An archive of articles and listserve postings of interest, mostly posted without commentary, linked to commentary at the Education Notes Online blog. Note that I do not endorse the points of views of all articles, but post them for reference purposes.
The City Council will not advance a controversial bill being pushed hard by Mayor Adams and the Municipal Labor Committee to change the city’s Administrative Code 12-126 that covers how the city covers its 300,000 active-duty employees and 250,000 retirees.
The Adams administration and MLC maintain the change was necessary to preserve health care options for retirees as the city implements a Medicare Advantage type program, which they say would save the city $600 million a year.
According to the Adams administration, the city spends $11 billion a year, about 10 percent of the entire city budget on healthcare costs related to active and retired civil servants. Of that, $600 million was spent on retiree health care coverage in 2021, up from $200 million in 2000.
The Adams administration’s attempt to change how it provides healthcare for its active workforce and retirees comes as it faces serious budget challenges and a long list of expired labor contracts.
The latest turn of events in the City Council is a major win for a grassroots campaign of New York City retired civil servants spearheaded by The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees. The ad hoc movement opposes the code change and the imposition of a for profit Medicare Advantage plan they assert would limit their access to health care with pre-authorizations.
The Adams administration and the MLC had claimed time was of the essence because its Health Stabilization Fund, created in 1984, used to cover healthcare obligations and help defray premium costs, is running out of money, putting at risk the premium-free health care that active and retired city employees continue to enjoy. Last year, the city said that City retirees could opt to keep their current health coverage by paying a $191 premium.
Retirees assert that their premium free healthcare was a form of deferred compensation that the city has a moral obligation to continue to pay. The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees have won two rounds in state court challenging the city's implementation of its healthcare reset.
The Council not moving forward with the Administrative Code change came after a Jan. 9 marathon Civil Service and Labor Committee hearing where the expert panel sent by the Adams administration repeatedly had to commit to following up later with answers to Council Members' questions.
While the Council Committee’s agenda item was the city’s Administrative Code — the questions from the Council zeroed in on the Medicare Advantage deal Mayor Adams and the Municipal Labor Committee are currently negotiating with Aetna for city’s retirees with a planned summer rollout. Members pressed the administration’s experts for more details on the potential five-year Aetna deal but could not get a commitment that they would get to see a draft of the contract.
At the Jan. 19 press conference before the Council’s Stated Meeting, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) said the hearing had generated “volumes of testimony to review” but that “there are no scheduled next steps” for the bill to change the Administrative Code as requested by Mayor Adams.
Adams added that she felt the Council needed to have access to the proposed Medicare Advantage contract between the city and Aetna.
“There are still so many questions,” Adams told reporters. “One of the questions at the hearing was where is the contract? We don’t even have a contract to deliberate on as a body. For me, and I am speaking for myself, that was a very important piece of information.”
Council Member Carmen De La Rosa (D-Manhattan) chair of the Civil Service and Labor Committee confirmed that the Administrative Code change has been officially “laid aside”. She described the retirees' successful organizing efforts as “Herculean” that included “making phone calls, emailing constantly calling and showing up.”
“Obviously, there is a looming problem that we will have to deal with as a Council whether it is by legislation or if we deal with it in the budget process—or deal with it if the administration chooses to move on with Medicare Advantage,” De La Rosa said during a phone interview.
De La Rosa continued. “The hearing process provides a platform that lends itself to getting clarity and getting to ask questions—that being said there are so many questions and there’s real concerns in the Council about the implications of changing the Administrative Code and the Medicare Advantage will have on some very vulnerable city workers--so at this moment there is not an appetite for this legislation by this body.”
The Adams administration is still negotiating with Aetna over issues like pre-authorizations, raising serious questions about how real all these so-called deadlines really were.
“It’s a tremendous victory for the organizers, for the retirees that we are not voting on that today—that it was pushed back,” Council Member Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) said during a city hall interview. “People thought it would be rushed through—thrown down people’s throats.”
Barron said that retirees and their supporters on the Council should “put the pedal to the metal” and press to have the $600 million needed to cover annual retiree healthcare costs covered in the pending budget to ensure the city kept its commitment of providing premium free healthcare.
“I am hoping the City Council can come up with the $600 million out of the $102.7 billion budget presented to us—put that $600 million in the budget,” Barron said, adding it would amount to less than one percent of the budget. “They put in the labor for us in so many different fields to make life better for us.”
“It is a big victory for municipal retirees,” said Brooklyn Council Member Ari Kagan, who recently left the Democratic caucus for the Republicans. “It is a big victory for everyone in the city. It’s democracy—petitions, email, testimony—they all work. I don’t think the administration and the MLC were prepared for this outcry and blowback and they just didn’t expect the strong opposition.”
“I am not surprised,” Council Member Vickie Paladino (R-Queens) said of the retirees' victory. “There was too much controversy surrounding it. As also grass root is what matters and grass roots is what works. It keeps people informed—it keeps them active, and it keeps them going because knowledge is power.”
The Adams administration and the MLC’s proposal for Medicare Advantage is an outgrowth of an agreement cut with the de Blasio administration to find billions of dollars in healthcare costs savings as unions settled contracts that Mayor Bloomberg had left unsettled for years. The collaboration between management and the MLC included the creation of a Tripartite Health Insurance Committee chaired by Martin Scheinman, who would act as the arbitrator over any disputes that arose out of implementation of the Committee’s initiatives.
In an October 28, letter Office of Labor Relations Commissioner Renee Campion warned that unless the Council passed the change to Administrative Code 12-126 by Nov. 4, the Adams administration “would seek relief” from mediator Scheinman, to order a change that would also comply with a standing order from the state judge that the city continue to provide retirees a single health insurance plan without a premium option.
In December, Scheinman issued an opinion he framed as an order saying the Adams administration could move ahead with the Medicare Advantage rollout, with or without the City Council acting on the Administrative Code change.
“While I understand change can be difficult, particularly when it comes to long-time health benefits, circumstances have evolved to threaten the sustainability of robust premium-free benefits for actives and retirees,” Scheinman wrote.
Katherine Goldberg· 0 Likes
Scheinman was not hired to arbitrate this issue, only to give his “opinion “.
If and when there IS an arbitration, it must involve the 2 parties who
are at odds on the issue. The Retiree Organization, who were the party
who would be effected by the change were never asked by Sheinman to
state their facts and point of view. If the 2 parties involved in the
arbitration were not present, then there is NO arbitration. It’s just 1
man’s opinion. Mr sheinman represents the mayor and the unions who are
are on the same page with forcing retirees ( and future retirees) into
an advantage plan. There was NO INPUT asked for from the group who would
be effected by the change…. hence there was no arbitration
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Walter A Czwartacky· 0 Likes
Your report is not accurate in the
following critical ways. First, no judge ever ordered the city to offer
only one plan. The City and the MLC make that claim but if you read the
rulings you will find it’s absurd and untrue. Second, the Scheinman
report is a biased document no retiree was involved with and is not an
order or ruling. By the authors own admission, It is a recommendation.
What it puts forward are non-binding recommendations Scheinman developed
in conjunction with City and MLC and WITHOUT retiree input.
Furthermore, Scheinman was not empowered to rule on Medicare Advantage
issue and term has expired.
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Roberta Gonzalez· 0 Likes
This is most likely a temporary
victory….the mayor has promised a ‘nuclear’ response to force all of the
retirees into a (dis) advantage plan. I’m not sure he can push all the
retirees off the cliff at once, but I think he will try. Maybe before he
tries that, he will publish the science that went into developing the
“better than what we have now” health plan for seniors that the unions
and the MLC has been promoting . Then everyone can see the results of
the pilot program that must have been developed to determine how this
plan, touted as specifically tailored for nyc muni retirees, compares to
Original Medicare with Sr. Ghi. How many people were in the pilot
project? What were the age ranges? Were there focus groups measuring
user and provider satisfaction ? What health/medical facilities
participated? What were the markers that determined success and
satisfaction? Are the participants healthier, better cared for, cured,
monitored, tested etc. as well as, better than, worse than the current
program? How can anyone say an untested new program is better than a
current program that gets high marks, without robust testing, and
publishing the science? Otherwise it’s all b.s. to me.
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Ronald· 0 Likes
Just as nationally, democrats and
republicans hijacked Social Security and refused to put funds in a lock
box, leading to the "justification" that our benefits funded by our
payroll taxes are an "entitlement" subject to be placed on the cutting
block, the UFT and city administrations misallocated transitional
funding and have tried to use employees' and retirees' deferred
compensation to cover their misuse of funds. Indeed this is part and
parcel of the desire to destroy all public wealth and privatize
everything.
Thom
Hartmann provides a brief history of the power of the for-profit
healthcare industry, which has successfully blocked a national
Medicare-for-All system. Please open the link and read it all. The
industry’s current push is to get people transferred from Medicare to
for-profit Medicare Advantage plans. Under Medicare, seniors can choose
their own doctors and do not have to seek permission for costly
procedures. under Medicare Advantages, patients may see only in-network
doctors and may be denied permission for treatment. That’s where the
profit is: denying treatment. About half of all seniors are on a
Medicare Advantage plan, because they were wooed by prescription drug
coverage or a free gym membership.
