Investigate Money in State Politics
Money in state politics plays a pivotal role in shaping public policy in individual states and across the nation. We track political donations in all 50 states. Take a look.
Posted by: Jon Campbell - Posted in Uncategorized on Aug 24, 2012
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is getting involved in the contentious debate surrounding hydraulic fracturing, penning an op-ed in the Washington Post and donating $6 million to an environmental group pushing for “responsible development.”
The billionaire media mogul’s philanthropic fund announced a three-year grant for the Environmental Defense Fund, which Bloomberg said would be used to push a centrist view on the much-debated technique used with natural-gas drilling.
“The environmentalists who oppose all fracking are wrong, and the drillers who claim that regulation will kill the industry are wrong,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “What we need to do is make sure that the gas is extracted carefully and in the right places, and that has to be done through strong, responsible regulation. And that’s what our work with EDF is all about.”
The donation appears to be more national in scope rather than New York-based, where the state is in the midst of a four-year review of high-volume hydrofracking and has yet to allow it. (The New York City Department of Environmental Protection had pushed for a ban on hydrofracking within the city’s watershed in the Catskills.)
In today’s Washington Post, Bloomberg and George Mitchell (hydrofracking pioneer, not former senate majority leader) announced donations from their respective philanthropic funds and outlined what they would be used to push for.
“We will encourage better state regulation of fracking around five key principles:
Disclosing all chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process;
Optimizing rules for well construction and operation;
Minimizing water consumption, protecting groundwater and ensuring proper disposal of wastewater;
Improving air pollution controls, including capturing leaking methane, a potent greenhouse gas; and
Reducing the impact on roads, ecosystems and communities.”
Leaked Information Swirls About Imminent Actions of DEC and Governor Cuomo
August 8, 2012 in Uncategorized
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today in Syracuse that no decision has been made on whether to allow hydrofracking in New York.
“We’re waiting for DEC to finish its final report and regulations,” Cuomo said, “and that hasn’t happened yet.”
So, perhaps some of the stories about 50 to 100 wells being permitted sometime next year belong in the category of more “trial balloons.”
The rumors are beginning to build about the expected release of the Governor’s/DEC’s plan for fracking in NYS. Recently, it was reported that “environmental groups” were being briefed on plans– in response to a hubbub that ensued when FOILED documents indicated that the DEC had been meeting with industry groups in advance of releasing its draft SGEIS, but not environmental groups. Fred LeBrun, a reporter for the Albany Times Union, purported to have some leaked information, from said environmental groups, which he published under the headline “End of the Anti-frack World Near.” Never mind the parochialness (in fact, worldwide, more nations are choosing the “anti-frack” option) the article may even be overstating things from a purely Capital District of NY perspective:
For those desperately hoping against hope that high volume, horizontal hydraulic fracturing for natural gas will be blocked from coming into New York state, sorry. For you, the end of the world arrives before Labor Day.
Top state officials are in the process of briefing selected environmental groups on a plan to be publicly released in a couple of weeks.
More objective journalists have been less hyperbolic about the plan to be released in the near future, how “final” it is, and when and whether it would result in any companies applying for any permits to frack any time soon. For instance, Tom Wilbur, a former Gannett Binghamton reporter who has recently had a bookpublished about the NYS fracking fight, says this:
I have since heard different assessments from anti-fracking camps familiar with aspects of the plan. Contrary to the thrust of LeBrun’s report –- that the Cuomo plan marks the beginning of the shale gas era in New York — some anti-frackers see Cuomo’s approach as a victory because it ultimately depends on involvement from the legislature. A primary monkey wrench, according to anti-fracking activists, will be a battle over funding -– never a sure thing in Albany and subject to even more uncertainty when it comes in the form of a controversial issue in the hands of partisan lawmakers. One advocacy group, Gas Drilling Awareness of Cortland County, advised members on its website that Cuomo’s plan “requires budget and legislative action … in the next legislative session delaying a final decision into 2013.” As reported by Jon Campbell of Gannett, state estimates show the Department of Environmental Conservation will need to come up with an average of $20 million each of the next five years to regulate the natural gas industry.
The certainty of any endeavor that requires NYS’s fractious legislature to agree to five years of $20 million-a-year funding seems unlikely….. especially given the fact that the upcoming election could return control of the Senate to Democrats. The NYS Senate’s Democratic Caucus is staunchly anti-fracking.
