At the Observer, Azi Paybarah brings us a depressing example of how Albany's anti-democratic culture has taken hostage the hearts and minds of so many in our state government. Paybarah interviews 72-year-old Assemblyman Anthony Seminerio (D-Queens), whose review of the budget battle is so cynical you can feel your soul melting as you read it:

“Eliot may wish he had another way, but there’s only one way the budget is ever going to get done, son,” said Mr. Seminerio, sitting by himself in the Assembly chambers Saturday night, hours before the budget deadline. “It’s three people, each getting a piece of the pie, and that’s it.”

[...]

“I don’t know if he learned anything,” Mr. Seminerio said. “I can’t speak for the Governor. I think maybe he understands the process a little better. I think, like everything else, he’ll learn. You know what I’m saying. He’ll learn. And it’s not that he did anything wrong. He thought the process should be done one way, and he thought, you know, he could accomplish it. And now I think he must understand—I can’t speak for him, certainly; you know he’s a brilliant man. I can’t speak for him—but I think he understands now that, hey, you have to sit down, and it’s a give-and-take.”

Waving his left arm in the air toward the empty room, Mr. Seminerio added: “The only thing that ever changes in Albany are the faces. The system stays intact.”

Don't fight it, son. Just take the pills like everyone else and soon you'll see it's all for the best.  read more »

From the New York Times:

Lawyers for the city, responding to a request to unseal records of police surveillance leading up to the 2004 Republican convention in New York, say that the documents should remain secret because the news media will “fixate upon and sensationalize them,” hurting the city’s ability to defend itself in lawsuits over mass arrests.

Yeah, well; the City could have considered that before spying on a Martin Luther King Rally endorsed by sitting members of the City Council. One would think this would have been obvious at the time.

It gets better.  read more »

Cross-posted at The Albany Project

I want to put in a word for the Albany Times-Union's outstanding special section in honor of "Sunshine Week," the annual effort, first launched by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, to foster a national dialogue on open government and freedom of information issues (check out the Sunshine Week blog, too). The issue is particularly relevant to New York, as a survey of members of Investigative Reporters and Editors slapped our state's freedom of information laws with a 'D' grade (pdf).

Times-Union Senior Editor Bob Port compares New York to Florida, and finds we've got a lot to learn:

In New York, a citizen who marches into town hall and asks to see the town supervisor's appointment calendar can be greeted by a laugh or a snarl from the staff.

"Make a FOIL request" is frequently the response, a reference to New York's often-cited Freedom of Information Law. A particular document might not be available, depending on the government's mood, for, oh, a couple of months.

In Florida, that same request wouldn't cause laughter. An immediate photocopy is anyone's right -- and all government officials know it.

(More after the flip...)  read more »

One thing I'd like to note, lest it get lost in the ruckus surrounding Shelly Silver and Joe Bruno's Comptroller stupidity: new Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith stood up on the right side here. As described in the Albany Times-Union editorial:

But then there was the Democratic minority leader of the Senate, Malcolm Smith of Queens. He attempted, albeit in vain, to have Martha Stark, the New York City finance commissioner, chosen as comptroller. The Assembly minority leader, James Tedisco of Schenectady, also supported Ms. Stark, who was one of the three entirely qualified candidates shunned by the Legislature.

"We want the people of the state to know that we are not only prepared to govern the way they want us to, but when we make agreements, we are prepared to keep those agreements," said Mr. Smith.

Let his words serve as a battle cry in the war to change the legislative culture.

I've mentioned before that Senator Smith, as Majority Leader-in-Waiting, will be under great scrutiny from progressives.

So credit where credit is due: in the Comptroller battle, at least, Senator Smith sided with reform and with the voters of New York State. Kudos.  read more »

Mayor Bloomberg and Senator Schumer have teamed up to release a report urging changes in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which set stringent new standards for corporate governance and transparency in the wake of the Enron scandal.

The study suggests exempting some non-U.S. companies from the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate-governance regulations. [...]

``Unless we take corrective steps, and soon, we're going to see America's leadership in global financial transactions dwindle, putting a chill on the nation's economy,'' Bloomberg said today during a press conference held at City Hall in New York. The report calls for ``greater clarity and balance to what is now a burdensome and inflexible system of government regulation and enforcement,'' he said. [...]

Bloomberg, a Republican, and Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said efforts to make Sarbanes-Oxley less onerous should go beyond recent changes recommended by the SEC. The New York politicians suggested small companies be permitted to ``opt out'' of provisions of the law as long as they disclose it to shareholders and foreign firms be exempt from certain Sarbanes- Oxley requirements.

The report comes as part of broad wave of attacks on SOX, from corporations, conservative think-tanks, and some politicians (see, for instance, this article by Stephen Bainbridge, a prominent SOX critic). A particularly New York angle is that, supposedly, New York will suffer economically as more and more companies either go private or flee to less-regulated foreign capital markets.

The attempt to blame SOX for companies going private, though, may be completely misguided. And, as this Times editorial points out, companies seek out foreign capital markets for all kinds of reasons - not least of them the fact that underwriting fees in London, for instance, are roughly half the size they are in New York. Moreover, SOX may help American markets maintain a reputation for transparency and investor confidence that will serve them well when Enron-type scandals start to pop up in dodgy foreign markets. [More: Spitzer on SOX]  read more »