She’ll be in the room where it happens

November 26, 2018

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Daily Point

Will New York lawmakers see a pay raise?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins isn’t likely to make a bold start as leader of the Democratic conference in the State Senate. Stewart-Cousins, elected Monday to be majority leader, she is not planning to testify Friday at the state pay raise commission hearing in Manhattan.

Stewart-Cousins will not take a whether lawmakers should get a raise, how much and whether those hidden benefits called “lulus” will continue. Nor, will she commit to banning outside income for lawmaker in return of a hike. At a press conference after her history making election, Cousins noted that when in the minority, Democrats have supported banning outside income for legislators.

It also could determine how long her leadership and Democratic control of the Senate will last.

The commission — composed of state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, SUNY chair Carl McCall (a former state comptroller), New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, and CUNY chair Bill Thompson (a former city comptroller) — has until Dec. 10 to decide. Whatever the four men conclude will become law without the legislature having to vote.

To make matters worse, the commission cannot tie any restrictions, such as a ban on outside income or other ethics reforms, to the pay increase.

Read our editorial to get a better understanding of the devilish details behind this backdoor pay raise. The only prayer the commission and taxpayers have for some long-overdue changes is if Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Stewart-Cousins make a public commitment to ethics reform. So far, both are mum, although Heastie is expected to testify.

Suburban Republicans are already salivating over the possibility that Stewart-Cousins, who hails from Westchester County, will blunder on her first big test. They contend that if the first thing a Democratic-controlled legislature does Jan. 1 is get a fat pay raise without making concessions to justify the hike, suburban taxpayers will quickly regret giving Democrats the Senate gavel.

Look for Craig Johnson and Brian Foley to become household names once again. The two Long Island Democrats, who gave their party the Senate majority and voted for the MTA payroll tax in 2009, were voted out in the 2010 election.

Rita Ciolli

Quick Points

Taxes, protests and Trump

People all over the world, including a bunch of rain-soaked pedestrians in Times Square, watched the live broadcast of a California control room as NASA’s InSight probe descended toward Mars, defied the odds and landed safely on the red planet. The cheers that greeted the touchdown told the story: We all need a little InSight.
Sen. Lindsey Graham says if the CIA confirms that it believes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, he’ll defy President Donald Trump and try to get sanctions passed against MBS. So that’s the straw that broke Graham’s back? For how long?
Demonstrators in Paris protesting high taxes were repelled by police who fired tear gas and water cannons — weapons no doubt purchased with the demonstrators’ high taxes.
President Donald Trump criticized the French protesters for not complaining about unfair trade deals between the United States and Europe that “badly” mistreat the United States. Someone needs to tell the president how French protests work.
President Donald Trump says he wants to reduce the deficit, build a border wall, fund a big infrastructure package, give a 10 percent tax cut to the middle class and not make big spending cuts. No, that’s not a big misprint. That’s Trump economics.
Former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum says scientists studying climate change “are driven by the money they receive.” Congrats, Rick, you’ve finally cracked this case wide open.
Evangelist Franklin Graham says President Donald Trump might not be the best example of the Christian faith, but he does defend the faith, showing that Graham is indeed a charitable guy.
Billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer, who’s been funding the Need to Impeach campaign, says he hasn’t decided whether to run for president. His real problem is that most of the country has already decided for him.
Elon Musk says there is a 70 percent chance he’ll go to Mars. Some people think he’s already been there.

Michael Dobie

Talking Point

Stewart-Cousins follows in Sammis’ footsteps

Andrea Stewart-Cousins made history Monday as the first woman to break the “three men in a room” male dominance of state power, the first female leader of a state legislative chamber.

That’s pretty slow progress since women were first elected to the State Legislature a century ago, and one of the first hailed from Huntington.

Women were first allowed to vote in New York in the 1918 election, two years before the right was granted nationally. Ida Sammis (nee Bunce), was a Republican who had founded the first suffragist society in Suffolk County five years earlier. She won by defeating an incumbent GOP assemblyman in a hard-fought primary, then enjoying a fairly easy election bid against her Democratic opponent, attorney Walter Stillwell.

Political legend has it that Sammis, who would serve only one term, began her time in office by taking the spittoon provided to all legislators and converting it to a prettier use: holding flowers on her desk. According to the legislative record, she sponsored successful legislation prohibiting the employment of women younger than 21 as elevator conductors, forbidding female elevator conductors to work more than 54 hours a week and before 7 a.m. or after 10 p.m., and requiring that seats be provided for all women conductors in elevators.

Her last name should sound familiar in a Mayflower kind of way. Her first husband was feed merchant Edgar Sammis, who died in a car wreck two years before she was elected. Ida Bunce Sammis Woodruff Satchwell would marry twice more after serving her single term in the Assembly.

The Sammis family that she married into is among the oldest on Long Island, stretching back to the arrival of John Sammis from England in 1654, and includes Sammis Realty Group founder Quentin Sammis.

Elected the same year from Manhattan was Democrat Mary Lilly, who was also the first woman admitted to practice law in New York and also served only one term in the Assembly.

(The first woman elected to the State Senate was Rhoda Fox Graves of St. Lawrence County, who served from 1935 to 1949.)

So Stewart-Cousins, when she takes the gavel, will take another huge step in the history of that advancement of women in New York State government that has roots in Huntington — but it isn’t the final one.

New York remains one of 20 states that has never had a female governor.

Lane Filler