One of the most interesting tidbits of leaked information is that “green completions” would be required. This rather technical issue has, in my opinion, great potential to make most of NYS extremely unlikely to ever see fracking, even were it technically permitted. A “green completion” is a situation in which the feeder pipelines are in place prior to the fracking of a well, so that no methane is vented to the atmosphere, or “flared” (burnt) causing other emissions and greenhouse gases. In reality, many gas wells end up being dry holes, even after fracking. If the industry must build pipelines to wells in advance of knowing whether or not those wells would produce, it will have costs in NYS far above the costs it would have in, say, Ohio or Pennsylvania. Not that this should make Broome County residents feel secure– the areas directly adjacent to Bradford County, a “sweet spot,” and near the already-completed Millenium Pipeline, would likely be worth the gamble to the gas companies.
Which, according to the leaks, is exactly where the first permits are anticipated to be issued…. if and when the Legislature agrees. Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo, who represents the area, does not consider it a done deal at all, according to Wilbur, writing in his blog:
“There are a lot of issues that have to be worked out, and there are many of my colleagues who are not comfortable with fracking,” said Lupardo, who predicted the fight over funding would be “epic.”
And, then there is that little issue of the local bans and moratoriums that are popping up like mushrooms all across NYS. Fred LeBrun published some misinformation on that in the Albany Times Union recently, too. Even Wilbur is a little fuzzy on this, noting that “the industry” has filed a “notice of appeal.” In fact, the decisions in Dryden and Middlefield have NOT been appealed…. the “notice” keeps the option to file an appeal open while Tom West, the lawyer that represented the plaintiffs (only one of which was a gas company) try to sell the right to appeal to others. Because, they do not intend to appeal the decisions. LeBrun has somehow mistakenly seen this as an appeal being expected to reverse the decisions any day now.
Meanwhile, the highest courts in the state will have something to say about the fracking schedule. While not making much of an issue of it, the DEC as it goes forward by the end of the year with its fracking regulations is tacitly assuming the final word will not be in favor of home rule. Currently, two state Supreme Courtdecisions have awarded the localities the right to ban fracking activities if they wish. That is being appealed in a mid-level court, and we should see that decision any day. Then, no doubt, considering the stakes involved, the entire debate will ascend to the Court of Appeals, probably on an expedited basis, and it will be a delight to see what the last word is. I believe home rule has a very good choice of prevailing.
If that is the case, both the governor and drilling industry will have themselves a big problem in expanding hydrofracking to anywhere near the scale they’d ultimately like.
LeBrun is assuming a lot (and correcting his published errors not at all).
This fight, according to my read, is very much still undecided.
http://solidshale.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/leaked-information-swirls-about-imminent-actions-of-dec-and-governor-cuomo/
What kind of energy policy?
August 12, 2012 at 5:01 am by TU Editorial Board
Our opinion: There are choices to be made, statewide and nationally. Our collective goal should be a cleaner, less costly way to live.
What better time than a sizzling hot summer, with so much political dialogue as ill-informed as ever, to cool down and tune in more reasoned voices. We need to have a serious conversation about energy.
Cleaner and renewable energy is what makes more and more economic sense. Nuclear power in particular is on the verge of obsolescence.
So comes the word — admittedly consistent with our own sentiments — from Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric Co.
“It’s really a gas and wind world today,” he says.
What a different place New York would be under the scenario envisioned by the CEO of a company that used to be a major producer of nuclear power plants. Already the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is about to stop licensing new plants until the industry finds a safer way to dispose of nuclear waste.
Think of the potential for jobs if energy policy takes such a sharp but sensible turn. GE’s renewable energy headquarters are in Schenectady. Its Global Research Center in Niskayuna is where wind and solar technologies are being further refined.
Suddenly, these are more than exotic quests. The price of solar panels is down 75 percent over the past three years. That’s enough to make solar energy competitive with retail electricity prices in some countries.
Wind energy, meanwhile, is the beneficiary of the steadily declining price of offshore turbines.
New York needs what still would be the Great Lakes’ first offshore wind farm. Or, better yet, one off the coast of Long Island.
Wind energy is critical for the state to meet its goal of getting 30 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2015. Whatever happened to plans for a turbine farm in Lake Erie or Lake Ontario shouldn’t be the last such venture here.
“People don’t really appreciate the extent to which the technology continues to improve,” says Bill Moore, CEO of Deepwater Wind, which developed the massive Tug Hill wind farm in upstate New York.
