| News That Matters Good Tuesday Morning, "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example." Today in 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney warned that Iraq would have nuclear weapons "fairly soon". Oops!
We should thank Tony Hay for briefly setting aside his Audit Committee meeting and to Vinnie Tamagna for handling the situation deftly. Thanks also go to Eileen Goren for all her work, the Putnam County Land Trust, and the Open Space Institute. Betsey Ryder brought along other members of her family, including one cousin who drove down from New Hampshire, and spoke to the committee after a short video presentation on the importance of the farm that's been in the family since 1795. There were many in the audience willing to take their turn at the mic and were prepared to do so but Legislator Tamagna, sensing that we were all in favor, moved the question, received a second, and took a voice vote. The committee also voted to begin construction of another phase of the Putnam County Trailway. (See Susan Elan's article below.) The next step will be for the full legislature to vote on this next Tuesday evening, September 2nd. Watch this space for more information on that vote to which you all may be called out to attend. As of this writing, Legislators inclined to vote in favor are, Tamagna, Odell, Olivario, Intrary, Birmingham and McGuigan. We don't yet know about the others so stay tuned. The hard part comes when we get to Mr. Bondi... for his support we may have to fight rather hard. There was one interesting tidbit that came out of the Audit committee meeting - county revenues drop when crime is low. How so? If crime is high we can rent jail space to counties who have run out of their own. When crime is low, we cannot. So in the future, please ask your friends and families who live out of county to become criminals or ask Legislators to make the remaining 3% of all we do illegal so that we can keep the county property tax rate lower. Thanks. The front page of the Putnam Times, the organ of the Putnam County Republican machine and a newspaper that is as peripatetic politically as a newspaper could ever be, this week carries the headline "Washington Woman Got Order Of Protection On Assemblyman Ball". If you're getting News That Matters from someone else (and I know many of you are), get your own copy each day either by subscribing through the link up there to the right, by visiting PlanPutnam, Blogspot or No Country For Sane Men on the 'net. And now, the News.
Putnam to begin new phase of bike trailwaySusan ElanThe Journal News The county will soon start construction of a nearly 4-mile stretch of the Putnam Trailway system. The new $9.3 million portion of the trail system for bicycle riders and pedestrians will run from Seminary Hill Road in Carmel to Putnam Avenue in Southeast. Putnam's portion of funding for the project is $1.6 million, with the rest covered by state and federal grants, said John Lynch, the county's commissioner of planning, development and public transportation. Putnam has already completed a 7-mile section of the paved bikeway, which runs from the Westchester County line at Baldwin Place to Seminary Hill Road. Putnam legislators were considering a bond resolution to pay for the county's portion of the new construction when the Physical Services Committee met last night. It would be voted on by the full board Sept. 2. Although Putnam faces a tough 2009 budget season, legislators are expected to approve trailway funding. "We have never denied funding for the bikeway," said Legislature Chairman Tony Hay, R-Southeast, a fiscal conservative. "It's one of the best recreational opportunities in the county and one of the best things done on behalf of the taxpayers."
Ball's plan would only increase taxesGreg Ball shows his lack of basic understanding of finance and tax with his proposed "property tax cap." In fact, all this alleged "cap" does is guarantee that your taxes will increase. By guaranteeing an increase in the budget with this proposal, the districts have no incentive to reduce taxes, and taxing authorities will inevitably increase the budgets (and taxes) the maximum 4 percent whether necessary or not. Read More Valley Views: Hudson River a gold mine left untapped for too longBy Martin GinsburgThe Hudson River is one of the most majestic waterways in the world. So why doesn't New York state promote it as a prime tourism attraction? By failing to harness the river's awesome potential, the state is squandering a golden opportunity to bring people from around the world to the Hudson River Valley to rediscover the river's grandeur and its diverse waterfront communities. July 2009 will mark the Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial - the 400th anniversary celebrations of the voyages of discovery made by Henry Hudson and Samuel de Champlain in 1609, and the 200th anniversary of the launching of Robert Fulton's steamboat on the Hudson River in 1807. The timing for revitalizing tourism in this region could not be better. With the impending quadricentennial casting a well-deserved spotlight on the river, we must seize the moment to promote the Hudson's unique role in our state's history and in its future. Flowing from Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondacks to the Upper New York Bay in New York City, the 315-mile waterway - nicknamed "America's Rhine" - practically begs to be activated. Tourism is the second-largest industry in the state, but New York tourism should not be limited to New York City. City residents would venture north to the Hudson Valley if vibrant destinations beckoned to attract them. Read More Uninsured pay $30 billion for health care: studyMon Aug 25, 2008 11:09am EDTWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans who go without health insurance for any part of 2008 will spend $30 billion out of pocket for health care and they will get $56 billion worth of free care, according to a report released on Monday. Government programs pay for about three-quarters, or roughly $43 billion, of the bills for these uninsured people, Jack Hadley of George Mason University in Virginia and