NEW YORK — Recovery of money from long-negotiated and overbilled contracts. The elimination of Madison Square Garden’s tax-exempt status. A hike in the minimum wage.

These are among the top-rated proposals on the People’s Budget NYC website, which was created by the city comptroller's office. None of those proposals, it should be noted, has received as many votes as the one put forth by Bruce Carmel, an advocate for adult literacy.

“For less than $1,000 per student,” Carmel’s suggestion reads, “adult literacy programs help people become more prepared for the workforce; parents can better help their children in school; young adults get ready for careers and college.”

The proposal earned 329 votes and became the site’s most popular suggestion. “It makes me feel heard,” Carmel, a member of the Coalition for Adult Literacy, said of the site.

The goal of the People’s Budget is to increase engagement by citizens in the annual allocation of city funds that critics of the process have long said has been held hostage by the needlessly drawn-out "budget dance" between the mayor and City Council.

Comptroller John Liu, who plans to share three of most popular ideas from the site at a hearing of the City Council's finance committee hearing today, called the budget dance "a huge distraction and a waste of resources."

"Every February, Mayor Bloomberg gets up and announces all these budget cuts," said the Democratic mayoral candidate, before summoning his own dancing metaphors. "Then you have Council members joining in the tango about all these complaints about how the cuts are going to be draconian, then we've got people camped out outside the steps of City hall doing the foxtrot as members come before City Hall.

"Then after months of this happening, the mayor and the speaker waltz in and announce that most of these cuts are not going to be necessary. It's a waste of time."

As this year's budget season winds down — the city's 2014 fiscal year begins July 1 — alternatives like the People's Budget and participatory budgeting are drawing increased attention. But it is unclear how they can make the budget dance go the way of the Macarena and Batusi.

What is clear, however, is that whoever takes over from Mayor Michael Bloomberg in January might have a shot at getting rid of it. And many of them have said they would try.

DANCING TOGETHER, OR NOT AT ALL

Of course, there are some people who reject the idea of the existence of a "budget dance" altogether.

"There is no budget dance," Brooklyn Councilman Domenic Recchia, who plays a key role in the budget negotiations as the chair of the finance committee, said. "It's negotiations. The mayor puts out his budget, we respond."

Like Liu, critics of the budget process say much of the negotiations between the mayor and City Council are spent debating line items that are cut only to be put back at the last minute.

This year, Bloomberg has proposed a $70 billion budget which, as in previous years, includes cuts to services including extended child care programs, at least 20 firehouses and library hours.

Those programs are typically what are at stake in the "budget dance."

Recchia has sat through hours of testimony from the leaders of the city's agencies and questions from his fellow members. For him, the back-and-forth between the Council and the administration is a natural part of the process.

"Everybody says they're going to support things," he said, "but when you get in a closed room you've got to make tough decisions. This is how much money you have; how do you want to spend it?"

Maria Doulis, director of city studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, called the budget dance a real but breakable habit.

She said services might be less vulnerable to cuts if the city took on larger-ticket budget busters, but there hasn't been a concerted effort to do so. Some of the obstacles include the city's health insurance obligations and its ongoing pension-related woes.

Between pension contributions, health benefits for retirees and debt service for capital projects, Doulis estimated that the budget for Fiscal Year 2015 is on track to increase to $17.8 billion from $8.5 billion in 2005 — an 8 percent spike. These legacy costs are just the tip of the iceberg.

Two week ago, the city's Independent Budget Office reported that health and related benefit costs would increase by $136 million in 2014 for a total of just over $5 billion

The IBO also reported that while growth in pension costs have slowed down considerably, the Bloomberg administration still expects the city’s contributions to grow to $8.7 billion in 2017.

On top of the city’s financial commitments to its employees, the mayor’s office has also been unable to settle its long-standing negotiations with labor groups that have worked without contracts, some for as long as five years.

The city estimates that back pay for workers could be as high as $8 billion dollars.

ALTERNATIVES TO THE DANCE?

Efforts like The People's Budget and participatory budgeting aim to give New Yorkers some say in how at least some of the money in the budget is spent.

Under participatory budgeting, residents of certain Council districts are allowed to vote on how to allocate their member's discretionary funds toward capital projects. Eight Council districts experimented with it this year, with more than 13,000 residents casting votes.

While the People’s Budget is the first time that crowdsourcing tools have been used to look at a budget as large as New York City’s, Deputy Comptroller Ari Hoffnung said "it's very much in the spirit of participatory budgeting."

Since April, the comptroller's site has invited New Yorkers to submit their own ideas for what the mayor and City Council should focus on in the 2014 fiscal year budget.

The city's comptroller's office proposed 75 ideas; the site now has 132 suggestions and more than 1,200 users who have voted 10,000 times.

Along with the proposal on adult literacy programs, Liu will present the other two winning suggestions: the extension of library hours and the recovery of $163 million from Hewlett Packard for an 8-year-old, over-billed contract.

Liu denied the website is motivated by his candidacy for mayor, and that it's his job as comptroller to look out for taxpayers as the new budget rolls around.

"We've already grown the number of people cognizant of the budget," Liu said. "The more people are aware, the easier it will be to obviate the budget dance."

ENDING THE BUDGET DANCE

Truly ending the budget dance, however, will likely have to wait until the next administration takes office.

During a mayoral forum on early childhood education in May, all of the candidates there said they were committed to getting rid of the budget dance.

"We don't engage in it," City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said of the budget dance, describing the Council as an unwilling partner. "It's the reality."

Quinn said that every mayor, whether it was David Dinkins or Rudy Giuliani, cuts programs from the City Council budget, even in years with revenue surpluses.

"Really changing that and making the city budget of New York what it should be — a statement of what our priorities are — that has to come from the mayor," she said, "and let me tell you, I've been frustrated and infuriated by this process my entire career."

De Blasio also bemoaned the dance and asked for a fuller public debate about the budget.

Thompson, who spoke out again retroactive pay during his 2005 bid for mayor, described the budget dance as unbelievable and said that he would "work collaboratively on raises," but declined to go into specifics.

Independence Party candidate and former Democratic Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión tried to take credit for terming the budget process "kabuki," arguing in favor of baselining many of the budget items often thrown about during budget talks, including library funding and early education programs.

Stephanie Gendell of the Citizens' Committee for Children was at the mayoral forum when the candidates announced their opposition to the budget dance, which was hosted by the Campaign for Children in May.

A coalition of child care advocacy and provider organizations, the campaign is one of a handful of groups planning to protest budget cuts outside City Hall today.

"The problem with the budget dance is that at the end of the dance you get what you started with," she said, explaining that the goal should be an expansion of early childhood services and not the preservation of more than $130 million in cuts that mayor proposed this year.

The fact that they have to go through it all over again after the Council restored $150 million in 2012 is frustrating, Gendell said.

"In some ways, last year was more shock and awe, she said. "Now it’s more déjà vu."

Gendell said that he hopes the mayoral candidates are true to their word, and that a combination of baselining as well as a new mayor might mean more financial stability for organizations like hers and bring about the end of the budget dance.

"If this really is the last year," she said, "that would really be incredible."

ALBANY, N.Y. — Allegations that former Assemblyman Vito Lopez routinely groped and propositioned young female staff members in his employ, detailed in a report released earlier this month, disturbed New Yorkers and contributed to his political downfall.

But one incident alleged by a female employee was perhaps most striking for another reason: It took place back in November 2010.

The legislative aide to Lopez told investigators that she had been on the job less than six months when her new boss began to touch her foot with his under a table during dinner with staff. "Sexual in nature" was how she described it in the report.

In the days after Lopez proclaimed his innocence and resigned, some questioned how, if the allegations were true, he had been allowed to hire so many women and subject them to such treatment for so long.

Several lawmakers, longtime Albany political operatives and former staffers argue that the reason is clear: for too long there has been a “boys' club” atmosphere in the capitol where women are pressured to go along to get along.

They blame a failed system of protection for women from unwanted advances and inappropriate behavior from male superiors — including outdated and sometimes confusing requirements for reporting sexual harassment that fail to provide the kind of safeguards that exist in the corporate world.

