As a freshman assemblyman, I saw Albany at its absolute disgraceful worst during the recent budget vote. The often-used word dysfunction doesn't begin to explain what happened in the Assembly.
Early last month, a bipartisan group of 78 Assembly members signed onto a letter demanding restoration of the $120 million that Gov. Andrew Cuomo cut from the Office of People With Developmental Disabilities in his budget. Both the Senate and the Assembly overwhelmingly passed budgets that included complete restoration of the cuts, which, by the way, comes with a 100 percent federal match. When the four men went into the room to negotiate the $136 billion budget, only $30 million was restored.
As part of last month's budget votes, Assembly Republicans proposed an amendment to fully restore the cuts. At most, it takes only 76 votes to pass a bill in the Assembly. The fact that a majority had signed the letter urging restoration should have made the amendment a slam dunk. Amazingly, our amendment was defeated with nearly every Democrat voting against it.
After their party defeated the amendment to restore funding, Democratic members gave impassioned speeches about how horrible the cuts were. One member, who has a developmentally disabled son, spoke from firsthand knowledge about abuses and even deaths at an underfunded institution in a magnificent speech. When he finished, the chamber gave him a standing ovation.
But in Speaker Sheldon Silver's Assembly, Democrats can only debate in favor of a bill that Silver opposes after the issue becomes moot. Had those speeches been given before the amendment vote, it would have been almost impossible for the Democrats to defeat it.
Silver's iron grip on the Democrat caucus and Cuomo's desire to fund pet projects prevented a sizable majority of the Assembly from doing right by the most vulnerable in our society.
In a properly functioning state, adequate aid to the developmentally disabled would have been one of the first items included in the budget. These New Yorkers have no lobbyists. They rely on us to be their voice.
The most politically pernicious part of these cuts is how they only hit the not-for-profit sector. The not-for-profits, though, do the work government agencies do for less money.
Clearly, Cuomo and the Assembly Democrats who voted against restoring these funds are more concerned about appeasing their public sector union friends than they are about doing what is right for the developmentally disabled.
Based on the overall budget, there is plenty of money to go around. Maybe Comcast and NBC will do the right thing and give back the $5 million in tax credits for "The Tonight Show" to come back to New York, which they were going to do anyway.
Let's ask Hollywood for some of the $425 million tax credits back. They're always telling the rest of America that they care about social justice. Ask the studios and networks to back that talk up with action.
The Assembly majority has $11 million in so-called "bullet aid" in the budget. Other than the requirement that the aid go to a school, a library or not-for-profit, there is no criteria for how the money is to be spent.
Even without a vote, the Democrats could informally agree to pool that money and restore a meaningful chunk of the funding for the developmentally disabled. I'm not holding my breath though.
One might say, "The Assembly Republicans could commit their bullet aid to OPWDD." Unfortunately, in the hyper-partisan Assembly, Republicans were not allocated any aid for our libraries, schools and not-for-profits.
This shouldn't be over. The governor and speaker are plain wrong and New Yorkers should force them back to the negotiating table to fix this.
Kieran Michael Lalor represents Dutchess County in the Assembly.