Posted on 03/16/2012 4:13:32 PM PDT by SJackson
Governor Cuomo caved.
Our lawmakers lied.
After more than a year of fresh air in Albany — led by a governor who passed gay marriage, reformed ethics laws and capped property taxes — the state capitol again stinks.
After midnight on Thursday, and behind closed doors, the proverbial three men in a room — Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos — cut a deal carving legislative election districts that virtually assures the lawmakers who approved it will be running things for years.
Instead of forming an independent panel to create districts that actually represent the people who live there, lawmakers created districts to keep themselves in office.
Not only is this an example of backroom politics at its worst, it's an example of outright lying.
Legislators had pledged — to former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, and thus to us — to back an independent redistricting panel.
On Thursday, most of them — with the notable local exceptions of Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston, and Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt, R-C-Greenwood Lake — went back on their word.
So did Cuomo.
When he was campaigning for governor, he vowed to "veto any redistricting plan in 2012 that reflects partisan gerrymandering."
He also vowed — right here in Middletown Thrall Library, and across the state — to "clean up Albany."
Yet in an apparent deal to win pension reform, Cuomo broke his pledge and let the legislators create their own fiefdoms.
In exchange, the lawmakers agreed to support a constitutional amendment to form a bipartisan redistricting commission the next time redistricting is mandated after the 2020 census. That's 2020.
You're excused if you're suspicious that the lawmakers who just broke their promises to us will somehow break those promises again. After all, Cuomo — who broke his word — won't be around to hold them to it.
But we will. And we don't have to wait until 2020.
Will we have the guts to do what we should have done the last election, when the legislators brought state government to a halt with their petty power plays?
Will we have the guts to vote them out of office?
After all, those lawmakers just created safe districts to assure re-election.
That's why, if you care that our leaders broke their promises to us, if you're sick of backroom politics, if you want to try and keep Albany honest, we really have only one course of action.
We can vote out the lawmakers who voted for this sleazy deal.
If not, we really don't have a right to blame Albany for anything.
We can only blame ourselves.
We can only blame ourselves, got that right.
Thanks SJackson. Gerrymanderer ping.
Wow, politicians lying and cutting deals by candle light in the dark of night!!
Who would EVER imagine such a thing!!???
/sarc
Huh, and I thought I read yesterday that Israel was safe and it was because of that that Ackerman is throwing in the towel.
oh well, I may have this mixed up.
he’s right, I guess, but NY State is a lost cause.
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