Editorials from around New York

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

The Jamestown Post-Journal on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pursuit of renewable energy in New York.

Ten years ago, Chautauqua County legislators approved experimenting with an electric vehicle fleet to see if they could save taxpayers some money and be more environmentally friendly at the same time.

George Spanos, county public facilities director, recently told The Post-Journal the county purchased two hybrid vehicles and three regular vehicles in 2006. The county’s experience showed that if both the hybrid and the non-hybrid vehicles traveled the same mileage in a year, the cost of the hybrid-complete with its original purchase price, an estimated cost of gasoline and its decreasing salvage value would be $5,000 more expensive than the non-hybrid. The increased cost led the county to pull the plug on its electric vehicle fleet.

If only we could count on New York state to be as sensible.

Come hell or high water, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is determined to have 50 percent of New York’s energy be provided by renewable energy by 2030. No one can logically argue with the goal. They can certainly argue the way the state is pursuing the goal. A cost study required for the Clean Energy Standard, the program to carry out Cuomo’s renewable energy goals, came under fire during public comment periods by the Business Council of New York State, the New York Farm Bureau and some manufacturing companies for using a flawed analysis to come to the conclusion that residents and big electric users would pay small enough increases in electric bills that it was worth pursuing Cuomo’s goals. That’s a problem if the Clean Energy Standard ends up increasing electric bills more than anticipated in a state that already is among the top 10 most expensive states for power, with an average that is almost 5 cents per kilowatt hour higher than the national average.

There is nothing wrong with trying to be more environmentally friendly. There is certainly something wrong, however, with doing so based on flawed cost assumptions and at the possible expense of higher energy costs that will make it even more difficult to attract new jobs to our state.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2aZBoqR

The Middletown Times Herald-Record on creating jobs in New York.

Aug. 15

You know who’s getting more volatile, more likely to say things that have even those who would like to back him shaking their heads and re-thinking their support?

Not him, the other guy - Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The latest my-way-or-the-highway moment from the governor concerns jobs and the state’s efforts to create them.

The numbers are clear. Despite spending millions of dollars promoting a program that more or less eliminates taxes for businesses that locate or expand on or near college campuses, no one seems interested.

While the governor is supposed to provide the vision when it comes to these efforts, he needs to look up once in a while to see where the state is going. Others who are looking up and ahead do not like what they see and no one has been more vocal than one of the governor’s fellow Democrats, a former member of the state Assembly and the man the state has elected to keep track of the numbers.

As the Albany Times Union put it, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli “has questioned whether state incentives are actually worth the money being spent.”

The governor’s response goes beyond the kind of give and take that is normally part of our state politics:

“I think he’s dead wrong,” Cuomo said. “He should educate himself in the area.”

That’s what is known as doubling down with a bad hand. If there is anyone who is familiar with the numbers, if there is anyone in state government who has shown an educated approach to spending money and expecting results, it is the state comptroller. His office is in charge of going over all sorts of numbers and making sure that the taxes we pay at all levels in the state are well-spent, or at least spent as well as can be expected.

When it comes to jobs, there is no doubt that the state is spending much more than it used to and getting results that are so far below mediocre as to be safely called a disaster.

As the comptroller politely explained, “The kind of critique that we’ve offered and the recommendations that we’ve offered to tighten up the program . all of this is from the perspective of saying, ’Alright, we understand economic development is important, we understand that New York is putting millions and millions of dollars into these programs, isn’t it appropriate for us to take a step back and say what’s working, what’s not working (and) how can we tighten it up to make sure the promise and the expectation that’s out there in terms of effective economic development and job creation, that in fact we’re getting our bang for the buck.”

Refusing to take the dare issued by the governor who always likes a good fight, the comptroller had a polite response to the unwarranted personal attacks. Members of the Assembly who have been equally critical of the governor’s failed job initiatives are also on the governor’s hit list for daring to make similar complaints.

It’s enough to make a Democrat wonder if there might be somebody more temperamentally suited to be governor of New York.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2bmVCKp

The New York Times on Aetna pulling out of the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

Aug. 16

Die-hard opponents of the 2010 health reform law, the Affordable Care Act, have often used its real and imagined problems to argue that it is fatally flawed. Now they are seizing on an announcement by Aetna that it will reduce its participation in the health insurance marketplaces set up by the law. Donald Trump’s campaign called Aetna’s move “the latest blow to this broken law that is slowly imploding under its regulatory red tape.”

This is hyperbole. The law has survived many setbacks, and it will overcome Aetna’s decision, too.

The law set up federal and state-run marketplaces where people who don’t have health insurance through their employers or government programs like Medicare can buy coverage. Despite initial problems with HealthCare.gov, the federal program’s website, and some state sites, the marketplaces have helped many Americans become insured. About 11 million people have bought policies, and the government provides tax credits to 85 percent of them to make the coverage affordable.

But some big national insurers like UnitedHealth, Humana and now Aetna say they are losing too much money on marketplace policies. The reason is that the customers they signed up used more medical services than the insurers had anticipated. On Monday, Aetna said it would reduce the number of counties where it sells such policies to 242, from 778, citing a $200 million pretax loss on those policies in the second quarter. The company had sold marketplace policies to about 911,000 customers as of April.

Aetna’s decision will cause problems in some places. For example, Pinal County in Arizona might have no insurer selling marketplace policies for 2017 unless another company steps in to replace Aetna. But competition is more robust elsewhere. A Kaiser Family Foundation report published in July said that in 16 states and the District of Columbia, there would be an average of 5.8 insurers selling policies for 2017. That number was down from 6.5 in 2016 but about the same as in 2014.

