January 26, 2007

The race to fill the vacancy for Comptroller took a surprising new twist yesterday as the "independent screening panel", set up by the Three Men in a Room, the Governor, Assembly Speaker and Senate Majority Leader, offered the State Legislature just three names to choose from, none of them an elected legislator..
 
The Sun gave the story the most coverage, with a large headline across the top of p1, SILVER DEALT A SETBACK IN ALBANY: On Candidates to Succeed Ousted Comptroller, the Assembly is Snubbed, Stark is Possibility.  Jacob Gershman's story started with a double-column lede:
 
"A special three-person state panel charged with screening applicants for state comptroller announced yesterday evening  that it is recommending for the job three candidates; Mayor Bloomberg's finance commissioner (Martha Stark), a financier who is a close friend of Governor Spitzer (Bill Mulrow), and the comptroller of Nassau County (Howard Weitzman)..
 
"The panel, comprising two former state comptrollers( Carl McCall and Ned Regan) and a former city comptroller (Jay Goldin), defied widespread expectations that it would pick five candidates and recommend at least one member of the Democrat-controlled Assembly."

The story is told by Nicholas Confessore on B3 of the Times, STATE PANEL SELECTS 3 LIKELY COMPTROLLERS, By Kenneth Lovett and Fred Dicker on p2 of the Post, COMPTROLLER PANEL NIXES SILVER PICKS, plus an editorial on p32, SPITZER EXPRESS; by John Riley on A17 of Newsday, SPAT OVER COMPTROLLER PICKS., and by Celeste Katz in the News, p30,c3, PANEL PICKS 3 FINALISTS FOR CONTROLLER (sic).  The Sun, Post and Times stories give more political detail than the News and Newsday.
 
What is the significance of this unexpected action by the screening committee.  It depends in part on what role Governor Spitzer had in their decision.  If it turns out that he expressed his preferences to the trio, then even if his candidates are more meritorious, selecting one of them would be considered substituting a 47-year-old king of the hill for the 62-year-old one.
 
Experience running a large agency is desirable, but should not be required for state comptroller.  What agency or majof corporation did Eliot Spitzer run before he was elected attorney general in 1998?   Yet he was an excellent AG.   Pete Grannis, the fine Assemblyman who the governor has just appointed Commissioner of Environmental Protection, has no managerial experience, although he has spent 32 years in the Assembly.  People should not get jobs on the basis of their political background, but neither should they be disqualified for that reason.
 
The three candidates selected by the panel have varying degrees of ability and credibility.  Can it be said objectively that every one of the other fifteen is substantially less able?  Was there no one else well qualified to serve?  Who would have been numbers 4 and 5?  We did not attend the two days of hearings, so we cannot judge for ourselves how the candidates presented themselves and answered questions. But it appears that the choice was based more on resumes than on  interviews.
 
It was a meritorious idea to have the screening panel, and to compel candidates to apply and state their qualifications in public. Although their charge said "up to five", it had no minimum.  Many people expected a wider choice than the panel presented.  But they have made their report, and now it is up to the 211 elected legislators (one, John Lavelle of Staten Island, just passed away) to decide who they will select to fill the term to which Alan Hevesi was elected in November.
 
An unfortunate aspect of the process is that the comptrollership will be filled through 2010.  There should be an election in 2007. A vacancy in the legislature is filled within two months by a special election.  Comptroller is a much more important position.  Why should the public have to wait four years to make their choice? The answer is that the lengthy and outdated State Constitution provides for filling the entire term.  It has been suggested that other parts of the Constitution permit an election to be held sooner. If the Constitution does forbid an election this year, the amendment process should begin at once (two legislatures - plus a referendum) so that the next time a vacancy occurs, it will be filled within a year by the people of the State of New York, not by three men in a room, or 212 in a chamber..
 
