Majority Rules In The Assembly

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Only in Albany is math skewed to the point where 76 is not a majority of 150. There are 150 members of the Assembly (42 Republicans, 104 Democrats, and four open seats), and it takes a majority of members to get legislation passed. You would think that would mean 76 members sponsoring legislation would green-light the measure to get on the floor for a vote. Well, not in the Assembly, where partisan politics apparently never takes a break.

“If forty-something Republicans and thirty-something Democrats [sponsor a measure], a majority of the Democrats still don’t want to see that bill happen,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) told The Jewish Press.

“For a bill to move it should be the majority of the Democrats that feel that this should happen. The way our government functions is that the majority rules. The minority must be heard but it is the majority rules.”

To make matters worse for Republicans, they are losing members without even holding an election. Assemblyman John Ceretto, a Niagara Falls native, jumped the Republican battleship and moved to the majority side of the aisle, switching his enrollment from Republican to Democrat.

“The speaker and the majority leader offered me an opportunity to be John, to vote my conscience, to vote my district, that I would have a strong voice in the conference and that I would have resources for the people that I serve,” Ceretto (D-Lewiston, Niagara County) told The Jewish Press.

This type of switch does not happen often. Suffolk County Assemblyman Fred Thiele (I-Sag Harbor) jumped from the Republicans to the Independence Party in 2009, saying the GOP no longer stood for pocketbook issues. While he has not switched his enrollment to the Democratic Party, which rarely wins seats on the eastern tip of Long Island, he currently caucuses with the Democratic conference in the state Assembly.

Go To The Polls April 19

April 19, presidential primary day in New York, will also serve as Election Day in three Assembly contests and one Senate race. The Lower East Side seat vacated by Assemblyman Sheldon Silver will be filled by a non-Jew, while the Staten Island seat vacated by Joe Borelli (who moved on the New York City Council) and the Brooklyn seat that opened up when Roxanne Persaud moved from the Assembly to the state Senate will continue to be filled by non-Jews. As of now, 14 percent, or 22 members, of the state Assembly identify as being Jewish.

In the Senate race, the seat vacated by Dean Skelos, a Nassau County Republican, could be filled by Jewish assemblyman Todd Kaminsky. If Kaminsky is successful in moving to the upper house, not only will it have an impact on the balance of power in the legislature, it will leave his seat open in the Assembly. Currently seven senators – 11 percent of the state Senate – identify as Jews.

Jewish Influence Continues To Wither In Albany

For 40 years Jews held the position of speaker of the state Assembly. That ended with the fall of Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) in 2015 and the ascension of Carl Heastie, an African-American Baptist from the Bronx, taking the helm of the state Assembly.

For 33 years the chief judge of the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, identified as being Jewish. That record fell earlier this year when Jonathan Lippman retired and Janet DiFiore succeeded him.

Two of the three Jewish members of the state Board of Regents have stepped down due to the expiration of their terms. The first Jewish chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, Merryl Tisch, and Regent Charles Bendit were replaced by non-Jewish members, even though several Jews applied to replace Tisch and Bendit. This leaves one Jewish member of the New York State Board of Regents, Roger Tilles, a resident of Great Neck in Nassau County. He was elected to a third five-year term last year.

Bendit told The Jewish Press that after nine years as a member of the Board of Regents his retirement became a business decision. He is the co-chief executive officer of Manhattan-based Taconic Investment Partners, LLC.

“Over the last couple of years, my business has gotten very, very active and the demands being placed upon me by my business [and] other boards that I’m on have made it more difficult for me to do the job that I feel I should be doing in serving the state and my colleagues on the board. You have a diverse board. That’s very important. All have been able to add a lot to the discussion around education.”

Tisch, who says she identifies as a “conservadox” Jew, said her tenure will hopefully be marked by her staunch support of “the parochial school system as a real part of choice in this state.”

“I believe in strong parochial schools,” Tisch told The Jewish Press. “I believe in values-based education. I believe parochial schools should be held to the same standards that we have for all schools. When I read that some of these Yiddish schools are not meeting academic standards it’s very disturbing to me. I’m hoping they are taking this seriously. I do believe that if you believe in choice, values-based education is something we should embrace and that we continue to provide as a choice.”

New Members Tapped For Board Of Regents

Dr. Asher Mansdorf, a Board of Education member of the Lawrence Union Free School District in Nassau County, a dentist and an observant Jew, was one of more than 70 candidates who applied for three available seats. Mansdorf tried to downplay the elite image of the school district.

“Over the last ten years Lawrence has been identified as having the largest and fastest-growing Hispanic community on Long Island,” Mansdorf explained to the Assembly panel convened to decide on who would be the new Regent. “We have a fully implemented K-12 bilingual program. The number of our children who are economically disadvantaged from 1995 changed from nine percent to 61 percent. Seventy percent of the Lawrence school district students are eligible for either a free or a reduced-fee lunch. That’s astounding. We have had to strategize, almost on a weekly basis, to create avenues to allow for the children to succeed.”

Mansdorf made a point to the mostly non-Jewish panel of his “choice to overtly identify as an observant Jew.”

“My choice to wear a yarmulke, which broadcasts to others my Jewish observance, may seem at first blush to set me apart, to identify me not as a New Yorker but as a member of a smaller group within our great state,” Mansdorf said in making his point. “To the contrary. I believe it makes a different statement. It says that each of us is unique. We each have our own values and beliefs but notwithstanding our differences, we are one community.”

The 17-member Board of Regents is elected by the state Legislature for five-year terms: one from each of the state’s 13 judicial districts and four members who serve at-large. Regents are unsalaried and are reimbursed only for travel and related expenses in connection with their official duties.

Making the cut during this arduous process were Luis Reyes, 71, director of education at Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies; Nan Mead, an education activist, a public school parent who works for a midtown Manhattan-based investment consulting firm; and Elizabeth Hakanson, 70, a retired teacher from Syracuse. The majority of the board will be women, and half the board will represent minority groups.

About the Author: Marc Gronich is news director of Statewide News Service. He also operates the website JBizTechValley.com. He has been covering government and politics since 1981. His Albany Beat column appears monthly in The Jewish Press.