In
an election year where Albany veterans are under unprecedented fire, popular
rage may be channeled locally into a single race. Unlike most state legislature
seats, which are gerrymandered into virtually unassailable partisan
strongholds, the 131st Assembly District offers a tighter race.

Incumbent
Democrat Susan John holds an advantage of less than 10,000 among registered
voters in the two main parties. The district also contains more than 16,000
blank or minor-party voters.

John’s
Republican opponent, Chili town board member Mike Slattery, lost a challenge to
her two years ago by a scant 800 votes. Slattery is a self-described
conservative, while John is known for more liberal stances. The two differ
along party lines on such matters as abortion (Slattery opposes it without
exception; John favors choice) and the death penalty (John opposes it; Slattery
wants the necessary reforms to put it back into effect). But frustration with
state government is at the heart of this race.

Slattery
doesn’t hide the fact that he hopes to ride the anti-Albany wave into a seat at
the state capitol. John counters by offering explanations for many of her
positions. Here are some issues the two candidates identified as top priorities
in conversations with City Newspaper:

•
Assembly Bill A7213. Slattery
immediately brought up this legislation (sponsored by Joe Morelle) before
speaking about any other issue. The bill would shift some of the financial
burden of work-related injuries onto workers. It now sits in the labor
committee, of which John is chair.

“A
democratic colleague of hers has a bill that she will not allow to come out of
committee, and it’s killing businesses in New York,” Slattery says. “Basically
it drives up the cost of insurance. She’s trying to say ‘well there’s
safeguards in there if somebody falls off a building or so forth.’ But the
thing is, we’re the only state in the country that has this bill.” Insurance
has gone up by 500 percent for some contractors, he says.

As
lawyers, he says, John and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver are blocking the
bill for personal gain.

But
John responds by questioning insurance companies’ motives. “The insurance
community is harping on this particular provision, but it’s also important to
note that there are many people who aren’t affected by Labor Law 240 who have
seen catastrophic increases in their insurance premiums, and the insurance
industry cannot tell us how much Labor Law 240 costs,” she says. “If you don’t
have that information then how do you know it’s a problem?”

John
acknowledges insurance costs are a problem for businesses, but says “to address
the insurance crisis, we need to make sure we don’t throw out the worker
protections at the same time.”

She
also denies blocking the bill in committee, saying she withdrew it at Morelle’s
request, after it became clear it would be defeated. “He asked me as a courtesy
if I would take it off of the agenda, and that’s what I did.”

•
Medicaid: “The state ought to take
over funding of the Medicaid program,” says John. “Take Medicaid off the backs
of the real property-tax payers.”

New
York’s federal reimbursement rate formulas — the lowest in the nation —
need to be updated, John says. “The business community needs to join hands with
the state government leaders and go to Washington and say we are not the
wealthy state we were in 1965,” she says.

Slattery
agrees Medicaid is a serious challenge. “When you look at the cost of Medicaid
that’s being passed down to local governments, it’s killing the county, it’s
killing the towns and villages,” he says. His reform strategy, though, is less
specific than John’s: “Do I have an actual plan for Medicaid relief? No. But
there’s something that needs to be done with it. Is it something that I’d like
to work on? Oh yeah, without a doubt,” he says.

•
Reform in Albany: Slattery sums up
his take on Albany in just three words: “Tax and spend,” he says. “They
continue to do that. They keep pushing mandates down to the local government
and on the local level we’re trying to balance our own budget.”

He
also takes aim at the infamous “three-men-in-a-room” style of government and
echoes the Brennan Center report, saying “What you need to do is empower
legislators.”

Slattery
didn’t commit to pushing for any of the center’s reforms, though, adding “I
just can’t say generically, can we go in and do everything in the Brennan
Center report? As in any bill that is sitting in Albany or in Washington,
there’s going to be flaws.” But he’s happy to cite statistics from the report
faulting the legislature, before adding “My opponent says that the report is
flawed and that she doesn’t agree with it.”

Indeed,
John told City Newspaper just that:
“I think the report is based on flawed assumptions,” she says. “For example,
right now, any single member of the House can force a quorum call so everybody
has to be in their seat when voting. Their proposal is that five people should
be able to demand that. Why is that a reform?”

John
also views surging anti-Albany feelings differently: “I think the public’s
frustration — and the Brennan Center’s report doesn’t address this issue at
all — is about the budget,” she says. “It’s because the budget’s been late
for 20 years that the public is so frustrated with Albany. We could do every
single thing in the Brennan Center report and the budget would still be late.”

John
was on a task force that worked on reforms to the budget process. “We
negotiated a constitutional amendment and a statute,” she says. “We need a
constitutional amendment because the court has said the role of the
legislature, if it doesn’t like the governor’s budget, is to wait for the
governor to negotiate.” That amendment, if passed again in 2005, could go to
the state’s voters by next fall, and would allow the legislature to impose a
budget, rather than wait for the governor.

This article appears in Oct 20-26, 2004.