Editorials from around New York

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

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The Wall Street Journal on rescissions and the federal deficit

April 9

The Congressional Budget Office finally rolled out its semiannual budget outlook on Monday, and the federal deficit is expected to be $804 billion this fiscal year and is heading toward $1 trillion by 2020. That should concentrate the minds of Republicans to use their power to rescind at least some of the excess spending in the recent blowout omnibus budget bill.

The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is a bad law that has made it hard for the GOP to repeal ObamaCare or reform other entitlements. But a corner of the statute lets the President request that certain discretionary (that is, non-entitlement) funds not be spent even though they have been appropriated. Congress then has 45 days to approve the rescission request. If Congress fails to act, the spending proceeds. A rescission package is subject to limited debate and requires only a 51-vote majority in the Senate.

This has the potential to undo some of the fiscal damage in this year’s 2,232-page, $1.3 trillion spending bill. The GOP felt obliged to accept huge increases in domestic discretionary spending in exchange for a modest and long-needed increase for defense. For example, the omnibus included $13.7 billion more for transportation and housing in 2018 than what the House passed in appropriations bills. The deal featured large increases for environment, labor, health and more, none of which were pinched for cash before this gusher.

Democrats are acting like rescission is a novel or extralegal idea, but it isn’t. Presidents have proposed 1,178 rescissions since 1974, according to the American Action Forum’s Gordon Gray. Congress agreed to only 461, and 101 were in 1981 thanks to Ronald Reagan. The total amount rescinded over the years comes to about $25 billion out of $76 billion proposed by Presidents. Bill Clinton in 2000 was the last President to propose rescissions.

Democrats will also cry that the GOP is reneging on a spending deal, but Democrats used their leverage with the 60-vote filibuster rule to coerce more non-defense spending. Republicans would now use their power under the Budget Act to claw some of that back. This is using legitimate political leverage under the law.

Republicans have been getting pounded by their voters for passing a Democratic budget, with the exception of defense, despite having GOP majorities. A rescission vote can restore some of the political accountability that the filibuster blurs.

House Republicans are already discussing possible rescissions, and it’ll take finesse to command a majority. Senate Republicans will be even less thrilled given their narrow 51-vote majority. But one reason Republicans are at political risk of losing in November is the lack of enthusiasm among their voters, and a fight over spending restraint would show grass-roots Republicans that it matters who controls the House and Senate next year.

Congress and the White House will also have to work together on a consensus package of what to rescind. The worst case would be for a rescission proposal to get public attention but then fail as Republicans defect or Mr. Trump wigs out. Cooperation isn’t impossible. The Administration and Congress managed to work together last year to repeal more than a dozen Obama-era regulations under the Congressional Review Act, and some votes were close.

President Trump should be on board after announcing how unhappy he was to sign the omnibus to get more dollars for defense. “I will never sign another bill like this again,” the President threatened at the signing. But if the GOP loses the House in the fall, Mr. Trump will be signing bills so big he’ll be sick of losing. A fight over spending restraint is worth having.

Online: https://on.wsj.com/2HeBFEc

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Newsday on crash prevention on state parkways

April 9

Had the coach bus that struck an overpass Sunday night been just a bit taller, or the overpass on the Southern State Parkway a bit lower, we could be dealing with a terrible tragedy.

The vehicles that usually strike Long Island parkway overpasses are trucks with drivers unfamiliar with the more picturesque construction of another era. A state Department of Transportation study concluded 81 percent of such strikes are due to incorrect GPS advice. The last one the editorial page wrote about, in May 2013, was a tractor trailer that hit the Cantiague Rock Road bridge on the Northern State Parkway.

Passenger buses, often driven by locals, are less frequently a problem. But the driver from Sunday hails from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and said he just didn’t know - and didn’t see the signs. There were 38 students, five chaperones and a driver on that bus. There were significant injuries and trauma, but thankfully all people aboard survived.

The overpass hits need to stop. There are warning signs along parkway entrances and the roads themselves. And the state has been installing an electronic system to warn drivers at some vulnerable Northern and Southern state parkway entrances if their vehicles are too high.

But there are also inexpensive commercial GPS systems that should be required, along with databases that enhance navigation systems programmed with warnings about every low overpass in the nation. One variety can be purchased, with free lifetime updates, for less than $50. Commercial insurance policies should demand these and refuse to pay claims when vehicles lack them. And fines for such strikes should be so high, no transportation company owner would risk them.

The next time a bus hits an overpass, the passengers might not be so lucky. So it’s time to prevent a next time.

Online: https://nwsdy.li/2JziZ0n

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The Syracuse Post-Standard on Sinclair Broadcast Group

April 6

Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of three Syracuse television stations and 190 other local stations across the country, is free to espouse any view it likes. This includes its recent corporate statement about “biased and false news,” read by local anchors across all its markets.

