The Update Desk: MBIA (v46)

And... it's a done deal. 

I'm not really surprised that our legislators are going to be the highest-paid in the country, making $142,000 per year, for a 60-day session plus whatever other time they put into their jobs that we don't know about, until we get their newsletters. 

You'll recall I told you about this a little over a week ago in Meanwhile, Back in Albany (v46)

Many New Yorkers are struggling right now, trying to come up with money to pay their rent, their utilities, to buy groceries, and to scrape together money to put even a fair-to-middling holiday celebration together for their families. 

Rural families, suburban families, urban families - it's not just one subset of New Yorkers; all of us are feeling a pinch in one way or another. Which is why it's so insulting to learn that our legislators just gave themselves a $32,000 raise. 

I think this was the fastest I've ever reached out to my elected representatives.

I've emailed Sen. Rachel May and Assemblymember Pamela Hunter, my representatives, for their thoughts and comments on their votes. It's clear from my comments that I don't support this move, so I'll be interested if I get a "thanks, Constituent" letter or if they'll try and convince me this is a good idea.

At the time, I didn't know how they voted, but I had a suspicion. I since confirmed that the count was mostly along party lines, which is no shock. In the Senate, it was 33 - 23, with 7 Dems voting no; in the Assembly, it was 81-52, with 8 Dems joining their Republican colleagues in voting no.

My two? They were both 'yes' votes. And I have yet to get a response from either of them.

I've also reached out to Gov. Kathy Hochul, urging her to veto the legislation and force the two chambers to override her veto, which they can do if they want, and I encourage you to do the same if you don't like being taken advantage of by our legislators. 

I got what appears like a canned response to anyone who writes to her; "thanks, and we've got a lot of work to do together" kind of thing, with no mention of my issue. 

And then we heard, late on New Year's Eve, that she had signed the bill, even though the raise was more than she had expressed support for, and so was the outside income limit. There have been suggestions that she didn't veto it because she needs the legislature to get things done with the budget and all the legislation they pack into it. There've also been suggestions that she should have gotten a guarantee for having her pick to be the chief judge on the Court of Appeals approved, which may or may not happen.

I'm not sure about either of those, but I wish if she was going to approve it anyway, she had made them wait and stew in it for as long as possible. 

Meanwhile Back in Albany (v39)

Nathaniel Brooks/NY Times

For the second day of his State of the State roadshow, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo opened with a quote from James Baldwin: "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." From there, he went to General Ulysses S. Grant, and to the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan. And it's that kind of effort we need, he said.

Now it's time to start looking ahead with the same toughness, the same smarts, the same unity, the same discipline, and the same love that brought us through last year. 2021 will be a year of continued challenges, transformation, and change. We will need to adjust to the new social and economic realities of the post-COVID world.

Expanding on his Day 1 message, he spoke of having to reopening New York "smartly and safely." It's not an either/or thing, it's a "a new model of balance" using science and technology to do things intelligently. Here are the key initiatives he mentioned.

• Testing is a big part of that, whether it's at large scale events, in commercial office/retail properties, or at individual businesses like restaurants.
• The New York Arts Revival, a public/private partnership that'll mount pop-up events across the state, outdoors mostly, with pilots for indoor performances to see what can be done safely. There's also a new Creative Rebuild Initiative to put artists back to work and support community arts organizations. 
• Tapping into the empty hotel and office space in the state, in ways that "benefit the community and make them commercially viable." Affordable housing, supportive housing, that kind of thing, can benefit communities and the state's going to offer flexibility to property owners for that type of re-use. 
• A Commission on the Future of the New York Economy, to draw up a roadmap for getting New Yorkers back to work in good paying jobs in long-lasting industries, and to examine what he called "the low tide American issues" - inequalities and structural racism - exposed by the pandemic. 
• A "jobs-of-the-future" program to include a Pathways Pledge from our largest employers to develop training and education programs for low-income workers. There's also an expansion of SUNY's online training programs to offer free training for high demand jobs.

In closing, Cuomo reached for his father, the late Gov. Mario Cuomo, and offered some hope for the future. Speaking of the light that shone through the darkness of 2020, he said

And this light illuminates a new path of possibility for our state. A path that says yes, we can care about each other, and we can help each other, and we can recognize our interconnection and relationship - that we are one community and one family. That our differences are second to our commonality. That we are strong, and we are competent, and we are capable. That we can build, we can achieve, we can take on great challenges and we can triumph. That we believe in ourselves and we believe in each other and we believe in this place called New York. This place of possibility, this place of welcome, this place of mutuality, this place of aspiration, this place of acceptance, and this place of cooperation. 

Are we that place, do you think?