They also argue that Albany has grown so accustomed to hostility toward women that it just seems routine — and that the Lopez scandal should bring about change in Albany.

“I think this should be a good opportunity for both houses and the governor’s office to look at their own policies (for sexual harassment reporting),” said Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, a Democrat from Westchester County who was elected in 2000. “This was a wake-up call.”

But Barbara Bartoletti of The League of Women Voters, said she thinks Albany has changed for the positive since reforms were enacted after a top aide to Assemblyman Sheldon Silver was arrested after being accused of rape for the second time.

Paulin agreed that much has improved, but that not all is well.

"I think there has been a vast improvement over the years,” Paulin said. “I haven't been a target of harassment but I have heard about it and witnessed some inappropriate behavior. I think it is important we make sure everyone knows how to report.”

Spokesmen for the Assembly and senate majorities did not respond to several requests for information on how many sexual harassment complaints they have fielded in the last five years.

When asked during a May 17 radio appearance on WCNY-TV with Curtis Schick whether the system for making sexual harassment complaints in state government should be changed, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said there were plenty of options for filing complaints.

“People have different avenues and they have options,” Cuomo said. “They can go to the legislative ethics committee, or whatever you call it, or the legislative leadership. They can talk to a private attorney. They can go to a district attorney. They can call a police officer, right? 911 is an option so all those options are available to a person.”

"DRESS CONSERVATIVELY"

Staffers and others in Albany tell stories that involve legislators who frequently stop into offices “by mistake” and then ask if their favorite intern is around, senior staff members who look for dates and other legislators who expect kisses and long embraces from female subordinates.

One woman who got a job out of college working for a senator’s district office in 2003 recalled for the Gotham Gazette how the senator constantly told her to wear shorter skirts and show more cleavage. The woman, who agreed to speak anonymoustly out of fear that talking to the press would affect her political career, said she wrote off the behavior as "machismo" but that other incidents made her think that such behavior was "condoned." She no longer works for the senator.

It isn’t just staffers who suffer under Albany’s culture of sexual harassment. Young interns who come to Albany because they want to gain experience in public policy and government also end up being taken advantage of by male legislators and their employees, say advocates.

One source, for instance, told the Gotham Gazette about a legislative staffer who used their power in office to pursue a 19-year-old intern who caught their eye.

“The staffer refused to set up meetings with anybody unless this intern joined the meeting,” said the source, who did not want to be identified out of fear of jeopardizing long-standing relationships in the Capitol. “When she was around, he'd call her up and ask her out to dinner on a regular basis.” The staffer no longer works in Albany.

“We are always concerned when one of our interns visits certain members,” said another source who added that they always brief interns on how to report sexual harassment.

Democratic state Sen. Liz Krueger said she takes female interns aside and instructs them very carefully not to get into relationships with staff or legislators. “I tell them, ‘Dress conservatively, don’t accept social invitations. I don’t care how big of a deal you think it is. If you ever have problems come to me.’”

Many interns are young and come to Albany bright-eyed and excited, she said. “It is the biggest deal for them to be paid attention to by people in elected office. They think, ‘Wow, I’m special.’ They don’t understand they are being exploited. They don’t understand that this is a totally unequal power equation.”

Sonia Ossorio, president of the National Organization for Women in NYC, told the Gazette that “it is sad” that Krueger would have to warn interns. “That is a clear indication that this is a culture where harassment is allowed to take place,” she said.

While interns are particularly vulnerable because of their youth and inexperience, legislative staffers are “at-will” employees and can be let go at a moment’s notice.

“Being ‘at will’ means there is a tremendous amount of pressure on them to make the boss happy,” said one legislator who wished to remain nameless.

Even some male legislators say more needs to be done to protect staff and interns.

“I have interns in my office because I believe young people should be allowed to see what we do in government,” state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, of the Bronx, said. “We have to make sure we foster an environment where such a thing is unacceptable," he said of the allegations against Lopez.

HANDLING SEXUAL HARASSMENT COMPLAINTS

The handling of the allegations against Lopez, detailed in the 70-page report from the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, is a study in the mismanagement of sexual harassment complaints.

After Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and his staff were confronted with the first complaints about Lopez they kept them quiet and allowed Lopez to hire more female employees. Under Silver's direction, the Assembly also paid the complainants $103,000 in taxpayer money.

But there were also questions raised about the way attorneys for the Assembly handled the complaints — including whether an email sent by one of Lopez's accusers to Lopez outlining her complaint could be considered an actual claim under the Assembly sexual harassment policy.

Gloria Allred, an attorney for two of the women who brought complaints against Lopez, detailed her clients’ long struggle to get recognition from the Assembly.

“Our clients made multiple efforts — over and over again — to get the Assembly to pay attention to their serious complaints,” Allred told the New York Post.

“They called Human Resources . . . They then followed the instructions of the HR point person, and sent in their complaints in writing repeatedly. Those complaints started in early December 2012. . . . Nothing was done,” Allred continued.

Krueger suggested that the Senate’s current sexual harassment reporting policy isn’t ideal for encouraging victims to bring complaints. The policy requires complainants to confront the person who is harassing them and to ask them to stop. If the harasser does not stop their behavior or the victim is too uncomfortable to approach the harasser, the policy suggests that the complainant go to a supervisor or, if needed, the Senate personnel officer or the Secretary of the Senate.

“We are asking people to go complain to someone who is employed by their harasser or who is their harasser’s best friend,” Krueger said. “I think it is incumbent on both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office that when dealing with young staff and interns, electeds and senior staff have very strict lines. We need clearer lines and stricter laws.”

Ossorio said that Lopez’s behavior would never have been tolerated in corporate America the way it was in Albany. “The corporate world has really grown. They have clear guidelines and rules to follow so that women are protected.”

Facing calls to resign from editorial boards across the state because of his handling of the matter, Silver apologized and created an independent investigative unit with its own budget to take sexual harassment complaints and investigate them.

He has also declared that all legislators and senior staff will be mandatory reporters of sexual harassment and will face sanctions if they fail to report an incident. Finally, Silver introduced legislation that would ban secret settlements in all state government.

Paulin backs Silver’s plan. “I like the idea of an independent office. I feel like it is making sure these cases are getting a fair review because the accusation could be against someone at a very high level. It will also put a little more fear into a member who is acting inappropriately.”

However, Silver’s new proposals did not strike Ossorio as an answer to the situation in Albany.

“The aspiring young women who would like to start a career in government deserve a real answer as to what behavior will be tolerated when they get there,” Ossorio said in a statement on Monday.

Ossorio said the incident was like deja vu and recalled Silver’s past handling of sexual harassment charges. “Until we hear more specifics from Speaker Silver, the women of New York are left to merely hope that he will finally address sexual harassment, and even violence against women, with the seriousness it deserves.”

PAST EPISODES

The episode didn’t just dredge up memories for Ossorio. It has been a distinct reminder of the bad old days in Albany when it seemed there were very few mores about interactions between legislators and their staffers and interns, and the men in power got more of a benefit of the doubt than their accusers.

From the 1980s to the early 2000s, male legislators and their female subordinates could be found after hours a few blocks up from the capitol on Lark Street — what locals like to think of as their St. Marks Place, with its funky head shops and art galleries — at a jazz cafe called Justin's. But as societal attitudes started to change, so did Albany — but slowly.

In 2001, the Michael Boxley case seemed, in some ways, to shake sense into the town. Boxley was a top Silver aide who was accused of rape by a young female Assembly staffer. Silver personally heard the woman’s story but publically defended Boxley.

The Assembly ethics commission looked into the allegations, but its final report was inconclusive. Two years later Boxley was taken out of the capitol in handcuffs as another female staffer accused him of rape. Boxley pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor of sexual misconduct.

Silver felt the effects of his handling of the incident, just as he did recently after the Lopez case. Silver implemented new rules banning after-hours fraternization between legislators, staff and interns.

Some changes in ethics law slowed down Albany’s legislative party scene — new lobbying rules meant legislators could no longer call up lobbyists and tell them to take them out for dinner and drinks; they had to pay for such dinners themselves.