Hartmann begins:
Republicans
have taken control of the House of Representatives, and already have
their sights set on forcing major cuts to “entitlements” like Social
Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
One
of the promises McCarthy made to become speaker was to force a vote on
dialing back 2023/2024 spending back to 2021 levels — and there’s been a
7% inflation increase in costs/expenses since then. In other words,
they want massive cuts.
His Republican colleagues have already outlined the starting point for their demands, as reportedby Yahoo News:
“The
Republican Study Committee proposed a budget for fiscal 2023 that would
gradually increase the eligibility ages for Social Security and
Medicare, and change the Social Security benefit formula for people 54
and younger…”
In
that, they’re going to have a hell of a fight on their hands, as
Senator Bernie Sanders is taking over leadership of the Senate Health
Committee, which oversees Medicare and Medicaid. He’s already promising “a lot of subpoenas” will be arriving at the offices of healthcare and big pharma CEOs.
Most
Americans have no idea that the United States is quite literally the
only country in the developed world that doesn’t define healthcare as an
absolute right for all of its citizens.
That’s
it. We’re the only one left. Were the only country in the developed
world where somebody getting sick can leave a family bankrupt,
destitute, and homeless.
A
half-million American families are wiped out every year so completely
that they must lose everything and declare bankruptcy just because
somebody got sick. The number of health-expense-related bankruptcies in
all the other developed countries in the world combined is zero.
Yet the United States spends more on “healthcare” than any other country in the world: about 17% of GDP.
Switzerland,
Germany, France, Sweden and Japan all average around 11%, and Canada,
Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Norway, Netherlands, United Kingdom, New
Zealand and Australia all come in between 9.3% and 10.5%.
Health insurance premiums right now make up about 22% of all taxable payroll (and don’t even cover all working people), whereas Medicare For All would run an estimated 10% and would cover every man, woman, and child in America.
How and why are Americans being played for such suckers?
We
are literally the only developed country in the world with an entire
multi-billion-dollar for-profit industry devoted to parasitically
extracting money from us to then turn over to healthcare providers on
our behalf. The for-profit health insurance industry has attached itself
to us like a giant, bloodsucking tick.
And it’s not like we haven’t tried to remove that parasite.
Despite the wave
of discontent, President Emmanuel Macron intends to push through plans
to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62.
PARIS
— More than a million protesters, chanting slogans like “retirement
before arthritis,” took to the streets throughout France on Thursday to
protest President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the legal age of
retirement to 64 from 62.
Striking
workers, from Calais in the north to Marseille in the south, closed
schools, stopped many trains, disrupted the Paris Metro, lowered
electricity output and curtailed flights, as France once again roused
itself to resist tampering with its protective social model.
Mr.
Macron, who is in the first year of his second and last term, wants to
push through an overhaul of what he views as an untenable pension
system. He sees this as a core part of his legacy. But in a country
where work is viewed by many as a burden rather than an opportunity, and
retirement as the panacea beyond it, his determination has ignited
fierce resistance.
Labor unions, from
the extreme left to the moderate center, united behind the protests, as
did often splintered left-of-center political parties. Marine Le Pen,
the leader of the extreme-right National Rally party that has attracted
growing support among the working class, also called for “an unjust
reform” to be blocked.
In
Paris, where the strikers’ march stretched over two-and-a-half miles,
Corinne Arramy, a hospital worker, wore a sticker saying “We live longer
and that’s for the best, not a reason to die at work.” Ms. Arramy, 56,
said “This is the start of something big,” a fight to preserve a
hard-earned right.
Teachers, railway
workers and employees at public radio stations joined more than a
million protesters at more than 200 demonstrations across the country,
according to the Interior Ministry. The CGT labor union put the number
at over two million. On Thursday evening, the labor unions welcomed the
day’s “powerful mobilization” and called for a new day of strikes and
protests on Jan. 31.
Chants of “Metro,
Work, Tomb” rose from the crowds in derisory dismissal of what is
widely portrayed as a government attempt to squeeze the last of pleasure
from life in a hypercompetitive world.
City
Council leaders announced Thursday they have no plan to pass a bill
pushed by Mayor Adams that would allow his administration to charge
retired municipal workers for health insurance — and multiple sources in
the chamber told the Daily News that the legislation is unlikely to
ever get a vote.
Courts have twice blocked the administration
from implementing the plan due to a provision that would slap $191
monthly premiums on retirees who want to opt out of it in favor of
staying on traditional Medicare. While Advantage would be free, the
courts have said the administration’s proposed financial penalty for
other coverage runs afoul of a local law known as 12-126 that requires
the city to provide its retirees with no-premium coverage for life.
As a result, the mayor has for months pressed the Council to rewrite 12-126
in such a way that the $191 fee would become legally feasible — but
Speaker Adrienne Adams said Thursday afternoon that her body has no plan
to vote on legislation introduced at his request that would achieve
that end.
