UPDATE: 4 p.m., January 10
In a phone conversation this afternoon, Rochester Mayor Tom Richards re-stated his opposition to a casino in downtown Rochester, and said he has not had any discussions with Cuomo about a Rochester-area casino. Given the legal issues with the Seneca Nation, who claim exclusive rights to Rochester for future casinos, Richards said he expects it will be several years, if not longer, for discussions of a Rochester-area casino to get serious.
Richards did say that the one place he could envision a casino in the downtown area is at Kodak's State Street campus. It's got the space and the parking, he said. (MCC plans to move to the Kodak site, against Richards' wishes.)
ORIGINAL STORY
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to establish three casinos Upstate — and that's just in the first phase — was one of the highlights in a State of the State speech yesterday loaded with marquee-worthy announcements on gun control, women’s equality, education, and other issues.
Casino-talk is nothing new to Rochester. People have long speculated about and/or advocated for a casino at Midtown, the Sibley building, or even at the former Medley Centre in Irondequoit.
Mayor Tom Richards has said in the past that the Rochester area will most likely get a casino, but that he doesn’t support putting one downtown because it sends the wrong message. Space is an issue, too, he said. Casinos make money by being part of big entertainment complexes, Richards said, and the money lost by gamblers subsidizes those other services.
It would be difficult for businesses that aren’t part of the casino complex to compete, Richards said, because they wouldn’t have that gambling money.
Locations aside, Cuomo’s advocacy of casinos as an economic-development tool is dubious. A 2009 Salon article says that the “gaming economy may be reaching its outer limits,” and that new casinos are cannibalizing revenue from existing operations.
As the gun control debate has unfolded in New York and nationally, there's been a tendency to associate tougher gun restrictions with Democratic legislators and liberals.
But the ideological split in the gun debate is not that linear. In advance of Governor Andrew Cuomo's State of the State address yesterday, the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York issued its own proposals for changes to gun laws. It's worth noting that the organization's board of directors includes Democratic and Republican DA's.
While the proposals from the DA's association aren't exact matches with Cuomo's, some are very similar. For example, the association calls for a stronger ban on high-capacity magazines. And it wants state officials to close the loophole that allows possession of the magazines as long as they were made prior to the 1994 federal assault weapons ban.
The association also proposes giving courts the ability to revoke firearms licenses based on a person's mental health, and calls for an end to lifetime permits. The permits should be subject to periodic renewal, just like drivers' licenses, the organization says.
And the DA's association also wants ammunition sales to be treated like sales of a particular cold medicine. In a document outlining its proposals, the association says:
"As anyone who has recently purchased cold medicine knows, buyers are required to provide identification so that sellers can record covered transactions. Large quantities of aggregate purchases are a red flag that the purchaser might be manufacturing dangerous drugs. DAASNY believes that if we can do this for cold medicine, we should do it for bullets."
The full list of proposals is available here. And a statement from the association's president, Cy Vance Jr., regarding Cuomo's gun law proposals is available here.
Rochester school board member Willa Powell submitted the following prior to Governor Cuomo’s 2013 State of State address this afternoon.
Today, Governor Cuomo delivers his State of the State address. Among other points, I expect he will talk about the difficult fiscal conditions that continue to plague NY in the aftermath of The Great Recession, and more recently of Hurricane Sandy. He will also likely boast that in 2012, he and this Legislature has “reigned in” costs by enacting a law that limits education funding growth to a “maximum allowable growth” of no more than the increase in personal income or the amount of overall inflation, whichever is less (referred to as the Personal Wealth Index). He will likely promise an on-time, balanced budget. When he turns his attention to Education, he may boast that his Education Commission has recently reported out its recommendations and that he supports these recommendations.
This is what he will not say about education:
That while delivering an on-time balanced budget is mandated by the NY State Constitution, the NY State Constitution also guarantees a “meaningful high school education” for all students in NY State, yet the State has failed to meet this constitutional obligation according to NY State’s highest court.
