FYI… Excellent editorial from down state.

OpEd - Political Pawns - By Tom Chandler

Albany veterans recall when the Governor and lawmakers waited until virtually the break of dawn on Dec. 18, 1998 to declare they had reached a deal. Mr. Pataki signed off on a 38% pay raise and legislators agreed to establish 100 charter schools in the state. http://www.nysun.com/article/45197

That pretty much says it all. Put enough money on the table and his mercenary facilitators will even rise up against Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. When NYSUT, the teachers union, realized that another pay raise was competing for Assembly loyalties, they commissioned radio ads to enlist public support against charter schools as expensive failures.

At issue are 22,000 low-income children currently on charter school waiting lists, being held back in under performing schools because the adults who care about them do not appreciate who has sold them out to moneyed and influential special interests.

How many tens of thousands of low-income children missed a better safer educational foundation all the years since initial legislation for the first 100 schools was drawn up, to be finally passed in 1998? How many could not find charter school seats because their side had not paid enough to play the political games where winners buy what they need?

Look at the NY’s four year graduation rate for minorities. We are 47th out of 49 states providing data. Compare the tax money spent on education in each state. For too many each semester spent in an under performing school is a big investment in a weak and flawed educational foundation upon which these children will build their future.

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/041906ThirdLowest.html
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ewp_08_t01.htm
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_48.htm#10

An informed public will not tolerate most of the routine foolishness that passes for a legislative session year after year in New York. Does anybody deny we would be far better off if our legislators knew they had to account for their actions to an informed public every election cycle? Gov. George Pataki argues the Assembly not only wanted a pay raise to raise the cap on charter schools but to pass tougher sexual predator laws, (in this, one of the bottom 10 states for such laws in the country.) For nine years this has been an annual struggle, each year the legislation passes the state Senate with unanimous bipartisan support, only to be stalled in the Assembly by Speaker Silver before it can be brought to a vote. Each election the Assembly majority re elects Sheldon Silver the powers of Speaker to do such things, trusting that he will.

To borrow from a Capital News 9 article Gov. Pataki brought them here ostensibly to pass a civil confinement bill. For nine years, he’s wanted the legislature to pass a bill keeping sexual criminals in custody. For nine years and counting, it’s failed. http://www.capitalnews9.com/content/your_news/capital_region/default.asp?ArID=200300

The Democratic controlled state Assembly objected to his bill and called it overreaching. But Pataki charged that. The Democrats were only looking for a pay raise in exchange for their support of his bill, which he refused.

Democrats countered that Pataki was tying their pay raise not just to civil confinement, but to charter schools, which some labor-friendly assemblymen don’t want.