The NY State legislature has wrapped up another session, and once again they have failed to act on issue after issue. New York will continue to have some of the worst election laws in the country. New Yorkers will continue to be unprotected if the Trump Supreme Court rolls back reproductive rights. New York taxpayers will continue to pay for prisons that are crowded with people who are only incarcerated because they are too poor to make bail. Long-time Albany watchers shrug their shoulders, and say, “What else is new?”
Well, one thing is new in 2018: people are paying attention.
Teachers are certainly paying attention to the fact that the State Senate let the session end without a vote on S.8301. The bill, which had already passed in the Assembly and had majority support in the Senate, would have fixed the punitive law tying teacher evaluations to test scores. Instead, the Senate GOP leadership, abetted by some of its “former” IDC allies like Jeff Klein and Dave Valesky, passed a different bill that took this popular policy and added in massive taxpayer subsidies for charter schools. It was a “poison-pill” vote that doomed efforts to reform teacher evaluation procedures for yet another year, while presumably ensuring its backers lucrative campaign donations from the for-profit charter school industry.
This kind of political maneuvering for donor dollars is a key reason why the NY State Senate has been failing New York voters for so long. Our state can be a national leader on so many fronts, if we can just break the power of dark money and bring decision-making out of back rooms and into the sunlight. We can fix the way we fund public education and make sure that even our neediest districts have the resources to provide excellent public schools for all our children. We can assure that all New Yorkers have comprehensive, affordable health care, while saving taxpayers billions of dollars. We can lower our greenhouse gas emissions and direct energy funding to the communities that are most vulnerable to climate disruption. We can shield immigrants in our state from some of the cruelest policies of the Trump administration.
We can do all this, if voters push back against political cynicism and back-room deals, and insist instead on electing a state government that works for everyone. We can’t – and won’t – shrug our shoulders or look the other way any more.
Please support the IDC challengers! You can learn about my campaign in SD-53 here.