Crain's New York - February 25, 2013 - (Page 13)

The only thing we have to fear? The NRA itself W ayne LaPierre and the National Rifle Association are trying everything in their arsenal to make us angry and afraid.It’s working for me: I am angry and afraid—of them. Their first attack,post-Newtown,was a TV ad designed to make us feel like second-class citizens because we aren’t the president of the United States and our children don’t have men with guns accompanying them to school. Snobby, snobby Mr. Obama. If it’s appropriate for the president’s daughters, then all our schools should have either armed guards or armed teachers or both. I wonder how many parents would feel assured that little Johnny’s teacher is packing. That was followed by a column by Mr. LaPierre in The Daily Caller that raised fearmongering to new heights. Titled “Stand and Fight,” it urges readers to be “prudent”and join the NRA, buy guns while they still can and prepare to protect themselves and their families from the coming onslaught. Hurricane Sandy and its effects on New York provided Mr. LaPierre with ammunition for his apocalyptic views. After the storm, he noted, “looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get sup- ALAIR TOWNSEND plies you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.” I live in a part of Manhattan that had no power for five days, and I didn’t want to be out after dark, either. But I’m not rushing out to buy Hey, guv, just give Mayor Miner money P olitical insiders and the reporters who cover them, especially upstate, are obsessed with the story of Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner. Tapped by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to run the state Democratic Party, Ms. Miner had the audacity to criticize the governor’s pension-smoothing plan to ease the fiscal squeeze on local government. In the no-dissent Cuomo world, this was heresy. Here is another dissent from the Cuomo doctrine: Just give ’em the money they need, governor. Let’s consider the issues. Local governments upstate are in a terrible bind. Their populations are shrinking, their economies have been eroding for a couple of decades (except in Albany and Ithaca), their tax bases are shriveling and their costs are soaring, mostly because of the way Albany stacks the deck in favor of unionized municipal workers and requirements for special education. The governor has made matters worse in some ways with a propertytax cap that limits annual increases to about 2%. Of course, astute mayors like Ms. Miner know they can’t really raise taxes more than that because they would get thrown out of office. So do school board members who actually have to win voter approval of their budgets every year. GREG DAVID Mr. Cuomo is loath to actually take over local governments, which he could do through control boards whose members he appoints, because he would become responsible for the results. He seems reluctant to a semiautomatic in preparation for the next 100-year storm. Of course, Mr. LaPierre wrote, there’s much more to worry about than hurricanes. There are tornadoes, riots, terrorists, gangs and lone criminals that “we are sure to face, not just maybe.” These coming perils will be made infinitely worse because President Barack Obama is leading the country to financial collapse, and there won’t be enough money to pay the police. We’lI be on our own against the marauders, just us and our guns against those who would steal all our worldly goods and take our lives as they do so. The worst is coming. He has no doubts, and we must believe him. A siege is coming! I look out my window at peaceful streets and people going about their business normally. I’m sure many of them worry, as I do, about the high rate of unemployment among our neighbors, about climate change and its effects on our world, about the need to improve our children’s schools and about the undermining of our democracy by efforts to keep large segments of our population from voting. There are plenty of things to engage people interested in constructive reform, more than enough causes to contribute money and time to. For me, reforming our gun laws is one of them. I will stand and fight. I’ve contributed to Americans for Responsible Solutions, the guncontrol PAC created by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. push for fundamental changes in the laws governing union contracts, special education or other state mandates that would lower costs because he doesn’t want to escalate his tense relations with public-sector unions. So he’s concocted the pension gimmick. He has won a lower-cost pension tier for new employees, which over time will save cities like Syracuse lots of money—an accomplishment deserving high praise. But he wants to lower pension payments for local governments right away and make them pay more later, although no one knows if they will be able to do so. Ms. Miner says that’s bad policy, and she’s right. What to do? Just funnel money from well-off New York City and the downstate suburbs to those who need it upstate in some sort of revenue sharing. After all, the federal government does this, taking money from wealthy places like New York and distributing it to poorer states. Such an arrangement would actually highlight one of the oftenignored facts of life in New York.Albany passes lots of legislation—like the coming 20%-plus increase in the minimum wage or hefty pensions for public workers—that can be afforded by downstate but would bankrupt upstate. OK, I don’t really mean it. Direct subsidies from downstate would merely paper over the untenable economics of upstate governments. But if the governor isn’t going to lead, what is the alternative? February 25, 2013 | Crain’s New York Business | 13 http://crainsnewyork.com/events-GOPrace http://crainsnewyork.com/2013TopEntrepreneurs http://crainsnewyork.com/2013TopEntrepreneurs

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crain's New York - February 25, 2013

IN THE BOROUGHS
IN THE MARKETS
THE INSIDER
BUSINESS PEOPLE
OPINION
ALAIR TOWNSEND
GREG DAVID
REPORT: DIGITAL NY
THE LIST
CLASSIFIEDS
FOR THE RECORD
REAL ESTATE DEALS
SMALL BUSINESS
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
SOURCE LUNCH
OUT AND ABOUT
SNAPS

Crain's New York - February 25, 2013