Editorials from around New York

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

___

The Albany Times Union on President Donald Trump blaming the media following his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

July 17

One day after his disastrous meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, and facing an avalanche of criticism, including from many in his own party, President Donald Trump reverted to his favorite excuse: He blamed the mess he created on the news media. “Fake news is going Crazy!” he tweeted in the morning.

Then, hours later, he changed his story, saying the uproar was all due to a simple misstatement - just a single word he got wrong during his joint news conference with Mr. Putin. Asked by a reporter about the U.S. intelligence community’s long-held conclusion that Russians meddled in the 2016 American elections, Mr. Trump had said, “I don’t see any reason why it would be Russia.” No, no, he insisted Tuesday; he meant to say, “why it wouldn’t be Russia,” meaning that he finally, after all these months, decided in Helsinki to accept the notion that Russia meddled in our election.

Of course, in the rest of the 45-minute news conference, that’s not at all what he was saying. And Tuesday, after clarifying what he now says he meant to say, he immediately qualified it yet again: “Could be other people, also,” he said. “A lot of people out there.” He then repeated his frequent assertion that there’s no finding of any collusion between his campaign and the Russians - a question among the many not yet addressed conclusively by the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

So goes yet another attempt to give cover to Mr. Trump’s GOP protectors and enablers, including those who briefly had the audacity and courage to publicly contradict him. Now they can assure critics of their timidity - their choice, on display daily, of partisanship over patriotism - that it was all a misunderstanding, since you can surely take this president at his word. No, he never lies.

Still, there remains mounting pressure for members of Congress to go beyond disagreeing with the Monday statements, perhaps to include a censure of the president for siding with Mr. Putin over the FBI, CIA, NSA and even Mr. Trump’s own top advisers. No wonder Republicans are eager to shift the conversation to other topics.

But there isn’t a topic more important than the weakness - some called it treason - of a president of the United States standing on foreign soil and denouncing our nation’s intelligence agencies while embracing a longtime enemy. Almost as important is the cowardice of a congressional majority that refuses to speak the truth of what everybody saw: a spineless leader, unequal to the task at hand. (Go to YouTube and watch the smug Russian alongside the overmatched American. It will break your heart.)

We have seen this pattern too often: Deny facts, then blame Democrats, then attack the media for reporting what can be seen and heard. But after Mr. Trump’s showboating abroad - undermining the NATO alliance, offending America’s best friends, affirming his bromance with Mr. Putin, our adversary - it’s ever harder for the president’s pals, especially those on Capitol Hill, to avoid the truth of his unfitness for office. Still, you know they will try: Fake news. Yeah, right.

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

___

The Post-Standard on corruption in New York government and reform.

July 14

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

That’s the verdict of 12 New York jurors on multiple charges against four defendants who conspired to rig bids for $850 million in state contracts for projects in Syracuse and Buffalo. The jury did not buy defense arguments that it’s unsavory, but not illegal, to do business this way.

It is both unsavory and illegal, as anyone with an ounce of sense could tell you.

Verdicts in the federal court trial of a former state official and two Syracuse-area business executives.

The defendants — former nanotech czar Alain Kaloyeros, Syracuse developers Steve Aiello and Joseph Girardi, and Buffalo developer Louis Ciminelli — own the illegal part.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo owns the unsavory part.

Now what are you going to do about it, Governor?

Cuomo denies any responsibility for the rot at the center of his signature economic development programs, the Buffalo Billion and SUNY Polytechnic’s nanotech center. It’s all SUNY’s fault, the governor said. People will do bad things.

Astonishingly, even after the second set of verdicts proving corruption in his own programs, Cuomo’s public statements betray no self-awareness or contrition. If this were President Donald Trump, he would attack with all his might. Yet, the governor is politically astute enough to know bad optics when he sees them; Cuomo canceled a Skaneateles political fundraiser to be held a day after Thursday’s verdict at a developer’s home.

Make no mistake, Cuomo owns this.

Who’s responsible for placing enormous trust and loads of taxpayer money in the hands of Kaloyeros? Cuomo, who called Kaloyeros “New York’s secret weapon” in the effort to bring jobs and economic activity to lagging Upstate New York. Kaloyeros knew how to get things done, all right. He brooked no interference or oversight and attacked his critics ferociously. The result: underperforming projects like the film hub and LED lighting factory in DeWitt, and solar panel factory in Buffalo.

Watchdog groups renew call for ethics reforms after corruption conviction of architect of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s economic development plan.

