Budget czar's departure leaves deficit on MTA board

Daily Point

Vacancies abound

Robert Mujica will be leaving more than just the New York State budget office behind when he begins his tenure at the head of Puerto Rico’s Financial Oversight and Management Board next year, a move the Albany budget director announced Thursday morning.

He also will be leaving dozens of board appointments — including, perhaps most prominently, the seat he holds on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board.

Budget spokesman Shams Tarek confirmed to The Point that Mujica plans to remain on all of the boards until the end of the year, when he will leave the budget director position. Many of those board seats are considered ex officio — so whoever is the next budget director will take Mujica’s spot.

But with the MTA, it’s more complicated.

Mujica was appointed to the MTA board in 2019 by former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. At the time, Cuomo orchestrated changes to the state public authorities law to allow an exception for Mujica to fill one of the governor’s seats, despite the fact that he didn’t live in any of the counties served by the MTA’s operations.

That change in law now states that one of the governor’s five MTA board appointments “may be the director of the New York state division of the budget,” and that if it is, it is considered an “ex officio” appointment, so it doesn’t have to meet the residency requirement.

Several officials told The Point that the language, while seemingly open to interpretation, appears to indicate that Hochul could appoint her next budget director to the MTA board seat — but that she doesn’t have to.

So far, there’s no indication of who might fill the critical budget director seat — or, sit on the MTA board.

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Talking Point

A new race at Belmont

The latest effort to remake the racing facilities at Belmont Park gathered new momentum Thursday, as the We Are NY Horse Racing coalition gathered in Albany to announce new members — including the influential Business Council of New York State — and to relaunch its effort to encourage the State Legislature to support state-backed bonding for a new grandstand and clubhouse at Belmont.

But the statewide coalition will be facing a very different landscape when it restarts its efforts in January. Long Island will have only two state senators in the Democratic majority, and fewer Assembly members in that chamber's majority. The Assembly representative who covers Belmont Park — Michaelle Solages — remains, and is a solid backer of the effort to secure state support for the $450 million bonding proposal.

On the State Senate side, representation of Belmont Park previously was split, as parts of it were represented by State Sens. Anna Kaplan, Todd Kaminsky and Leroy Comrie. But after redistricting, Belmont is now nearly entirely part of the 9th State Senate district — which will be represented by newly elected Republican Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick. And with Kaplan losing reelection, Belmont loses some key support.

But Kaplan’s successor, Jack Martins, told The Point he supports the bonding. And Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick told the editorial board during her endorsement interview that she backs Belmont’s redevelopment, including a new grandstand, especially because she does not expect it would generate significant additional traffic.

“I think the revitalization of Belmont would be a great thing for the community,” Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick said.

She added that she supports the bonding proposal, “as long as it’s done in a responsible manner.”

Sources tell The Point that Comrie remains a supporter — as are other key players like State Sen. Joseph Addabbo, who chairs the State Senate’s Committee on Racing, Gaming and Wagering and represents Aqueduct. Modernizing Belmont would open the way to consolidating all downstate thoroughbred racing at Belmont and allowing Aqueduct to expand beyond its current video gambling operation if it wins a full casino license.

Coalition members noted Thursday that support for Belmont bonding stretches beyond Long Island and New York City, pointing to the farms and thoroughbred facilities across the state that could benefit, along with what the Belmont project would do for Saratoga racetrack.

“Modernizing Belmont Park is not solely a downstate priority,” said Todd Shimkus, president of the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce. “It’s a statewide priority and important to Saratoga.”

 Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Pencil Point

Dems for Donald

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Reference Point

Age-old electoral apprehensions

As ballot counting winds down from the 2022 midterms, it’s clear the disruptions many feared never materialized.

Different types of voting disruptions also were feared 50 years ago, in what Newsday’s editorial board referred to as “the extraordinary potential for trouble.”

The reason for the board’s alarm: the 26th Amendment. Passed in 1971, it lowered the voting age in the United States to 18; the previous limit had been 21. And the board was concerned about how all those new voters might stress the system.

“In both Nassau and Suffolk, the number of new registrants and the number of absentee ballots set records,” the board wrote in a Nov. 10, 1972 editorial, “and the period for processing new voters was extended closer to Election Day than ever before.”

The rush underscored the mind-boggling speed with which the amendment was adopted, after decades of futility. West Virginia Sen. Harvey Kilgore first pitched the reduced age in 1941 and the idea drew lots of support, including from first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1954, Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first president to publicly jump on board. But the idea didn’t come to fruition until the deaths of thousands of service members in Vietnam, many under 21, led to an outcry that if you could die for your country you were older enough to vote in it. One of the staunchest opponents to the 18-year-old vote from the 1940s all the way to 1970 was New York Rep. Emanuel Celler, for much of that time the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, who notoriously insisted that young people lack “the good judgment” considered essential to being good citizens.

After a 1971 attempt to amend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not pass Supreme Court muster, the House Judiciary Committee approved on March 2, 1971, a proposed constitutional amendment to lower the voting age to 18 for all elections. The Senate passed it, 94-0, on March 10, and the House followed, 401-19, on March 23. And by July 1, it had been ratified by the required 38 states, a record for fastest approval of a constitutional amendment. New York was No. 31.

So 1972 was the first presidential election featuring those hordes of younger voters, hence the editorial board’s warning about “the extraordinary potential for trouble.” And although some 4.5 million more Americans voted than in 1968, the board concluded that “Tuesday’s election was one of the smoothest on Long Island in recent years.”

But the board’s signoff was uncanny for its prescience and relevance to the atmosphere in which the most recent election was held.

“The two county boards of election and the thousands of workers who manned the polls deserve a vote of thanks,” the board wrote. “They did well for democracy.”

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie and Amanda Fiscina-Wells @adfiscina