That the 2007 Contract for Excellence education funding law, which initially called for complete phase-in by 2011-12 in accordance with the NY State Court of Appeals CFE ruling, was revised to extend the completion date of the phase-in to 2015-16, but did not lay out a plan for how the funding will reach the original goal. (They did not repeal the education funding law, nor reject the funding goals set by the courts, state agencies, or the legislature itself.)
That subsequent to the 2007 Contract for Excellence law, the NY Legislature introduced a temporary “gap elimination adjustment” that alters the phase-in schedule in a manner that challenges the intention of the funding formula, harming the State’s neediest children, and that “gap elimination adjustment” was made permanent in 2012.
That the Personal Wealth Index mechanism of capping the growth of education aid in the NY State budget makes it impossible for the state to ever meet the funding goals demanded by the 2007 Contract for Excellence law.
That the current State education budget is 30 percent below the goal for the 2012-13 year (as stated in the 2007 law), without any adjustment for inflation.
That since the onset of The Great Recession, the Legislature and the Governor have had three years to eliminate hundreds of recommended mandates that inflate the cost of education delivery in NY State, or to otherwise indicate what programs currently required by the State Department of Education are non-essential. No mandates have been eliminated, not even the reporting mandates enacted with the 2007 Contract for Excellence, even though there is no new funding to Contract for Excellence impacted districts. This amounts to telling high needs districts to “do more with less” or “make bricks without straw”.
That the highly touted Education Commission neither makes recommendations for cost reduction through mandate relief, nor recommends funding increases to meet the constitutional mandate.
“The fact that the state has also accompanied its budget cuts and deferral of the CFE increases with a cap on general support for public schools determined by the rate of growth in personal income in the state, and the “gap elimination adjustment” mechanism has now been made a permanent part of the law, indicates that the state has no intention of ever providing the promised funding increases.” (Michael Rebell, 2012 article in the Albany Law Review, p 1902, http://schoolfunding.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Safeguarding-Sound-Basic-Education-75-Alb-L.-Rev-18552012.pdf, emphasis mine)
In my humble opinion, if the Governor’s budget proposal for 2013-14 is consistent with these two legislative mechanisms that limit the implementation Contract for Excellence funding to a rate that cannot foreseeably translate into full funding by 2015-16 as promised in the revised legislation, the Rochester City School Board should be prepared to sue the Gov. Cuomo and the State of NY. NY Small City School Boards Association initiated such a suit on the premise that the state would renege on its promise. 2012 was the year that proved their premise, and we must be prepared to act likewise.
While School Board members are locally elected, we swear an oath to act as agents of the State, to implement THE STATE’s constitutional obligation to provide a sound basic education. The State’s highest court — a coequal branch of government — has told the State what its constitutional obligation is, and the Governor and the Legislature accepted that obligation as a matter of law in 2007. While School Boards are in no way coequal, as agents of the state, we have an obligation to hold the State accountable to the public for its failure to meet the constitutional rights of its most vulnerable population: children in the highest needs areas of the state, whose poverty prevents local government from providing the resources to meet this obligation without the financial help of the State.
State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has selected Assembly member Joe Morelle to serve as the chamber's majority leader.
Morelle lives in Irondequoit and his district includes the town, Brighton, and parts of the City of Rochester. He also serves as chair of the Monroe County Democratic Committee. During an interview last week, Morelle said he'd like to continue in that position, and that several other state legislators with high-level positions also serve as party chairs. But he also said that his ability to serve as chair would depend on his duties if he were chosen majority leader.
Everyone seeking a rational, common-sense approach to gun legislation should take a minute to watch the recent exchange between CNN host Piers Morgan and radio personality Alex Jones. In a later interview with Politico, Morgan called the Jones interview an advertisement for gun control.
Morgan isn’t a particularly good interviewer, nor does he break journalistic ground on his chat show, which is typically a mix of celebrities, politicians, and people famous for being famous. But booking Jones was a brilliant move. Morgan, who does little more than let the camera roll in the Jones interview, records what comes off as a madman’s anti-government rant.