a team at the Urban Institute reported. "Physicians' donated time and forgone profits amount to $7.8 billion. After government payments to hospitals are subtracted, private philanthropy and profit margins are responsible for at least an additional $6.3 billion," they wrote in the report, published on the Internet at www.healthaffairs.org/. "From society's perspective, covering the uninsured is still a good investment. Failure to act in the near term will only make it more expensive to cover the uninsured in the future, while adding to the amount of lost productivity from not insuring all Americans," Hadley said in a statement. On average, an uninsured American pays $583 out of pocket toward average annual medical costs of $1,686 per person, Hadley's team reported in the journal Health Affairs. The annual medical costs of Americans with private insurance average far more -- $3,915, with $681, or 17 percent, paid out of pocket, the report found. "The uninsured receive a lot less care than the insured, and they pay a greater percentage of it out of pocket. Contrary to popular myth, they are not all free riders," Hadley said. Read More Border fence design blasted as causing floodingBy ARTHUR H. ROTSTEINAssociated Press Writer TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- Flooding caused by a border security fence in southwestern Arizona shows the structure is being built too quickly and without regard for the environment, critics say. Debris and water backed up at the fence during a storm July 12, leading to flooding at the port of entry at Lukeville and Sonoyta, Mexico, and at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. "One of the reasons for it was the debris that accumulated on the fence itself," said Lee Baiza, superintendent of the monument, a lush desert tract overseen by the National Park Service. Environmental groups have criticized how the Army Corps of Engineers and federal contractors have designed and built a range of fencing and vehicle barriers along the Arizona-Mexico border. Read More New Stadiums: Prices, and Outrage, EscalateBy RICHARD SANDOMIRNo American market has witnessed anything like it: two baseball teams and two football teams will open three new stadiums within 17 months and 20 miles of one another, with everything set to be in place by the fall of 2010. But even as fans of the Mets, the Yankees, the Giants and the Jets look forward to state-of-the-art stadium architecture, better sightlines, wider concourses and more bathrooms, some of them are also facing startling increases in ticket costs during a serious economic downturn. The teams are confident market research supports the increases, but season-ticket holders say the price they are being asked to pay in the new stadiums — the Mets’ $800 million Citi Field, the $1.3 billion Yankee Stadium and the $1.6 billion (and climbing) Jets-Giants stadium — is turning them into something other than fans. Instead, interviews with two dozen fans indicated, they are starting to feel like unwitting bankers. “You’re asking me for money and giving me nothing in return,” said Steve Kern, a construction executive from Boonton Township, N.J., who owns two Jets season tickets. “I won’t be sharing in the revenues or get any perks.” Kern, who organized a small protest outside the Jets-Giants exhibition game Saturday, said he objected to the sale of personal seat licenses, the one-time fees that simply give fans the right to buy season tickets at the new stadium the Jets and Giants will share. The Giants have said they will charge from $1,000 to $20,000 a seat for their personal seat licenses; once fans buy the seat licenses, they will still have to pay from $85 to $700 a ticket. The Jets are expected to unveil their ticket plan Tuesday. Read More Tax loopholes seen costing billions annuallyMon Aug 25, 2008 9:43am EDTWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tax and accounting loopholes that largely benefit rich taxpayers and companies cost the government $20 billion a year even as the pay gap between chief executives and employees has widened, two groups said on Monday. The biggest loss comes from a "stock option accounting double standard" that allows corporations paying executives stock options to deduct more than their actual expenses, they said. For example, when UnitedHealth Group Inc paid CEO William McGuire 9 million stock options, it put on its financial statement that the compensation cost the company nothing, according to the Institute for Policy Studies and the group United for a Fair Economy. But it claimed a tax deduction of $317.7 million, the groups said. That practice alone costs the U.S. government $10 billion a year, the groups said. Read More That Troubled Terrorism ListPublished: August 24, 2008A half-billion-dollar emergency program to repair the nation’s main and deeply flawed terrorist watch list is “on the brink of collapse,” according to a Congressional investigation. That means that warning signs of a terrorist attack could again be lost in the chaos. The new program, known as Railhead, is intended to fix the problems with the current outmoded program. That database — begun as an urgent priority after the Sept. 11 attacks — has been bedeviled by an array of problems, including the inability to do basic searches to find suspects’ names. Bush administration officials have been pronouncing Railhead a success. But the investigation by a House Science and Technology subcommittee found it crippled by serious design flaws, management blunders and runaway contractors. Hundreds of private contractors from dozens of companies involved were recently laid off as government managers finally ordered a fresh overhaul in the face of “insurmountable” problems. Some of the flaws discovered are mind-bogglingly basic. The Railhead database, it seems, also has fundamental problems with its search function. It failed, for example, to handle multiple word searches connected by “and” and “or,” and it could not offer matches for slight misspellings of suspects’ names. Read More |
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Tuesday, August 26, 2008
News That Matters - August 26, 2008
