Editorials from around New York

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

The Albany Times Union on restoring an addiction-treatment program’s eligibility for grants as it tries to resolve a dispute.

March 22

The state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services presents what appear to be compelling reasons for what can only be called its systematic shutdown of the addiction-treatment program run by the Rev. Peter Young. Compelling, until you read the same agency’s most recent inspection reports of the operation.

OASAS Commissioner Arlene Gonzalez-Sanchez responded after demands from numerous state legislators seeking an explanation for why her agency was so bent on closing the highly successful Peter Young Housing, Industries and Treatment program. The furor followed a story by the Times Union’s Brendan Lyons detailing the abusive treatment of the nonprofit by an OASAS official.

Commissioner Gonzalez-Sanchez cited what she called PYHIT’s unwillingness to take needed steps to correct administrative, operational and financial deficiencies. It also listed numerous maintenance and sanitary problems at some of the program’s residences for recovering addicts.

The commissioner reiterated what’s at the heart of the conflict between her agency and the nonprofit: the 2012 convictions of five PYHIT staffers for crimes ranging from padding expenses to embezzlement. The probe that led to the criminal charges originated after the nonprofit itself reported the discrepancies and presented evidence to OASAS.

PYHIT has since been frozen out of applying for new state grants. As its funds run down, PYHIT has struggled to meet its mission of providing its desperately needed drug and alcohol treatment and job training programs.

The organization contends nearly all its 12 licensed facilities received the highest possible rating in OASAS inspection reports over the past three years, though it acknowledged maintenance at its facilities has lagged - hampered by the state’s decision to cut off maintenance funding. PYHIT also disputed the state’s depiction of its finances, arguing its $3.5 million in “mortgage debt” on properties valued at about $9 million is manageable.

One thing is clear: The state wants PYHIT out of business. That’s what the OASAS general counsel, Robert A. Kent, using profane language, told Father Young and some PYHIT board members last year when he insisted the organization will never get another state grant.

The losers are the thousands of addicts who may never be able to benefit from PYHIT’s proven programs. Father Young, at age 86, faces the sad prospect of seeing his life’s ministry to the addicted collapse.

Instead of OASAS carrying out what Kent referred to so coarsely, there is a better way. The state should restore PYHIT’s eligibility for grants while it works to resolve the dispute, perhaps inviting the state comptroller to do an independent audit that defines the next steps.

Too much is at stake. OASAS should be setting PYHIT up for success, not failure, in fighting addiction for many more decades to come.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2o1JgfZ

The Syracuse Post-Standard on adding another name to Albany’s wall of shame.

March 24

By one count, state Sen. Robert Ortt of Niagara County became the 40th New York state legislator to face legal or ethical charges since 2000. Ortt’s predecessor, George Maziarz, would have been No. 41 on the Legislature’s wall of shame had he not retired from public office in 2014 under an ethics cloud.

Ortt faces three felony counts of filing a false instrument, for allegedly arranging a no-show job for his wife and funneling payments to her through a pass-through entity. Maziarz faces five felony counts of filing a false instrument, for allegedly hiding $95,000 in campaign payments to a former Senate staffer who resigned over sexual harassment charges. Both men pleaded not guilty and vow to fight the accusations.

The charges against Ortt and Maziarz, brought by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman after an investigation by the state Board of Elections, got scant attention as the battle raged in Washington over health care legislation. Compared to the bloodletting going on there, corruption in Albany is a dull toothache - a nagging pain that New Yorkers seem resigned to live with.

Clearly, voters aren’t up in arms over the lack of progress on ethics reforms.

For the seventh year in a row, Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed an ethics package in his State of the State address. He included it in his proposed state budget, the starting point for negotiations with the Senate and Assembly. It included such chestnuts as closing the LLC loophole (the spigot through which vast sums of money flow into political campaigns), public campaign financing, a cap on legislators’ outside income, expansion of the Freedom of Information Law to cover the Legislature, among others.

The Legislature seems to have little appetite for it.

The Democrat-controlled Assembly’s one-house budget adopted most of Cuomo’s ideas (closing the LLC loophole, for example) but did not go along with others. The Republican-controlled Senate’s one-house budget included none of Cuomo’s ethics proposals. Only the Senate Independent Democratic Conference, a group of eight breakaway Democrats who share power with the Republicans, offered unqualified support for Cuomo’s reform package.

