Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Gerald Benjamin

Gerald Benjamin

  • Filling a Vacancy in the Office of Lieutenant Governor: History and Hochul’s Opportunity

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    Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of the Governor)


    Kathy Hochul is the ninth New York lieutenant governor to become governor through the state constitutional process to fill a vacancy.* But she will be just the second to appoint a successor to the office she herself vacates. David Paterson was the first. This  provides her a unique opportunity to improve New York state government.

    Lieutenant Governor Paterson became Governor in 2008 when Eliot Spitzer resigned in disgrace. Notwithstanding the centuries long practice of

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  • Minding the Medicaid Gap

    gov outlines budget

    (photo: Darren McGee/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)


    Albany chatter in anticipation of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2020 State of the State message was dominated by the prospect of a $6.1 billion budget gap. How to fill it? Tax? Cut programs? All unpalatable.

    Of course, budget gaps are nothing new. In an opinion essay published in the Rochester Beacon just three days before the governor spoke, his Budget Director Robert Mujica pointed out that annual “baseline gaps” are routinely closed by controlling spending growth. “Last year,” Mujica wrote,

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  • New York's Election Administration Accountability Vacuum - Part I: 'Bad Choices at Every Step'

    joint comm hearing regarding issues

    NYC BOE Executive Director Michael Ryan (photo: John McCarten/City Council)


    After each election cycle, New York elected officials, government insiders, and interested members of the press and public gather at City Hall and in other hearing rooms for a bit of political theater. The protagonist is the electorate, or the democratic process, itself; the one cast as villain is Michael Ryan, the executive director of the New York City Board of Elections, who is there to respond to questions about how voting went that year.

    “Mr. Ryan,

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  • How We Got Here & Where To Go: The Centuries Old Legislative Pay Debate in New York

    gov cuomo carlheastie

    (photo: Office of the Governor - Kevin P. Coughlin)


    New Yorkers have been upset by state legislators’ compensation for more than 200 years. At the 1821 constitutional convention, Ezekiel Bacon, a former member of the Assembly and of Congress, called the pay issue “…a hobby horse of ambitious demagogues and peddling politicians, that caused the great questions that affected the vital interest of the state too often to be overlooked.” The current debate is nothing new. We’ve never liked how much legislators are paid. We’ve never liked how the matter is

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  • Fusion, Spoilers, and New York's Many Ballot Lines

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    Gov. Cuomo voting (photo: Governor's Office)


    New York’s unique fusion voting system is again in the spotlight this year, with renewed attention in the wake of Cynthia Nixon’s insurgent challenge for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination against Governor Andrew Cuomo, with the potential for vote-splitting on the left leading to a Republican victory in November. Cuomo and Nixon have each now been endorsed by a minor party with automatic general election ballot access, even as they vie for the big prize of the Democratic

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  • Can the De Blasio Administration Really Register 1.5 Million More Voters?

    Mayor de Blasio voting

    Mayor de Blasio voting (photo: Samar Khurshid/Gotham Gazette)


    New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced a DemocracyNYC plan. One big goal: “to register 1.5 million New Yorkers to vote over the next four years.”
    To make this work the mayor will create a new city leadership post: Chief Democracy Officer. How hard will it be for this new chief to meet the mayor’s goal?

    Let’s do some rough math, based upon recent enrollment, census, and vital statistics data:

    According to estimates in the most recent American

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  • Previewing Cuomo’s 2018 State of the State

    Cuomo State of the State Long Island

    Gov. Cuomo (photo via The Governor's Office)


    Governor Andrew Cuomo is set to deliver his 2018 State of the State address on Wednesday in Albany, at which he will outline his policy agenda for the year, his eighth as governor. A Democrat who plans to seek a third term later in the year, Cuomo has been rolling out planks of his State of the State agenda in the weeks leading up to the speech.

    As of Wednesday morning, Cuomo had officially announced 22 pieces of the agenda, each in a separate press release from his office,

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  • Defeated on Con Con, Gerald Benjamin Plots His Next Move

    Gerald Benjamin SUNY

    Gerald Benjamin


    “It was a devastating defeat,” said Gerald Benjamin, wounds still fresh from a blowout he had, in his seventies, worked very hard to avoid. “The size of the defeat upset me more than the fact of the defeat,” he added, referring to the overwhelming vote against holding a New York state constitutional convention.