Who could argue with such statements as, “It’s our responsibility to pursue and report the truth” and, “Our commitment to factual reporting is the foundation of our credibility, now more than ever”?

However, we take issue with Sinclair’s insidious message that the news media cannot be trusted - except, of course, for media owned by Sinclair. We take umbrage at being lumped in with “some media outlets” that publish fake stories and “some members of the media” who show personal bias. Which outlets? Which members of the media? By its vagueness, the statement implicates everyone and says “trust no one.”

Despite its statement that “we understand truth is neither politically left or right,” there is no denying that Sinclair’s approach to the news leans hard to the right. Its management supported the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump and continues to support him as president. After this controversy broke, Trump reciprocated with a laudatory tweet.

Sinclair stations have been known to soft-pedal news that reflects poorly on the president. The chain employs former Trump advisers to produce commentaries that “must run” on every station. Another “must-run” is a daily “Terrorism Desk Alert” that ratchets up viewers’ fears and reinforces the president’s role in countering terrorism. As Sinclair stations run more of these canned pieces, the fewer local news segments their viewers see.

If you don’t like Sinclair’s slanted approach, why not just change the channel? In Syracuse and many other markets, you’ll merely be changing it to another Sinclair station. The chain owns NBC 3 (WSTM), CBS 5 (WTVH) and CW 6 (WSTQ), whose news operations are combined under the CNY Central brand.

Sinclair’s stations currently reach 43 percent of the nation. It’s about to get even bigger. The Federal Communications Commission under Trump relaxed ownership rules that limited the number of TV stations under one owner. If the Trump administration approves Sinclair’s $4 billion acquisition of Tribune Co.’s 42 stations - as seems likely - Sinclair stations will reach 72 percent of U.S. homes. Despite the waning influence of TV news, such concentration could harm communities where Sinclair’s local news producers and TV journalists are restrained from practicing their craft and seeking truth.

We feel for all the local TV journalists who had to read the corporate statement, whether they agreed with it or not. Sinclair “borrowed” their familiarity and credibility with viewers to convey a political message. Going forward, viewers will have reason to wonder if they are speaking their own words or Sinclair’s propaganda. That can’t be good for journalism or Sinclair’s “commitment to factual reporting.”

Sinclair’s statement warns that “fake stories” and alleged “personal bias and agenda” among journalists are “extremely dangerous to democracy.” What poses a real threat to democracy is Sinclair’s effort to delegitimize the rest of the news media in pursuit of its own political agenda. Its attack on the media echoes the tactics Trump is using to cast doubt on facts, neutralize criticism, undermine watchdog journalism and further polarize Americans. Correctly viewed, these cries of fake news should be seen as fake criticism.

Online: https://bit.ly/2qb8pVq

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The Auburn Citizen on a state commission to study Legislature pay raises

April 8

Among the many last-minute surprises that came out of the secret state budget negotiations was a provision to create another commission to study state Legislature pay raises.

The commission will also take a look at pay for state agency commissioners and statewide elected officials excluding the governor, but the biggest group to be potentially affected is the 213-member Legislature.

Elected lawmakers have not seen their base pay of $79,500 increase since 1999, so it’s not something that should be automatically rejected. But the same issues that derailed a potential pay increase the last time a pay commission was formed, in 2016, have not been resolved.

Chief among them was the official status of the Legislature as a part-time body of citizen lawmakers. This setup allows our individually elected legislators to continue to make earn money through outside jobs, consulting arrangements and other scenarios while they also are paid to be legislators and make decisions on behalf of the people of New York.

It’s an arrangement that has led to numerous indictments and convictions of elected legislators who allowed their outside income interests to mingle with their official duties as lawmakers.

Any increase in Legislature pay should come only after outside income restrictions are put in place. That’s what the previous pay commission suggested, and we believe it was the correct stance to take.

Another issue that should be addressed on conjunction with Legislature pay is the extra money that lawmakers get on top of their base pay. Most legislators actually bring home several thousand dollars above their salaries through lucrative stipends doled out for committee leadership titles and the $175 per day they get to cover their travel expenses for being in Albany. Both of those items have been abused by legislators, and both can certainly be curtailed to help cover the cost of raises.

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

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The New York Times on judicial independence

April 8

Last week in Wisconsin, an election for an open seat on the State Supreme Court was so bitterly contested that voters were barraged with more than $2.6 million in television and radio ads. Most of the money was spent by partisan outside groups attacking the candidates, who were nominally nonpartisan, for past decisions in criminal cases.