Who watched approvingly as Kaloyeros ran his economic development projects through nonprofit corporations, Fort Schuyler and Fuller Road management corporations? Cuomo. The corporate entities were designed to cut through government red tape. Instead, they were breeding grounds for corruption and pay-to-play deals, thanks to lax contracting rules and a lack of transparency. Developers who made campaign contributions to Cuomo had the inside track on government contracts. After Kaloyeros was arrested, Empire State Development instituted new governance and transparency measures. State government, including SUNY, should quit using private, nonprofit affiliates to achieve public aims, period.

Who gave out “a key to the governor’s office”? The trial showed how developers bought access to decision-makers in the Executive Chamber through disgraced lobbyist Todd Howe, who also was being paid by Kaloyeros. In an earlier trial, Cuomo’s former right-hand man Joe Percoco provided the key. Personal connections matter. Money talks. Taxpayers get cheated.

The governor is running for a third term on his record of promoting people-first, progressive causes: gay marriage, a $15 minimum wage, abortion rights. He should attack corruption with the same zeal.

Cuomo had the chance this past legislative session. The state Senate passed a slate of reform bills that included a “database of deals” to bring transparency to state economic development spending; more oversight of state contracts; an independent state budget office and an independent ethics watchdog. The Assembly passed a bill closing the “LLC loophole” allowing individuals to skirt campaign contribution limits. Cuomo and lawmakers did not get together on any of it.

Do it now, Gov. Cuomo. Own the problem. Call a special session of the Legislature to demand action on reform. Lead, or get out of the way.

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

___

Newsday on Amtrak’s mounting schedule delay issues.

July 18

The LIRR’s Monday morning rush was a cascade of cancellations, diversions and delays.

The excuse this time? Amtrak, which controls Penn Station and the tracks beneath it, couldn’t finish its weekend repair work on time.

The national passenger railroad had a 55-hour planned outage to replace a switch on a track beneath Penn. It apparently had the resources and staff it needed to get the job done on time. But at 5 a.m. Monday, the time when Amtrak needed to clear out, work was still in progress. Amtrak didn’t finish until 7:30 a.m. - way too late to spare morning commuters their aggravation.

This isn’t a one-time mistake. In 2017 alone, 3,000 LIRR delays, cancellations and other service issues were attributable to Amtrak, according to State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. As recently as May, Amtrak pledged to improve after a similar delay in overnight work led to another rush-hour mess.

Amtrak’s apologies and promises to fix what went wrong are not enough. It controls Penn and insists that its unions do the repairs. But Amtrak has yet to show it can handle the job. New York’s needs can’t be managed from elsewhere. Amtrak must give clear authority to a specific executive - a Penn Station czar of sorts who oversees the work and who can be held accountable for unnecessary delays and who can hold job managers and workers accountable for these screw-ups. The czar should also be tasked with communicating truthfully and regularly with the LIRR and its riders.

Monday’s fiasco was preventable, and Amtrak should understand that.

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

___

The New York Times on rising drug prices.

July 17

It has been two months since the president released his road map for lowering drug costs that seems to lead nowhere, and about a month since he predicted the “big drug companies” would announce “voluntary massive” price cuts. Here’s where things stand:

A congressional investigation has found that the drug company Novartis got more out of its $1.2 million payment to Mr. Trump’s “personal attorney” Michael Cohen than had been known. Meanwhile, several other drugmakers defied Mr. Trump’s lofty prediction by raising their prices substantially, while his administration shot down a proposal that would have helped individual states lower their drug costs.

Taken together, the developments help explain why, a year and a half after Mr. Trump took office, prescription drugs cost more than ever.

Let’s start with Novartis: When a lawyer for Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic-film star suing Mr. Trump, revealed that the drug company was among those who had made payments to Mr. Cohen after the election, Novartis executives insisted they’d had only one meeting before concluding that Mr. Cohen didn’t know enough about health care policy to be helpful. But Senate Democrats have since found that the company actually had several meetings, that drug-pricing policies were on the agenda and that a number of proposals Novartis pushed for made it into the White House plan.

For his part, Mr. Trump made a show of chastising the industry on Twitter when several drugmakers raised their prices this month. He called out Pfizer specifically, saying the company “should be ashamed” of itself. The tweet led to a phone call between the company’s chief executive and the president, after which Pfizer agreed to hold off on those price increases for six months, or until the administration had a chance to put its road map into action.

Mr. Trump said the concession was “great news for the American people,” but it might actually be more of a coup for the pharmaceutical industry. By tying its actions to the president’s initiative, Pfizer now has both a stick and a carrot to wield: implement a policy that benefits the industry and maybe the company will abandon its price increases; create one that hurts the industry and the company may raise prices once again. In any case, none of the other drugmakers that raised their prices followed Pfizer’s lead, meaning that those increases are all still in place.

