Any registered voter choosing to not cast a ballot on Tuesday, November 2 is part of the problem that has nearly bankrupted New York State. For far too long governing has been left solely in the hands of elected officials, and that absolute power coupled with an uninvolved electorate has fueled the phrase, “Asleep at the Wheel.”
If New York State government were one big family then it would be the largest dysfunctional family on the east coast. So what can be done on the State level to affect the beginnings of true change – change that is overdue like a check lost in the mail?
River Journal sat down face-to-face in four separate interviews with three candidates and one incumbent whose constituency includes the residents of Irvington, Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow.
Tom Bock and Tom Abinanti are running for the 92nd District State Assembly seat vacated by Richard Brodsky. Liam McLaughlin has challenged incumbent Andrea Stewart Cousins for the State Senate in District 35. In each race the philosophies that drive the opponents could not be any farther apart and still be within State boundaries.
Tom Bock, age 56, is an on-site systems administrator for a computer software company. He has been an active 37-year firefighter and was a former Chief of the Elmsford volunteer Fire Department. For the past 25 years he has been a member of Westchester County’s Hazardous Materials Response Team. In addition, “Just prior to 9/11 we realized that there was no technical rescue capability in the County, and I, along with several other firefighters, formed the Westchester County Technical Rescue Team for catastrophic events,” he added.
Facing fiscal realities we asked candidate Bock to give a specific program or area within NYS government that could levy a zero percent tax increase. He said, “In the latest State budget there were 243 fees that were either increased or newly created. In this budget there are roughly $14 billion in new taxes. Even though they [legislators] said they balanced the budget, they did not. What they [legislators] did was to take $6.8 billion in debt and carry it over to the new 2010/2011 budget. That is not balancing a budget, that’s not being an adult and it’s certainly not being true to your constituency.” When asked again about the possibility of a zero percent tax levy he said, “At this point I don’t see how that could happen and that’s why I want to go up there.” He then added that restoring the STAR tax rebate and repealing the MTA tax were high priorities for him.
When asked what effect he could have in Albany, Bock said, “I have a management background that would allow me to evaluate State programs and I want to put everyone of them on the table.” As for the question of three personal accomplishments, Bock listed the first as his son being born. “It’s the raising part that is tough,” he said jokingly. “From a firematic standpoint – becoming Chief and implementing the service award program where there was none.” Lastly, from a professional standpoint, Bock has been a part of major renovations of computer equipment and systems which have been multi-million dollar projects.
We also asked Tom Bock what he could accomplish as a junior Assemblyman in Albany? “Being junior is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that I can start throwing a lot of papers in the air and create a great deal of attention about things I think are wrong. I would bring management and leadership skills to Albany. I have the ability to assess, critique and respond.”
Lastly, we gave Bock the opportunity to ask his opponent Tom Abinanti one question. “As a career politician who has done nothing but raise taxes and spend other people’s money as a Westchester County Legislator, isn’t it time for Abinanti to step down to make way for some new blood?” Bock asked.
Our first question put to him centered around New York State and any program that he felt could levy a zero percent tax increase for residents. “New York State has to provide appropriate services throughout the State, funded by a fair and common sense system of revenues. Setting a target in advance of understanding the needs and resources will only create chaos for all other levels of government which are dependent on the property tax. My concern is to reduce and stabilize property taxes at the local level. I cannot in advance tell you what that is going to do to the State budget. The most single concern of our residents is high property taxes, and in large measure it is because the State has shifted costs from its own budget to local budgets,” he said.
Abinanti shifted his focus back to Westchester County government and cited several major accomplishments that enabled local municipalities to operate more efficiently through the aid of County involvement with resources and monies. He then went on to say, “Should I put it this way – that the taxpayers today are schizophrenic? They want the services but they don’t want to pay for them. I am a taxpayer to and I pay a lot of taxes and I’m on a limited budget as well. I spend a lot of time as County Legislator and a lot less as a lawyer. So I understand the pressures that we’re under today. At the same time we have a community that has to work. You just can’t walk away and say, ‘Too bad.’” He went on to say, “The public wants services for nothing and they expect that politicians and office holders are magicians. We’re normal people like everybody else. We’re business people, we’re taxpayers and we apply all of the knowledge that we have to try to come up with the best solutions. This attack on career politicians is really a red herring because it’s like any other field; you have to have some expertise, some understanding to be able to accomplish something.”
