Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Citizens Union

Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Diane Savino

Posted by on

The Senate elections committee will hold hearings on corruption in the New York City public campaign finance system at 11 a.m. tomorrow. Oral testimony is by invite-only, and it just so happens that a good number of campaign finance experts from New York are not welcome to speak.

Bill Mahoney, New York Public Interest Research Group's number-cruncher extraordinare, just happens to be one of those campaign finance experts.

"Oral testimony is by invitation only," Mahoney said. "I suppose they are not interested in hearing from actual New Yorkers who have been effected by the system. They just want to hear people criticize a system that works better than ours."

Members of some of the state's largest government watchdog groups wrote the committe chairs — Sens. Thomas O'Mara and Diane Savino — to ask to be allowed to testify but they were not allowed to give oral testimony. The groups include Common Cause/NY, The Brennan Center, Citizen Action New York and Center For Working Families. 

When asked about why good government groups were not allowed to give oral testimony, Senate Republican spokesman Scott Reif replied:"I don't believe that is accurate. Dick Dadey, from Citizens Union, is on our confirmed speaker list."

...
More about:

Posted by on

It has been three months since Gov. Andrew Cuomo gave his State of the State Address and announced a 10-point plan to address injustices facing women in today's society.

Since then, Cuomo has successfully passed major gun law changes and enacted a state budget. 

Supporters of the plan expectthe legislation will resemble the already-proposed Reproductive Health Act that would take abortion out of New York's penal code and make it part of health law. But the wide-ranging proposal was also supposed to deal with human trafficking, pay discrepency and sexual harassment.

Cuomo indicated earlier this week on Susan Arbetter's The Capitol Pressroom radio show that he is in no hurry to introduce precise bill language on the issue. 

“Oftentimes they don’t want the bill to come to the floor for a vote because they don’t want to take the position,” Cuomo told Arbetter, adding, “What we need to do is strip away the devil is in the details as just an excuse.”

...
More about:

Posted by on

Sen. Diane Savino's spokesman Eric Soufer did not grant Gotham Gazette's request for an interview about gun-control legislation last week — a request that was made a day before the mass shooting in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn.

But someone using her Facebook account did take the time to respond to the article this evening:

i am fully confident that we will take up many of these issues this session. and, btw, you should ask my former conference members in regular democratic conference how many votes they have for these measures. when we held the majority we did not have 32 votes to pass them, there may be more votes now. i must say that i was rather dismayed to see them issue press releases in a blatantly political attempt while there are families burying babies. the call for microstamping is very important, i have supported and will continue to do so, but it has no relevance to what happened on friday, someone using Savino posted around 6:30 p.m. 

I asked Savino if she would like to be interviewed on the subject now, but have yet to receive a response.  

More about:

Posted by on

Senate Republicans and members of the Independent Democrats will gather in Queens today for the first meeting of the Bipartisan Senate Task Force on Hurricane Sandy  — and they have invited a couple of members of the Democratic conference as well. 

"There isn't any room for poltical differences," said Queens Sen. Joe Addabbo who is a member of the Demcoratic conference. "We have no room for that when there are still 10,000 without power in the Rockaways." 

Addabbo will be just one of a number of legislators who have seen their districts ravaged by the storm. From Staten Island to Long Island, the senators who will gather in the Rockaways today represent areas that need immediate attention.

Sens. James Sanders, Dean Skelos, Diane Savino, Andrew Lanza, Jeff Klein, Diane Savino, Martin Golden and Charles Fuschillo have been confirmed for the gathering. The group will tour the Rockaways and then meet with community leaders. 

Addabbo says it will be the task force's job to keep the Legisalture connected to the areas and constituents that need the most help.

...
More about: