Editorials from around New York

Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from New York’s newspapers:

The New York Daily News on Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City subway system

July 19

Putting aside their constant rivalry and mutual distrust, Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo came together to confront a dire threat to New York’s well-being.

Too bad that mayor and governor staged their Monday hug-in to take on an easy target - the Republican Congress’ Trumpcare proposal, which collapsed hours later.

The far direr threat to New York’s well-being is the crisis in the subways, crystallized Monday by a crippling rush hour rubbish fire. Here the mayor and the governor squabble bitterly while millions of their constituents stew underground.

De Blasio says that Cuomo is ultimately responsible for running the subways. De Blasio is correct - and Cuomo now agrees he’s in charge.

Cuomo says that de Blasio is underfunding the subways under ancient formulas. Cuomo is correct - and de Blasio needs to pony up more.

It’s past time for the pair - who both express the highest confidence in new MTA Chairman Joe Lhota - to unite to fix the trains.

Lhota is feverishly working on an assessment of the subways and buses, due within weeks.

The stations, tunnels and tracks are city-owned and leased to the Transit Authority to operate, under a 1953 agreement. And the gov runs the TA.

The law, which no one seems to have read in decades, makes the city pay capital funding for its asset. During the years when the city was broke, it only gave pennies for capital, forcing Albany to step in. Yet the days of city penury are long gone.

Operating funds come from fares, bridge tolls and dedicated taxes, which residents and visitors to the city and suburbs pay. City Hall pays little.

The city’s share for half-priced fares for seniors and people with disabilities have remained flat since 1978 (!) and now cover less than 10% of costs. The MTA absorbs more than $100 million a year. That formula, and one for student MetroCards, must be revised to have de Blasio ante up.

Tens of millions here and there aren’t going to solve the MTA’s funding problems, billions are more like it. If Cuomo and de Blasio can’t make peace on paying for the small stuff, war will erupt once Lhota delivers what could be his hefty price tag for the upgrades.

Cuomo and de Blasio have to cooperate to find new steady revenues. They fought Trumpcare together. They must save the subways together.

Online: https://nydn.us/2vjKQKV

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The Journal News on suburban anger over a local ice cream shop

July 14

One of the hottest local conflicts in the Lower Hudson so far this summer is over ice cream. Well, that’s not entirely true. It’s over ice cream and traffic and zoning and parking and noise and litter - all the ingredients to make suburbanites go nuts.

It’s like an extra-large sundae of suburban angst.

The conflict is over the future of Ralph’s Italian Ices and Ice Cream, an incredibly popular joint at a busy spot on Boston Post Road in Mamaroneck. The village Zoning Board of Appeals is trying to close Ralph’s, which is making ice cream lovers see maraschino cherry red. Between 100 and 200 people gathered outside Ralph’s Thursday night to fight for the shop’s survival. A chorus of honking cars backed them up.

Ralph’s detractors made their presence known, too. One guy taunted and berated supporters, as captured on a lohud video. A police officer kept separating people to keep them from getting further whipped up.

The whole thing started with a municipal mistake. The village Building Department somehow classified Ralph’s as retail instead of a food establishment before the store opened 14 months ago. The mistake was caught, and the village said Ralph’s could continue operating while applying for a special permit and site-plan approval.

But the Zoning Board of Appeals denied the application and pulled Ralph’s certificate of occupancy. The store is supposed to shut down, denying Ralph’s beloved crème ice to its fans at the height of summer.

Critics have very real concerns about traffic, parking and noise, the kind of concerns that have frozen out countless businesses, big and small, since the earliest days of suburban life. Last year, more than 300 signed a petition raising worries about “unregulated” access to Ralph’s.

Many, no doubt, will see this conflict as a classic example of “first world problems.” There are other fine ice cream establishments within a few miles - everything from traditional Carvel soft serve to Latin American paletas. Any supermarket around has dozens of ice cream brands, flavors and calorie counts.

Other communities would be less willing to throw out a popular business. In Mount Vernon, where the knocking down of a zombie home days ago was cause for celebration, Mayor Rich Thomas tweeted an open invite to Ralph to move to his city: “Mount Vernon is open for business.” He included his phone number.