But, according to others, the culture has simply adapted, become less public.

“I would be lying if I said I haven’t been in a coffee shop in Albany early in the morning when a legislator and an intern walk in together with their hair still wet from the shower,” said one source.

In 2007, Republican Assemblyman Mike Cole was removed from his ranking position on the drug and alcohol committee for sleeping at the house of a 21-year-old intern after a night of heavy drinking.

In 2008, the Assembly’s Ethics and Guidance Committee found that Democratic Assemblyman Sam Hoyt had a sexual affair with an intern from 2003, when she was 23, to 2005. Silver’s rule banning fraternization between legislators and interns went into effect in 2004 and, by that time, the intern had become a paid staffer.

Thanks to that technicality, Hoyt was simply banned from participating in the Assembly internship program and forbidden from hiring interns at his Buffalo district office.

Sen. Greg Ball has also dealt with a number of accusations from women. Before he was elected, Ball was hit with a restraining order by his former girlfriend, who accused him of stalking her.

During Ball's time in the Assembly, a waitress at the Assembly Restaurant and Lounge accused him of groping her in a sexual manner, and a sexual harassment charge brought in the Assembly was eventually dismissed.

Ball told The New York Times in 2010 that the two incidents were politically motivated.

Bartoletti, Krueger and Cuomo have all said they think the Lopez scandal should motivate lawmakers to take legislative action against sexual harassment.

Cuomo’s 10-point women’s equality agenda includes measures that tackle sexual trafficking; discrimination against pregnant women; a controversial piece that would that would make abortion part of the state’s health code rather than the criminal code; and a portion that would create, “zero tolerance” for sexual harassment in the workplace. The measure faces steep opposition from the Republican Senate.

Cuomo has yet to actually introduce the details of his plan or actual legislation.

“If anyone should be the poster boy for the women’s agenda legislation, Vito Lopez is it,” Bartoletti said.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Former state Sen. Pedro Espada expensed a garage door, a new fence and a few dinners at Red Lobster to his nonprofit health clinic’s corporate credit card.

Former Queens state Sen. Shirley Huntley was said to have bought toiletries and household items with money she pocketed from a state-funded nonprofit she controlled.

Both got prison sentences for looting their organizations.

Nonprofit agencies have long been the favored vehicle of unscrupulous state lawmakers for schemes to embezzle state funds — and for good reason: they are easily created and self-governed, allowing politicians to surround themselves with cronies who approve their decisions and are rewarded with positions and other patronage.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman unveiled two bills yesterday that he said were designed to overhaul charity law in New York and curb such fraud. The bills were negotiated with the state Legislature and nonprofit groups.

The measures come less than a week after Huntley was sentenced to one year and a day in prison, and just days after prosecutors charged Assemblyman William Boyland of funnelling taxpayer money to a nonprofit and misused it. Among the allegations is that Boyland used the money to pay for self-promotional t-shirts. The lawmaker pleaded not guilty. 

Doug Sauer, CEO of the New York Council of Nonprofits, said he isn’t convinced the measures being championed by Schneiderman will do much to prevent corruption or cut red tape.

"I'm not so sure this is going to have that great of an impact," said Sauer, who served on the committee that prepared recommendations that led to the legislation. "This is just not terribly bold. I was quite up front and told them this was addressing low-level fruit."

The goal of The Nonprofit Revitalization Act and The Executive Compensation Act, according to Schneiderman, "is to revitalize New York's charitable organizations and, at the same time, put a stop to the financial abuses that have come to light."

The Revitalization Act would require that nonprofits audit themselves, verify that transactions with nonprofit insiders are fair, prohibit any employee of a nonprofit from serving as its board chair and increase the attorney general’s power to "unwind" transactions between interested parties and a nonprofit.

Sauer said these measures just create red tape rather than implement clear rules. "It doesn't do a lot to bar conflicts of interest. We would like to have seen something banning board members as staff at nonprofits,” he said.

However, during deliberations over the legislation, a number of nonprofit heads said that having staff members serve as board members brought useful information to the board.

Sauer said he also isn't sure the attorney general’s office has enough resources to pursue enforcement. "It is generally known that the AG's nonprofit bureau doesn't have the resources to enforce what is on the books now,” he said. “I don't know how much preventative ability they are going to have. Now they just come in afterward something bad has happened and do an investigation. I don't think this will change that."

Representative’s from Schneiderman’s office said that despite being one of the best-staffed attorney general offices in the country, they don’t have the ability to police every transaction in the state’s 100,000 nonprofits. Only California and Texas have more nonprofits.

Schneiderman’s legislation is designed to prevent it from taking place by setting standards for nonprofit boards to follow, the attorney general’s office said. If those standards fail then the legislation will give the office more power to rectify the misdeeds than it currently has.

A number of legislators and nonprofit heads were supportive of the legislation.

“These bipartisan proposals strike the right balance in two important ways by achieving a comprehensive modernization of state law to assist charitable organizations and requiring common sense Board of Directors oversight and governance,” said Susan Hager, CEO and president of United Way NYS, in a statement.

While Schneiderman’s office wants to see more nonprofits form in New York so that the state reaps the financial benefits and so that the entities will clearly be under state law, Sauer said it is already too easy for nonprofits to form.

Sauer said that there is plenty of redundancy in the nonprofit community with staff and other expenses eating into the overall money going towards addressing one problem or another--from saving parkland to helping feed starving children.

Schneiderman’s legislation does seek to alleviate some of that by cutting the red tape involved in forming a nonprofit and in closing one done. Under current law it costs more to shut down a nonprofit than to start one.

On executive compensation, the legislation would require nonprofit boards review an executive’s salary and determine if it is "fair, reasonable and justified."

The goal of the legislation is to dissuade nonprofit heads from receiving massive salaries while being funded by taxpayer dollars. In 2011, The New York Times highlighted the salaries earned by executives of organizations that provide Medicaid-financed services to the developmentally disabled.

One striking example was that of Joel and Phillip Levy, who each earned as much as $1 million annually while heading The Young Adult Institute. The brothers and other executives were allowed to bill the organization for their children’s college tuition and one brother paid for part of his daughter’s Greenwich Village co-op. Both brothers resigned in June 2011.

Charities that make over $2 million in annual revenue would have to review the payment of their five highest paid officers under the proposed legislation.

ALBANY, N.Y. — There are few people in scandal-shocked Albany arguing these days that the current system of campaign finance and ethics checks are ideal or even functional.

And yet legislating ethics and campaign finance reform is still being played as a political game, where each side tries to ratchet up support for its own agenda to give their members the greatest benefits and the least troublesome restrictions, while boosting the ability of special-interest allies to influence legislation and elections.

Even Albany’s steamrolling governor, Andrew Cuomo, has held back from pushing groundbreaking reforms — instead proposing piecemeal bits of reform legislation that in turn have been privately derided by legislators.

“He just wants us to pass something so all this doesn’t stick to him,” said one legislator, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to anger the Cuomo administration. “Will the public think his proposals will get the job done? I can’t say for sure.”

Reform groups are also a bit put off by Cuomo’s proposals.

“His bills are steps in the right direction, but true reform would reduce the amount of illegal behavior by elected behaviors, and not just make it easier to catch or penalize them,” said Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Group. “Whatever his final reform proposal is should include components such as public financing, and we hope that it is made public with enough time for New Yorkers to read them and weigh in.”

Reformers say change is not only needed, but being demanded by the public following the arrests in recent weeks of three state lawmakers and the revelations that two other lawmakers wiretapped their colleagues for federal investigators looking into allegations of public corruption. Federal prosecutors have hinted that at least a half dozen other state lawmakers may be under investigation.

Fair Elections for New York, an umbrella organizations of groups that support campaign finance reform, has touted a recent Global Strategy Group/Mercury Public Affairs poll that found major dissatisfaction among New Yorkers with corruption in Albany and overwhelming support for public financing of campaigns.

