hearts and minds.  (Cf. Rule 13-V, available on request).
 
Good guys are limited by their lack of political organization — the problem is that once people organize politically, they attract bad guys and in the end, history has shown, they and their successors often become bad guys themselves.  Then it is time for another popular uprising, but unless the challengers are well-armed, it can take a generation to storm the walls successfully.  And when you recall how the Reign of Terror followed the French Revolution, you become a little more cautious than you otherwise would be.
 
Reform is in part a state of mind, the feeling that society could be better and that you want to do whatever you can to make conditions better for more people.  Many struggles will be ahead of you or behind you (Rule 21-U: You win some, you lose some).  You persevere if that is your nature, you give up if that gives you comfort.
 
New generations regularly replenish the ranks of reformers who die off or become cynics.  It was interesting to watch NYPIRG kids on the bus along with women who have been working for civic reform for many years.  One or two may have been part of WILPF (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom), a group that held Kim Jong Il in higher regard than I do.  But not having participated in the attempt to bring truth to power for some years, I must say that I enjoyed the day, commend the organizers for their diligence and thank the people, old and young, who took the time and trouble to come.
 
 
P.S. It was fifty years ago today (5-5-55) that the Federal Republic of Germany became a sovereign state, and the 15th member of NATO.

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