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Albany’s Legislative Clock Runs Out, but Accord Withers in the Morning Light Legislature Reaches Deal to Extend Mayoral Control of New York’s Schools for a Year
(about 5 hours later)
ALBANY — The people’s business seemed almost finished by midnight on Thursday, the last official day of the legislative session, when New York State lawmakers left the Capitol with a tentative agreement. ALBANY — State lawmakers on Friday reached a long-awaited deal to conclude the 2016 legislative session that included a modest ethics package, the release of $570 million in state funding for supportive housing for the homeless, required lead testing for public school drinking water and a one-year extension — with major caveats — of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s control of New York City schools.
That tentativeness did not fare well in the dead of night. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and legislative leaders had already announced an agreement on ethics reform measures that would, among other things, strip state pensions from public officials convicted of corruption and strengthen prohibitions on political campaigns coordinating with independent expenditure committees.
Friday morning revealed divisions between the Assembly speaker, Carl E. Heastie, John J. Flanagan, the Senate majority leader and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the three legislative leaders who negotiate every Albany deal. Major issues that seemed nearly settled Thursday night once again had question marks appended. But consensus kept lurching out of reach on the one Albany issue that mattered most to the mayor: city schools, and what Mr. de Blasio would have to give up to his antagonists in Albany in order to keep controlling them. In the end, he made significant concessions in exchange for a one-year extension, including a requirement for his Education Department to publish city school districts’ budgeting information and a sweeping change to the oversight structure of more than half the city’s charter schools.
Tasks still outstanding: stripping state pensions from officials convicted of a felony, a popular ethics measure; legalizing daily fantasy sports, which, though popular, are currently considered illegal online gambling in New York State; extending Mayor Bill de Blasio’s control over New York City schools for an additional year, but with conditions; and releasing millions of dollars in state funding to go toward supportive housing for the homeless. The trouble this week began when it became clear that Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, and the State Assembly, which is dominated by city Democrats, would have to accept a one-year extension of mayoral control, down from the three years they had hoped for.
Though the Assembly passed a resolution on pension forfeiture, a popular ethics reform measure, shortly before midnight on Thursday, the Senate did not seem prepared to embrace the same resolution on Friday. (In order for it to become a constitutional amendment, two consecutively elected Legislatures must approve it before voters consider the measure on the ballot.) It continued on Friday morning, when State Senator John J. Flanagan, a Republican who is the majority leader and who is not disposed to be helpful to a mayor who has openly worked to flip control of the chamber to the Democrats, said he would grant a one-year extension in exchange for more public information about the city’s education spending.
Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, the leader of the breakaway Democrats in the Senate who have a partnership with the chamber’s Republican leadership, said on Friday that the Senate was standing by “the bill that we passed previously,” referring to a broader version of the measure that the Senate approved last year. And it culminated with a last-minute hurdle thrown in Friday afternoon by Senate Republicans, who introduced a charter school provision would effectively create a parallel system of charter schools within the city by exempting those charters, authorized by the State University of New York, from state rules and regulations.
Still, he said that working out some agreement on pension forfeiture as well as changes to independent-expenditure committees — a late-session priority announced earlier this month by Governor Cuomo — was a priority. Under the terms of the deal announced Friday, school districts will be required to test for lead in drinking water, with the state paying for some of the testing costs.
In what he said was “an attempt to reach out to the Senate and address any points they have raised,” the Assembly bill’s sponsor, Assemblyman David Buchwald, a Democrat from Westchester, introduced an adjusted version of the bill on Friday that removed language specifying that forfeiture would apply only to those who commit their crimes after the constitutional amendment is enacted, or in 2018 at the earliest. Even in the absence of that language, however, the federal Constitution prohibits laws that retroactively increase penalties for crimes, a condition that Mr. Buchwald said would prevent New York State from stripping the pensions from politicians who get in trouble before 2018. The state will also provide an additional $50 million in capital funding for SUNY and the City University of New York.
