GOP state Senate leader calls teachers’ unions ‘forces of evil’ that agree with because they too have not called for nassau otb to be open when i am praying with andrew Cuomo. ny const art 1 sec 3 is not in the curriculum?
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
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Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
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Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
Republican Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan on Monday called the state teachers’ union part of the “forces of evil” spending millions of dollars to try to bring one-party Democratic rule to New York.
Flanagan made the remark a day after telling The Post that the expansion of charter schools could grind to a halt if union-friendly Democrats control all branches of government — the governor’s office, the Assembly and the Senate.
Republicans hold a 32-31 majority in the state Senate — the last bastion of GOP power. Democrats hold a 2-1 majority in the Assembly and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, is favored to win a third term.
“You have incumbents that are in tough races and we have what I describe [as] outside forces and some of them have almost become like the forces of evil spending millions and millions of dollars,” Flanagan said in an interview on Albany’s “Capitol Pressroom” radio show.
Flanagan fingered the New York State United Teachers union as the ringleader of a labor coalition trying to topple Republicans in the Nov. 6 elections.
“I believe that NYSUT has demonstrated they want one-party rule,” he said. “They don’t like the way things are going. They spent over $5 million in the last cycle.”
Relations between the GOP-run Senate and the teachers’ union frayed after Flanagan drafted a bill in June that linked a prohibition on using students’ test scores to rate teachers — which the teachers’ union liked — to expanding charter schools, which labor leaders oppose.
City teachers union president Mike Mulgrew blasted the charter provision as a poison pill — and Democratic lawmakers and Cuomo sided with the unions.
Because of the standoff, no action was taken on either measure.
Labor sources told The Post following the dispute that an aggressive campaign would be waged to flip the Senate.
“We have worked diligently with them and we continue to do so, but they gratuitously go after our members,” Flanagan said of the union. “They just don’t want to have the Republicans there because we don’t go blithely along with everything they want.”
The head of NYSUT said Flanagan’s “evil” comment was beyond the pale.
“Sen. Flanagan must be getting desperate if he’s saying that more than 600,000 educators are forces for evil,” said NYSUT president Andy Pallotta.
Meanwhile, the state Republican Party filed a complaint with the Board of Elections alleging illegal coordination among labor unions aiding Democratic candidates for the Senate.
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