In Kansas, lawmakers are seeking to amend the state Constitution to strip the courts there of all power to rule on cases involving education funding. The push follows a ruling last year by the Kansas Supreme Court ordering the Legislature to find the money to fund the school system adequately by the end of this month or face a statewide school shutdown. Kansas has faced dire budget shortfalls since 2012, when it passed massive tax cuts championed by Sam Brownback, then the Republican governor.

Meanwhile, Republican legislators in North Carolina, who recently gerrymandered themselves into a veto-proof majority, have taken repeated aim at the state courts. On party-line votes, they reduced the size of the state’s midlevel appeals court, preventing Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat elected in 2016, from filling seats. They required judicial candidates running at all levels to identify themselves by partisan affiliation. They tried, and failed, to expand the state’s Supreme Court right before Mr. Cooper took office, in the hope of slipping a few extra appointments into the hands of the departing Republican governor, Pat McCrory. In a special session next month, they will attempt to gerrymander trial-court districts in favor of Republicans and to cut judicial terms from eight years to two. As one lawmaker justified it, “If you’re going to act like a legislator, perhaps you should run like one.”

And in Pennsylvania, a dozen Republican lawmakers have moved to impeach four justices of the state’s Supreme Court - all of them Democrats - for their majority vote in January to strike down a congressional district map that was heavily biased in favor of Republicans. Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania’s supposedly moderate Republican senator, called the 4-to-3 ruling a “blatant, unconstitutional, partisan power grab” and said of the push to remove the judges, “it’s inevitable that that conversation’s going to take place.”

Are we the only ones sensing a pattern here? Across the country, state judges are under increasing fire from lawmakers and outside groups angered by their rulings, their power, their tenure or simply their independence. That independence is, of course, central to the separation of powers, which defines American government, and to the legitimacy of the judicial branch in the eyes of the public. Going after judges for partisan reasons may not be a particularly new pastime, but it has become more popular as America’s politics have become more polarized and as brute tribal warfare replaces a respect for basic democratic values.

Already in 2018, lawmakers in at least 16 states are considering at least 51 bills that would diminish or politicize the role of the judiciary, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice. Some bills would inject more politics into the judicial selection process, or into court rulings themselves. For example, Washington State lawmakers are considering whether to require every decision by the state Supreme Court to carry a “fiscal note” estimating the cost the decision would impose on taxpayers - which effectively puts the vindication of basic constitutional rights to a majority vote. Bills elsewhere would slash funding to the courts, shorten judicial term lengths or just eliminate seats, as has happened in North Carolina. Still others would protect legislatures from the effects of court rulings, as Kansas lawmakers are trying to do in the case of school funding. In Missouri, a proposed amendment would let voters decide whether a federal law is constitutional. If they say no, state courts will be barred from enforcing that law or hearing disputes involving it or any similar state law.

Most if not all of these bills are terrible for the judiciary and harmful to democracy. But even if they don’t become law, the message they send and the publicity they generate can have real consequences. This is especially true for elected judges, who may be more wary of issuing what they perceive to be controversial or unpopular rulings, for fear of blowback. That fear isn’t unfounded. In 2010, three justices of the Iowa Supreme Court lost retention elections the year after they voted to legalize same-sex marriage in the state.

Of course, electing judges, as is done in the majority of states, doesn’t just affect their behavior. Equally important, it affects how the public perceives them. One poll found that almost nine in 10 voters said campaign contributions and spending by independent groups affect judicial decisions. Almost half of state judges agree. It’s no surprise, then, that studies have found judges more likely to issue pro-business rulings when business interests donate more to judicial campaigns and less likely to rule in favor of criminal defendants when the number of TV ads related to judicial campaigns increases.

But no matter how judges get on the bench, the important thing is to keep them as insulated as possible from outside political pressures. Instead, many lawmakers in recent years have been doing the opposite, treating judges like political pawns who are, or should be, more beholden to a partisan platform or public pressure than to the law. For those lawmakers to then complain about judges acting like legislators is rich.

Especially dangerous are efforts to impeach justices over specific rulings, as is happening now in Pennsylvania. Impeachment is a tool best used very rarely, as it has been with federal judges. In fact, only 15 federal judges have been impeached in American history. Impeachment should be reserved for situations involving serious ethical or criminal violations, not for decisions that displease a political party. (Pennsylvania’s Republican lawmakers have also openly defied an order from the state’s high court in the gerrymandering case, a sign of disrespect for the judiciary and an infringement of the separation of powers.)

Of course, judges have political beliefs and ideological persuasions. Everyone does. But public officials must not treat the judiciary as if it were just another political branch. Doing so undermines public respect for state courts - which provide most Americans with their only experiences with the judiciary - and debases their hard-won independence, for nothing but partisan gain.

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