To legislators’ reticence, add the complications of negotiating a budget when Congress and the Trump administration is about to pull the rug out from under state finances. The prospects for a meaningful agreement on ethics and voting reforms by the April 1 budget deadline are dim.

What are the chances Albany will take them up after the budget? Dimmer, unless the public makes a stink. Which it never does. Even as the list of politicians brought up on charges grows ever longer.

If you can’t muster any more outrage at corruption in Albany, here’s one concrete action you can take. On the back of November’s ballot, you will find a constitutional amendment that would reduce or strip the state pension from public officials convicted of a felony related to their official duties. Vote “yes.”

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2ocuosp

The Middletown Times Herald-Record on the strengthening case for a special investigation into Russian influence on the presidential election.

March 23

As the latest developments unfolded in the probe of Russian influence on the presidential election, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona made the case for appointing a special investigator the same way Congress has handled other important, volatile and politically divisive allegations.

“It’s a bizarre situation,” he said. “I think that this back and forth and what the American people have found so far is that no longer does Congress have the credibility to handle this alone.”

McCain and others were alarmed by hearings before the House Intelligence Committee and especially the disconnect between members of the two parties, illustrated best by the differing approaches of the Republican chair, Rep. Devin Nunes, and the Democratic ranking member, Adam Schiff, both members of the California delegation.

Nunes and his party colleagues focused mainly on leaks to the press. Schiff and his colleagues focused mainly on what those leaks revealed about the connections between the Trump campaign and administration and Russia.

By itself that should be enough to convince others in Congress, others who are concerned that a foreign government and a very hostile one at that was able to wield so much influence, that we need an unbiased investigation.

But then the odd situation got a bit more odd.

If anybody has been a champion of keeping secrets secret it has been Nunes. It was the main topic of his statements and questions at the hearing and the only subject of the coordinated questioning from majority members.

This is not a new concern for him. In mid-February he talked about leaks of intelligence materials and said “it’s totally unacceptable for anyone within government to be doing this. I think most of this is probably from people who were in the old administration, but there still could be some people that have burrowed in and are providing classified information to the media.”

Just last week, before the hearings began, he reaffirmed his concerns.

“Numerous current and former officials have leaked purportedly classified information in connection to these questions. We aim to determine who has leaked or facilitated leaks of classified information so that these individuals can be brought to justice.”

So imagine the reaction when on Wednesday Nunes, according to his own account, received word “from sources” concerning the potential surveillance of the Trump team complete with enough information to identify at least one individual.

Did he share it with other members of the committee or the National Security Agency or the FBI?

No. He shared it with the president just before the daily briefing so that Sean Spicer could tell everyone how pleased his boss is that his suspicions about being watched have been vindicated.

The Intelligence Committee is not scheduled to meet until next week. When it reconvenes, it is hard to imagine that it will be able to proceed beyond the big question in the room, the one that has now eclipsed the previous big question.

How can the chairman both condemn leaks and use them for his own political and partisan purposes?

The answer is, he can’t.

Only a special investigation removed from these partisans will be able to do the job.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2neszu1

The Plattsburgh Press-Republican on making meaningful reforms to the Affordable Care Act.

March 28

The defeat of the Republican health-care plan was a show of force by the American people, who effectively put the brakes on an unexplainable rush toward change.

It’s not that the public doesn’t see faults in the Affordable Care Act; the fissures are there, and they need to be corrected.

But the advancements achieved by Obamacare were clear to many people, and they didn’t want those gains rejected.

By now, most Americans know those pluses: about 22 million more people have insurance, people with pre-existing medical conditions can’t be denied coverage, children can stay on their parents’ policies to age 26, being among the most talked about.

Obamacare is far from a perfect plan. But Republicans, including President Trump, seemed hell-bent on hastily repealing it.

GOP Congress members, including Rep. Elise Stefanik, have repeated that repeal mantra for years. But, though they claim that is what their constituents were clamoring for, they weren’t really listening. Most Americans didn’t want a massive step back to when many people didn’t have health insurance. They just wanted adjustments made so the system worked better.

We believe reform is what they still want, and that message was made clear last week.

It must have been a hand-wringing week for Stefanik and other Republicans who truly care about the people of their districts. Here they were, re-elected supposedly in part because they wanted to repeal Obamacare.

