Commentary: Enjoy your vacation, Albany, while you can

Long Island Business News, Jun 29, 2007 by Jerry Kremer

The members of the state Legislature sailed home last week for a brief respite, leaving behind them a wake of debris that will take a long time to clean up.

The list of matters to be dealt with is a fairly long one. Eventually, some of these issues will be resolved, and some will be deferred to another day or year. No matter when members return, though, the unsolved problems will be waiting, and in some cases festering.

It's impossible to say which challenge is most important, but there are countless seen and unseen headaches lurking in the capitol's shadows.

In almost every corner of the state, there is a group of angry state Supreme Court judges, who haven't received so much as a cost- of-living raise in almost 10 years. The stalemate over judge's salaries is due to the fact that, for good or bad, the Legislature has always tied judge's pay to legislators' pay. In some years, the Legislature has been afraid to raise its salaries for fears of voter retribution; in others, sitting governors have sent a message that they would not support new money for either group.

This year, Gov. Eliot Spitzer has balked at any future pay raise for legislators unless it is linked to one of his pet projects, campaign finance reform. The session ended without any reform package, and the judges lost out, along with the legislators.

Judges are not a powerful lobby, compared to teachers and health- care unions. But judges can inflict a lot of pain on the Legislature, similar to what they did by supporting former Gov. George Pataki in his battles with the Assembly and Senate.

One of the least-visible entities to be affected by legislative non-action is the state's Public Service Commission. The PSC deals with energy policy, rate increases for utilities and other important (if unseen) quality-of-life issues; but few people have every heard of the PSC, unless they have dealings with this all-powerful body.

It seems there has been a vacancy for the position of PSC chair, a position filled by the governor, all year. In February, Spitzer announced his designee and sent it to the state Senate for confirmation, but as an outgrowth of the friction between the governor and the Senate leadership, the Senate took no action.

Every state needs a working PSC to deal with oversight of utility companies, rate increases and emergencies such as the 2006 Queens blackout. New York's commission consists of four commissioners appointed by Pataki, and no one appears willing to follow the wishes of a new governor from a different political party.

One of the most contentious headaches awaiting the return of the two houses is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal for so- called "congestion pricing." Bloomberg wants to tax every truck and car that drives into any part of Manhattan south of 86th Street during certain hours; the mayor views this as a way to cut down congestion and raise federal money for mass transit initiatives.

The mayor has won the support of many city politicians and preliminary support from the governor, but by and large, these endorsements mean nothing. Suburban legislators are a powerful voting bloc and are not expected to support anything that looks like a tax on their constituents.

Speaker Sheldon Silver has balked at getting on Bloomberg's bandwagon, and without Silver's support this train doesn't leave the station. Considering that a group of state legislators from the city will also oppose the plan, the mayor may wind up with nothing more than a spirited debate.

Albany is considered a pretty warm place in the summer. But when the legislators come back for the next round, it will be even hotter inside.