A few weeks ago I was in a Senate office to discuss strategies in overturning Citizen's United, the regressive Supreme Court decision that protects unlimited corporate campaign donations as "free speech." For several years now, the Sierra Club has seen the direct correlation between special interest money in politics and failed environmental policies. In response, we have taken basic advocacy steps to help strengthen our decocracy through ethics and campaign finance reform.
An industry lobbyist I am acquainted with, who was also waiting at the reception desk, dryly quipped, “I thought you enviros already got your ‘democracy’ this past December,” referring to Governor Cuomo’s historic decision to ban fracking. What he really meant was: “How can you claim the system is so corrupt if you keep winning against the oil and gas industry and their insurmountable billions?”
I didn’t fight him on the point, but there is a big distinction between building a strong grassroots campaign and having an actual functioning democracy. It’s true our collective anti-fracking movement harnessed the kind of democratic power that should have a permanent pre-sence in the halls of the Legislature: strong public participation from a diverse spectrum of New Yorkers who are unrelenting in the protection of the public interest. Maybe it is also true that, after seven years of rallies, protests, lobby days, and hundreds of thousands of written comments from engaged New Yorkers, we didn’t need democratic reform to enact sound public policy. Our actions transcended the typical gridlock and dysfunction in Albany.
But achieving the fracking ban did require a Herculean effort. Getting traction on any important issue before a governing body should never have to be so hard or take so long. It should also be said that, in the end, it was science and the wisdom of medical professionals that decided the fate of fracking. The massive public outcry and participation created the space for the fact-based deliberations to occur and an opportunity for Governor Andrew Cuomo to demonstrate an act of courageous leadership by allowing science, not emotion, to render the final verdict.
So, if we take the anti-fracking movement as a model, what kind of citizen pressure will it take to recreate a government responsive to the needs of the people and the stability of our rapidly changing climate?
Voter apathy
Last fall’s election in New York saw an anemic 28.8% voter turnout that roughly translated into 18% of the electorate actually voting for the returning incumbent. (That means 82% of eligible voters either stayed at home or voted for the losing candidate.) This is hardly the hallmark of a representative democracy. Voter apathy was tied to the perceived corruption in Albany and the general sense that public concerns are not as important to elected officials as the interests of those that fill their campaign coffers.
But 2015 could provide key opportunities for reform and voter reengagement. In January, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was indicted on charges of receiving over $4 million in bribes and kickbacks and subsequently was forced to resign from his leadership post. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has targeted Albany’s rampant corruption and vows more indictments will follow.
In the Senate, where an incumbent state senator is more likely to leave office in handcuffs than by the ballot box, Majority Leader Dean Skelos is purported to be under investigation for similar crimes. In consideration of the fact that the last four senators to hold the top leadership post (Bruno, Smith, Espada, Sampson) have all faced criminal charges for public corruption, it appears the odds are against him.
Scandals open reform door
Governor Andrew Cuomo had declared that he will block an on-time budget unless minimum standards are adopted to address this new wave of political transgression. But the scope of his reforms (disclosure of lawmakers’ outside income, limits on personal spending of campaign cash, increased penalties for violations) do not go to the core of the problem: unlimited outside campaign contributions whose influence makes the state’s governance more akin to an oligarchy. If we fail to take advantage of this scandal-marred session, we may never have an opportunity as fertile as this one to enact real reform.
So what do these developments mean for New York’s environment in the 2015 legislative session? For one, the uncertainty of future indictments could throw the Legislature into even greater gridlock should the Senate face a similar leadership void as the Assembly did earlier in the session, meaning very few bills will advance.
But in spite of our low expectations for legislative achievement, there is still hope for some of our legislative priorities. For example: The Child Safe Products Act, a bill that would force the disclosure and phase-out of highly hazardous chemicals in toys and other children’s products, has nearly universal support and majority co-sponsorship in the Senate. But year after year, in spite of passing the Assembly by wide margins, the bill fails to get a floor vote in the Senate because the American Chemical Council and other big polluters have pumped millions of dollars into lobbying and campaign coffers. Last year, the chair of the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee, Mark Grisanti, was quite open about his reluctance to advance the bill out of his com-mittee for fear of reprisals from the chemical manufacturers in his district. After Grisanti lost the Republican primary to a more conservative member, the chair of the environmental committee now passes to Tom O’Mara, a senator who may not be as susceptible to the same, in-district political pressure.
In the 2015 State of the State address, Governor Cuomo declared that the Child Safe Products Act was a priority of his administration. So, if the legislative session is spared the implosion of continued political scandal, and special interests are more wary of the U.S. attorney’s inquiries, we may actually see this bill become law.
Democratization of Energy
The real environmental focus in 2015 will be on the state’s energy picture—an area that is surprisingly (and increasingly) outside the authority of the Legislature. This does not mean, however, that outcomes are any less affected by special interest money and influence. Currently, the Public Service Commission is convening a public solicitation of ideas to overhaul the state’s energy grid in a process called Reforming the Energy Vision (REV). This exciting opportunity has provoked a wave of thoughtful public dialog about restructuring the energy markets to take into account the long-term value of renewable energy development, efficiency and smart grid technologies.
The big question is whether the utilities will be willing to look past short-term profits (primarily based upon temporarily low fossil fuel prices) in favor of the long-term interest of the ratepayer and the stability of the Earth’s climate. Additionally, it remains to be seen whether we can redirect the intensity of the anti-fracking movement to recreate the infrastructure by which electrical power is distributed, conserved and generated.
Who will control energy reform?
At the core of the REV proceedings is the question of who controls the reform. So far, the process has been dominated by utility companies and other ancillary industrial entities. As a result, proposals coming out of the REV proceedings cede much of the design and control over New York’s clean energy programs to utility companies, not agencies charged with “conducting the people’s business.” Even more troubling is the fact that some of the proposals will phase out the state’s clean energy subsidies and programs in favor of a market-based approach.
In recent months, the state and various power authorities have rejected power purchase agreements for offshore wind farms by falsely claiming that they are too expensive. At the same time, the Public Service Commission has been advancing proposals to repower aging coal plants with natural gas and allowing utility companies to pass on the exorbitant retrofit and pollution control costs to the ratepayers, which is a de facto public subsidy. The Sierra Club and our partners have found alternative, cutting edge transmission and renewable energy fixes for every repowering proposal, at a fraction of the cost to ratepayers, yet have been unable to persuade government regulators to act within the rhetoric of their new “market-based” approach.
In spite of these setbacks, we are hopeful that there is still time to turn things around. But our success in “democratizing energy” and restoring our democracy generally, will depend upon our ability to organize the same way we did around fracking. Part of that successful model was the firm belief that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people. Please consider what you can contribute in this next phase of the fight. Every single effort counts.