Why would a crowd of people come out on a summer night to demonstrate their love or loathing of an ice cream shop, only two months after many school-district budget votes drew only a few hundred people? Because the battle over Ralph’s pits one set of suburban values against another.

Critics fear the creep of overdevelopment from an unpredictable planning process - a classic threat to the suburban lifestyle. But supporters are smitten with a simple, counter-only ice cream shop where families can gather on summer evenings and order cones from high school kids they know, the type of experience that is also central to the suburban American dream.

Ralph’s future is still unclear, as its owner, Scott Rosenberg, is fighting to stay open. Whatever happens, some will go away grumbling that things were better back in the day.

Devoted patrons can drive 12 miles to visit a new Ralph’s in North Castle, also owned by Rosenberg. The shop, on a busy stretch of Route 22, has quickly become a local attraction. Parking is tight, the lines are long and drivers are slowing down to see what the fuss is about.

Online: https://lohud.us/2tfwCJC

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The Syracuse Post-Standard on the overturning of Sheldon Silver’s criminal conviction

July 18

The Supreme Court has given corrupt public officials a roadmap to ill-gotten gains. Congress needs to put up roadblock.

The high court’s 2016 decision in McDonnell v. United States already is having a pernicious effect on efforts to fight corruption in Albany.

Former New York state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was convicted in 2015 of taking $4 million in “legal referrals” - read “bribes and kickbacks” — that prosecutors said were given in exchange for favorable treatment on rent control legislation and cancer research funding. Last week, a federal appeals court overturned Silver’s conviction based on a 2016 Supreme Court ruling that narrowed the definition of “official acts.” Federal prosecutors vow to retry the former speaker, but the bar will be much higher.

For that, New Yorkers can blame former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. Justices voted 8-0 to throw out McDonnell’s corruption conviction. There was little argument the governor and his wife had taken more than $175,000 in cash and gifts from a constituent seeking the state’s help testing a dietary supplement, and that McDonnell had indeed arranged meetings and lobbied his own administration while being plied with Rolex watches, trips, loans and fancy meals.

The case turned on the definition of “official acts,” as opposed to the routine favors politicians do for their constituents. The justices said the trial court judge’s instructions to the jury about what constituted an official act were too expansive. This is the loophole through which Silver scurried last week. Former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, also convicted of corruption, will try to do the same thing. Odds are he will succeed.

The Supreme Court, persuaded that prosecutors were overreaching, defined an official act as a “formal exercise of governmental power.” To prove a “quid pro quo” - something given in exchange for something else - prosecutors now must prove one of the “somethings” was, say, a vote or an executive order. That standard ignores the considerable power wielded by elected officials like governors and legislative leaders. It gives unscrupulous politicians a whole lot of leeway to walk right up to that line without fear of getting in trouble. And trust in government suffers another cut.

We know Albany lacks the will to rein itself in. Post-McDonnell, criminal prosecution is less of a deterrent. It’s up to Congress to redefine what constitutes public corruption in the real world, where the quid pro quos are rarely so blatant as the Supreme Court would like to believe.

Online: https://bit.ly/2uJmBsG

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The New York Times on electric cars

July 18

There is simply no credible way to address climate change without changing the way we get from here to there, meaning cars, trucks, planes and any other gas-guzzling forms of transportation. That is why it is so heartening to see electric cars, considered curios for the rich or eccentric or both not that long ago, now entering the mainstream.

A slew of recent announcements by researchers, auto companies and world leaders offer real promise. First up, a forecast by Bloomberg New Energy Finance said that electric cars would become cheaper than conventional cars without government subsidies between 2025 and 2030. At the same time, auto companies like Tesla, General Motors and Volvo are planning a slate of new models that they say will be not only more affordable but also more practical than earlier versions. And officials in such countries as France, India and Norway have set aggressive targets for putting these vehicles to use and phasing out emission-spewing gasoline and diesel cars.

Skeptics may see these announcements as wishful thinking. After all, just 1.1 percent of all cars sold globally in 2016 were electrics or plug-in hybrids. And many popular models still cost much more than comparable fossil-fuel cars.

