Two amendments to the NYS Constitution and one Bond Act will be on the back side of the NYS paper ballot on November 4th. Until yesterday's local weekly paper was released, I hadn't heard a whisper beyond what I caught in election inspector training over the summer. NYS may have some good reasons for keeping quiet about the three proposals, but in my experience, their silence is usually because the voters would be angry with the facts and disapprove the measures.
Proposal 1 Redistricting Creates a redistricting commission to draw district lines every ten years
The first is a "reform" of the redistricting process (and amendment to the NYS constitution). The one change I am sure of is that it removes some of the power of the legislature by requiring the redistricting to also have the approval of the governor It seems to streamline the challenge process by having short response times from the judicial branch. It also gets two of the ten members of the redistricting committee from outside the two main parties, but all of the members of the committee are still appointed by the legislative leaders. I am going to try and read it one more time to see if it is actually an improvement....with baby steps.
Proposal 2 Legislature Allows for electronic versions of bills rather than requiring paper copies
Second proposal/amendment
allows electronic transmission of pieces of legislation. Seems sensible, but there may be a catch about "emergengy legislation". Another re-read needed here.
Proposal 3 Bonds Authorizes $2 billion in state bonds to fund technology upgrades in schools
The third is a bond resolution that suggests that NYS should
borrow 2 billion dollars to improve access to technology in
public and non-public schools. Buried deep in the bill are other things like classroom construction and security systems. There is plenty of money in NY to give public schools these updates, but it just feels wrong to me that public money would be going to support non-public schools which do not have to follow all the rules and policies that the public schools do. The private and charter schools have no local publicly elected school boards to help assure accountability that the funds are being spent wisely. I think the possibility of for-profit entities actually getting a big chunk of this money for "studies" and uninspired school construction projects is huge.
Let non-public schools float their own bonds, thank you very much.
The abstracts and full texts of the proposals are available at this link.
The language on the ballots will be abbreviated and because it will be printed on the back of the ballot, it is likely to be missed or misinterpreted by some NYS voters. I was told as an inspector I couldn't remind people to vote the propositions, but I could bring attention to the fact that it was a two-sided ballot in a non-verbal way. Hmmmm.
Any-hoo, I hope all NYS voters and DK readers will take a moment to inform folks about the proposals on the ballot, and because publishing them about a week before elections does not allow much time for study and comparison, much less campaigning for or against any individual proposal, it is now or never for these three proposals. Good Luck NY, it is already a tough year to be a progressive NY'er.
Additional resource: http://ballotpedia.org/...