Colby Hamilton

In the wake of the Queen Elizabeth II-sized political drama of this week’s “taxis for all” bill signing, the blog grist mills have been working overtime talking about the Bloomberg versus Cuomo battle that happened behind closed doors.

The Daily News’ Ken Lovett has the pièce de résistance on the whole thing out in today’s paper. You can read the article here.

But then Ken posted a blog piece with the tantalizing, if somewhat scandalized, quote-cum-headline: Team Cuomo: "City Is A Creature Of The State"

While it might sound like a monstrous statement of unparalleled power and authority—second only to the governor’s “I am the government” comment—the reality is, well, the state actually has unparalleled power and authority over the city. At least that’s what I remembered from my days as a naïf reporter enrolled in Doug Muzzio’s class at the CUNY j-school.

I called him up to double check. Yup. I was right.

“In the American political system, cities are creatures of the state. It’s known as Dillon's Rule,” Muzzio said.

In truth, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city didn’t have control over the livery cab legislative battle. Sure, Bloomberg had proxies for the issue who carried the Mayor’s water through the state legislature. But Governor Andrew Cuomo was truly always in complete control over the situation. The Mayor didn’t have any power to give up.

“Mike Bloomberg may be the $16 billion gorilla but the bottom line is that, in state politics, Andrew Cuomo is the 800 pound gorilla, and that counts more,” said Muzzio.

Of course, nothing going on between Bloomberg and Cuomo is anything new, Muzzio pointed out by referring me to Mayor Fernando Wood’s call for the city’s secession from the state. Yeah, that was back in 1861.

“This is perennial,” Muzzio said. “With both Cuomo and Bloomberg, you’ve got two guys who’ve got extensive personal and political egos clashing. But in these kinds of clashes, the Governor wins.”

Not that the Mayor seems to take notice. From congestion pricing to first-in-last-out--and now the livery cab bill—Mayor Mike seems to be a glutton for political punishment.

“Part of the problem with the Bloomberg administration, and they often don’t get what they want, is because they don’t get Albany,” Muzzio said. “In the whole budget deal last year, you had the Mayor’s people pissing on the Governor’s people and vice versa, but come on: Why are you going to piss off the Governor?

“There’s a learning curve but it ain’t very steep. And sometimes it dips down.”

The state comptroller is weighing in on the federal fight over a payroll tax extension for workers. Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli is warning that the failure to come to an agreement that would extend the tax holiday could end up costing New Yorkers $7.1 billion in additional taxes next year.

"Partisanship has a $7.1 billion price tag for residents of this state if an agreement can’t be reached to extend the payroll tax cut and that’s simply not what New York families need right now," DiNapoli said in a statement.

And to his point, the Comptroller's office broke down the increase in taxes on various earners:

Wage        Tax Increase

$ 20,000     $400

$ 40,000     $800

$ 60,000     $1,200

$ 80,000     $1,600

$100,000    $2,000

$110,100+  $2,202

WNYC's It's A Free Country and other blogs have been covering the Washington gridlock over this, with lots of great insight into the issue.

In the fallout over disgraced former state Senator Carl Kruger’s resignation, rumors have been swirling in the press over who will be running to fill the seat. On the Democratic side, it is almost sure to be City Councilman Lew Fidler. In conversations with Democratic officials, it was clear that Fidler has the backing of the Brooklyn Democratic Party (there are no primaries in special elections, so the party organization picks its candidate). Adding to this assurance is that labor groups, which back the Working Families Party, are content enough with Fidler that they won’t run someone to his left.

The Councilman has been not-so-subtlety suggesting he’d be gunning for the seat for some time. This is partly because he will be term limited out of his position in the city council in 2013 (he got a new lease on life when the Mayor Bloomberg-backed term limit override allowed him to run for a third term). Fidler has been showered with city council discretionary funds over the years, and has been close to Speaker Christine Quinn. That wasn’t enough, though, to help him secure the most coveted of council chairmanships—finance--back in 2009. The spot went to the Bloomberg-backed Domenic M. Recchia, Jr.

