Syndicated Column
Taking a page from Letterman, here’s my top ten
by Alan Chartock

Here are the top ten reasons to feel bad about state government here in New York.
No. 10. Lack of transparency. The government has developed a language of its own designed to keep the foreigners [the people] out. Because of this, it has done an admirable job of dumbing down the electorate. The less people know, the less they will participate. You can be sure of one thing: if the folks who are running things wanted you to understand what they were doing, they’d find a way to let you know what was up. The act of reading the New York State budget is an exercise in frustration for any citizen. Not only is it huge, but it leaves out crucial information.
No. 9. Partisanship. If you’re a Republican in the Assembly or a Democrat in the Senate, your ideas and efforts are not worth very much. The system reminds me of the old Soviet Union where party discipline was everything. Even the United States Congress is a paragon of decency by comparison. There, Democrats and Republicans work together all the time to craft legislation. You can still have responsible party government and everyone can be valued for what they do.
No. 8. [Follows No. 9] It isn’t fair that people who live in a district that is represented by a member of a minority party get less back for their tax dollars than those who just happen to live in a district represented by a majority party legislator.
No. 7. The governor is fighting with the Legislature. It happened with Cuomo and it’s happening in spades with Pataki. It seems to me that this has to come back to the governor. He’s the leader.
When I came to Albany, there was a restaurant called Joe’s. It’s long gone now, but then it was the best thing about the city. You’d go in there and see Nelson Rockefeller and his top colleagues in the Legislature eating and talking and schmoozing. It is possible for a governor to see top legislators as allies and not just as pain-in-the-butt foes.
No. 6. The staffs have too much responsibility. In New York, work that could and should be done by bright legislators and governors is delegated to staff when it would be far more appropriate to see everyone roll up their sleeves pitch in. There are many other states where the political culture allows this to happen. Not here, and we are all the poorer for it.
No. 5. The media does a terrible job of covering state government. That’s why so few people know anything. The editors of the big New York papers see Albany as some far distant place that it costs a lot of money to cover. Even the great New York Times sees the Capitol as a place to send bright political novices to earn the spurs and/or bones before they move on to bigger and better things. The whole concept of a democracy is that people will make decisions based on good information. Not here. [See No. 10.]
No. 4. The government is very part time. The Legislature meets for less than half a year and then only a few days a week. The incumbent governor doesn’t even want to live in Albany and commutes at state expense to the Capitol. At least the last guy lived here. For what we pay, we ought to get a lot more back. Legislators will tell you that they work hard in their districts and many of them do, but many of them don’t – and when they do work, it is on something more personally lucrative than serving the government.
No. 3. The present administration has been politicizing the agencies of government to the point that the top decision makers, who should be looking out for the health and transportation and economic development needs of the state, are instead looking over their shoulders to make sure they have not offended the latest partisan dictates of the people in charge. The Pataki administration has put so many new wrinkles on this that they are now the all-time champs at making good people in the agencies crazy. Please see my earlier remarks about the communists in the old Soviet Union.
No. 2. Everyone knows that much of our educational system is broken and needs to be fixed. The courts and the experts have all said so. Let’s use our money wisely. When possible, school districts should be combined. And it goes beyond primary and secondary education. The present people in the governor’s office have taken the great State University of New York where I teach and attempted to turn it into a political patronage mill, hiring hack lawyers and politicians with little or no educational credentials to fill vacancies for college presidents and even some of the very top university jobs. They also have taken to firing or forcing out talented academic leaders who will not follow their agenda.
No. 1. They are taxing the people to death and that money will be spent in some questionable ways. We can pay for things that we need but with some of these folks, it really all comes down to money for themselves and their cronies.

- posted by Alan @ 2/09/2004 08:11:00 PM