The poll found 80 percent of independents, 75 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of Republicans support Fair Elections for New York’s proposal calling for public matching funds for small donations, lower contribution limits and the disclosure of spending by outside groups.

Mahoney and many of his colleagues in good government including Citizen Action, Common Cause, and The Brennan Center, advocate adopting the New York City style of public campaign financing where candidates have to raise a certain amount of money to earn a matching amount of public funds. If rules aren’t followed, candidates lose the right to public funds.

Good government groups also say that reforms need to be made to the existing Board of Elections system so that if a public financing system was created candidates would not be able to opt out and enjoy the largesse of the current system.

NYPIRG issued a report on May 7 that showed over 1,000 violations of campaign finance law since 2011. It was just the latest in a stream of reports from the group that demonstrated that the State Board of Elections is either incapable or unwilling to fine and punish groups that violate the state’s campaign finance laws.

Cuomo has advocated creating an independent watchdog to oversee the current Board of Election to ensure enforcement by the otherwise partisan board. He also favors tightening donation regulations, empowering local district attorneys to prosecute legislative corruption, tightening the definition of a bribe and stopping party leaders from having the exclusive power to give their lines to candidates.

Conspicuously absent from that list is public campaign financing, which Senate Republicans vehemently oppose — and even held a hearing last week billed as a look at how the New York City's public campaign finance system doesn't work.

“Right now we haven’t been making significant progress. Public financing, they don’t agree,” Cuomo told reporters on Wednesday. “They don’t think that’s the answer. The Senate Republicans don’t believe in it. It is not about numbers and cost, it’s about philosophy they don’t think public financing makes it better. There is a sentiment that public finance could make it worse.”

A number of supporters of the public financing model were not allowed to testify at the Senate Republicans’ hearing last week, while others who did get invited to speak were national figures like David Keating, of the Virginia-based Center for Competitive Politics (the nonprofit bills itself as “the nation’s only organization dedicated solely to protecting First Amendment political rights.”)

While admitting he had no basic knowledge of how much corruption existed in the city or state system, Keating praised Oregon’s system where there are no campaign finance limits. He repeatedly warned that with public financing, taxpayers could end up funding neo-Nazi candidates.

Others who testified, such as former Rudy Giuliani Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, testified about what flaws he thought could be fixed if New York State were to adopt the model.

Republican Sens. Kathy Marchione and Greg Ball repeated that they felt taxpayers would not want to foot the bill for elected officials to run. Ball continually invoked the name of wealthy businessman George Soros to say that billionaires could subvert the system and opt out of public financing and run on their own cash.

On the same day as the hearing, the Democrat-dominated State Assembly passed its campaign finance bill, which would create a 6-to-1 public matching system like New York City’s but it would not end “housekeeping” accounts that allow corporations to dump unlimited cash to each conference.

The bill also would not restrict the ability of party heads to award their lines to candidates. This is seen as a favor to the Working Families Party, which supports progressive causes, is backed by labor and is a strong ally of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

The Senate Republicans’ partners in governing, the Independent Democratic Conference, came out in full support of a public financing of campaigns after one its four members, state Sen. Malcolm Smith, was indicted in a scheme to buy a spot on the Republican ballot for mayor in New York City.

The IDC plan, perhaps the most comprehensive out of any proposal, would ensure that any candidate who opted out of the public finance system would have to abide by strict contribution limits that would lower the donation ceiling to $2,600 in all state races.

The current donation limits vary by position and committee but New York’s have been going up rather than down because the BOE sets the limits based on a formula that is updated each year.

The current contribution limit to campaign committees is around $100,000, while the limit for statewide races is around $40,000. Campaign committees have abused state donation limits by taking massive contributions from corporations and then funnelling them to individual candidates. The IDC plan would close this loophole and end the the ability of party heads to hand their line to one candidate.

The IDC have been holding a series of hearings across the state on campaign finance reform and Cuomo has even hinted that the future of campaign finance reform relies on their willingness to push the issue.

But Republican Sen. Dean Skelos, who shares power in the Senate with the IDC’s Jeff Klein, has indicated he is not willing to bring campaign finance to a vote; and Klein has not indicated he will try to force a vote.

“I think there is an opportunity if you count heads between the Senate, Assembly and governor to come to a very serious small-donor, ethics reform package,” said Democratic state Sen. Liz Krueger, who sits on the elections committee. “And yet, I don't hear Dean Skelos saying he is willing to discuss any of this. The question is, ‘Do the votes count? Or do they only count when Dean Skelos and Jeff Klein agree they should count?'”

Klein is one of the Legislature's most prodigious fundraisers, having mastered the current campaign laws. Questions have been raised about some donations to Klein. In December 2012, Klein returned some donations after the Riverdale Press in the Bronx reported that some of the money was linked to donors with felony convictions and "ties to organized crime." There was never any evidence, the newspaper reported, that favors were granted in exchange for donations. Klein's office didn't respond to requests for comment for this story. 

For Senate Republicans, the issue may not be about public support or philosophy as Cuomo says. The issue may be based on survival.

As Republicans experience a major decline in party rolls around the state, they rely more heavily on major donations from corporations.

“Report after report shows massive corporate donations benefit the Senate Republicans,” said Jessica Winsnewski of Citizen Action. “Big money goes where power is. Senate Republicans are protecting the status quo rather than bringing real people's voices into the process."

A November 2012 report by the Center For Working Families showed that, at the time, 49 of the state’s 62 senators got more than half their campaign cash from corporations and donors who contributed $1,000 or more. The top 10 recipients of corporate cash in the Senate were Republicans including Sens. Skelos and Tom Libous, the report said. The exceptions are Sen. Jeff Klein and Buffalo Democratic Sen. Tim Kennedy. In terms of percentage of funds raised through corporate donations, Republicans make up the entire top ten.

Senate Republicans, however, have insisted that bad actors will do bad things no matter what system is in place and taxpayers should not be on the line to fund campaigns.

Senate Democrats have offered a plan that would greatly restrict the use of campaign funds, bar them from being used to fund legal defenses, take away pensions from convicted lawmakers and require lobbyist’s donations be specially marked on contribution disclosures.

Their plan, like the Assembly’s, does not address the ability of party heads to give their line to candidates — again seen as a sign of their relationship with the Working Families Party which endorses and helps elect many Senate Democrats.

Assembly Republicans have a similar proposal that would restrict use of campaign funds and rescind pensions but the centerpiece of their proposal would create a recall system for elected officials. A recall campaign could be started if a group secured the signatures equaling 20 percent of the number of voters who voted in the official’s last election.

The tool could be quite a powerful one for the Assembly minority because grassroots campaigns could be started to recall a legislator who faces legal trouble or simply because they pushed for an unpopular measure.

Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb is steadfastly opposed to public financing of campaigns.

“Look at John Liu and the irregularities with his fundraising, and he is using the public system,” Kolb told the Gazette. “You also have the problem of having only rich people being able to run for public office. Bloomberg can write a check and go after a legislator who did something he didn't like. He can take the regular guy right out of the mix.”

Last week, Cuomo invoked his oft-repeated threat to call a Moreland Commission that would have unprecedented powers to investigate the legislature if a deal isn’t reached for an campaign finance overhaul. “We don’t have any agreement thus far but we will keep talking. There are other options where I can move unilaterally,” Cuomo told reporters.

But with several federal investigations already underway that may not be much of a threat anymore.

Politically, Cuomo may not be able to carry the load of public financing. His poll numbers have dipped this year as he pushed through gun control laws and has taken more liberal policy stances.

As much as Cuomo may push the IDC to convince the Senate Republicans, the IDC doesn’t have much recourse for retaliation since they are even less likely now to leave the Republicans with key Senate Democrats possibly facing corruption investigations. The IDC, of course, already had to deal with its association with Smith.

Without functional support in the Senate, Cuomo will be left getting the scraps the Legislature throws him. Still, the governor has made it clear he just wants legislators to act on something — anything — to reassure the public.