On the Republican side, it’s been reported that David Storobin, a Brooklyn GOP official, is angling for the seat. The Observer reports that he's meeting with key Republican officials today. There are a number of factors that could make this a competitive race—the district is relatively conservative, it voted for Republican Congressman Bob Turner by a 2-1 margin back in September, if the special election is held on the Republican presidential primary date—but Fidler, with his name recognition and fundraising ability, would be a difficult candidate to beat.

Remember yesterday when we were talking about the Martin Act and how it's a huge tool for the AG's office to recoup funds from malfeasant banks? Well, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office just announced a claw back from Bank of New York Mellon for "manipulative trading of auction rate securities." The bank settled with the AG's office and will pay $1.3 million as part of the deal.

And now Schneiderman gets to sound like a financial Robocop:

"Today’s announcement sends a clear message that the manipulative trading of auction rate securities in New York will not be tolerated under any circumstances," Attorney General Schneiderman said. "My office will continue to protect the integrity of NY’s global financial markets at all costs."

Today on "The Capitol Pressroom":

What are next session’s most critical issues? We hear first from the Senate Democrats represented by Senator Neil Breslin.

Former gubernatorial candidate John Faso shares the GOP’s priorities, as well as his take on the future of the State's Republican Party.

Bill Samuels, Founder of the New Roosevelt Institute, is pressing Governor Cuomo to take a lead role in campaign finance reform by pledging not to take corporate campaign donations.

Bob Ward of the Rockefeller Institute on taxation and representation.

ProPublica has a breathlessly delivered article about California's redistrict process that was "surreptitiously" hijacked by Democrats for maximum partisan gain in their new Congressional maps. It’s an instructive tale of how arguably the most extremely “independent” process in the country led—at least at the Congressional level—to even more lopsided lines than before.

"What emerges is a portrait of skilled political professionals armed with modern mapping software and detailed voter information who managed to replicate the results of the smoked-filled rooms of old,” ProPublica tells us. You can read the full article here.

In the end, there’s something violently Californian about the whole thing. Like their solution to taxes—ever increasing mandates but an unwillingness to tax them—the redistricting process appears to be an extreme perfect-as-the-enemy-of-the-good situation: commissioners so thoroughly sanitized of any hint of partisanship they were blind to the partisan manipulations happening right in front of them.

In a ruling by the state’s highest court on December 20th, a major disagreement over one of the biggest tools the state’s Attorney General has in regulating Wall Street. In a unanimous decision, the Court of Appeals ruled that New York’s Martin Law didn’t preempt private individuals from going after Wall Street firms that mismanaged or defrauded investors.

In a statement, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office called the decision "an important recognition that private lawsuits brought by harmed investors are compatible with our office's public enforcement role under the Martin Act."

The New York Law Review has a detailed (and technical) breakdown of the Martin Law’s and the history of this issue.

But for those not plugged into the securities industry, the Martins Law is a Depression Era law unique to New York, that allows the state’s Attorney General broad powers to go after firms that swindled investors. In light of the 2007 Wall Street-created meltdown of the economy, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has taken the baton passed down from former AG Eliot Spitzer to use the previously unused law to go after big Wall Street firms.

The Court of Appeals decision settles a disagreement over how the Martin Act impacts private investors’ attempts to recoup funds they believe were inappropriately lost. Some state and federal courts had ruled that the act preempts investors from seeking damages because the facts of the case could be used by the Attorney General to make his or her own case.

Now, the two are separated and can happen concurrently: the Attorney General’s office can sue a firm for fraud and investors can also try to get back some of the money they invested, using the same facts to build their separate cases. No longer does the AG’s office have sole domain over pursuing firms thanks to the Martin Act.

