Monday morning began as unfortunately many mornings began
this session with more indictments of legislators – in the Senate, once again. There ensued several local television appearances
to discuss corruption and reform. As
session began, there was clearly nothing else on the legislative agenda except
the chilling effect of more corruption charges.
On Tuesday morning, NYPIRG held a press conference and released
a report finding over 100,000 violations of NYS campaign finance laws in
the past two years, and pointing out that the NYC Campaign Finance Board has
been more responsive in responding to violations than has the state Board of
Elections. The report was released on Tuesday
to counteract the Senate
Republican’s “public” hearing that day, which was sham attempt by the
Senate Republicans to discredit the NYC’s public financing system, the system
upon which the Fair Elections legislation is based. All of
the good government groups participated in the press conference with a united
message for a need for comprehensive campaign finance reform, including
all of the reforms for which the league has lobbied in past decades. The good government then groups walked en
mass from the LOB to the capitol to attend and listen to what was supposed to
be a public hearing. Since the
invitation was issued as a public hearing, we clearly anticipated that the public
would be allowed to attend. As we
approached capitol 124 – which is where many standing committee hearings are
held, but is not where public hearings are usually heard – we were told that
the room was at capacity and the door was shut in our faces. Even as people exited the hearing, no one
else was allowed in, as is usually the case with public hearings at
capacity.
Citizen Action, MoveOn, and Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Albany
had organized a rally to show support of public financing and protest the
influence of big money in politics. The
rally was planned to be a silent protest.
Only after it was established that no one could get into the “public”
hearing did the crowd outside become loud.
Chants of “let the public in” could be heard throughout the capitol and,
we are told, within the meeting room. When
a window was opened inside the hearing room, protesters
went outside to the open window, tossed dollar bills into the window and
stage-whispered questions and comments like “How much does it cost?”
Several of the good government groups, including the League,
sent
a letter to the NYS Committee on Open Government, urging the committee the
investigate the Senate’s breach of the Open Meetings law and to formally
censure the Senate Elections Committee for shutting on the public on
Tuesday. The Committee on Open
Government ruled that the senate was indeed in violation of the Open Meetings
law, that the meeting should have been moved to a larger room, and that the
crowd could have been told to leave if they had then disrupted the hearing.
Later on Tuesday afternoon, Speaker Silver’s Fair Elections
Act passed in the assembly, with a vote of 88-50.
Women’s Equality Push
Heats Up
Some more exciting news this week is that a new media
campaign for WEA was launched Tuesday – Check it
out!
Legislative meetings on the WEA have been taking place at a
furious pace and we will be asking leagues to come to a rally day for Women’s
Equality on June 4th. Busses to Albany will be provided around the
state. It will be a major day, with celebrities
and music, and voices raised to demand equality – so save the date! We’ll be sending out more details as we get
closer to the date. We hope to have a
huge league presence at the rally!