“There is no scheduled next step,” the speaker said during a news conference at City Hall.
Retirees
protesting the Medicare Advantage situation relating to the 12-126 law
outside of City Hall, Manhattan, New York, Wednesday, October 12, 2022.
(Shawn Inglima/for New York Daily News)
During a contentious Council Labor Committee hearing
earlier this month, Adams administration officials said that if the
Council does not adopt the 12-126-tweaking bill by Jan. 26, they would
move ahead with the drastic option of eliminating all health insurance
options for retirees besides Medicare Advantage.
The administration has maintained that option would comply with the court rulings since there’d be no financial penalty at play.
Given
that the Council’s final meeting of the month was Thursday, Speaker
Adams confirmed the body will not act by the stated deadline. That
presumably means the administration will follow through on its pledge to
make Advantage the only available plan for municipal retirees.
Adams
spokesman Jonah Allon declined to disclose the administration’s next
step. Instead, Allon reiterated that the mayor and the Municipal Labor
Committee believe the administration must move ahead with Advantage
because it could save the city hundreds of millions of dollar per year at a time of great fiscal uncertainty for the municipal government.
“The
city and the Municipal Labor Committee worked together to take
advantage of the federal funding for Medicare Advantage plans that would
permit us to continue providing high-quality, premium free coverage for
retirees while saving approximately $600 million a year — savings that
are especially critical as we continue to face a skyrocketing health
care crisis and other fiscal challenges,” Allon said.
Mayor Eric Adams (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)
Before
the full Council would ever be able to consider the bill favored by
Adams, the Labor Committee would have to approve it — and a source
inside the panel said that’s highly unlikely.
“The
appetite isn’t there to move this bill,” the source told The News,
speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Another
source close to Council leadership agreed. “It’s dead,” the insider
said of the bill, noting that no Council member came out in support of
it during this month’s hearing in the committee.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)
In her press conference, Speaker Adams declined to speculate on whether there’s any support for the bill in the chamber.
She cast doubt over the Jan. 26 deadline floated by the administration, though.
“It’s
not even clear that the deadline was ever [active],” she said before
lamenting that the administration hasn’t yet provided the Council with a
detailed contract for its preferred Advantage plan. “One of the
questions at the hearing was, ‘Where’s the contract?’ ... We didn’t even
have a contract to deliberate on as a body, so for me, that was a very
important piece of information that we would need to go forward in any
decision.”
The NYC Organization for Public Service Retirees filed the lawsuit
that prompted courts to block the first iteration of Adams’ Advantage
push — and has indicated it will seek additional legal intervention if
his administration attempts to make it the only health plan available to
them.
“If
they did that, I’m sure we’ll see them in court pretty quickly,”
Marianne Pizzitola, a retired FDNY EMT who leads the retiree group, said
at last month’s hearing to cheers from her members.
Ever
since former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration first tried to roll
out the Advantage plan in the fall of 2021, thousands of retired
teachers, EMTs and other municipal workers have argued that such a
switch would destroy their coverage. They’ve pointed to federal studies
showing that Advantage plans — which are administered by private health
insurance providers, unlike traditional Medicare — can deny “medically
necessary” care for beneficiaries.
Adams’
administration has disputed such concerns and said Advantage would
provide retirees with robust coverage, while allocating savings to hedge
against a city budget deficit that could grow as large as $6 billion in
coming years.
Rather than accept defeat based on the vote of the NY Senate Judiciary
Committee, Gov. Hochul has threatened to sue the NY Senate Democrats to
force a floor vote on Judge Hector LaSalle’s nomination.
Ugh! What could be more damaging than a Democratic governor suing
Democratic legislators for doing their job? I know! When newly elected
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries enters the fray to demand that
state Democratic legislators confirm an unpopular, conservative judge.
Hakeem Jeffries ill-advised involvement has led to harsh criticism from
progressive groups. See Common Dreams,'Disgracing Himself': Hakeem Jeffries Stumps for Anti-Abortion Judge.
If anyone has personal connections with Governor Hochul or Minority
Leader Jeffries, I hope you will reach out to them and ask that they
stop the madness. The ill-fated effort to nominate Judge LaSalle has
been both embarrassing and damaging to the Democratic Party in NY. We
cannot afford another series of losses like those we suffered in 2022.
====
Here are a few articles on the story.
Politico NY:
“The committee has spoken. The nomination was lost.”
That’s Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins with a definitive take on what happened to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s chief judge pick, Hector LaSalle, on Wednesday.
Her remarks came after 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against advancing LaSalle to a full Senate vote,
concluding nearly five hours of public questioning. And it was after
Hochul declined to accept the blow, instead sending out a swift
statement dismissing the committee's authority and integrity.