This is partly what Queens Assemblyman Rory Lancman has been pushing for with a bi-partisan bill he has cosponsored with State Senator Tom Libous of Binghamton.

As a new Quinnipiac poll says, support for an independent commission to try new political boundaries is on the rise. More than half--52 percent--of those polled said said it was time for the Legislature to hand over the line drawing to someone else.

“Drawing new legislative and congressional district lines will be high on Albany’s 2012 agenda. Quinnipiac University has been tracking this sleeper issue for some time and we see support for an independent commission to draw the lines is edging up,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, in the report. Carroll noted that 56 percent of those polled believed that an independent commission should be devoid of legislators.

You can see what some non-partisan groups are proposing for maps here.

Lastly, the poll shows that more than two-thirds of those polled support Las Vegas-style casinos in New York.

New York voters are less sure when it comes to hydrofracking. The drilling process is supported by 44 percent of those polled, while 45 percent are opposed to it. New York City and upstate voters are less in favor of bringing hydrofracking to New York--49 and 48 percent respectively--while 53 percent of suburban voters support drilling.

“Another big 2012 issue – hydro-fracking – has New Yorkers split right down the middle.  Overwhelmingly, voters think it would produce jobs. A smaller majority worries that it would damage the environment,” Carroll said.

The poll surveyed 1,143 registered voters and has a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percentage points.

JCOPE Chair Janet DiFiore (Karen DeWitt / New York Public Radio)

That's pretty much the way today's first public JCOPE meeting went. You can review the agenda here. For the first 15 minutes, the members of the commission went around introducing themselves. For the public's benefit, I presume, as they've already met in private so you'd guess they'd have gotten that out of the way.

For the remaining half hour the commission was briefed by the chair of the earlier ethics commission incarnation, Barry Ginsberg, on the host of things the new commission needed to take care of.

"We have an enormous amount of work ahead of us," said JCOPE Chair Janet DiFiore. What that consisted of--for the public portion of the meeting at least--was the Chair stating the need to find an executive director, and the commissioners giving her the green light to search for that person.

Then Ginsberg ran down the outstanding issues that JCOPE needed to deal with, including the development of guidelines for per diem payments to commissioners, the review of current (rather, the former) ethics commission's rules that are on the books, and the commission's own ethics and conflicts of interest guidelines.

And when they were done discussing the seemingly most basic organizational needs of the commission, DiFiore asked for the commission to adjourn their public meeting so they could be their executive, behind-closed-doors meeting.

The Associated Press' Michael Gormley then asked why the commission felt the need to go into special executive, non-public session--what was the specific reason. DiFiore essentially told Gormley, "Because I said so."

As we all know there is an exemption in the [open meetings] law. I think all of us would agree, given the nature of the work here, we should endeavor to do as much of our work in open view and have the public be able to tune in and hear what we’re thinking, and talking about and working on. But there are some matters that requires confidentiality and I think that as we go we will figure out what those matters are. Today, the matters that are on our agendas, that we will discuss in executive and closed session meeting, I think are appropriate. Any further discussion?

This isn't to say that DiFiore doesn't have a point. JCOPE definitely needs time to discuss highly sensitive matters behind closed doors. This is probably one of those times, but without knowing some, even slightly more specific details, we'll never have a sense as to whether going into special private session is necessary. And for an ethics panel, that becomes a concern.

Still, DiFiore got approval from the board to move the session into private, with the exception of Ravi Batra, who voted against going in to executive session. He did not vocalize why he was against going behind closed doors.

Meanwhile, a State Senator resigned today ahead of pleading guilty to bribery charges that could land him in jail for up to 20 years. Perhaps JCOPE's private conversations can help keep other legislatures on a more honest track.

As always, State of Politics and YNN host Liz Benjamin has a great rundown of Kruger's career. Read it here.

Carl Kruger Resignation Letter

State officials made their final pitches to the Federal judge in charge of deciding when the state's primary date could be next year. Judge Gary Sharpe has said he'll make a decision by next week.

