History > 2007 > USA > Politics > States, Laws

Governors (I)

Virginia Governor

Closes Gun Loophole

April 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:58 a.m. ET
The New York Times

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- The governor said Monday he has closed the loophole that allowed a mentally disturbed Virginia Tech student to acquire the guns used to kill 32 students and faculty members.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine issued an executive order requiring that people who are found to be dangerous and ordered to undergo involuntary mental health treatment must be included in a database barring them from buying guns.

Virginia Governor Closes Gun Loophole, NYT, 30.4.2007,
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Virginia-Tech.html

Expensive Lesson for Maine

as Health Plan Stalls

April 30, 2007
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK

PORTLAND, Me., April 23 — When Maine became the first state in years to enact a law intended to provide universal health care, one of its goals was to cover the estimated 130,000 residents who had no insurance by 2009, starting with 31,000 of them by the end of 2005, the program’s first year.

So far, it has not come close to that goal. Only 18,800 people have signed up for the state’s coverage and many of them already had insurance.

“I think when we first started, in terms of making estimates, we really were kind of groping in the dark,” said Gov. John E. Baldacci, who this month proposed a host of adjustments.

The story of Maine’s health program — which tries to control hospital costs, improve the quality of health care and offer subsidized insurance to low-income people — harbors lessons for the country, as covering the uninsured takes center stage. States, including California, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, have unveiled programs of their own, seeking to balance the needs and interests of individuals, employers, insurers and health care providers.

But as Maine tries to reform its reforms, it faces some particular challenges: It has large rural, poor and elderly populations with significant health needs. It has many mom-and-pop businesses and part-time or seasonal workers, and few employers large enough to voluntarily offer employees insurance. And most insurers here no longer find it profitable to sell individual coverage, leaving one carrier, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, with a majority of the market, a landscape that some economists said could make it harder to provide broad choices and competitive prices.

Some parts of the state’s current program — named Dirigo after the state motto, which means “I lead” in Latin — are seen as promising. These include the creation of a state watchdog group to promote better health care, and an effort to control costs by asking hospitals to rein in price increases and spending, although experts and advocates said those cuts needed to be greater.

But a financing formula dependent on sizable payments from private insurers has angered businesses and is being challenged in court.

And while some people have benefited from the subsidized insurance, which provides unusually comprehensive coverage, others have found it too expensive. And premiums have increased, not become more affordable, because some of those who signed up needed significant medical care, and there are not enough enrollees, especially healthy people unlikely to use many benefits.

“It was broad-based reform that just never got off the ground,” said Laura Tobler, a health policy analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures. “The way that they funded the program became controversial. And getting insurance was voluntary and it wasn’t that cheap.”

Governor Baldacci said in an interview that when the Legislature enacted the Dirigo Health Reform Act in 2003, it gave him less money and more compromises than he had wanted. He said his administration had now learned more about what works and what does not.

His new proposals include requiring people to have insurance and employers to offer it and penalizing them financially if they do not; making the subsidized insurance plan, DirigoChoice, more affordable for small businesses; creating a separate insurance pool for high-risk patients; instituting more Medicaid cost controls; and having the state administer DirigoChoice, which is now sold by Anthem Blue Cross.

“We’ve got a reform package that takes Dirigo to the next level,” Mr. Baldacci said. “It takes the training wheels off.”

The proposed overhaul seems to include something each of Maine’s constituencies can embrace and something each opposes, so there is no guarantee which changes will be adopted by the Legislature.

“It’s very hard politically to deal with the underlying costs of the system,” said Andrew Coburn, director of the Institute for Health Policy at the Muskie School of Public Service in Portland. “And Maine is just not wealthy enough to cobble together enough resources to fully cover the uninsured.”

The state’s current program, which has added 5,000 people to Medicaid and enrolled 13,800 people in DirigoChoice, has made progress. Even though the enrollment goal has not been met, the insurance plan has grown faster than any in Maine’s history, the governor said. And although about 60 percent of its enrollees were previously insured, some were paying what state officials deemed was too high a percentage of their income, said Trish Riley, director of the Governor’s Office of Health Policy and Finance.