The founding fathers knew, Jones warns, that government tyranny is a cruel reality that we must arm ourselves against. No weapons or amount of them should be off limits. And any effort to control gun ownership weakens our democracy and individual rights, and worse, leaves us vulnerable to despots and oligarchs.
Jones has built a media empire that is neither conservative nor liberal. He offers listeners more of a comic-book Armageddon view of the world with libertarian overtones. His stories tend to take the basic facts of recent world events and frost them with populist conspiracy warnings about World War III, pandemics, and world domination by a secret group of industrial titans.
Whether he really believes this stuff is anyone’s guess.
Morgan was targeted by Jones for his strong pro-gun control stance and comments Morgan made following the Newtown, Connecticut shootings last month that left 26 people dead — many of them small children.
Jones urged his listeners to sign a petition to deport Morgan because of Morgan's efforts to undermine the Bill of Rights. The petition has more than 100,000 signatures.
Morgan, however, managed to show in the Jones interview the unbalanced face of the anti-gun-control lobby. Jones made Tom Cruise jumping off Oprah’s sofa seem perfectly normal. Though I'm not sure we learned anything from the interview, it must have set off alarms in the pro-guns camp. Even Glenn Beck has distanced himself from Jones.
The Town of Brighton is acting to make a temporary ban on natural gas and oil drilling within town limits, including fracking, permanent.
At 7 p.m. today, the Brighton Town Board will hold a public hearing on its proposed ban. Town Supervisor Bill Moehle says the board will probably vote on the proposed law at its January 23 meeting. That meeting is also at 7 p.m.
The law will forbid not just drilling, but also related activities, such as disposal of drilling wastes or the underground storage of gas or oil. Moehle says drilling and related activities are akin to heavy industrial activity, which is inconsistent with town zoning.
"The most intense zoning district we have in Brighton is light industrial," he says.
New York State officials are conducting an environmental review of high-volume hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in shale formations. To prevent fracking within their borders, many communities across the state have enacted categorical bans on all drilling and related support activities. In most cases, state courts have upheld the bans.
"If each of the towns do it, we have a ripple effect," says Judy Schwartz, a Brighton resident who supports the town's proposed ban.
The digital revolution will be…sparsely attended.
Points for effort, but Rochester Police Chief James Sheppard’s first Twitter town hall (transcript below) attracted few participants — about a handful over an hour’s time. A few participants asked multiple questions, and the RPD filled the remaining time by plugging PAC-TAC and other police programs, sharing neighborhood crime maps, and telling people how to become police officers.
Sheppard also shared an RPD promotional video, to which someone replied “Disgusting,” and linked to a Nazi propaganda video.
Sheppard answered questions on human trafficking, children’s safety, how to report suspicious activity, respect for police, and the RPD’s role in improving the perception of the city.
Someone asked Sheppard if ShotSpotter — the city’s gunshot detection system — is effective. Sheppard said it is “very accurate” and has resulted in arrests. But a February 2012 story in City paints a different story. We showed that 3,306 ShotSpotter alerts from January to November 2011 had resulted in only six arrests.
The town hall — the first of four Sheppard will do this month — was heavily promoted. But the poverty in the city and its related issues: lack of computers and Wi-Fi connection, may have played a role in the poor participation.
The next Twitter town hall is from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, January 15.
Emily Good and Drew Langdon have been elected to serve as the 2013 co-chairs of the Monroe County Green Party, the party reports on its website. They replace Alex White and Vinessa Buckland.
Good and Langdon were elected for one-year terms during the party's December meeting. Good is an activist; in 2012 she was arrested by Rochester police as she made a video recording of a traffic stop. The arrest drew national attention from both the media and civil rights groups. The District Attorney's Office eventually dropped the charges against Good.