There have been questions about Aetna’s motives. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the insurer could be pressuring the Justice Department to drop or settle a lawsuit it filed last month to block Aetna’s proposed $37 billion acquisition of Humana. She and others have pointed out that as recently as April, Aetna’s chairman and chief executive, Mark Bertolini, told analysts that he considered the company’s presence in the marketplaces “a good investment.” And in May, Aetna said that it might expand into other parts of the country. Aetna says that the lawsuit did not influence its decision to reduce participation.

It is clear, however, that Congress should strengthen the marketplaces to ensure sufficient competition. For example, it could encourage more healthy people to buy insurance by extending tax credits to families that now earn too much to qualify. Many of those people find it cheaper to pay the tax penalty for not having insurance than to buy it. If more healthy people participated, more insurers would want to be on the exchanges. Congress and state governments could also consider offering a government insurance plan in rural areas and other places where there is little or no competition, as President Obama and Hillary Clinton have proposed.

Any law as complex and comprehensive as the Affordable Care Act is bound to have some hiccups. The only sensible response to those problems is to improve the law.

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Online:

https://nyti.ms/2bAVKp0

The Glens Falls Post-Star on reforming the Olympic Games.

Aug. 14

The Olympic Games still have the power to thrill, despite the doping, despite huge problems associated with hosting them and despite the International Olympic Committee, which throughout its history has made one awful decision after another.

Despite everything - despite the way corporate sponsors, television networks and Olympic officials get rich off the Games while many of the athletes can barely pay their way - the Olympic Games remain, for many athletes and spectators, the pinnacle of competition and achievement.

This year already, we have seen Michael Phelps break a record - 12 gold medals in individual events - set more than 2,000 years ago by Leonidas of Rhodes. Every day over this two weeks, we get to watch feats of surpassing skill, endurance and courage, often in sports that we rarely if ever catch a glimpse of otherwise.

The Olympics does what it was meant to do - it creates bonds among people from all over the world in the crucible of athletic competition, and it displays their commonalities to hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide.

All want desperately to win. All are crushed when they lose. All have the capacity for courage, for grace when they fall short, for joy when they win.

Look at the photo of the two young women gymnasts - one from North Korea, one from South Korea - taking a selfie together. Their countries are mortal enemies, but in their smiles you see how much they share.

As for the problems, many of them could be addressed by finding more permanent homes for the Games. The most drastic solution would be to establish one permanent summer site and one winter site.

But other solutions are possible, such as establishing two or three permanent winter and summer sites and rotating the Games among them. Or, each continent could have either a Winter Games or Summer Games site. Or, instead of moving the Games every time, sites could be chosen to host two or three Games in a row, so host countries would be more likely to recoup the enormous cost of building the Olympic venues and the necessary infrastructure.

Hosting the Olympics has become a financial burden many cities and countries are hesitant to bear. Boston withdrew from consideration for hosting the 2024 Olympics, because of public opposition, after winning the top place among U.S. contenders.

Those places that do get the Games, like Rio, have a chance like no other to promote their city and their culture. But they also risk bankrupting the national treasury to build the Olympic venues - venues that, after the Games, can themselves become sinkholes for tax dollars.

All the Olympic bidding and building becomes exhausting, especially now that the Winter and Summer Games alternate, so we have an Olympics every two years. Handling the site selection is one of the main responsibilities of the IOC, and its members have regularly been implicated in payoff scandals as part of that process. Having permanent sites, or semi-permanent ones, will provide fewer opportunities for corruption.

Policing the use of performance-enhancing drugs is an unfortunate necessity in the modern sports world that is not unique to the Olympics. In some sports, like sprinting and bicycle-racing, pure speed or endurance is a decisive factor, and drug use robs the competition of all validity. In others, like rugby or judo or soccer, athletes rely on a combination of speed, strength and skill, and it’s easy to believe that even if some are cheating, they won’t gain an insurmountable advantage. If less money were being poured into constructing new Olympic sites every couple of years, more could be put toward catching drug cheats.

One of the thrills the Olympics provides that professional sports does not is the opportunity for astonishing upsets, such as the U.S. men’s hockey team’s victory over the Russians and eventual winning of the gold medal in Lake Placid in 1980. Even if your favorite football or baseball team is in the cellar and beats the first-place team, they’re all professionals, and an upset victory does not have the shock value of an unknown knocking off a champion at the Olympics.

The modern Olympic Games have become a victim of their success. They are so spectacular, and spectacularly expensive, they have outgrown the ability of most potential sites to host them. The IOC now seems unlikely to address the problem, but if enough cities refuse to host the Games, it will be forced to do something.

Meanwhile, we’ll keep watching.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2b17pvP

The Gloversville Leader-Herald on rising debt in the U.S.

Aug. 15

Congressional Budget Office analysts estimate the national debt, now at 75 percent of the gross national product, will grow to 86 percent in a decade.

Rising debt hampers economic growth, the analysts added. And they pointed out critical programs including Social Security, Medicare and the Highway Trust Fund are headed toward insolvency.

A key part of the report noted government spending is growing faster than revenue to fund it is increasing.

For liberals, including Hillary Clinton, the answer to that is higher taxes - including many hidden ones affecting the middle class.

But the CBO did not analyze one aspect of the issue: how the hundreds of billions of dollars a year in new taxes to support bigger government would affect the lives of Americans.

Perhaps that is an analysis best left to those of us who, at some point, need to decide whether to demand Washington rein in its spending habits - or let it continue on its merry way.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2b0Q3w4