The energy conversation we need would continue, of course, with an even greater emphasis on natural gas. All indications are that the Cuomo administration is about to approve natural gas hydraulic fracturing.
Natural gas prices are so low that Mr. Immelt says the vast supplies that hydrofracking could put on the market might make such energy “permanently cheap.”
That puts his bullish outlook against the more cautious perspective of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
“A sustained gas glut could undermine new investments in wind, solar, nuclear and energy efficiency systems — which have zero emissions — and thus keep us addicted to fossil fuels for decades,” Mr. Friedman warned on these pages last Sunday.
“We have to do this right,” he says of natural gas extraction, especially fracking.
No energy technology is without its drawbacks. But hydrofracking raises especially urgent questions.
Why, for instance, is the Cuomo administration ready to allow fracking without a more vigilant effort to remove contaminated wastewater from well sites? Why wouldn’t it impose taxes on the very companies so eager to drill for natural gas?
We await some answers — along with more progress toward better alternatives like wind and solar.
http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion/what-kind-of-energy-policy/21553/
ALBANY — In 2007, Joe Martens stood in Sullivan County with fellow environmentalists and promoted a newly formed organization dedicated to advocating “the Catskills way of life.”
Martens was the group’s founding chairman through 2010, and he outlined his hopes for building “an active network of citizens” in a region that “needs its people speaking up so that its tremendous cultural and natural resources stay intact.”
Over that time, the group — Catskill Mountainkeeper — has become one of New York’s strongest and most visible critics of hydraulic fracturing, the much-debated method used to help extract natural gas from rich, underground rock formations such as the Marcellus Shale.
Now, the state appears poised to issue a long-anticipated report that would allow high-volume hydrofracking on a limited basis — under the direction of Martens, now commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
It means the organization that Martens helped create five years ago will likely be one of the loudest opponents of his agency’s ultimate decision.
“When this issue (hydrofracking) emerged five years ago, we were one of the first groups to come out against it,” said Wes Gillingham, Catskill Mountainkeeper’s program director. “Under (Martens’) leadership, we took a strong position that was very clear.”
Martens’ relationship with the group highlights the complex transition from conservationist and advocate to the state’s top environmental regulator, one that comes at a time when the DEC is faced with making a high-profile decision on whether to approve high-volume hydrofracking.
“I think life sort of depends on from where you sit,” Martens said in a recent interview. “As head of DEC, I have a very broad responsibility. I have to look at the big picture, and organizations like Catskill Mountainkeeper — they’re looking at the Catskills. That is their focus.”
In the course of his career, Martens, 56, has viewed New York from plenty of different seats. He was with the Open Space Institute from 1995 through 2010, serving as its president after 1998. While there, the New York City-based group completed hundreds of transactions, using its sizable endowment to conserve about 86,000 acres of land in New York, including Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Top Cottage” retreat in Hyde Park, Dutchess County.
Prior to that, he was then-Gov. Mario Cuomo’s environmental liaison, serving as an aide during the governor’s third and final term after he had previously worked for the state Assembly’s Ways & Means Committee.
He was a college athlete, setting school records in the indoor high jump (7’) and outdoor 400-meter dash (47.2 seconds) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1974 through 1978. Martens also played a year of basketball, joining the team just three years after Julius “Dr. J” Erving left the school to begin his now-legendary professional career.
Langdon Marsh, who was DEC commissioner during the tail end of Martens’ time in the elder Cuomo’s administration, said Martens was particularly adept at navigating the inevitable Albany intersection of politics and policy.
“He was very thoughtful of the agency’s needs while at the same time primarily being concerned about the impact on the governor’s program and policies and politics and so on,” Marsh said. “I thought he did an extremely good job of balancing those things. He was an advocate when he could be, and he was tough when we started to stray off course.”
Specifically, Marsh credited Martens with helping create the state’s Environmental Protection Fund. The fund is a pot of money included in the state budget each year since 1993 and is provided to local governments and nonprofit groups, primarily for land conservation and recycling projects.
A victim of major cuts during Gov. David Paterson’s administration, the fund has remained at $143 million annually since Andrew Cuomo took office.
Dealing with politics, Martens said, is “a necessary component of being in public service.”
“I think it’s almost unavoidable for any commissioner, not just DEC,” Martens said. “You have to know what the realities are out there and what’s achievable, and politics plays a strong part of that.”
