Navigating the Albany Legislative Swamp

Navigating the Albany Legislative Swamp

 In 1866, the Surrogate of New York County wrote in a decision on a legal malpractice claim against a deceased lawyer’s estate: “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.”

At the October Delegate Meeting UFT President Mulgrew, in his monthly president’s report, summarized the national, state and local issues. The state legislature convenes in January, the governor’s state of the state message the first week, the  preliminary executive budget at the end of the month, in February the one-house budgets and in March the haggling over the final budget due April 1. An Easter and Passover break in April and the race to adornment in early June, party primaries the third week in June.

Mulgew said the two legislative priorities: improvements in Tier 6 and replacing mayoral control with another governance system.

Legislatures around the nation vary widely in days in session, size (from 40 to 474 members) and remuneration, (from $100 in New Hampshire to $120,000 in NYS). Most legislatures are part time with modest salaries, New York State is the exception, the legislators with a few exceptions are full time with staffs in Albany and a district office. About 15,000 bills are introduced, only a few hundred are signed into law. The business of the legislature is transparent. All bills and the progress of the bills are on the website.

For example my Assembly member, Harvey Epstein introduced 170 bills in the last session. Epstein introduced a bill proposing changing the state constitution to require free public education in grades pre-k through undergraduate school.

TITLE OF BILL: CONCURRENT RESOLUTION OF THE SENATE AND ASSEMBLY proposing an amendment to the Constitution, in relation to education of pupils through under-graduate  

PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL: This amendment would require New York to provide free, quality education from prekindergarten through post secondary school.  

.The bill has not progressed past the education committee.

The full text, memos and progress of bills are all available on the Assembly website.

The governor’s preliminary budget, extremely detailed is due around the third week in January, See last year’s preliminary budget here.

The 2023 budget, unexpectedly removed the regional charter school cap, nothing to do with the budget. The governor probably “traded” charter school cap removal for $5M from Bloomberg to pay for advertisements supporting the governor’s plan to build 800,000 “affordable” housing units in the suburbs, opposed by many suburban legislators.

 Governor Hochul will also eliminate the regional cap on the number of charter schools in New York City and authorize the reissuance of charters due to surrender, revocation, termination, or non-renewal. These changes will permit the issuance of additional charters in New York City and expand educational opportunities for students

The approval of the budget was delayed three weeks as the UFT battled with the governor, with the full support of the democratic leadership and eventually agreed to the reissuance of 14 expired charters, not the 150 charters the governor sought and loss of around 4,000 teaching positions in public schools in NYC.

Sometimes thwarting proposals are more important than passing bills.

Class size in New York City has been significantly higher than across the state, the provisions of the Taylor Law, “ability to pay” and “pattern bargaining,” places class size outside of the contractual bargaining process. In the waning days of the 2022 legislative session a number of education bills were tied together and with the support of the legislative leadership passed both houses (See discussion here). Mayor Adams vigorously opposed and urged the governor to veto the bill; however, in September the governor signed the bill into law (Read here).

One year the governor tries to open the door to 150 more charter schools and in another year agrees to historic class size reductions, Navigating Albany is akin to navigating Scylla and Charybdis.

An aside: this site contains constant criticism of the UFT President, certainly the right of every union member; however, opposition caucuses propose, “…prepare for a strike.” is not a viable option.

Mulgrew has been consistently adept at weaving his way through the Albany thorns.

Eleven years ago Cuomo maneuvered the creation of a new pension tier, Tier 6, moving the retirement age with full benefits to age 63; pensions are funded by school districts through property taxes; ten percent of the New York City budget, about $10 billion is set side to fund pensions.  Improving pensions at the expense of taxpayers is a heavy lift.

A few earlier blog posts:

How to Change Teacher Pension Laws: September 8, 2023:  https://mets2006.wordpress.com/2023/08/01/correcting-tier-6-how-to-change-teacher-pension-laws/

I suspect the unions will attempt to whittle away at Tier 6 and eventually mirror the benefits in Tier 4

Mayor Control, except for Mayor Adams, has no support in the legislature or in the school community. The question: what replaces mayoral control?

See options in an earlier post:

Mayoral Control in NYC and Alternatives:

https://mets2006.wordpress.com/2023/08/25/school-governance-in-nyc-mayoral-control-and-alternatives/

“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.”