But the greatest friction between the Republican-dominated Senate and the Assembly, run by Democrats, appeared to be on the issue of mayoral control of city schools. Mr. Flanagan said on Friday that he was willing to grant a one-year extension, but with an additional layer of state oversight that would require the city’s Department of Education to release detailed data about how it budgets money for individual schools. The Legislature was still considering a measure to legalize daily fantasy sports, which, though popular, are currently considered illegal online gambling in the state.
Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, has been at odds with Senate Republicans since he openly, though unsuccessfully, worked to retake the Senate majority in 2014, and they have not hesitated to make things difficult for him on the schools issue. A few high-profile bills did win both houses’ backing on Friday afternoon. The hotel industry in New York City cheered the passage of legislation that would keep people from advertising stays shorter than 30 days in unoccupied homes, a measure that the bill’s supporters said would restrict commercial operators of illegal hotels, but that Airbnb — the company most affected by the bill — said would affect regular city residents. It is already illegal in New York to rent out an empty apartment for less than 30 days at a time.
Mr. Flanagan cast the provision as a matter of basic transparency. The Legislature also passed bills that would increase penalties for using software known as ticket bots to scoop up large numbers of tickets to concerts, games or other events, a practice that the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, highlighted in a recent report. Doing so is already illegal, but the bill would make the practice a misdemeanor.
“It is eminently reasonable for a parent or City Council member to be able to say, ‘Where are you spending the money? How much are you spending per pupil in what district?’” he said after he met with Mr. Heastie, Mr. Klein and Mr. Cuomo on Friday morning. The announcement about the ethics agreement highlighted what it called strong protections against the independent expenditure committees empowered by the Citizens United ruling, the Supreme Court’s 2010 campaign finance decision. The governor had already made a push to tighten restrictions on such committees over the past few weeks.
New York City officials, however, were arguing that the requirement was a heavy-handed, not to mention unworkable, overreach that would impose a large administrative burden on school officials. Top mayoral aides were in Albany to try to beat back the Senate bill. Of all the ethics reforms measures lawmakers had discussed this session — the first after the corruption trials of Sheldon Silver, the former Assembly speaker, and Dean G. Skelos, the former Senate majority leader — pension forfeiture, a relatively straightforward and popular measure, was the only one to survive. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, had proposed, but ultimately abandoned, more ambitious proposals that included closing a campaign-finance loophole that allows limited liability companies to donate to political candidates as individuals, rather than as businesses.
Mr. Heastie has previously made clear that he will protect the city’s interests when it comes to the issue of mayoral control, and it was unclear on Friday afternoon where the final deal would ultimately land, or even whether lawmakers would be able to agree by the end of the day. Mayoral control is set to expire at the end of June. In order for pension forfeiture to become a constitutional amendment, two consecutively elected Legislatures must approve it before voters consider the measure on the ballot.
Another issue that still seemed to require further negotiation was the legalization of daily fantasy sports. The bill’s sponsors in each house expressed confidence in an agreement earlier in the week, but Mr. Flanagan said they were “still discussing” it. The ethics package will also require political consultants who simultaneously advise elected officials or candidates and work with companies with business before the state to register with the state and disclose their clients. It strengthens disclosure requirements for lobbyists and for tax-exempt nonprofits that lobby the state to disclose financial support from other nonprofits that are not supposed to engage in political activity.
At the same time, advocates for the homeless were trying to pressure the governor and legislative leaders to fund supportive housing units that they say are a key to reducing homelessness. Reports that the latest figure for such funding stood at just $150 million drew a flurry of statements urging lawmakers to approve $2 billion. Blair Horner, executive director for the New York Public Research Group, said the deal was a “smorgasbord of elections, ethics and lobbying reforms” that nonetheless was “not focused at the heart of what’s wrong with Albany,” including the nearly unchecked flow of money through multiple limited liability companies.
That said, Mr. Horner said that the move to define coordination between independent expenditure committees and candidates was an improvement. “No one has defined what that means,” he said. “And this does.”