New York Post. August 24, 2022.

Editorial: Stop telling critics to leave NY, Gov. Hochul — Dems have driven out too many already!

“Jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong,” Gov. Kathy Hochul hectored her opponent Lee Zeldin and other GOPers Monday night — implying her critics “are not New Yorkers.”

It was a clear echo of her disgraced predecessor’s 2014 announcement that “extreme conservatives … have no place in the state of New York.”

Yet it’s Hochul’s views that are out of line with what Empire Staters actually want.

The biggest disconnect: Crime. Poll after poll shows that New Yorkers from Manhattan to Niagara Falls hate the state’s disastrous criminal-justice reforms. A Siena poll earlier this summer showed 92% of New Yorkers see crime as a serious problem across the state (79% of black voters say it’s a very serious problem).

And Hochul, despite having done nothing substantive to fix the disastrous reforms, knows just how out of whack she is on the issue — hence her move to get sucker-punching sex offender Bui Van Phu arrested after he was let out by the soft-on-crime Bronx DA’s office and a weak-kneed judge.

On the economy, the other big issue driving voters, Hochul is utterly absent.

Our state unemployment at 4.4% is well above the national rate; our businesses are withering on the vine while Florida’s and Texas’ blossom. Her response? Signing a bill excising the word “salesman” from state law.

Meanwhile, her green-energy agenda is pushing electric bills ever-higher and will guarantee future blackouts unless it’s aborted soon.

The vast majority of voters hate her Bills-stadium boondoggle. They ignore her MTA mask mandate. The list goes on and on and on.

Her critics are eminently commonsensical. They aim to fight crime by empowering cops and prosecutors and to stop strangling businesses with high taxes and soaring energy.

If wanting safe streets and a humming economy makes people into fake New Yorkers, the Empire State must be full of frauds.

Then again, the gov’s policies are doing all too good a job of driving those New Yorkers to move out.

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Dunkirk Evening Observer. August 22, 2022.

Editorial: NEW YORK STATE Make Cuomo pay his own legal bills

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo deserves the right to mount a defense in the federal lawsuit filed earlier this year by an unnamed New York State Police officer who accuses Cuomo and others of violating her civil rights.

But he does not deserve to have New York taxpayers pay for it.

Cuomo filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Letitia James last week, claiming James’ denial of Cuomo’s public assistance for legal bills violates state law. He says the allegations stem from a time when he was acting within the scope of his state duties and, therefore, should be paid for with public money.

James’ 2021 investigation found reports of improper behavior by the former governor against early a dozen women and that Cuomo and aides worked to retaliate against one of his accusers. Those accusers included the trooper on his security detail, who said he allegedly subjected her to sexual remarks and on occasion ran his hand or fingers across her stomach and her back.

The last time we checked, there was nothing in the governor’s job description that includes such behavior. Under Cuomo’s logic, the state should be on the hook for a whole lot of legal bills — including those of Joe Percoco and Alain Kaloyeros, two Cuomo lackeys who were convicted of bid-rigging for Buffalo Billion projects, former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was convicted of honest services fraud, extortion and money laundering in an influence peddling case that resulted in state grants going to a research center run by a doctor that referred asbestos cancer patients to Silver’s law firm so it could seek huge settlements for personal injury lawsuits. Should the state also pay for disgraced former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin’s legal team, who is accused of using his position as a state Senator to direct a state-funded grant to an organization controlled by a real estate developer in exchange for campaign contributions?

We think not. None of those actions were part of those officials’ job descriptions, just as sexual harassment isn’t part of the governor’s. Cuomo needs to pay his own legal bills.

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Jamestown Post-Journal. August 24, 2022.

Editorial: State Should Approve Peace Officers In Institution, But A Special Session Isn’t Needed

Designating Chautauqua Institution’s security staff as peace officers likely would not have prevented Hadi Matar of New Jersey from stabbing Salman Rushdie multiple times on the institution’s Amphitheater stage.

The way security was deployed, Matar would likely still have reached the stage to carry out his attack. So, preventing such incidents really is a Chautauqua Institution matter.

But, we do agree with Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, and state Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, that legislation previously passed by the state Legislature and vetoed by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo designating the institution’s security as peace officers should be revisited in the next legislative session and, if approved, by signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Goodell and Borrello have proposed allowing Chautauqua’s security team to be classified as peace officers, which would allow them to make arrests and have direct access to emergency radio systems. Given the number of people in the institution at any given time, such a designation makes sense.