And yet here were the CEOs of every hospital in Stefanik’s district saying that repealing the Affordable Care Act and installing the quickly contrived GOP plan would be not just problematic but “devastating.”

“It is not an exaggeration to say that the loss of insurance for millions, decreased stability of health-care providers, jobs losses and higher taxes are among the outcomes that would follow implementation of this bill,” read a joint letter from the heads of hospitals in Plattsburgh, Malone, Saranac Lake, Elizabethtown and other facilities.

We can’t imagine Stefanik was unmoved by that message.

Then there was the barrage of letters and phone calls from constituents and the protest marches and rallies.

Stefanik’s office says many contacts came from outside the 21st District, but, like it or not, plenty of district residents voiced opposition to the GOP plan - some because it didn’t go far enough to reject Obamacare, some because it they felt it would do more harm than good.

Some observers believe Stefanik would have voted for the plan. After all, her hesitation gave her the muscle to get more funding added for women’s health and maternity care, and she could have claimed that victory.

But we won’t know for sure because Stefanik’s office refused to answer direct questions leading up to and after the expected decision. Even the day of the vote, she was “undecided.”

Some district residents resented her not revealing how she would vote on the biggest decision of her career so far. But it turned out to make good political sense; she ducked having to anger one segment of district residents - either the yeas or the nays.

But the story isn’t over. Obamacare still needs adjusting, and people will want it fixed in a thoughtful, bipartisan way.

Republicans will look like sore losers if they refuse to help make that happen. And Democrats can’t gloat and ignore compromise.

On this one, the American public is in the driver’s seat - the way it should be.

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Online:

https://bit.ly/2nHFGqy

The New York Daily News on the need for the federal government to continue funding lifesaving research and development projects.

March 27

High atop the list of things that make America great is its investment in science.

A commitment to basic research, led by the federal government, has long made the United States an electromagnet for the smartest people on Earth.

It laid the groundwork for the internet. Has planted seeds for explosive economic innovation. Unlocked untapped energy. Enabled, and is increasingly enabling, medical miracles.

All for a relatively piddling $68 billion in 2016, or a wee bit more than the single-year increase in the defense budget President Trump is ordering up.

Yet if Trump gets his way in his new budget, the feds will pull the plug on thousands of vital projects.

The National Institutes of Health, America’s leading medical research grantmaker, would suffer an 18% hit - an unprecedented single-year decline.

Discoveries funded by the NIH have deciphered the human genetic code; kept blood-transfusion supplies safe and clean; lowered the cholesterol of millions, via statins; and developed a class of drugs instrumental to turning AIDS from a death sentence into a chronic disease.

They are working as you read this to map the human brain as never before. To pioneer understanding of and therapies for Alzheimer’s disease. And to radically improve cancer treatments that have already saved thousands of lives.

Trump would systematically hobble that work.

(Insult to injury: Defense research and development spending, much of it designed to make it easier to injure and kill, would get a big boost as lifesaving R&D goes begging.)

Meantime, Trump would all but eliminate funding for studies on the impact of climate change that are enabling the United States and the world to adapt to, and potentially mitigate, potentially cataclysmic alterations to the planet.

Deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture would weaken scientists’ ability to help curb air and water pollution.

Still unknown: How badly Trump would wallop the National Science Foundation, which pays for pathbreaking work in dozens of vital realms beyond biology and environmental science.

The assault couldn’t come at a worse time. America is already at risk of losing its leadership position; for years, the U.S. share of R&D spending has been falling, with China, Japan, South Korea, India and Singapore gaining as we slip.

Meantime, four in 10 U.S. colleges - and half of all graduate schools - this year are reporting declines in the number of international students, who often go on to study science, technology and engineering.

That phenomenon, no doubt triggered largely by Trump’s anti-immigrant fearmongering, will only be exacerbated by a freshly expressed hostility toward research.

To those who protest, “If it’s so important, the private sector will pay for it,” wrong: The very nature of most basic science is that it doesn’t pay short-term economic dividends. And private philanthropy, while essential, can’t do nearly enough.

Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress get that. It is their responsibility now to enlighten a President who doesn’t. Or, failing that, just defeat him.

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Online:

https://nydn.us/2o6WGrm