When asked what effect he could have in Albany as junior assemblyman he said, “I believe that I can be part of the solution in Albany. I am not going to be able to solve it alone. The solution from our point of view is to direct the attention of the Legislature and of the Governor to the suburbs, to the property tax base communities. There is too little understanding among the dominant New York City legislators of the problem of property taxes. A person owning a $600,000 house in New York City [all 5 Boroughs] pays about $3000 in property taxes. They don’t have the sensitivity that we have to property taxes.” He went on to add that too often people throw around slogans in dealing with complex problems. “I will take on Albany the way I took on Westchester. I believe that I have passed as much significant legislation as any other legislator in Westchester.” In Albany, Abinanti believes that creating a “suburban coalition” of property tax-based communities will have an impact on how programs are paid for. “You have to have a countervailing force to the interests of New York City,” he added.
Tom Abinanti also sees himself as anything but a junior assemblyman should he be elected. “I believe that my years of experience plus my years of working in Albany as a staff member make me a freshman and a half.” He also believes that he is not wedded to the Albany culture and the way they do business up there. “I have both an understanding of government and of Albany and that gives me a head start on working to make changes.”
As for accomplishments while in office, Abinanti cited significant environmental legislation, along with a law he enacted to clean up organized crime control over the garbage industry. He is also very proud of a law he enacted that bans smoking in Westchester work places.
The question he would pose to his opponent Tom Bock is, “What in your history shows that you can actually accomplish some of the good things that you suggest?”
He is a firm believer that New York State government is dysfunctional and attributes that dysfunction to incumbents being re-elected over and over again. His background as a CPA has helped him see firsthand the wasteful and ever increasing spending that the State seems unwilling to condemn. When asked what specific program or area of government within the State could exist with a zero tax increase he stated the following. “You could look at specific programs like Medicaid where we’re spending 70% above the national average. New York State spends more on Medicaid than Florida, Illinois and Texas combined. I think the area is rife with abuse. I also think that very strict measures need to be in place to ensure that the people getting the benefits are the people that need them,” McLaughlin said. “The current majority in the Senate refuses to simply pass measures like ‘finger imaging’ and ‘face-to-face’ interviews that would allow us to weed out billions of dollars in Medicaid fraud and corruption,” he added. McLaughlin is also in favor of Senate “member items” within the budget being voted out in the open and individually so as to avoid hidden monies being passed along in line items. “In the past it was refereed to as ‘honest graft’ but it’s not honest and it’s illegal,” he said.
In short, McLaughlin sees the immediate need for different ways of doing things in Albany. All programs should be considered for their cost effectiveness and there should be no “sacred cows” so to speak. “Small things add up and Legislators refuse to look at them because they think it’s insignificant,” he said. “Saving a couple hundred thousand dollars here and there adds up to real money,” he said tongue-in-cheek.
As for the effect Liam McLaughlin could have in Albany, McLaughlin was quick to point out, “As someone who can add and subtract I think I could produce a good effect. It seems there are a lot of people up there that don’t know how a budget works. They want to spend money that they don’t have and their answer to everything is to just increase taxes. That can’t be the answer. People in Westchester are tired of being the highest taxed County in the nation. They’re voicing it over and over again, and that’s ultimately why I decided to run for State Senate. I, too, am fed up and it didn’t appear that anyone was taking this issue on from our senatorial district, and I said enough is enough. So I am going to run as an accountant who can understand numbers and budgets and bring my strong financial background to the table.” In addition McLaughlin sees the need to stop businesses from leaving the State due to ever increasing taxation. With those businesses go jobs as well. “The number of friends that I have who have moved to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Arizona is amazing. To me it just points in one direction – the State’s spending which is completely reckless,” he said. According to McLaughlin the reckless approach to spending by the Legislature has one outcome – higher taxes. “New York just can’t compete, because we are too expensive to do business here. I consider myself fortunate to live 5 blocks away from my parents and 5 minutes away from my wife’s parents, and ideally that’s where you want to be. My son can grow up with his grandparents. However, I have so many friends and family members that couldn’t do that and had to move away. They miss family members and it has become a strain on them to be so far away. I’m tired of seeing that and I want to do something about it. I want to cut costs at the State level,” McLaughlin said.