In our view, a special session isn’t needed because the institution’s season will be over by the time the legislature could be convened, the legislation passed and then signed.

But, the legislature should act early enough in the next legislative session that Chautauqua Institution officials can plan on enhanced security, provided by the institution’s contracted security team, for the 2023 Chautauqua season.

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Auburn Citizen. August 24, 2022.

Editorial: Keep marijuana products out of reach of children

New York state’s medical marijuana program launched in 2014, meaning that people with certain conditions could purchase products if they showed the required medical cannabis card. In 2021, recreational pot became legal statewide for anyone 21 and older, and while retail stores aren’t operating in the state just yet, marijuana in various forms has become widely available.

And while disagreement remains over whether pot should have been legalized in the first place, it is here to stay, and marijuana products are now in more and more homes. An unintended consequence of more widespread availability and usage, however, was recently highlighted by the Upstate New York Poison Center, which is experiencing a spike in calls regarding children who have taken powerful marijuana edibles.

The Syracuse-based center said that is is on pace to handle the highest number of calls regarding edibles in its 65-year history and that some of the children consuming high levels of THC are 5 and younger.

Part of the problem is that some of these products come in packaging that makes them look just like candy, and when children find them they tend to eat more than what is considered a single adult dose, which can result in dangerous changes to blood pressure and cause breathing problems.

Packaging aside, at the end of the day, the adults in the home need to be responsible and keep these types of drugs in places where children can’t get to them, just like any other over the counter or prescription drugs.

Health officials recommend storing marijuana products on a shelf out of the reach of toddlers or in a medication lock box to prevent any young person from being able to access them.

Anyone who suspects that a child has swallowed any form of marijuana should call the center at (800) 222-1222, and information on how to obtain a free medication lock box can be found at the center’s website.

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Albany Times Union. August 24, 2022.

Editorial: JCOPE’s parting flub

The former state ethics commission blew a case against Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but the issue hasn’t gone away.

The Joint Commission on Public Ethics finally did the right thing when it came to holding former Gov. Andrew Cuomo accountable, and got it wrong anyway. That’s understandable. You’re bound to make mistakes when you’re that out of practice.

But this was no exoneration. JCOPE’s successor, the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, can and should revisit lingering questions concerning whether Mr. Cuomo improperly used the labor of public employees to enrich himself. JCOPE’s incompetence aside, that remains the central issue.

In July 2020, the then-governor arranged a $5.1 million deal with Penguin Random House to produce a memoir, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.” He’d gained national attention for his sober and reassuring daily briefings, which stood in such stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s self-aggrandizing and sometimes surreal news conferences during the crisis.

But it was later learned that people in the administration had helped with the book, a violation, as the commission understood it, of Mr. Cuomo’s assurances that he would not use public employees for this private undertaking. Mr. Cuomo insists it was OK because they did it on a voluntary basis on their own time — nuances the commission said were never part of its approval.

That the commission went after Mr. Cuomo at all was fairly extraordinary, given its years of being dominated by gubernatorial appointees and staying clear of matters close to the Executive Chamber. The secrecy in which JCOPE operated ensured that the public knew little of any machinations behind closed doors to protect the governor and his allies from investigation. But the public would learn, in the final tumultuous months of Mr. Cuomo’s tenure, that he been told details of at least one of JCOPE’s presumably secret votes.

Well after Mr. Cuomo resigned one year ago today, JCOPE in March found he had improperly used public employees to publish the memoir. It rescinded its approval and ordered that he repay the $5.1 million. He sued, and last week prevailed, with acting state Supreme Court Justice Denise A. Hartman saying JCOPE had violated its own procedures and denied Mr. Cuomo due process. It was doubly embarrassing for a commission that had long hidden behind the law to keep the public in the dark.

Mr. Cuomo’s camp unsurprisingly crowed about the decision, declaring that “everything...has been about politics – the facts and the law be damned – and every time one of these cases goes before a neutral arbiter, the law prevails.” But as Justice Hartman noted, this was about the process, not the substance, and the new Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government could still revisit the matter.

Which it should, giving Mr. Cuomo all the due process the law requires. Regardless of the outcome, holding a governor, even a former one, accountable would send a message that no one is above the law. It’s a chance for the commission to do what JCOPE was never quite able to: show how ethics oversight is done right.

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News from © The Associated Press, 2022