"While this was a thorough hearing,
it was not a fair one, because the outcome was predetermined. … While
the Committee plays a role, we believe the Constitution requires action
by the full Senate,” the governor said, alluding to her view that
"advice and consent" means something more helpful in the New York
Constitution than it does in U.S. Constitution.
Nope,
the committee speaks for the Senate, Stewart-Cousins said, and there
are a lot of other people her conference would love to see chosen as
chief judge. When it comes to a legal battle Hochul has threatened…
“I hope, and I’m sure that few of us have time to extract revenge, and so on,” Stewart-Cousins said. “We have work to do.”
Whether that’s a statement or a warning,
it begs the question of how Hochul will react to losing her first big
power struggle with the state Legislature and whether she can afford to
hold the kind of grudges that often fester in Albany.
If Hochul sues
the Senate (it’s still unclear what kind of jurisdiction this would
fall under, Judiciary Chair Brad Hoylman-Sigal said) what’s to stop dual
supermajorities from overriding any or every one of her gubernatorial
vetoes?
She doesn’t have too many other open nominations aside from her recommendation for New York Power Authority
head. But she does have a handful of open spots to lead agencies within
her administration — including at Tax, Health, Corrections, Budget,
Thruway State Police and Child and Family Services — that will
eventually require nominations and legislative approval.
More pressingly,
she’s got an executive budget filled with grand plans to transform
housing and mental health over the next several years that she’ll need
to introduce by Feb. 1. And then it’ll be time to negotiate with an
emboldened Legislative majority that just got a sweet taste of flexing
its authority.
NYT:
Inside the Political Fight That May Have Doomed a Chief Judge Nominee
A
battle over the nomination of Justice Hector LaSalle was rooted in both
judicial policy and politics, as progressive Democrats in New York
showed their strength.
ALBANY,
N.Y. — It was a historic show of force by a clutch of left-leaning
Democrats, disrupting what is normally a rubber-stamp judicial
nomination process by rejecting a candidate they believed was too
conservative to lead New York’s court system.
The
vote against Justice Hector LaSalle on Wednesday was all the more
remarkable because he was the nominee of Gov. Kathy Hochul, the leader
of the Democrats’ own party, and signaled what could be a contentious
four-year term for the newly elected governor.
Ms.
Hochul came to face such a prospect not only because of the clout of an
insurgent and outspoken progressive wing in the Democratic-controlled
Legislature, but also because she made a series of missteps, failing to
lock up solid support for Mr. LaSalle before announcing his nomination
on Dec. 22.
When opposition quickly
lined up against Mr. LaSalle, a former prosecutor, Ms. Hochul dug in,
refusing to withdraw the nomination — a move that could have forestalled
the embarrassing loss.
Instead, the governor is now left to contemplate whether to go to court to seek a full Senate hearing, or simply concede defeat.
Wednesday
was Mr. LaSalle’s first public testimony since criticism arose over
several of his judicial decisions, which critics suggested were
anti-union and anti-abortion. Mr. LaSalle’s supporters pushed back,
saying the decisions were being mischaracterized, cherry-picked or both.
During
the hearing, Mr. LaSalle was praised by many lawmakers — even those who
opposed him — while he, at one point, noted the cordial chats he’d had
with many of them before the vote in which they rejected him. “The
private conversations I’ve had,” he said, “have not mirrored the public
statements that have been made.”
While opposition to Mr. LaSalle was centered on his stances, the moment was also a clear demonstration of political muscle.
“They’re
testing her,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic political
consultant, noting that the governor in New York often has outsize power
in budget and other negotiations. “This is a battle about who is going
to run the state, and what ideological group is going to run the state,”
he added.
Indeed,
moments after the vote not to send Mr. LaSalle’s nomination to a floor
vote, the Working Families Party — which is positioned to the left of
mainstream Democrats and opposed Mr. LaSalle — sent out a triumphant
message, as did several other progressive-aligned groups.
“With
a far-right U.S. Supreme Court, and a New York Court of Appeals
captured by conservative and corporate interests, New York’s next chief
judge must be ready to stand up for the rights and dignity of all New
Yorkers,” Sharon Cromwell, deputy director of the party, said in a
statement. “Governor Hochul should return with a new judicial nominee.”
That
same progressive wing also took credit for salvaging Ms. Hochul’s
flagging campaign for a full term in November, after the governor found
herself in an unexpectedly tight battle with Republican Lee Zeldin, the
conservative congressman from Long Island.
At
the same time, the opposition also comes from a hunger on the part of
many progressives and moderates to push the court back to the left after
the tenure of the previous chief judge, Janet DiFiore, an Andrew Cuomo
nominee, who many saw as too conservative.
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That
opinion was codified last year, when a 4-to-3 bloc led by Judge DiFiore
rejected a new map for the state’s congressional districts, a decision
that many Democrats felt paved the way for a raft of Republican wins in
Congress in November.
The fight over
Mr. LaSalle also opened new fault lines among some of the state and New
York City’s most powerful Democratic constituencies, including labor,
the left and Latinos.
Opposition to
Mr. LaSalle has bound together some left-wing and more moderate, but
still pro-union members, of the Legislature. But union opposition to the
nomination has not been monolithic, with major labor groups like the Transport Workers Union criticizing fellow union groups for their tactics.
Many
Latinos were thrilled by the nomination of Mr. LaSalle — who would be
the state’s first Latino chief judge — but one of his critics on the
committee was Senator Jessica Ramos, who spoke Spanish with the nominee
at the hearing before voting no, a position she voiced weeks in advance of Wednesday’s hearing.
While
such schisms are not unheard-of in New York politics, the emotion that
the LaSalle nomination engendered may be more difficult to forget. On
Wednesday, some of Mr. LaSalle’s Democratic backers seemed angry at the
questioning from fellow Democrats.
State
Senator Luis R. Sepúlveda of the Bronx accused his colleagues of
“character assassination” and spreading misinformation, something he
said that he had only seen “the last time we had a Latino or a Latina
before this proceeding.”
He continued,
saying Wednesday’s questioning reminded him of last year’s contentious
confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court
justice, “where my colleagues were complaining about the Republicans
treating her in a certain way.”
For
Republicans, who, despite having a good year in congressional races
still face Democratic supermajorities in each chamber in Albany,
watching the intraparty war seemed to create a special joy.
“You
know, in reading your decisions and especially in listening to your
opening statement, I thought for a moment I was in the wrong room,” said
State Senator Andrew Lanza, a Staten Island Republican, drawing
laughter from the packed hearing room in Albany. “You do not come across
as a right wing conservative nut.”
William
F.B. O’Reilly, a Republican consultant, said that the battle over Mr.
LaSalle was “the first skirmish in a greater war to come.”
“Progressives
and democratic socialists are feeling their oats, and blocking the
governor’s chief judge pick would give them a major momentum boost in
New York,” he said, adding, “Moderate Democrats are fighting hard for
LaSalle because they don’t want the tail wagging the dog for the next
four years.”
Blair Horner, the
executive director for the New York Public Interest Research Group, a
watchdog group, said Wednesday’s committee decision had put Ms. Hochul
in a “lose-lose position” of either accepting defeat or pushing for a
vote that could rely heavily on Republicans.
“If
her nominee fails, she lost despite putting enormous capital into the
effort,” he said. “If the nominee is approved, she’s caused a big
headache for the Senate leadership and created deep tension with many
members, just as she goes forward with her budget,” which is due April
1.
Mr. Sheinkopf agreed that the fight
over Mr. LaSalle could be seen as a test by progressives of their
power. “If they can roll her on the judge,” he said. “They can roll her
on the budget.”
On Wednesday, State
Senator Jabari Brisport, a democratic socialist from Brooklyn, cast
Justice LaSalle’s defeat as a harbinger of a newly emboldened
Legislature.
“The State Senate doesn’t
need to tolerate Gov. Kathy Hochul acting like a Republican,” he wrote
on Twitter, “on judge nominations or in the upcoming budget
negotiations.”
Jesse
McKinley is a Metro correspondent for The Times, with an emphasis on
coverage of upstate New York. He previously served as bureau chief in
Albany and San Francisco, as well as stints as a feature writer, theater
columnist and Broadway reporter for the Culture desk. @jessemckinley
Comment: Hochul is burning political capital she does not have to save this guy.
Why? Which of her billionaire donors is demanding that the right wing
tilt of the state Court of Appeals be preserved? Could it be the same
billionaires that bought off Janet DiFiore and brought the Republican
gerrymander of congressional districts? Or is it something even more
sinister?
I have a Progressive heart but live in a region of New York where safe
Democratic house of representative seats flipped and went to
Republicans. Why was New York the only state that produced a red wave?
My neighbors are convinced (fairly or unfairly), that progressive
Democrats are soft on crime. Kathy Hochul's nomination of Hector LaSalle
was pragmatic and politically, quite astute. Aren't abortion rights now
enshrined in the state's constitution? Have we been losing traditional
support from Hispanic voters? Does New York have the money to meet the
demands of labor unions here?
Stand firm, Governor Hochul. New York is not as solidly blue and
progressive as one might think.
No place is as solidly blue or red as one might think.
You ask questions that don't seem relevant regarding several
constituencies. You say LaSalle's nomination was pragmatic and
politically astute. How? First of all like McCarthy in the U.S. House
she should have counted the votes before nominating this guy. Also re:
Latino voters, he's not the only Latino jurist out there. Why someone
this far to the right? Which demands of unions are you talking about?