The arguments weren't new from those proposing that the state return its primary election to the pre-1974 June date. Attorney General Eric Schniederman's office put a cover letter on arguments from Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and the state's bipartisan Election Commissioners Association that June was superior to the August date favored by Senate (and other) Republicans.

The AG's office stated that it wasn't specifically arguing for a June date, but the direction of its statements make it clear they are clearly on the side of the June proponents:

The Governor's office just announced that he'll be giving the 2012 State of the State address on Wednesday, January 4 at 1:30 pm. The address will be given in the Empire State Plaza Convention Center. Interested in going, read on:

A new report from the Rockefeller Institute at the University of Albany concludes what has been an open secret: downstate communities, including New York City, get back less in state spending than they put in in taxes.

The entire report is below, but here are the important numbers during the 2009-2010 budge cycle:

• New York City pays 45 percent of the state's tax other revenue burden. We receive back only 40 percent of the state's expenditures.
• Downstate suburbs pay 23.6 percent of the tax burden, but only receive 18 percent of the state's funding.
• By comparison, out of the remaining 48 counties--not including the Capital Region--in the state paid 24 percent of the state's taxes, yet received 35 percent of the state's dollars.
• And in the Capital Region--Albany, Rensselaer, Saratoga and Schenectady counties--those communities paid 4 percent of the state's tax share, but received nearly double that much back at 7 percent.

While this will hopefully give comfort and fodder to those pushing back on the idea that New York City is gobbling up disproportionate amounts of the state's resources, it's also worth looking at this in the context of redistricting.

I posted a lengthy piece digging in to downstate redistricting maps proposed by Common Cause. Their maps would work, among other things, to balance out the concentration of State Senate seats so New York City was better represented in that chamber. As the Rockefeller Institute shows, those political realities--who represents where--make a difference.

Today on "The Capitol Pressroom":

If Spitzer was the luv guv, could Cuomo be the beluved guv? Quinnipiac pollster Maurice Carroll joins Susan with his latest survey of registered voters which gives an early Christmas present to Governor Cuomo. The highest approval ratings of his tenure: 68 to 17 percent of voters approve of the job the Governor is doing. The Governor even has 63% approval among the GOP. Can it be sustained?

Advocates for the developmentally disabled are watching the Governor like a hawk this week waiting to see if he’ll sign legislation to create an abuse prevention notification system. Joining us will be the sponsor of the legislation in Assembly (A8330), Harvey Weisenberg and Bridgit Burke, an Associate Clinical Professor & Director of the Civil Rights and Disabilities Law Clinic at Albany Law School.

Calling all artistes! The lines that designate voting districts in the state have been given two thumbs down by such notable critics as Common Cause, so the critics have turned the tables, developing an on-line mapping tool for people like you to give it a shot. At the same time, the group has come up with its own version of maps, “drawn according to good government principles”. Common Cause Executive Director Susan Lerner shows off her collection.

The majority of New York voters seem to think Governor Andrew Cuomo can do no wrong. According to a new Quinnipiac University poll, the Governor's approval rating stands at 68 percent--the highest he's scored with Quinnipiac during his first year in office.

And this despite 40 percent of voters believing the recent tax reform package engineered by Cuomo was indeed a tax increase. It was a tax decrease for 28 percent of those polled, a more than a third said they weren't sure. When asked how they thought it would affect their taxes, 43 percent also said they were unsure.

“Whatever they think about the tax deal, New Yorkers still love their governor. Andrew Cuomo’s job approval hits a new high, higher than we’ve seen since the post-9/11 approval ratings for Gov. George Pataki,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, in the report.“Voters like Gov. Cuomo as a person 65 – 13 percent and they like his policies."

And this despite the fact that nearly half of those polled--47 percent--believe the Governor did not keep his promise to not raise taxes. Additionally, 42 – 23 percent, with 35 percent undecided, believe Cuomo broke his promise to end government by "three men in a room."