“We need to say to the people of New York, ‘To the extent that you have a question about the integrity of our government we have an answer,’” Cuomo told reporters on May 8. “I’m not willing to let the session conclude without a response.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story inaccurately reported that state Sen. Jeff Klein had faced "ethical questions" over his campaign fundraising. The story should have said that questions were raised about donations made to Klein in December 2012 in a Riverdale Press report. Klein returned the money. 

NEW YORK — More often than not, Marta Schwartz’s paycheck is worth nothing.

The $5 she makes per hour as a server doesn’t even pay the taxes she owes on her tips, and that’s reflected in her pay stub with a neat line of zeros.

Schwartz is one of 771,000 hospitality workers in New York State — about 2.8 million food service workers across the country — making the federal minimum wage of $7.25 or less.

When New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers solidified a plan last month to raise the state minimum wage to $9 from $7.25 over the next three years, it was hailed by some low-wage workers and advocates across the state.

Yet some advocates also argued the bill short-changed tip workers, who are typically paid less than minimum wage and won’t automatically get an increase under the deal.

Groups that advocate for low-wage workers are working to bring pressure on the Cuomo administration and other state labor officials to change that.

On Mother’s Day, a coalition will announce a campaign called “100 women for 100 percent,” aimed at bring parity for tip workers under the minimum wage deal. “A majority of people who work for tip wages are women,” said Sara Niccoli, executive director of the Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State, which is working on the campaign. 

“One of the challenges of the campaign for tip workers is the question of if they are making so much in tips why do we have to have a more serious base wage,” she said. “We have to show people that a good number of wage workers are not able to make enough to get by.”

Under the state’s new minimum wage deal that was integrated into this year’s budget, Cuomo is required to appoint a wage board — comprised of equal parts representatives of consumer groups, employers and labor — to evaluate the base pay for hospitality workers and make recommendations to the commissioner of the Department of Labor.

A final decision could come as early as the end of the year.

Hunger Action New York is also throwing its weight into the fight for higher wages for tip workers, though as part of a separate coalition than the one launching a campaign on Mother’s Day. “We want to get the wage as high as possible for tipped workers,” said Mark Dunlea, the organization’s executive director.

Groups that represent the state’s business interests are expected to push back against any increase in minimum pay for tip workers.

The Business Council, which represents firms throughout the state, opposed the state’s minimum wage increase, arguing that employers would be burdened with additional costs and cutbacks in job opportunities.

On the matter of tip workers, the Council argued that many tip workers earn more than $9 an hour. Indeed, Hunger Action Network cites data that the median wage for a tip worker is $9.38 an hour.

“What is the real policy argument, then, for increasing the minimum wage of that person's take home pay?” asked Ken Pokalsky, vice president of government affairs for the Council. He said regional differences in what tip workers make also needed to be accounted for.

Dunlea said that even $9.38 an hour is still a poverty wage. “Their income is so low that they quality for food stamps,” he said.

MINIMUM WAGE DEBATE

The debate over minimum wage has been ricocheting from the local to the national level for months now.

But it didn’t gather enough momentum to galvanize policymakers and advocates in New York until President Barack Obama advocated raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour during his State of the Union address this year.

Obama’s proposal was followed by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand advocating increasing the wage to $10.10 an hour over the next three years.

Citing Obama and Gillibrand's stance, Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Democrats advocated increasing the state's wage to $9 an hour with indexing to inflation.

But when the deal was first worked out in March, calling for a raise in the minimum wage to $9 over three years, it excluded tip workers. "If you're a waiter, you're not a minimum-wage worker because you get tips,” said Bronx state Sen. Jeff Klein, whose Independent Democratic Conference shares power in the Senate. “So automatically you're beyond the minimum wage. . . . [and] if indeed you don't make enough in tips, then you're raised to the minimum wage. So it really isn't an issue."

However, the final compromise included a path for raising the minimum wage that tipped workers earn, by giving the commissioner of Labor the right to raise it on recommendation by the wage board.

A spokesman for Klein told the Gotham Gazette that the senator “would like to see the Department of Labor increase wages for New York's tipped workers.”

Under federal law, an employer may pay less than the minimum wage to an employee who receives tips, as long as that employee makes at least $30 per month in gratuities. The only caveat is that the workers don’t spend more than 20 percent of a shift performing non-tip related work, like folding napkins or filling ketchup bottles.

The difference between the minimum wage and the hourly wage rate is called the “tip credit.” The federal governments sets that wage at $2.13, though New York, like many other states, sets the wage for tipped workers higher. Wait staff in New York City usually make a minimum wage of $5 an hour.

“I don't feel like I'm getting any wage. I don't even see this money,” said Schwartz, 35, who immigrated to the U.S. from Poland 11 years ago and works at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan.

Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at University of California, Berkeley, wrote in a February 2011 report that waiters in the U.S. are almost three times as likely to fall under the federal poverty line and often require government assistance.

“It seems ironic people serving food then have to be on food stamps,” Allegretto said.

James Parrott, an economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute in New York, said that he doesn’t count tips as a form of income for workers because they are so unpredictable. “Not everybody tips and the workers have to provide the service anyway,” Parrott said. “There are scads of cases where the workers get robbed of their tips or tips get shared along whom they were never meant to be shared.”

When the minimum wage does increase, it will do so over a period of three years. Andrew Moesel is a spokesman for the state Restaurant Association, which represents thousands of restaurants across New York.

He said that a rise in the minimum wage could have adverse affects.

"What some advocates don't realize is the cumulative impact of these increases," he said. "It could be a difference of being profitable and not, and ultimately someone might decide to close up shop."

But advocates for the minimum wage increase say the deal reached by state lawmaker and Cuomo was not aggressive enough.

Apurva Mehrotra, a policy analyst at Community Service Society, said the minimum wage should increase every year to stay consistent with the cost of living and account for inflation.

“Some workers struggle to get by even with a minimum wage,” he said. “It's not like this is a magical remedy and they'll now be raking in the dough.”

STRUGGLING ON TIP WAGES

A report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics outlining 2012 trends in employment showed that the industry with the highest proportion of workers with hourly wages at or below the federal minimum wage were employed in restaurants or other food service businesses.

"There's no security," said Roni Ginach, 26, who works at a restaurant in Brooklyn. She asked that the restaurant not be named out of fear of retaliation. "There's no assurance. The system is set up so you will earn more than minimum wage but not if there are no customers."

Ginach is paid $5 an hour, and, like Schwartz, on a busy weekend night can make $150 for about seven hours of work. "If we don't have customers for an hour they're basically paying us five dollars an hour to clean silverware," she said. She says she doesn’t budget as well as she should, but hasn’t ever missed rent and rides her bike to save money on transportation.

To save money on rent, Schwartz lives in an affordable neighborhood in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Her commute to work is around forty-five minutes each way, but it could be more than an hour at night when the trains are running less often.

She also saves money by being strategic about where she goes out to eat. “When you go out you go to friend’s places,” she said, “where you might get a discount.”

At Ginach’s restaurant, the dishwasher is paid the federal minimum wage, because he is not paid tips, and the servers share their tips with the busers, bartenders and the hostess.

"We rely on the customer to support the service staff basically, and the employer really just provides a platform," she said.

Even if the federal minimum wage is raised, Ginach said it wouldn’t convince her to switch industries. "It usually turns out that tips end up being more than minimum wage," Ginach said.

She said that she doesn’t count on on her wages or her tips. On a good night she can make $150 or more. On a bad night she nets one-third of that.

“There are good seasons and bad days. There are so many different elements that influence my income,” she said.

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Additional reporting by David Howard King and Cristian Salazar.

Below is a searchable database of 224 political clubs that failed to register their contributions with the state. As part of a collaboration with our sister organization, Citizens Union, we are calling on readers to help us flesh out the details on the clubs in the comments section below. We'll publish the results in a subsequent article. 

Of the various illegal schemes that former City Councilman Larry Seabrook was accused of orchestrating, it was the laundering of tens of thousands of dollars in contributions through his political club that resulted in some of the more colorful details during his trials.

There was, for instance, the $50,000 that his club received from a Seabrook-recommended contractor who got a $300,000 opportunity to install boilers at the new Yankee stadium.