As for accomplishments, Liam McLaughlin cited his first budget on the Yonkers City Council where they voted in a “zero percent” property tax increase in 1997. It was the first time in over 30 years that property taxes had not increased. “We also cut the income tax surcharge by 33% while I was on the City Council and the real property transfer tax by 50%,” he added. Those two reductions were all part of a bigger plan to reduce taxes in the City of Yonkers which had a number of “nuisance taxes” as they were referred to and that other cities didn’t have. “Business started to boom in Yonkers as a result of our efforts and that was ahead of the real estate boom. We began to develop our waterfront, which up until then had been industrial.
I fought hard for the economic development of Yonkers and was successful,” he noted.
When asked what he would do as a junior Senator, McLaughlin’s response was direct. “I don’t accept ‘No’ for an answer,” he said. He then added that the word “no” is his least favorite in the English language. He would find ways to make things happen and work tirelessly to that end.
Finally, he was given one question to ask his opponent, Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins. “Why can’t this State live within its means?” he asked.
We asked the Senator about facing the fiscal realities of 2010, and what specific program or area of State government could exist with a zero percent tax levy? “One of the things that I am proud to be part of is the New York Task Force on Government Efficiency. It’s an internal and bi-partisan review of State government. We are going through each agency and looking at what they do. We are also examining whether they are true to their mission, whether they are bloated or if overtime pay has run amuck. Bringing in just three agencies and having hearings on them we have identified potentially $300,000,000 in savings,” she said. When asked to identify the agencies and specifically what was found, Stewart-Cousins replied, “The Department of Transportation (DOT) was one. They seem to rely a lot on outside contractors and the discussion centered on whether or not this reliance was because the agency had always operated with outside contractors. We then asked the DOT to assess what specific work they need outside contractors for and what they could accomplish ‘in house.’” Another issue with the State Department of Transportation dealt with the agency wanting an exact and certain color of orange on its signs and this required them ordering more signs until they got just the color they wanted. “The whole idea of starting a process like this is to determine where we can immediately start saving money,” she added.
Andrea Stewart-Cousins is not in favor of arbitrarily saying that each State agency should receive an automatic cut of a certain percentage.
“A 5% cut in one agency might not be a problem whereas in another agency it might devastate them. The reality is that we have to look at each agency’s mission and what they are doing to fulfill that mission. It’s not a shotgun approach but rather a detailed and selective one,” according to the Senator.
“We have also looked at the State University system (SUNY) and the way that its campuses are structured. One of the things we looked at is how they address public safety. We found out that every campus has its own police chief, deputies and so on. The question is whether each campus needs its own hierarchy of structure to do what they need to do. It’s the beginning of a conversation to allow everybody to be in a room together and to explain why this really matters. We invite everybody including the parents of students. We’re not here to dismantle the services only to justify that the dollars spent are spent in the most appropriate manner possible.”
Andrea Stewart-Cousins believes that these meetings send a message to State agencies and that they will be looked at in ways they haven’t been before. “We expect accountability and transparency and unfortunately when people talk about the State being dysfunctional it didn’t start this year.” She cited that when she ran for office in 2004 the New York State Legislature had been labeled the most dysfunctional governing body in the country. “I ran because I understood this was a problem. I ran because I have been a catalyst for change everywhere I go. I’m not afraid to do the hard things and that’s why I am here now,” she added.
Turning to accomplishments the Senator said,“My first major accomplishment was saving Dobbs Ferry Hospital. It was on the chopping block when I arrived as a freshman Senator. I believed that not only was the hospital important for the river towns it was also an integral part of a network of hospitals. It would have been devastating to lose the hospital.” Turning towards a second accomplishment she said, “Working to reform the system [in Albany] so that people can at least see what’s going on in government. We now have the opportunity to broadcast the meetings in real time and that increases the transparency. I was also part of rules reform that allowed minority members in the Senate to introduce bills, and that had never been the case before. That increased the number of real voices at the table.”
On a more local level the Senator is proud of her accomplishments in keeping Con Edison accountable for how they manage vegetation when pruning around their power lines. She had legislation passed that allowed municipalities in Westchester County to bring in the utility provider to tell them specifically what the scope of the work would be regarding pruning and cutting. “It comes back to accountability and transparency,” she said.
When given the opportunity to ask one question of her opponent, Liam McLaughlin, Stewart-Cousins said, “Where have you been?”