Langdon mounted an unsuccessful challenge against Democratic State Assembly member David Gantt last year. He ran solely on the Green Party line. Last year, Langdon served as secretary of the party.
The Greens also elected Tom Janowski as secretary and Michael Hendrick as treasurer.
Rochester Police Chief James Sheppard will hold the first in a series of Twitter town halls this week. Participants can offer comments or ask Sheppard a question on any issue of concern, including bullying, gun violence, and gangs.
The first town hall is from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, January 8. You must have a Twitter account to participate. Join the discussion by following the Rochester Police Department Twitter feed at @RochesterNYPD
Other sessions are scheduled for January 15, 22, and 29. Christine Carrie Fien
The Rochester school board will hold a public hearing on expansion of the True North Rochester Preparatory Charter School at 6 p.m. on Thursday, January 10. Since charter schools are public schools in the Rochester district, openings and changes require public notice.
The hearing will be followed at 6:30 p.m. by a public hearing on Superintendent Bolgen Vargas’s new facilities modernization plan. Several public meetings have already been held on the plan, and more are scheduled.
Both meetings will be held at the district’s central office, 131 West Broad Street. Tim Louis Macaluso
Governor Andrew Cuomo will give his annual State of the State of Address at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 9. Cuomo’s office hasn’t released a link for the webcast, though www.governor.ny.gov is a good place to start.
Cuomo has a growing list of topics he could touch on in his speech. He’ll probably push for a minimum wage increase, and he could talk about education standards and teacher evaluations. During an interview last week, State Assembly member Joe Morelle said he expects Cuomo to talk about the state’s economy and how the recovery from Superstorm Sandy will affect the state budget.
Cuomo barely addressed fracking in his State of the State address last year, and it looks like that may be the case again this year. Fracking opponents will rally in the capital on Wednesday, including a busload of fractivists who are leaving Rochester at 6:15 a.m. that day. To join them, visit here.
But the issue that’s going to grab the most attention is guns. The governor has said he’ll lay out his proposals for new gun laws during the speech; he’s said he wants the state to adopt the toughest gun laws in the nation. His proposal is expected to focus on loopholes in the current assault weapons ban as well as high-capacity magazines.
Cuomo has support from Democrats, including the leader of the breakaway Independent Democratic Conference. The IDC and the Senate Republicans have a power-sharing agreement, though the gun debate could be the first test of the arrangement. Recent attempts to pass new gun laws have stalled in the Senate.
Over the weekend, Republican leader Dean Skelos released his own gun law proposals. They do not include any expansion or modification of the state’s existing assault weapons ban. Instead, he calls for: harsher penalties for people convicted of illegally possessing a gun, stiffer sentences for the use of a gun in committing a felony, a lifetime sentence without the possibility of parole when someone murders a first responder, registering and tracking violent felons, and more.
In response, a Cuomo spokesperson said, that any gun policy "that does not ban assault weapons ignores the reality of gun violence and insults the common sense of New Yorkers."
Other Republicans, including Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb, have called for reinstatement of the death penalty.
An article published yesterday by the New York Daily News suggests that Cuomo is prepared to mount a public relations offensive against Senate Republicans if they block or delay his gun law proposals. Jeremy Moule
Violent crime began trending down in the 1990's after the highs of the 1970's and 80's,
The Christian Science Monitor reported that in 2012, the national rate of serious crimes was at its lowest since 1963.
Researchers have developed many theories about why the crime rate unexpectedly dropped. Some credit tough-on-crime policies. Others credit the rise and fall of crack. One team of researchers famously — or infamously, depending on your view — argued that legalized abortion helped reduce the crime rate.
But there's another theory I wasn't aware of until last night, when I came across an article on Mother Jones' website called "America's Real Criminal Element." The article pulls together several studies citing lead exposure as a factor in the crime rate. When exposure increased, so did crime levels. When lead was banned from things like gasoline and paint, crime rates fell.
The article pays particular attention to a study linking leaded gasoline to crime levels.