EDITORIAL ROUNDUP

April 4 Dunkirk Evening Observer (N.Y.) Limiting press access

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie didn’t say much during Sunshine Week, a yearly commemoration each March of open government and freedom of information.

“New Yorkers deserve a government that works for them and does so in an open and transparent fashion,” the Brooklyn Democrat said in a news release.

That’s more than he said in defense of a three-year-old Assembly policy limiting reporters’ access to the state Assembly chambers and the areas surrounding the chambers which used to be a good place for reporters to get information from Assembly members and their staff.

Heastie and his fellow Democrats were silent after voting down a Republican effort to restore press access to pre-pandenic levels. Not one Democrat gave a reason why access should be limited. The silence was, in our opinion, deafening.

For years reporters had access to legislators in the state Capitol chambers as long as they didn’t interrupt the work of the Senate or Assembly. Often, that meant impromptu queston-and-answer sessions outside some influential legislators’ offices because that was the best way for reporters to be able to ask questions when those legislators didn’t return phone calls. Of course, Heastie’s office was a popular place for the press since that was the best way to ask questions of the Assembly speaker.

When COVID-19 hit, access was limited. That made some sense at a time when the full Assembly or Senate couldn’t be in the chamber at one time under rules meant to allow lawmakers to be socially distant from each other. When the Assembly chamber reopened to the public, reporters have been limited to seats in the back of the chamber and in front of its rostrum. But now, with natural immunity and vaccines available, there is no reason for COVID-19 limitations on the press to remain. But remain they do, Republicans recently introduced changes to the Assembly’s rules that would have restored reporters’ access to the Assembly chamber and areas near the chamber, but they were defeated in a party line vote.

His actions, and those of his fellow Democrats, show it’s easier to pay lip service to open government than it is to actually provide open government.

April 3 New York Post

Cheer for budget delay

With budget talks between Gov. Kathy Hochul, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and their staffs not remotely close to agreement as of the April 1 deadline, New York’s leaders on Monday agreed to short-term “extender” legislation to keep paychecks going out to state employees and so on.

Good — on the late budget, anyway. The governor in particular is right to hold firm on several of her key proposals. Indeed, if her legislative “partners” keep holding out, she should start insisting that some of them be part of future extenders.

As it stands, the “gang of three” (formerly “three men in a room,” now two women and one man, though Senate No. 2 Mike Gianaris likely counts as at least half another decision-maker) is by all accounts still at loggerheads on just two issues without deeply engaging on many others.

Those two are: housing and Hochul’s proposed fix to the no-bail law.

On no-bail, she absolutely needs to stick to her guns. She simply wants a change that clarifies to judges that it’s absolutely fine to order remand (bail or jail) when the law otherwise allows it.

Too many jurists are reading the “least restrictive” language (plus some remarks by a single legislator back in 2019) as ordering them to spring perps who clearly shouldn’t be on the streets.

On housing, there’s likely room for some compromise. Lawmakers should agree to at least some no-strings-attached extension of the city’s 421-a tax break, which is responsible for most of the affordable housing built over the last decade or two.

But Hochul’s aggressive zoning proposals (and the Legislature’s “let’s just add more subsidies” counteroffer) likely need more discussion.

And all that leaves a lot to work out. It’d be utterly unconscionable for the Legislature to fully block the gov’s plan to let charter schools expand in New York City, but perhaps they can agree to “lift the cap” by a few dozen, rather than about 100, this year — then seek community (as opposed to special-interest) input over the next year.

Plus, they need to find some way to add funds for the MTA. We’re not fans of either side’s ideas; maybe a simple one-year state grant is the best compromise.

In the meantime, a few extra weeks of not increasing state spending is already a win for the people of New York.