And, perhaps most infamously, there was the doctored receipt that prosecutors say indicated Seabrook was reimbursed $177 by the club — for a bagel sandwich and soda. 

Seabrook is gone from office, after being convicted for misappropriation of funds last summer, and being sentenced to five years in prison.

But political clubs like the one Seabrook founded and controlled remain powerful tools of elected officials and parties. These political club going back generations, and more often play a unique — and positive — democratic role in the city.

However, too often, clubs are skirting state law by failing to report campaign activity, according to a report published by Citizens Union earlier today.

The good government group is the sister organization of Gotham Gazette. 

In an analysis of campaign filings between January 2009 and January 2013, Citizens Union found that 224 political clubs that had over $1,000 in contributions did not register with the state, as required by law. "As a result of not filing and reporting who contributes to them and to whom they make expenditures, a shadowy world of political activity is hidden from view," the report states. 

A fuller examination of unreported transactions can be found here (Google Spreadsheet).

NEW YORK — A review of responses to requests for information over three months found "deep inconsistency" across 18 city agencies, with some failing to follow the law, according to a report released by the public advocate's office yesterday.

The report singled out the New York Police Department and the city's Housing Authority as particularly egregious in failing to respond to requests under the Freedom of Information Law.

While some agencies disputed the report's findings, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who is running for mayor, wants City Hall to intervene to make transparency easier for New Yorkers.

Titled "Breaking Through Bureaucracy," the report is a snapshot of how the city's many agencies comply with FOIL. Each agency, commission and committee is subject to the law, which requires that they make all records not protected by federal or state statutes publicly available.

In late 2011, the public advocate's office sent out requests to 38 agencies for a list of all public information requests they individually received between January and March of that year. Of those, the public advocate's office focused on agencies that received more than 100 requests.

There is no definitive answer to how the city as a whole responds to public information requests, and as a result of incomplete results of certain agencies, the report does not conclusively diagnose systemic problems. Instead, the public advocate's office sees the report as a move to preserve the spirit of the law in the face of noncompliant agencies.

To that end, the report finds that the inconsistent methods used across the agencies make it difficult for the public to take advantage of the FOIL request process. In particular, it said 15 agencies do not offer a contact information page for public information requests, and that one in 10 FOIL requests were lost or forgotten in the process.

The biggest offender of undetermined, meaning neither approved or denied, requests was the New York City Police Department, which had 577 outstanding requests as of late 2011. NYPD and the New York City Housing Authority both received identical failing scores for what the report calls poor response time, many unanswered requests and moderate ease to file requests.

Over the three months that the report focused on, the Police Department received 1,833 requests. NYCHA received 504. Both agencies do have staff designated to process requests and provide instructions for filing requests — resources that de Blasio wants every agency to offer.NYCHA declined to comment.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said in an email to the Gotham Gazette that the "greater volume of requests" that the department receives and "the nature of police work" — including the need to protect the identities of victims and ongoing investigations — "results in the lawful and appropriate denial of access to records after careful, extensive and time-consuming reviews."

Some of the highest-rated agencies included the Department for Consumer Affairs, the Health Department and Buildings Department. The report also had high praise for the Department of Transportation for its response time and answering rate, despite not having a online or e-mail submission process, nor information on how to appeal a denied request. Still, after receiving 1,655 requests, the Transportation Department earned an "A" rating.

The Department of Education, which received 194 requests and scored a "D" on de Blasio's grading scale, pushed back on the report and said that the numbers attributed to it were wrong. It also asked that de Blasio's office correct his report.

"The report’s analysis of the DOE is inaccurate and misleading," the department wrote on Tuesday afternoon. "The frequency of the DOE’s responses to FOIL requests is vastly under-reported, the data regarding the timing of responses is inaccurate, and the report also does not take into consideration information that is provided to the public on a daily basis outside of FOIL or is available on our website."

De Blasio's office said on Tuesday night that it recounted the FOIL documentation submitted by the Department of Education and stood by its grade.

Nonetheless, the Department of Education does provide quantitative data both on its website and on the city's open data homepage. Home to almost 2,000 data sets, the Open Data portal was created to host agency-collected data for public use.

Last year's open data bill was signed into law by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in March 2012 and mandated that the city collect and publish data sets. While the agencies' compliance with the law has varied since its first deadline in March of this year, the bill's founding sponsor says that the law was partly designed to help drive down problems with public information requests.

Manhattan Councilwoman Gale Brewer led the charge for the open data law in New York and said she largely agreed with de Blasio's report and its goal of increased transparency.

"If you've been around as long as I have," she said, "you know agency responsiveness varies widely from agency to agency."

A former deputy public advocate, Brewer helped create the office's first web site in the 1990s. The biggest difference between then and now the the open data law, she said, adding that the law is meant to decrease the need for FOIL requests.

"This will save everyone time in the long run, as agencies will have the infrastructure in place to proactively publish information in open, accessible formats to the public, elected officials and good government groups," Brewer added.

De Blasio, a Democratic candidate for mayor, also provides a series of recommendations to improve responsiveness to FOIL requests, including the adoption of laws that would require agencies to file regular status updates and create a repository for the most-frequently asked information. He also suggests that City Council penalize agencies that either show a "pattern and practice" of violating the law, and that his office's Commission on Public Information & Communication review agencies to make them more accountable.

"The City is inviting waste and corruption by blocking information that belongs to the public," he said in a statement on Tuesday. "That’s the last thing New York City can afford right now. We have to start holding government accountable when it refuses to turn over public records to citizens and taxpayers."

De Blasio already proposed a bill in 2009 that would enforce one of his proposals. Intro 227-2010 would require that agencies issue monthly reports to the Council and the public advocate on how many FOIL requests are made, how many are granted and denied, the response time and the number of appeals to denied requests.

The bill is still in committee, according to the public advocate's office, and will be amended based on the report's findings.

___

Word image by Divergence, used under Creative Commons license.

ALBANY, N.Y. — The arrests of two state lawmakers on federal corruption charges last week were unwelcome reminders that New York is among the nation’s go-to destinations for political scandal, graft and greed.

They were also reminders of how difficult it is to stop unscrupulous lawmakers from violating the public trust.

“From time to time the question arises: How common is corruption in New York?” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said at a press conference on April 2 announcing the indictment of Democratic Sen. Malcolm Smith and a host of others in a bribery scheme to buy and sell the Republican line in the New York City mayoral race. “Based on the cases we have brought and continue to bring, it seems downright pervasive.”

Two days later, Bharara was back in front of reporters announcing the indictment of Assemblyman Eric Stevenson for accepting bribes to craft and pass legislation. A second lawmaker, Assemblyman Nelson Castro, meanwhile, resigned and admitted to wearing a wire for about three years to help Bronx and federal prosecutors in various corruption cases — including but not limited to the investigation that led to the arrest of Stevenson.

Smith’s attorney says he’ll be vindicated, as has Stevenson’s lawyer.

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In response to the latest scandals, good government groups, including Gotham Gazette’s sister organization, Citizens Union, have called for campaign financing reform, election reform, strengthening bodies charged with investigating ethics violations and more. If they sound familiar, that’s no surprise — many have been batted about for years.

Of course, all of this comes with a sense of deja vu. Corruption and reform are an evergreen call-and-response of politics in Albany.

At his State of the State in 2011, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared there would be a “new New York” — a place where government is clean and shiny and functions on every level. With much ado, he and the state Legislature worked to install a new state ethics commission, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics or JCOPE, and sought to curtail bad behavior through less visible means.

It’s also worth recalling that Cuomo came into office having pursued corruption charges against former Sen. Pedro Espada and former Comptroller Alan Hevesi as attorney general.

In response to the latest corruption allegations, Cuomo said in a statement: “The allegations of public corruption by City and State officials revealed this week are appalling ... New Yorkers deserve a government that is as good as the people it serves and the events of the last few days fail this and every standard of public service.”

Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Research Group says some progress has been made in preventing corruption in Albany but that the entire culture of the capital is to blame. 

