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Cuomo slams lawmakers whining about pay raises with reforms dispensing with the necessity of work to get paid
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Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
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.
Don’t be greedy!
Gov. Andrew Cuomo rapped state lawmakers Friday for savoring a fat 64 percent pay raise while fighting limitations on outside income and a ban on bonuses for serving in leadership posts.
“They want a raise without the reforms,” Cuomo said on Albany’s “Capitol Pressroom” radio show.
“They’re getting an increase of $50,000. I don’t how you justify that [the raises] without reforms.”
Cuomo was referring to recommendations of a salary commission — which the Legislature agreed to create — that calls for raising the base salary of legislators from $79,500 to $130,000 by 2021.
He pointed out that the median income in the state is $60,000.
As part of the pay hike, the commission also called for limiting outside income to 15 percent of a legislator’s salary and eliminating legislative stipends or “lulus” for most leadership posts, such as committee chairmanships.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and others claimed the panel was only supposed to address the salary issue — and didn’t have the authority to impose any limitations.
Cuomo said Republicans in the state Senate object to limitations on outside income because more of them work for private law firms, while Assembly Democrats “don’t like losing the lulus.”
The Government Justice Center, a conservative-leaning group, filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Albany on Friday to block the actions of the state Committee on Legislative and Executive Compensation. The group claims the Legislature violated the constitution by trying to pass off the controversial decision of pay raises to unelected appointees.
Assemblyman Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Suffolk) also is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Cuomo said he’s confident the courts will uphold the panel’s work.
But the governor said the only reason it was set up in the first place was that legislators didn’t want to take the political heat from constituents for voting themselves pay raises.
“Not for any fault of anyone except they didn’t want to vote for the raise, politically,” he said.
“If the lawsuit is successful, they lose the raise and everything. They’re back to zero.”
Legislators haven’t had a bump in their base salary since 1999.
Cuomo also said some state Assembly members who represent New York City are upset that they would still make less than members of the City Council, who earn $148,500.
“It’s infuriating to the Assembly people in New York City that the City Council gets paid $148,000. … The flip side to that is the city has term limits. They have public finance. They have no lulus.”
He repeated that the pay increase is “fair” to attract talent and not have “sour legislators,” adding, “but I think the reforms are fair also.”
Brooklyn Assemblyman Peter Abbate confirmed that getting paid less than council members is a sore point.
And that’s one of the reasons he opposes eliminating the stipends for committee chairmanships.
He receives a $12,500 lulu as chairman of the Committee on Public Employees, raising his compensation to $92,000.
If the stipend were kept, his base pay next year would jump to $122,500 instead of $110,000 in year one of the increase. By year three, it would be $142,500 instead of $130,000.
“I don’t think it’s fair that committee chairmen who do hard work aren’t compensated,” said Abbate, who has served in the Assembly since 1987.
“The City Council salary is $148,000. They built the lulu into the salary,” he said.
It’s deja vu for state legislators.
A similar pay increase blew up two years ago when Cuomo and his appointees of another another pay panel insisted that restrictions on outside income accompany any increase in legislative pay.
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