    “I really think that this was a major missed opportunity,” Benjamin said by phone Monday, less than a week after New York voters decided 83 percent to 17 percent not to hold a convention to amend the state’s most powerful

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  • What’s The [DATA] Point? 1936

    whats the data point


    What’s The [Data] Point? Episode 16 - 1936, with Gerald Benjamin of SUNY New Paltz  [You can download What's The [Data] Point? wherever you get your podcasts, including on iTunes]

    geraldbOn Election Day, November 7, New Yorkers will be asked whether the state should hold a constitutional convention. It is a quesion that appears on the ballot every 20 years, mandated by the

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  • 10 Bold or Bizarre Proposals for a New York Constitutional Convention

    voting constitutional convention


    When New York voters head to the polls on November 7, Election Day, printed on their ballots will be the question, “Shall there be a convention to revise the constitution and amend the same?”

    A "yes" vote would trigger a state constitutional convention process that could lead to major changes to the New York constitution.

    While the first New York Constitution dates back to 1777, the version used today was adopted in 1894, with significant modifications made following the 1938 constitutional convention. Of those in support of a

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  • The Evolving Powers of the New York Attorney General

    schneiderman cuomo attorney general

    Cuomo & Schneiderman (photo: The Governor's Office)


    The office of New York Attorney General has recently become one of the most high-profile law enforcement jobs in the country, and a springboard to the Governor’s Mansion, with its own heightened powers and prestige. Both Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo jumped from Attorney General to Governor of New York after tenures marked by major prosecutorial victories, and there is plenty of talk that current A.G. Eric Schneiderman -- one of the leading national opponents of President Donald

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  • As Legislative Leaders Warn of Con Con Dangers, Good Government Groups Come Out in Favor

    assembly chamber via wikicommons

    The Assembly (photo: wikicommons)


    While legislative leaders are declaring opposition to a New York State constitutional convention, government reform organizations are trending in the other direction, with some who were wary of the idea in previous years coming out in support or considering doing so.

    Leading up to the November 7 vote on whether to hold a convention, the debate is shaping up around fear of what could be taken away versus hope that the public can take a shot at democratic reform.

    Republican Senate

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  • Constitutional Convention Absent from Cuomo’s 2017 Agenda

    cuomo budget address cameras

    Gov. Cuomo (photo: Governor's Office)


    Though he has expressed support in the past for a “yes” vote for a constitutional convention on this year’s ballot, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s newly revealed 2017 agenda and 2017-2018 budget provide no indication that such support continues.

    Last year, Cuomo backed a constitutional convention in his lone State of the State speech, which was combined with a budget presentation, and he included $1 million in his spending proposal for a preparatory commission. Yet, this year, the issue is notably absent from Cuomo’s

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  • Calling for Efficiency, Cuomo Pushes Latest Municipal Consolidation Contest

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    Gov. Cuomo (photo: Governor's Office on flickr)


    Since his time as attorney general, Governor Andrew Cuomo has painted a picture of New York as a state cluttered by redundant and inefficient municipalities, attributing the state’s notoriously high property taxes in large part to a bureaucratic web of overlapping government services.

    Cuomo’s latest attempt to detangle the web is an incentivized competition challenging two or more local governments to come up with a bold consolidation plan as a way to cut spending, increase efficiency, and lower property

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  • Does Higher Pay Attract Better Politicians?

    state of the state auditorium standing

    (photo via The Governor's Office)


    After months of deliberating, a commission tasked with recommending salary adjustments for state lawmakers and executive branch employees met for the final time on Nov. 15 and did not suggest raises. The salary of New York state legislators has remained the same since 1999, and could stay unchanged until the commission meets again in another four years, as established by the 2015 law

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  • Recommendations Near, State Pay Commission Constitutionality Questioned

    heastie cuomo flanagan

    Heastie, Cuomo, Flanagan (photo via Governor's Office)


    Recommendations on potential salary increases for Governor Cuomo and members of the state Legislature are due Tuesday, but constitutional questions hang over the effort to increase legislative and executive chamber pay.

    The New York State Commission on Legislative, Judicial, & Executive Compensation is at the center of the issue and an ongoing legal battle over the validity of the process it was put in charge of through 2015 legislation. Created as

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  • Paying the Overhead for Democracy in New York

    voting booths elections campaign finance

    (photo by Peter Duton)


    My dad Ruby Benjamin worked as a professional basketball player, a New York City cop, a hosiery salesman and, for much of the second half of his life, the owner of a liquor store on West 31 Street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. He loved his first two jobs, but liked the last one the best (the sales job was another story entirely.) Twelve hours a day, six days a week in the store was grueling. “But nobody tells me what to do, Jerry,”

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  • Should Everything Silver and Skelos Touched Be Reviewed?

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    Skelos, Cuomo, Silver (l-r) (photo via The Governor's Office, Jan. 2015)


    Former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos were each told by their judge during recent prison sentencing that their corrupt actions have increased public cynicism around state government. Their corrupt actions, they were told, make people question what might have been different in the budgets and policy deals they negotiated, government decision-making that impacted millions. Judge Kimba Wood told Skelos we “can’t know” how his budget advocacy would

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