Differing views
Martens’ time with Catskill Mountainkeeper isn’t well-known in Albany. It isn’t included in his official DEC biography nor was it mentioned in a state announcement about his appointment, which focused on his 12 years as president of the Open Space Institute and time as a top environmental aide to former Gov. Mario Cuomo.
While both Martens and Mountainkeeper staffers had kind things to say about one another, their views on hydrofracking policy have shifted in opposite directions. That shift is most apparent when looking back to July 1, 2011, less than seven months after Martens was appointed commissioner and his Mountainkeeper tenure ended.
In Albany, Martens was unveiling the DEC’s latest draft of the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, a document that will ultimately guide the agency’s permitting of high-volume hydrofracking.
It marked the first time Martens publicly backed the technique used with gas drilling.
“With all of the precautions that we have built in to the process, I believe it can be done safely,” Martens told reporters at the time.
The same day, Catskill Mountainkeeper issued an alert of its own. The group had grown disillusioned with state officials — it did not mention Martens by name — and called for a statewide hydrofracking ban.
“Up until this point, Catskill Mountainkeeper has operated under the good faith that our leadership in Albany has been working on behalf of all New Yorkers — an assumption that was harshly rebutted in light of recent events,” the group wrote.
Martens said that was a “position that Mountainkeeper evolved into” after his departure.
“When we first started Mountainkeeper, fracking was not the reason Mountainkeeper was created,” Martens said. “That was not the focus. It was a lot of other threats to the Catskills and a sense that a lot of us had that the Catskills did not have an advocacy organization like the Adirondacks had for a long, long time.”
Gillingham, the organization’s program director, said the decision on whether to move forward with hydrofracking isn’t on Martens, but on Cuomo.
“Joe was a great chairman during his time on our board,” Gillingham said. “Now he has a new position and a new boss. We remain steadfast in our beliefs that this is a dangerous technology and should be banned.”
Previously, their beliefs had been more closely aligned. In 2010 — with Martens as chairman — Catskill Mountainkeeper had called on the DEC to wait until a federal Environmental Protection Agency study of hydrofracking’s impact on groundwater was complete before issuing a decision of its own. That study, which began that year, is expected to be completed in 2014, with initial results coming later this year.
Also in 2010, Martens detailed a similar personal position in a speech at Union College. (“What’s the downside of waiting for the results?” he asked.)
Now, Martens says the added perspective of working from within DEC has broadened his view.
“What I’ve come to appreciate after having been on the inside of DEC is just how much work DEC has done on the issue,” Martens said. “They have explored it inside and out from every perspective.”
Meanwhile, as Martens’ agency continues to piece together a final decision on hydrofracking, advocates on both sides of the issue said they have great respect for the commissioner, though they don’t necessarily agree with some of his policy positions.
“I’ve been through many commissioners, and I think Joe’s doing a great job,” said Tom West, an Albany-based lobbyist representing the gas industry. “I think he’s assembled a great team, and the best way to evaluate a commissioner is to evaluate the team he’s put in place.”
Eric Goldstein, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Martens has a “good set of skills that serve him well in an impossible-to-satisfy-everyone position.”
“He’s a very talented guy,” Goldstein said. “He’s smart, he’s got integrity, he’s got the perfect temperament, and he’s got a lifelong commitment to conservation.”
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20120811/NEWS01/308110030?nclick_check=1
Obama Proposes $14 Million for Fracking Research
February 13, 2012 | 2:01 PM
By Susan Phillips
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson speaks to reporters at an event in Philadelphia.
President Obama’s proposed FY 2013 Environmental Protection Agency budget has a reduction of 1.2 percent, or $105 million dollars, from the previous year. It’s the third year in a row the agency has had to endure cuts. The proposed reduction comes at a time when the EPA has come under fire from Republican lawmakers, and some presidential candidates, who say the agency has engaged in over-regulatory zeal.
But some of those same presidential candidates have faced questions about the dangers of fracking on the campaign trail. And the budget announced today includes research funds dedicated to the impact of hydraulic fracturing. The proposed $14 million dollars will support research in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey and the Department of Energy that will “begin to assess potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on air quality, water quality, and ecosystems.”
The EPA’s total research budget of $576 million includes $81 million for the agency’s STAR grants, which will support research on fracking, potential endocrine disruptors, and green infrastructure. At the end of this year, the EPA expects to release preliminary results of their current study on the impact of fracking to drinking water supplies. The study includes areas of Marcellus Shale drilling in Pennsylvania.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said difficult choices had to be made with this budget.