One person who combines legislative experience (state senator and president of the city council), with experience running a large agency (ten years as executive director of UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund), is Carol Bellamy.  As far as we know, no woman has held a state-wide office in state government, with the exception of the ceremonial lieutenant governors, Mary Anne Krupsak, Betsy McCaughey (Ross at the time), and Mary Donohue. Of course, there is a federal official who was elected state-wide in 2000 and re-elected in 2006, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
 
In addition to the requirements of professional competence, high intelligence, absolute integrity and sound judgment, there are several policy issues that arise in the choice of a Comptroller.
 
One is financial responsibility.  Too often Comptrollers have turned their backs, closed their eyes, held their noses, scratched their heads, gnashed their teeth, or simply wrung their hands over excessive spending, but they never used their legal authority to prevent it.  There are reasons for this inaction: ignorance, unwilling to upset the status quo, or (as long as we are into Latin) possibly a quid pro quo.  It may be that at some time a member of a comptroller's family received a substantial benefit in an unusual manner close to the time the comptroller approved a governor's budget.
 
There is a saying in politics that all a comptroller needs to do is be more fiscally responsible than the governor or the mayor.   Sometimes more is not enough.  Under the State Constitution, the Comptroller is an independently elected public official.  When he is selected by the Governor or the Speaker or any one individual, especially for a four-year term, is he not less likely to be independent than if he were elected by the voters of New York State?  Is that person likely to be grateful for his selection?  Is the Pope Catholic?
 
Another issue is what initiatives the comptroller should take on various issues that have been brought before the boards of directors of major corporations.  Should the comptroller support raising environmental standards, paying higher wages, not dealing with countries, corporations or individuals of whom we disapprove, making corporate governance more open and transparent, limiting executive salaries and stock options, or any other type of reform that may be proposed by some shareholders.
 
These questions require making difficult choices: when to intervene and when to refrain from intervening..  Are the New York State pension funds the police officers for corporations around the world, or do they stand idly by while the environment is destroyed, workers are underpaid, evil flourishes and good is crushed?   Rule 30-T "The truth lies somewhere in between."
 
In these cases, we would go further than Alexander Pope (1688-1744), the great poet who gave us  "An Essay on Criticism", said to have been written in 1709, and published in 1711.
 
"Be not the first by which the new is tried,
Nor yet the last to set the old aside."
 
New York State should take the lead, and try to bring along other pension funds, to advance social justice in ways consistent with maintaining high earnings for the funds' beneficiaries, the men and women who spent their working lives here and are now living longer after they retire earlier..  It should also respect reasonable boundaries between the private sector and the state, and not try to decree public management of American business according to the most recent whims of political correctness.  Yet it has an important role in helping secure honesty and fairness in the corporate world.
 
 We cannot refrain from reminding you that every time the Legislature, in gratitude to its contributors, lowers the age of retirement, or assumes that more diseases are presumably work-related, or  increases benefits for favored groups of employees, it places further burdens on the pension system and the City of New York.  The comptroller should do all he can to shield the funds he manages from these additional obligations, which circumvent the collective bargaining process which should determine wages and pensions.  We need a state comptroller who will stand up to the special interests who
feast on the state treasury to the extent that elected officials allow them to do so.

There Goes The Judge

”All my ex's live in Texas, that’s why I make my home in Tennessee” 

The latest installment in the tale of former Judge Reynold Mason of Brooklyn, currently residing in the State of Georgia:  On January 23, we reported JUDGE'S EX DROPS THE TIME.  Today the Daily News follows up on p10 with another Nancie Katz story. COURT RIPS DEADBEAT EX-JUDGE: Owes $230G in Child Support. The lede: "A former Brooklyn judge was found in default yesterday for stiffing his kids out of nearly $230,000 in child support, setting the stage for a judge to order his arrest."  The last sentence: "Abrams Mason (his ex-wife) faces eviction from her home in a New York suburb, where she is raising two teens and a 9-year old on the wages she makes at Wal-Mart."


 

#347 01.26.07   1412wds