“That transparent government that Gov. Cuomo promised? Opaque is more like it. A lot of voters think that, in the quickie tax deal, Cuomo broke his promise to end Albany’s tradition of ‘three men in a room,'" Carroll said.

Yet, despite all this, 63 percent of those polled gave Cuomo either an "A" or a "B" as a grade on his first year as Governor.

The good-government group, and regular critic of New York’s legislature-led redistricting process, todayunveiled its proposed maps for both the state legislature and Congress. The lines were drawn wholly divorced from the current maps and who the representatives are, according to Common Cause. They say they began with the most basic geographic boundaries—towns, cities and county lines—before adding demographic data to create what they say are non-partisan alternatives to gerrymandered districts.

“We have been outspoken about the problems with the current process, which is characterized by partisanship and political self-interest,” said Common Cause’s executive director Susan Lerner during a conference call. “Our goal has been to show that there is no practical impediment—it’s only a political one—to achieving fair, non-politicized district maps.”

Common Cause’s maps were released in partnership with Newsday, and the interactive map database “U Map NY” is located here.

Let’s take a look at these by legislative level, and keep it focused on the city.

The State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's office warned again today that New York's tax collection efforts continue to lag behind projections. According to DiNapoli, the state is nearly $72 million behind estimates.

“Financial sector downsizing, as well as lower profits and bonuses on Wall Street, may result in lower than expected state revenues over the next several months," the Comptroller said in a statement. "The Personal Income Tax (PIT) actions taken by the governor and the Legislature this month should reduce projected deficits in the near-term, but balancing next year’s budget will again be a struggle, and current conditions add risk to the upcoming state budget."

DiNapoli said his office was projected lower tax returns for the next two years. Governor Andrew Cuomo's office had projecting a shortfall of $350 million for the current fiscal year, and an additional shortfall of as much as $3.5 billion next year. The tax reform package put together earlier this month reduced the estimated shortfall by $1.9 billion.

By JENNIFER PELTZ
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) - A political operative convicted of bamboozling Mayor Michael Bloomberg out of hundreds of thousands of dollars was sentenced to prison Monday un a case that brought the billionaire politician to the witness stand and gave the public a behind-the-scenes look at his campaign and City Hall.

John Haggerty agreed to pay $750,000 in restitution to Bloomberg in addition to his prison term of 1 1/3 to 4 years.

Haggerty, a veteran Republican campaign consultant, was convicted in October after a trial that jurors called a crash course in the workings of politics. Besides the business-mogul-turned-mayor, the case drew in the state's third-largest political party and featured a coterie of Bloomberg insiders sketching their roles in his political, philanthropic and business affairs.

Updated with additional statements below.

As the New York Times reported today, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has thrown his support behind the contentious living wage bill sitting stalled in the City Council. In a letter to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio said the legislation was need because "we have not done enough to grow the prospects of all New Yorkers."

"Our city is in the midst of a prolonged economic crisis that has battered the middle class, driven down wages and led to unacceptably high rates of unemployment. Underlying these problems is a rising income inequality that threatens our social fabric and economic future," de Blasio said in the letter. "New York City must move aggressively to address rising income inequality—and I firmly believe that the Living Wage bill represents one of the most immediate and important steps our City can take to do this."

The move puts de Blasio on firm ground in the debate over the bill--and on the side of labor, whose backing he courts in the coming mayoral race--while further boxing in Speaker Quinn, who has not taken a position on the bill. However, the legislation cannot move to the floor without her consent, where it will likely pass. The Speaker has positioned herself as the candidate friendly to business interests in the city, which observers believe are pressuring her to keep the bill from becoming law.

Political consultant Michael Tobman, of the New York City-based firm Hudson TG, saw the letter reflecting three current political realities in the early stages of the 2013 mayoral battle.