These machinations would be troubling enough by themselves. But the administration seems intent on adding insult to injury, by blocking states from carrying out a policy that might actually make a dent in the drug-cost problem.

That proposal would have opened the door on allowing state Medicaid programs to deny coverage for certain medications. Private insurance companies, the Department of Veterans Affairs and many other countries with drug prices far lower than ours already do this, but Medicaid is required to cover all federally approved medications, no matter how much they cost or how well (or poorly) they work. If states were allowed to circumvent this rule, they would be able to avoid paying for pricey new drugs that aren’t necessarily as effective as cheaper versions already on the market. They would also have much more negotiating power because they would be able to walk away from the table for drugs that were overpriced.

Massachusetts asked the administration for a waiver that would allow it to try this approach. But in June, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Health and Human Services agency that regulates these two insurance programs, rejected that proposal and issued a notice to all states, reiterating that all Medicaid programs must cover all drugs.

“It takes away a substantial tool that a lot of states were hoping to use,” says Rachel Sachs, a law professor and drug policy expert at Washington University in St. Louis. It also points to a hypocrisy, she says. “They’re permissive when it comes to work requirements that put added burden on the vulnerable, but protective when it comes to measures that would strain the pharmaceutical industry.”

It’s unclear where we go from here. The administration’s road map for lowering drug costs was short on details about when or how any of its provisions might take effect. And while there’s no telling what Mr. Trump discussed with Pfizer that caused it to temporarily halt planned price increases, the exchanges between Mr. Cohen and Novartis hardly inspire good faith. In fact, if the industry is “getting away with murder,” as Mr. Trump once claimed, it stands to reason that at this point, it’s doing it with the president’s help.

The good news is that elections are coming, and lawmakers know that Americans are enraged by soaring drug costs. By keeping the pressure on, we may see real change yet.

Online: https://nyti.ms/2O0vZyv

___

The Post-Star on drug rehab centers

July 15

Compare the amount of information available on nursing homes in New York with what is available on drug treatment centers, and you will begin to grasp the extent of the problem state residents face when trying to find a drug rehab bed.

As Kathleen Moore detailed in a story last Sunday, the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services website allows you to find out where open spots are available for inpatient and outpatient care.

Choosing a drug rehab facility for in-patient care is still a shot in the dark, even though the state is now running a website that tries to u.

Otherwise, the site is unhelpful. It does not list the programs offered at each site. It does not list basic data, such as how well people do after completing a program. It does not even reveal the number of patients who die.

The site allows each program to list more detailed information, but some programs provide information and some don’t.

One program Moore checked did not even list the hours during which clients could be admitted.

State inspectors don’t visit the rehab centers and rate them on various performance factors and put the results online, the way they do with nursing homes. Hospitals, too, must provide critical data to the state and federal governments, and consumers can find much of this data online.

Without a way to judge the effectiveness of drug treatment programs, patients and their families are left to roll the dice. Peoples’ lives are in the balance, but they have no information on which to base a decision and have to rely on luck.

The state is running the website that updates the availability of beds, so why isn’t it also providing the information people need to decide where to go?

The administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo has recognized the severity of the opioid crisis and the importance of addressing it primarily as a public health problem, not a criminal justice problem.

In March, the Cuomo administration widened prescription-monitoring, which now includes 25 states and Washington, D.C.; expanded the number of investigators who will be trained to carry and administer naloxone, which can counteract the effects of an overdose; and loosened certification rules on hospitals so they can provide more detoxification services.

This year’s state budget includes an opioid tax expected to generate about $100 million per year.

But, as frequently happens in politics, some proposals are more impressive before you know the details. Of that $100 million opioid tax, for example, only about $20 million will go to pay for drug treatment. The rest will go into the state’s general fund.

Likewise, having a state website that collects information on rehab centers in a centralized location is an excellent idea, but the execution, so far, is lacking.

Much remains to be done before the official response to opioid addiction matches the severity of the crisis.

Longer residential stays - as long as several months - should become standard, since they have been shown to be most effective. Instead, insurance companies will often cover only shorter stays of two or three weeks.

Longer stays are expensive. State oversight and reporting costs money, too.

But it’s important to remember that doing nothing, or not enough, is also costly. If we don’t spend public money on treatment, we will be spending it on jail and hospital stays, on police and court services and on caring for children neglected by parents who are addicts.

It is not possible to solve this problem cheaply. But it is possible, with a long-term commitment to drug treatment and prevention, to solve this problem, and it’s worth the effort.

Online: https://bit.ly/2LtE5hk

___