“This budget is focused on fulfilling EPA’s core mission to protect health and the environment for millions of American families,” said Jackson. It demonstrates fiscal responsibility, while still supporting clean air, healthy waters and innovative safeguards that are essential to an America built to last.”
The EPA budget also includes an increase of $11 million over FY 2012 for a total of $68 million dollars to “reduce chemical risks, increase the pace of chemical hazard assessments, and provide the public with greater access to toxic chemical information.”
Jackson also told reporters on a conference call this afternoon that the proposed budget includes a 5.8 percent increase in compliance and enforcement.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/02/13/obama-proposes-14-million-for-fracking-research/
by Lena Groeger
ProPublica
Fracking has only recently become a household word, but government involvement with the drilling technique goes back decades. President Obama has championed the potential of natural gas drilling combined with more regulation. While there has been mounting evidence of water contamination, few regulations have been implemented. The graphic below traces officials' moves -- and levels of caution -- over time.
(see chart at link below)
http://www.propublica.org/special/from-gung-ho-to-uh-oh-charting-the-governments-moves-on-fracking
Natural Gas lobby in bed with the Sierra Club?
posted at 6:40 pm on February 4, 2012 by Jazz Shaw
File this one under, "DOH! What were they thinking?"
News broke this week, highlighted at the Daily Caller, that Chesapeake Energy, largely through CEO Aubrey McClendon, donated $26M to environmental group Sierra Club to run down the coal industry.
A Time magazine blogger reported Thursday that the Sierra Club, America's oldest and most august environmental organization, accepted millions of dollars in donations from one of the nation's biggest natural gas-drilling companies for a program lambasting coal-fired power plants as environmental evildoers.
The total take for John Muir's conservation group? A whopping $26 million over four years from Chesapeake Energy and its subsidiaries, mostly through Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon.
The news rocked the environmental movement, sent the Sierra Club headlong into explanation mode, angered coal companies that the organization targeted with natural gas money, and had free-market advocates shaking their heads.
First of all, as has been published here many times, I'm frequently in touch with Chesapeake and have supported their work in developing America's natural gas resources. (Just to get the disclosure thing out of the way early on.) But even with that said, I have no idea how this situation came to be. I contacted the company and was referred to Jim Gipson of their communications group who provided Hot Air with the following statement:
Back in 2007, Chesapeake and the Sierra Club had a shared interest in moving our nation toward a clean energy future based on the expanded use of natural gas, especially in the power sector. We mutually agreed in 2010 to end our funding.
Over the years, Chesapeake has been proud to support a number of organizations that share our interest in clean air and agree that America's abundant supplies of clean natural gas represent the most affordable, available and scalable fuel to power a more prosperous and environmentally responsible future for our country.
I'm sorry, but as much as I support these guys, this seems like a tone deaf thing to do. I was on the phone with another person familiar with the players here - who asked not to be named- who gave me a much more reasonable answer, paraphrasing some recent political candidates.
Hey. this ain't bean bag.
See. I could at least respect that. NG competes with coal, and you do what you need to do in order to gain an edge in a very competitive market. But jumping in bed with the Sierra Club? That leads to big problems, mostly because our recent success in natural gas exploration relies largely on fracking and other developing technologies. The Sierra club has been All Hands On Deck against such things.
The Fracking Regulatory Action Center (or FRAC tracker) is a resource for activists to help secure strong safeguards for fracking. It tracks state efforts to update their rules to stay ahead of the fracking boom, and to blunt its most dangerous effects. It also collects a growing library of technical comments and reports on these rules, which activists can use in their own work.
Their allies have also been up in arms trying to stop us from developing domestic resources.
And how as late as Tuesday, Sierra Club tried to mislead it's own members about the money.
According to the Time report, between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy - one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking.
Time reported that the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010 - and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations.
Waiting to speak with Brune.
And ask him what he meant by:
"We do not and will not take any money from Chesapeake or any other gas company."
This entire affair has the Greens up in arms against the Sierra Club and domestic energy supporters wondering why Chesapeake would get in bed with these guys, beyond trying to leverage a bit of advantage over the coal industry. And. AGAIN. we can understand why any group in a capitalist society would want to get a leg up on a competitor. As was noted. this ain't beanbag. They want to make a profit and coal is a competitor. But. the Sierra Club? These folks aren't anyone's friends in the energy community. Poor move, guys. And a huge waste of money. How much of that $26m went into anti-fracking advertisements?