“It seems like JCOPE will help prevent some scandals as they will require legislators to disclose outside interests,” he said, saying that might have prevented past scandals. “But it seems like the culture just hasn’t changed.

But so far it is unclear how JCOPE has handled its first major test. The ethics commission has sent its final report on the sexual harassment settlement against Assemblyman Vito Lopez — reached in secret by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — to a legislative committee. It’s unclear if Silver himself will be a target of the report. Silver has two appointees on the ethics panel who could have blocked any investigation.

Over the weekend, New York Post Columnist Michael Goodwin wrote of JCOPE and Cuomo’s other reforms: “At best, the governor made no impact on public integrity among New York’s native criminal class.”

Mahoney points to an alleged quote from City Councilman Dan Halloran, who was also swept up in the corruption case involving Smith, caught on a wire tap. “It’s all about the f--g money!” Halloran said, according to a transcript in the federal complaint.

“And Halloran is right,” Mahoney said. “As long as legislators are used to walking through the Fort Orange Club” — a swanky clubhouse and banquet hall a block from the capital — “for big money fundraisers after session this culture will continue. It is legalized bribery.”

Halloran has also denied the allegations. 

New York has the highest campaign contribution limits of any state that has limits. Mahoney says that more than most other states, New York interest groups are flush with cash and ready to spend it to mold the legislation and they can do it legally.

That has led to calls for campaign finance reform, possibly to include an overhaul that would make the state system look more like the one in New York City, where funds raised are matched by public funds.

But opinion makers are already questioning whether such reforms will result in anything close to the level of accountability needed to curtail schemes like the one Smith is accused of orchestrating.

“Those who work in the trenches of city politics know it as the cash cow it is,” wrote columnist and Republican consultant William F.B. O’Reilly in yesterday’s edition of Newsday. He continued, writing:

Under the system, contributions collected by candidates are matched 6-1 with taxpayer money, ostensibly to keep politicians from being bought. The system is like a slot machine that returns $700 for every $100 you put in. It screams to be abused, and it is – year after year.

Alex Camarda, director of public policy for Citizens Union, disputed O'Reilly's characterization of the city's campaign finance system.

"Virtually everything he says in that article is factually wrong," he said in an interview, emphasizing that Smith would have had a difficult time gaming the city's system. "The campaign finance board audits every single piece of paper for every candidate." 

Smith spent about $2 million in campaign cash over five years on pure luxury under the state campaign finance system, including a trip to China with a stay at the Beijing Grand. Smith paid off his credit cards with campaign cash without listing what was paid for with the cards. Two cards had totals of over $10,000 in debt. He also spent big at steakhouses like Smith & Wollensky and Bobby Van’s.

But this is not atypical behavior for an Albany politician. Sen. Jeff Klein, the leader of the breakaway Independent Democratic Conference that is sharing power in the Senate, has spent tens of thousands of dollars in campaign cash over the years on fine dining. Assemblyman Peter Rivera used campaign cash to pay for two Mercedes.

Mahoney says there is an upside to Albany being portrayed in the media once again as a three-ring circus of sleaze. “This forces them to do something ... They have to address it.”

ALBANY, N.Y. — Black and Latino state lawmakers say their signature issues were sidelined during negotiations over the budget, leaving them wondering if they can get their communities’ voices heard in Albany.

“On issue after issue we just aren’t being listened to,” said Democratic Sen. Kevin Parker, of Brooklyn, in an interview last week. “This is not working together. Maybe in the end I don’t get what I want, but at least hear me out.”

Espaillat and other black and Hispanic lawmakers say the causes they had championed only to see them jettisoned during negotiations that culminated in a $135 billion budget on Thursday would have benefited people of color in particular.

They included helping to keep open a struggling Brooklyn hospital that provides training to minority doctors and employs 500 people; and the decriminalization of the possession of small amounts of marijuana that could prevent tens of thousands of young men and women from having their records irreversibly damaged each year.

“New York City got left behind in this budget, “ said Sen. Adriano Espaillat, of northern Manhattan. “I like the governor and I have had a good working relationship with him. But I am hopeful we can bring forward our ‘spring of discontent’ and discuss our issues with him soon.”

Harlem Assemblyman Robert Rodriguez agreed. “I think we absolutely know there is a disconnect between the rank and file and what got done in the budget,” said

But the most painful setback for the lawmakers was the lack of momentum on the state’s proposed DREAM Act that would have extended financial assistance for secondary education to undocumented immigrants.

“I have never seen one single issue that has been more important to our community than the DREAM Act,” said Sen. Adriano Espaillat. “This is our gay marriage, this is our gun control.”

Espaillat noted that Cuomo has been ahead of national issues with gun control and gay marriage, and passing the DREAM Act would once again demonstrate the state’s leadership on a national level. A separate, federal version of the DREAM Act would provide permanent residency to undocumented immigrants who graduate high school, arrived in the country as minors or lived in the country continuously for five years before the bill is enacted.

“You can’t make everybody happy,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo told Susan Arbetter on the Capitol Pressroom on March 25 in response to criticism about the budget. “This budget in many ways does more work on more levels than any budget we’ve ever done.”

Cuomo’s office declined to go on the record for this story after repeated requests for comment.

It wasn’t just minority legislators who were miffed at the issues ignored in the state budget. Mayor Michael Bloomberg lit into Republican Sens. Dean Skelos, Marty Golden, and Simcha Felder (a Democrat who is caucusing with the Republicans) last week, blaming them for failing to allow a speed camera program that would have been instituted around schools to prevent speeding around schools. Bloomberg is also a supporter of the DREAM Act. 

Some legislators have said that there wasn’t enough outcry from advocates of the DREAM Act, but Espaillat disagrees. “We had thousands of people there pushing the DREAM Act. Maybe they just weren’t listening to us,” he said.

Eric Soufer, a spokesman for the Senate’s breakaway Independent Democratic Conference, said that IDC leader Sen. Jeff Klein supports a “fully funded DREAM Act." He said key reforms back by black and Hispanic lawmakers failed to get into the budget because the Senate Democrats didn’t have enough votes “to advance the governor's reform proposals."

For decades, Albany has been controlled by three white men. That changed briefly when Senate Democrats won the majority in 2008. Democratic Sen. Malcolm Smith, who is black, became majority leader and senate president but only after going to great lengths to woo the support of Sens. Pedro Espada, Ruben Diaz, and Carl Krueger. All three legislators won positions and power that were supposed to be reserved for more tenured members.

Budget negotiations were different this year only in that there was an extra man in the room, with leadership of the Senate split between a breakaway faction of Democrats and Skelos. 

Other legislators blame the alliance between the IDC and the Senate Republicans for marginalizing minority issues. When Republicans and the IDC cut a deal for a power-sharing agreement last year, many minority groups were aghast because the five members of the IDC were in effect blocking the influence of a great number of minority legislators from the city. The IDC had only one member of color and only five members total .

The NAACP, Rev. Al Sharpton and a number of black and latino legislators decried the union as discriminatory. NAACP President Hazel Dukes wrote Cuomo and implored him to get involved to stop the IDC from joining the Republicans. “If what I read is true, there is one African American, no Hispanic and 35 White members in this important leadership group,” wrote Dukes. “This ‘cozy’ little cabal excludes women, gay and Hispanic legislators from most important leadership positions.”

“Think about it,” said Parker, “we are talking about a group of five senators who represent about one million people total and a group of legislators who represent about seven or eight million. Andrea Stewart-Cousins should be at the negotiating table point, blank, period.”

Stewart-Cousins, who is black, is the recently appointed head of the Senate Democrats. She is the first female conference leader in the Senate. (Mainstream Senate Democrats have tried to draw attention to the disconnect between the number of minorities in the Senate and how many are in leadership positions. They replaced Sen. John Sampson with Stewart-Cousins.)

After continued criticism, the IDC offered committee chairmanships to two black Senate Democrats: Eric Adams of Brooklyn was offered the chair of the committee on aging; and James Sanders of Queens was offered the chair of the alcoholism and drug abuse committee. Sanders turned down the offer; Adams accepted.