The skeptics, however, have consistently been overly pessimistic about this technology. Electric cars face challenges, yet they have caught on much faster than was thought likely just a few years ago. There were two million of them on the world’s roads last year, up 60 percent from 2015, according to the International Energy Agency. The cost of batteries, the single most expensive component of the cars, fell by more than half between 2012 and 2016, according to the Department of Energy. Tesla has indicated that it can produce batteries for about $125 per kilowatt-hour. Researchers say the cost of electric cars will be at parity with conventional vehicles when battery prices reach $100 per kilowatt-hour, which experts say is just a few years away. Electric cars are more efficient, of course, but they also require less maintenance, which should make them cheaper to own over time.

The potential environmental benefits of electric vehicles are huge. The transportation sector accounts for 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and 27 percent of emissions in the United States. Moreover, countries have found it much more difficult to reduce planet-warming gases from transportation than from power plants. In America, for example, transportation emissions again regularly exceed those from the electricity sector for the first time since the late 1970s. The switch to electric cars is good for the climate because petroleum vehicles produce more greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy than power plants fueled by natural gas, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Proponents say the growth of electric cars, when combined with the surge in renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, could lead to big reductions in emissions over time. These forces should also help reduce local air pollution in countries like China and India, which is why their leaders are getting behind these technologies in a big way. Government incentives have turned China into the biggest market for electric vehicles. And an Indian government minister says his country wants all cars sold there by 2030 to be electric. France says it wants to end sales of new diesel and gasoline cars by 2040, while Norway’s goal is 2025.

Government support could prove as crucial to the future of the technology as technical advances. If countries, states and localities encourage the spread of public charging stations, through tax breaks, other incentives or public spending, more people will take the plunge and convert. If the United States and other governments continue to spend money on research to help drive down battery costs, their economies and consumers will benefit.

Some parts of the fossil fuel industry will no doubt try to sabotage the electric car revolution. In the United States, the industry is lobbying states to eliminate subsidies for the vehicles. And many analysts expect the industry to seek similar changes at the federal level from President Trump and Republican leaders in Congress, who have already made clear that they do not see climate change as a major threat. They should know, though, that the most they can do is slow down the process. The electric car has already left the garage.

Online: https://nyti.ms/2vy2jOY

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The Plattsburgh Press-Republican on having prison inmates participate in public works projects

July 18

For a long time, governments have seen the wisdom in not merely locking up lawbreakers but trying to change their futures for the better and reinforce their respect for laws.

In the 1960s and ’70s, very well-intentioned programs were introduced into prisons to turn guards into officers who would work toward correcting the prisoners, hence the evolution of the name “correction officers.”

The hope was that once lawbreakers saw the error of their ways and the advantages of learning a lawful means of making a living, prisoner populations would shrink because so would crime.

It hasn’t exactly worked out that way, as most of us can observe.

But a Press-Republican Lookback entry this week reminded us that having inmates do something useful and good is not a new concept. Exactly a century ago - in 1917 - the Clinton County sheriff was applying that thinking to his operation.

In case you missed it in Monday’s edition, this was the Lookback entry:

“The demand for farmhands in all parts of Clinton County is far beyond the supply, and in order to somewhat relieve the situation, Sheriff Fiske has arranged to have the majority of the men confined in the County Jail under short sentences employed on some of the farms close to the city, where the men can be taken each day and returned to the jail for confinement at night.

“The men receive $1 per day for their labor, in addition to dinners and suppers. The county is thus saved the expense of providing two meals each day for every man sent into the fields.’”

Imagine how life-changing that work may have been for the men. They learned skills that could make them potential employees once they left jail, and they had reason to feel pride in their efforts while still imprisoned.

For years, prisoners from the area’s minimum- and medium-security prisons have been used on local work projects, both to extract some value from the expense of housing criminals and to teach them constructive work habits.

Franklin County Sheriff Kevin Mulverhill recently introduced the practice of raising chickens on the jail grounds to occupy some of the better-behaved inmates and to save taxpayer money by providing eggs for some jail meals.

Clinton County Sheriff David Favro’s jail recently inaugurated a counseling program for inmates to help them toward a better start when they are released.

We’re all for the concept of rehabilitation of inmates. We’re also all for putting the inmates to work, both for their own sakes and for the benefit of the public.

Obviously, the concept is not a new one. But it has yet to be employed pervasively enough to be a truly productive practice.

Using inmates for the benefit of themselves as well as the public should be a priority pursuit.

Online: https://bit.ly/2tg4VQF