(01/30/12)
A one paragraph clause in Governor Cuomo's budget has caused some concern among state lawmakers over the separation of powers between the governor and the legislature. In Albany, Karen DeWitt has the details.
It's one short paragraph in the hundreds of pages in Governor Cuomo's budget plan, and it's repeated in several different places. It says, essentially, that the governor's budget office can move money around in state agencies to consolidate business services, like information technology and other functions, without the permission of the legislature.
It sounds innocent enough, but some state lawmakers are wary that it may be a power grab by the governor, because it would take some key decision making authority away from the legislature.
Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat, questioned Cuomo's budget director about it at a recent hearing on the governor's spending plan, saying she's concerned it could be "potentially stripping the entire purpose of the legislature in budget negotations."
The governor's budget director, Robert Megna, told the Senator that the provision may seem worse than it actually is.
"It sounds pretty complicated and it sounds pretty far reaching," Megna admits.
But he says it's simply meant to help consolidate portions of state government and save taxpayer money quickly. For instance, he says the governor would like the authority to consolidate the multiple call centers in agencies around the state to down to a few more centralized centers.
"We don't believe that that the public is well served necessarily by having 27 different call centers" said Megna. Megna says right now, he can't tell lawmakers whether two or four or five centers are best, and who should operate those centers.
Senator Krueger told Megna that she understands the need for government consolidation. The Senator is a member of the governor's Spending and Government Efficiency panel, known as the SAGE commission. But she says the clause inserted into the budget has nothing to do with that.
Previous governors have also sought greater powers in the budget making process. In the 1990's, then Governor George Pataki attempted to use the state budget to change policy, instead of following the long custom of just presenting the legislature with dollar amounts for each category of spending. The Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver, sued, and lost in court. Senator Krueger says Cuomo is taking the powers permitted in the court ruling even further.
"I have a great fear that this paragraph actually goes far far beyond even the court case," said Krueger.
Afterward, Senator Krueger said she asked some attorneys she knew to interpret the language. She said she was told by one of them that the clause could theoretically be used to whittle away the legislature's authority to nothing.
"Then next year, the state budget would only need one page," Kruger said she was told, consisting of that paragraph and a total dollar amount at the bottom.
Lawmakers would then just vote "yes or no" Krueger said.
Budget Director Megna, at the hearing, tried to diffuse tensions, saying Governor Cuomo has instructed him to work with legislative staff on the exact wording of the paragraph.
"The governor has asked me to sit down with legislative staff and to talk specifically about what we think this paragraph means and how it should be applied," said Megna. "To get reaction from the legislature to see how we could move forward."
Senator Krueger expressed relief, and says she'll await that discussion.
Greetings, (from Walter Hang - ToxicsTargeting.com )
The Coalition Letter which requests that Governor Cuomo immediately withdraw the Revised Draft SGEIS now has nearly 10,700 signatories!!! Stay tuned for more heavy-hitters and important groups signing on. Keep beating the bushes.
1. We were fortunate that the huge tax deal struck this week by the Governor and the Legislature did not include any hydrofracturing component. Gas and oil lobbyists were circling the halls of the Capitol to the very end. Thanks for the hundreds of emails and phone calls to Governor Cuomo and Senator Libous.
This article in The New York Times discusses our Governor's modus operandi: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/nyregion/cuomos-tax-overhaul-follows-a-familiar-path.html
2. When Andrew Cuomo was a gubernatorial candidate, he said: "The economic potential from the Marcellus shale could provide a badly needed boost to the economy of the Southern Tier..." See: http://www.toxicstargeting.com/MarcellusShale/documents/cuomo-statement-marcellus-shale He has yet to be dissuaded. We must keep pushing.
3. I strongly encourage you to listen to a terrific radio interview from the day of the Binghamton hearing. This perfectly shows how the coalition letter is fully integrated into a media outreach, public policy and grassroots organizing campaign with an extremely focused message.
http://www.wnbf.com/FlashPlayer/default.asp?SPID=19668&ID=2344819
4. The Environmental Protection Agency continues to raise concerns about potential hydrofracturing impacts: http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20111208/NEWS01/112080416/EPA-links-fracking-groundwater-pollution-Wyoming?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Local%20News
http://www.toxicstargeting.com/MarcellusShale