Most of what you put forth is that kind of Republican-lite approach that
harmed this state particularly during the Cuomo yrs. The flip happened
because a right-leaning judge put in by Cuomo made the call. That
coupled with the trend of Democratic leaning areas having reduced voter
turnout helped to flip those seats. Not just in NY but other states as
well (CA in particular).
LaSalle Is Rejected by New York Senate Panel in a 10-9 Vote
Gov.
Kathy Hochul’s choice of Justice Hector LaSalle to become the state’s
top judge caused an intraparty Democratic battle that divided a judicial
hearing on Wednesday.
ALBANY,
N.Y. — Gov. Kathy Hochul’s embattled nominee to become New York State’s
top judge was rejected on Wednesday, an unprecedented repudiation that
underscored a deep division among Democrats on the direction of the
state’s judicial system.
After a
combative hourslong hearing, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 10-9
against the nomination of Justice Hector D. LaSalle, whose nomination
was strongly opposed by progressives who saw him as too conservative.
The
committee’s rejection — the first time that New York lawmakers have
voted against a governor’s choice for chief judge — laid bare how
vulnerable Ms. Hochul, a Buffalo-area Democrat, may be to a challenge
from her own party. All 10 senators who voted against the judge were
Democrats; two Democrats voted in favor of Justice LaSalle, while one
Democrat and all six Republicans on the committee voted in favor
“without recommendation.”
The
rejection does not necessarily mean that the LaSalle saga is over. The
governor has not ruled out taking legal action to force a vote on
Justice LaSalle’s nomination on the full Senate floor, raising the
specter of a constitutional showdown.
The
fight over the chief judge nomination, usually a noncontentious ordeal,
has become the most consequential political challenge of Ms. Hochul’s
first full term after being elected in November. The quarrel has set her
against more progressive Democrats in the State Senate, testing her
relationship with lawmakers as she begins to push her recently unveiled policy agenda in Albany.
Justice
LaSalle, who was vying to become the first Latino chief judge, always
faced an uphill climb. His nomination in December was immediately
opposed by several unions, reproductive rights groups and community
organizations, which pointed to cases that they said revealed he was
anti-union and anti-abortion.
A large
contingent of Democrats in the State Senate had already said they
opposed him — many others raised their objections in private — with many
arguing that the judge’s elevation would help perpetuate the court’s
conservative tilt.
In his first public
remarks since emerging as a political flashpoint, Justice LaSalle
sought on Wednesday to dispel what he said were unfair characterizations
of his judicial record, vowing to “set the record straight.”
“I
only ask that this body look at my entire record, not just the record
that certain advocates have chosen to look at,” Justice LaSalle said in
an unusually crowded legislative hearing room, arguing that some of his
cases had been the target of “mischaracterization simply to derail my
nomination.”
Indeed,
citing his upbringing in a union and working-class household, Justice
LaSalle repeatedly leaned on his personal life story, casting his
judicial career as one centered on breaking down barriers affecting
marginalized communities.
“When you
talk about labor, those are the people that raised me,” Justice LaSalle
said, describing how he walked “the picket line with my abuela.”
He
also reaffirmed his belief in a woman’s right to abortion services,
saying, “I do not want my daughter to have fewer rights than her
mother.”
Justice LaSalle is the
presiding justice of the Appellate Division of the Second Judicial
Department of the New York State Supreme Court, which handles civil and
criminal appeals from Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Westchester
County and a half-dozen other counties.
He
was considered among the more moderate potential nominees from a list
of seven candidates Ms. Hochul was given to choose from by a special
commission as she looked to replace Janet DiFiore, who resigned last
year. The chief judge leads the Court of Appeals and oversees the
state’s vast and complex court system.
Even with the
committee’s rejection of Justice LaSalle, there’s a chance that the
clash over his nomination could end up in the courts. The governor has
argued that a committee vote is irrelevant and that, according to her
reading of the State Constitution, her nominee must be subject to a full
vote on the Senate floor.
The
governor on Wednesday criticized the hearing as unfair, claiming that
“the outcome was predetermined” after the State Senate suddenly expanded
the committee this month to add more Democrats, all three of whom voted
against Justice LaSalle.
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While
Ms. Hochul did not say whether she would pursue litigation, she said
she believed “the Constitution requires action by the full Senate.”
Shortly
after, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Democratic majority leader in the
State Senate, seemed to rule out that scenario, adding that her
conference was interested in a chief judge who could “change the
trajectory” of the Court of Appeals’ conservative-leaning rulings in
recent years.
“It’s clear that this
nominee was rejected and that’s it,” she said. “We have to find a
nominee that will be supported by the majority of the Senate and then
get on with that.”