Parker and Espaillat both say they want to see a fundamental change in how budgets are negotiated so that the needs of their communities are actually addressed or at least are heard by those who are hashing out the budget.

“This kind of stuff matters to voters,” said Parker. “Voters don’t care about campaign finance reform but budget issues they understand because it involves money, it involves what is happening in the district. It is the most important thing I do. We are talking about the third largest budget in the country and to not have a truly democratic process goes against the fabric of America.”

It will take a concerted effort from lawmakers to pressure Cuomo into action on their issues. The governor has a number of major policy points he still wants to get done this year including his women’s equality agenda. But with his approval ratings tanking with Republicans and upstate, Cuomo may be loathe to spend political capital on The DREAM Act or any other issue that is being championed by Hispanic and black lawmakers. 

Image of the four men who ultimately decide the state budget, courtesy of the governor's office. 

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York’s drama-free budget officially no longer exists.

There is a budget deal but — after weeks of promises from lawmakers that no conflict would derail the process — the facade that it would be smooth going disappeared yesterday.

While the Senate labored to pass budget bills yesterday, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced he would delay his chamber’s vote until mid-week.

Senate Republicans said that a weekend voting schedule had been reached with Silver only for him to change his mind.

“Whatever the Assembly decides to do that’s their business,” Republican Sen. Tom Libous of Binghamton told reporters on Sunday. “But we don’t have to follow their lead. They don’t run the Senate. We do.”

Republican Sen. John DeFrancisco of Syracuse called Silver’s decision “impolite.”

Silver spokesman Mike Whyland told Capitol Confidential the delay was caused because "we don't have agreement on all of the issues."

The Legislature was scheduled to be on vacation for the next three weeks to allow members to celebrate religious holidays but an on-time budget earns legislators and the governor major political capital.

Under Gov. Andrew Cuomo the appearance of a functioning government reigns supreme over all else. As weeks of supposed drama-free negotiating wore on, legislators and the governor repeated their mantras (“There isn’t a deal until there is a deal,” “Progress is being made”) and sticking points emerged — sticking points that could have created drama. Those sticking points were jettisoned from budget negotiations last week and a “conceptual agreement” was announced.

A number of sticking points that did not make the $135 billion budget agreement are major issues that impact residents of New York City from a speed camera program designed to reduce traffic accidents and deaths to tweaking the laws regarding possession of small amounts of marijuana.

And that is surprising given that Silver hails from Manhattan and one-half of the coalition that leads the Senate — the breakaway Independent Senate Democrats — are also led by a city native, Sen. Jeff Klein.

One issue that was in a way resolved for the city was the $260 million in education funding taken away by Cuomo when the city failed to reach an agreement on teacher evaluations with the teacher’s union. The money has not been restored, but the city will receive $300 million more in education funding than it would have in the governor’s original budget proposal.

Even on major issues that made the budget deal, advocates and rank-and-file Democrats feel that they got the shaft in negotiations. The minimum wage plan would see the wage raised to $8 an hour next year and $9 an hour in 2016 with no indexing to inflation and it would also not apply to tip workers.

Sen. Kevin Parker of Brooklyn said he was horrified by the minimum wage deal, contrasting it with President Barack Obama’s minimum wage proposal. “So if the nation is going to have a minimum wage of $9 an hour, do we really believe New York should have a minimum wage that is the same as Utah?”

Mark Dunlea, executive director of the Hunger Action Network, in an interview last week, wondered who was “negotiating on behalf of the workers and Democrats here"

"There is a majority of senators eager and waiting to vote for $9 an hour, with indexing, and yet the three Democrat leaders in the back room keep giving away more worker wages and tax dollars to appease the minority Senate Republicans,” he said. “This isn't how democracy is supposed to work."

Meanwhile, a middle class tax rebate that is part of the budget deal would send $350 checks to families with at least one child whose household income is between $40,000 and $300,000.

Advocates are astonished the rebate does not apply to families that make under $40,000 and applies to families that make up to $300,000.

Sen. Jose Peralta of Queens, who has been pushing Cuomo to include tuition assistance to undocumented students in the budget through flattering statements, issued a terse statement after the budget deal was announced.

“We seem determined to shrink our middle class, grow the ranks of the impoverished and widen the gap between the richest and poorest,” he said. “It’s the only way to explain the minimum wage debacle that’s playing out and why immigrants who want to go to college, work and pay taxes are treated like social outcasts.”

Supporters of the DREAM Act protested by surrounding Cuomo’s office in the city and Albany, but legislators and staffers said they felt the effort was too little, too late.

Jackie Vimo, director of advocacy at the New York Immigration Coalition, said she and other advocates had been putting tremendous pressure on legislators. “I think that I can speak on behalf of immigrant communities when I say we are growing frustrated about the silence on The DREAM Act from the governor,” she said.

But Vimo noted Cuomo’s record on immigration issues, noting he issued an executive order to improve language access in state government and pushed back against the federal Secure Communities Act. “He has such a strong record, we hope that he would support this,” said Vimo.

On Saturday, as legislators prepared to vote on the budget, Assemblyman Nelson Castro who heads the Assembly’s Task Force on New Americans issued a press release with a host of other Assemblyman decrying the fact that the budget did not address the DREAM Act.

“New York State can no longer continue to ignore the need to ensure that these young adults, who we have educated and raised for decades, have access to good quality education and be given the opportunity to accomplish their goals,” he said in a statement.

Sen. Jeff Klein, head of the Independent Senate Democrats, who was one of the four men in a room during the budget negotiations, didn’t give any reason for the immigration legislation being excluded from the budget.

Klein told the Gazette that while the goal of the DREAM Act has been a priority, he said he would put his energy toward establishing a fund that would create a pool of cash for private donors to contribute to help undocumented youth attend college, instead of the legislation. “I think we should look at that. It is something we are going to have to look at later this year,” he said.

Klein and the IDC have faced major criticism from fellow Democrats as well as editorial boards around the state for not pushing for more on issues they say are most important to them.

Parker voted against all three budget bills on Sunday, citing a lack of minorities and women at the negotiating table as well as the lack of a DREAM Act provision. Sens. Jose Peralta and Adriano Espaillat also registered no votes in protest over the exclusion of a DREAM Act deal.

Perhaps the largest policy piece that was part of budget discussions but was left out of the final deal was legislation designed to combat arrests of young men for the possession of small amounts of marijuana as part of the city’s stop and frisk program.

Cuomo pushed for legislation that would have altered the law making it only a ticketable offense to carry small amounts of marijuana but Senate Republicans blocked the bill. In negotiations this year, the tweak to the law would have only affected New York City but the issue was dropped from the budget altogether.

“We have to do something about stop-and-frisk,” Parker told the Senate chamber on Sunday.

Speed cameras for the city were also left out of the budget and advocates are blaming Brooklyn Republican Sen. Marty Golden.

Golden has come down on the side of the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association who want officers to remain in complete control of issuing speeding tickets.

The New York City Department of Transportation found that speeding was the largest cause of crashes last year. The City Council passed a resolution last week asking the Legislature for the cameras and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Ray Kelly and the DOT support the program.

When asked why the issue was not addressed in the budget on Sunday, Golden told the Gazette: “I have no idea.” Advocates hope they can move legislation in both houses before the end of session.

Klein again said he thought the issue would come up later in the year. “I have found them useful around schools, but we have some members who don’t like them,” he said. “This is an issue that will come up later in the year.”

The budget deal also doesn’t provide cash to the SUNY Downstate Medical Center that officials warn could shutter its doors without financial assistance. The budget contains language that calls for hospital officials to submit a restructuring plan to the state by June and allows them to negotiate less expensive contracts.

Parker said layoffs at the Brooklyn-based hospital would be devastating to the area’s economy.

The Senate is scheduled to convene at 11 a.m. today but will likely be unable to vote on any budget bills. They will then return Tuesday and likely work overnight into Wednesday until they have passed the entire budget. While there were only a few votes against the budget yesterday, Senate Democrats plan more cohesive opposition later this week.

Image of the four men who will determine the direction of the state budget courtesy of the governor's office.