March 31, 2014

Breaking News Trifecta

A trifecta is generally described as a type of bet where, in order to win, the bettor must pick the top three finishers in the correct order.  Here are the top three from the past couple of days.

Moreland Commission to be Shut Down
Apparently the State Legislature has succeeded in ringing down the curtain on Governor Cuomo's Moreland Commission investigation into bad behavior of politicians.  The Commission, with great fanfare, announced there was lots of bad stuff going on, some of it perfectly legal, some of it not,  in how we handle campaign money here in New York.

I've posted several times on the Commission, ethics, and the like, and on our local DA-for-Life Bill Fitzpatrick --  he of the tens of thousands of dollars of campaign funds spent on steak and golf -- who was one of the chairs of the panel. I was not impressed with the preliminary report they issued which was practically word for word what the Governor wanted them to find, which detracted from the Comission's independence. And of course, note that the Commission was only investigating the Legislature, not the Executive -- something that did not impress the gang under the microscope, not surprisingly.

And so, again not surprisingly, during the budget negotiations, the Leg told Cuomo to ditch it, and he asked them to try public financing, at least on one state-wide race (Comptroller), and maybe they'll talk about some clients of their day jobs, and maybe the Board of Elections will be a bit more aggressive, but that's about it.

One's left wondering whether the Sonova Governor, who had (several weeks ago) some $33,000,000 for his re-election campaign, was really all that interested in solving ethics problems; after all, he told us he's above the fray on that personally, and other than needling the Legislature, what was really accomplished? 

Prisoner Education to be Privately Funded
Apparently a Cuomo administration official (anonymous, of course) has advised that the Governor's plan to provide college education to prisoners didn't fly, and so these efforts will continue to be privately funded, as they have been for the many years. Cuomo had planned on spending $10,000 - $15,000 per prisoner to hep them get associates and bachelor's degrees; this would be on top of the $60K we pay each year to keep them behind bars.

I'm happy that we will not be paying for this, not because it's a horrible concept, but because it's another frustrating expenditure when taxpayers are struggling themselves, and who are not finding themselves in jail.   I'm hopeful that someone in the administration or in the Legislature will take a really hard look at what we're getting for the 60 grand we spend on our inmates. Maybe there's a way to do it for $50K this year, and then maybe $45K next year, and so on, til we're paying something similar to what other states pay for the privilege of housing inmates. And maybe by then, we'll be in a better position to pay for college for these folks.

SUNY Upstate Spends $660K on Out of Town Ad Agency
Why is it not surprising that a SUNY facility, our own Upstate Medical University, spent $660,000 on an ad agency from Alabama to help improve their image?  The ads, which you may have seen in the local paper or on TV, talk about the 9,000 people who make Upstate what it is, and note that many of the docs there are born and raised New Yorkers, and how all of the employees contribute to our overall welfare.  All of those things may very well be true, and we are fortunate to have a facility of this caliber, a regional powerhouse if you will, in our own back yard.

Know what else we have here in New York? Advertising agencies. Lots of them. A very good one,  headquartered maybe a mile from Upstate, for example. Now, I don't know if the local agency would have bid on the image campaign for Upstate, which has taken a hit lately.  They might not have been interested. But I have to think that one thing our SUNY schools should be doing, what all of our governmental agencies should be doing, is buying goods and services from New York.

Just as several years ago when it was discovered that the I Love New York tourism hot line was answered by a call center in Georgia or somewhere, we should be outraged that any state agency is not using New York companies for their services. Even in this case, where Upstate took the money from what seems like a really big petty cash fund, it just feels wrong that we're sending the money out of state.

Can't we do better?

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