The State Constitution says that a governor must make judicial
appointments with the “advice and consent of the Senate.” Ms. Hochul, as
well as some legal experts and Senate Republicans, have interpreted
that to mean that the entire Senate, not just a committee, must vote on
her nominee.
A floor vote
could arguably favor Ms. Hochul, who would have greater flexibility to
cobble together enough votes from Democrats and even some Republicans in
the minority to confirm Justice LaSalle.
Senate
Democrats have defended the committee vote — the process routinely used
to move legislation to the floor — by arguing that the Senate can
determine its own procedural rules, especially since the Constitution
does not explicitly say a candidate must be voted on by the full State
Senate.
In explaining his vote against
Justice LaSalle, Senator Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat from Brooklyn,
used a baseball analogy, saying that “It’s not just whether a judge can
call balls and strikes, but more importantly it’s how they view the
strike zone.”
“After reviewing Judge
LaSalle’s record in case after case, I believe that he has a
conservative view of what the strike zone is,” he said.
Many
Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about a 2015 defamation case where
Justice LaSalle and a majority of the appellate court held that while
state law prohibits companies from suing unions and their
representatives for labor-related activities, such lawsuits are allowed
if companies can show that the representatives were acting in their
personal capacity.
“Any suggestion
that I’m anti-union or anti-labor is absolutely untrue,” Justice LaSalle
said, adding that he “agreed full heartedly with the concept that big
business should not be using litigation to chill the voices of organized
labor.”
In his line of questioning,
Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat from Manhattan who chairs the
Judiciary Committee, sought to tie Justice LaSalle to Ms. DiFiore, who
was reviled by many Democrats, noting cases in which she had reached the
same conclusion as Justice LaSalle.
He also
questioned Justice LaSalle, who is a former prosecutor, on instances
where he had sided with the prosecution, saying that “it would seem to
me that one could make the claim that you lean toward prosecution and
against civil rights.”
Justice LaSalle
said he “did not recognize the person” that some of his opponents had
made him out to be, saying that he understood “what people deal with
every day in the U.S., with police engagements, with the law.”
Other
lawmakers asked Justice LaSalle about a unanimous opinion he joined in
2017 that ordered the New York attorney general to narrow a subpoena
issued to the operator of anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers.” The
case had led to accusations that Justice LaSalle was hostile to abortion
rights.
“Based on your record, I
think that it’s not unfair for people to project what some of your
decisions might be,” Senator John Liu, a Democrat from Queens, said,
raising concerns about the case.
Justice
LaSalle reiterated that he strongly believed in “a woman’s right to
make her own reproductive decisions,” arguing that the case in question
centered on prosecutorial overreach.
In
an unusual twist, it was Republicans who gave Justice LaSalle a far
warmer reception, with many saying that his confirmation had devolved
into an intensely politicized process.
Senator
Anthony H. Palumbo, a Republican from Long Island, told the judge that
Justice LaSalle represented “the embodiment, in my opinion, of the
American dream.”
Despite pressure on
her to withdraw her nomination, the governor has forcefully defended
Justice LaSalle. Over the weekend she rallied support alongside other
top Democrats, including Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the U.S. House
minority leader, stressing the symbolic importance of elevating a jurist
of Puerto Rican descent to the upper echelons of state government.
Indeed,
Justice LaSalle’s nomination has split Latino elected officials, with
some suggesting that he was subjected to a double standard because of
his ethnicity.
Senator Luis Sepúlveda,
a Democrat from the Bronx who is Puerto Rican and voted in favor of
Justice LaSalle, said the judge had been the target of a “character
assassination” because he was Latino.
After
the hearing, Mr. Hoylman-Sigal, the committee chairman, implored the
governor to avoid taking legal action, warning of a potential
“constitutional crisis.”
“It’s
obviously the governor’s decision, but we have so much work to do in
Albany,” he said. “To be distracted by a lawsuit would be a travesty for
the people of New York.”
Jesse
McKinley is a Metro correspondent for The Times, with an emphasis on
coverage of upstate New York. He previously served as bureau chief in
Albany and San Francisco, as well as stints as a feature writer, theater
column
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Scheinman was not hired to arbitrate this issue, only to give his “opinion “.
If and when there IS an arbitration, it must involve the 2 parties who are at odds on the issue. The Retiree Organization, who were the party who would be effected by the change were never asked by Sheinman to state their facts and point of view. If the 2 parties involved in the arbitration were not present, then there is NO arbitration. It’s just 1 man’s opinion. Mr sheinman represents the mayor and the unions who are are on the same page with forcing retirees ( and future retirees) into an advantage plan. There was NO INPUT asked for from the group who would be effected by the change…. hence there was no arbitration