Budget Gains for Fish and Farms, Not Judges (NY)

ALBANY, April 4 — New York State is getting its first fish pathologist. A million dollars is going to jump-start the effort to provide cellphone service along a major highway in the Adirondacks where a Brooklyn man died, unable to get a signal. And the state’s dairy farmers will get $30 million to help them recover from a bad year.

There are eight million stories buried in Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s first state budget, which was passed last weekend as the governor squared off with Republicans in the State Senate over education aid to suburban districts and with the health care workers’ union and a hospital association over his plans to reduce Medicaid spending.

The health care battle was especially fierce, with multimillion-dollar ad campaigns on both sides. Mr. Spitzer used half a million dollars of his own money, in addition to campaign funds, on his television ads, an aide said.

While Senate Republicans have been vociferously claiming victory, the governor toured the state proclaiming that he was the winner of his first budget battle. During a stop in Chili, a suburb of Rochester, on Wednesday, the governor was asked about Senator Joseph L. Bruno’s recent comments suggesting that he was the big winner.

“The only person I know who should be gloating is the taxpayer in the state of New York, because I won on every issue,” Mr. Spitzer said. “If he’s gloating, he misunderstands what happened. Health care reform, education reform,...”

State Senator Elizabeth Little, a Republican who represents the area, said in a statement: “The goal is to provide service that is fully funded by a cellphone carrier, not requiring support from the state. But given the existing state policy that restricts the height of cellphone towers in the Adirondacks, a state subsidy may be appropriate.”

Is there a reason that the cellphone towers can't be mounted on the fire watchtowers scattered through the Adirondacks?

Are they anywhere near I-87?

As for the budget, the steamroller got steamrolled. Silver steamrolled him on charter schools, limiting the number of new schools and including an odious unionization provision if the schools get too big. Bruno and the Health Care Union steamrolled him on hospital funding. And he got steamrolled on the whole process itself, keeping negotiations behind closed doors as in the old days.

New Yorkers didn't win with this budget.

“State Senator Elizabeth Little, a Republican who represents the area, said in a statement: “The goal is to provide service that is fully funded by a cellphone carrier, not requiring support from the state. But given the existing state policy that restricts the height of cellphone towers in the Adirondacks, a state subsidy may be appropriate.””

I can see Betty Little’s office out of my window as I type this. She’s been a good Senator. The environmentalists are fighting cell phone towers anywhere in the Adirondack Park. The talk is now centered around towers that look like trees, but the tree huggers want them so short that they may not work. We used to have phone boxes, but those were taken down probably because use was infrequent.

I don’t know a precise answer to your question about installing them on fire watchtowers.

Something has to be done. The Northway is the only major route other than Rt. 9. It is beautiful, but long and lonely with exits few and far between...and obviously not a good place to be in an emergency.

Sidenote: The Northway runs through my old backyard. We had to move our house down the hill when it was built. I remember riding my bike on it before it opened.

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