The DirigoChoice benefits are impressive, said Hilary K. Schneider, policy director for Consumers for Affordable Health Care, a Maine advocacy group. The program completely covers preventive care, subsidizes premiums and deductibles, and unlike most insurance plans, covers treatment for mental illness and does not exclude people for pre-existing medical conditions.

Such coverage has caused critics to say DirigoChoice would be more affordable if it scaled back benefits.

“It’s a Cadillac policy, and we ought to be trying to fund a Ford Escort policy,” said Jim McGregor, executive vice president of the Maine Merchants Association.

One of DirigoChoice’s success stories, Jacquie Murphy, 63, of Westbrook, said, “It absolutely saved my life.” Ms. Murphy said she has fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, back problems, an autoimmune disease and memory problems from a childhood brain injury. She said that a few years ago, when she left an abusive marriage and gave up her husband’s coverage, the fear of being unable to afford insurance that would accept someone with her illnesses “caused me to become clinically depressed.”

With DirigoChoice, which costs her just over $100 a month with the state paying a subsidy of about $250, she now has a walker, sees orthopedic surgeons for shoulder and ankle fractures, and takes medication for memory, cholesterol and thyroid problems. The relief of being insured lifted her depression, she said, and now, in her home with its Asian-themed pebbled backyard, she works as a career and life coach.

For others, like Leah Deragon, 34, DirigoChoice is too costly. Ms. Deragon, who runs a Portland nonprofit center that helps low-income families with new babies, said that although she and her husband, an engineering student, qualified for a subsidy, they could not afford the roughly $300 out-of-pocket cost each month. She remains uninsured, forgoing annual checkups and using student loan money when she needed dental work.

“For us it was very frustrating,” said Ms. Deragon, who shops at Goodwill and lives in her mother’s home in Gorham to save money. “We earned, I think, $16,000 last year. We can’t do $200 or $300 a month and still put gas in our car. Come the end of the month, we would be forced to hitchhike.”

And there is John Henderson, 42, of Auburn, who enrolled in DirigoChoice in 2006 for about $90 a month while working at an L. L. Bean warehouse, a job he kept to 20 hours a week so his income would qualify him for such a low rate.

But he dropped the plan this year when rates increased by 13.4 percent on average. Mr. Henderson, who has diabetes and is currently jobless, said he had stopped once-regular doctor’s appointments and some medications that “I have just no hope of affording.”

Ms. Schneider’s group is suing the state insurance commissioner for approving the rate increase.

An Anthem spokesman, Mark Ishkanian, said the increase was necessary because medical claims of DirigoChoice customers were “substantially higher” than anticipated, about double those of non-Dirigo plans. One reason for the higher expense was “pent-up demand” by enrollees who had been deferring visits to doctors while they were uninsured, Mr. Ishkanian said. Another was the richness of the coverage, which enrollees used for treating long-held conditions or mental illness, he said.

Ms. Riley said the state was surprised that more than half of DirigoChoice enrollees qualified for the highest subsidy, 80 percent, which meant the program has been more expensive for the state.

She said Maine also expected more small businesses to enroll in DirigoChoice. But many businesses found that the program requirements of enrolling 75 percent of a firm’s employees and paying 60 percent of the cost were too expensive.

“If they weren’t able to afford insurance before, they’re unlikely to be able to afford Dirigo,” said Kristine Ossenfort, senior governmental affairs specialist of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce.

Some health care advocates have accused Anthem of not marketing DirigoChoice enough to prospective customers, which Anthem denies.

Especially controversial was Maine’s financing formula for its program, which assumed that there would be savings because an increase in insured people would mean less charity care from hospitals, and that the cost-cutting measures would mean lower costs to insurers.

The state said it would charge insurers for those savings, rather than let insurers take the savings as profit. But when the state tried to charge insurers $43.7 million in 2005 and $34.3 million in 2006, the insurance industry and the chamber of commerce sued, saying the insurers owed much less.

A judge ruled for the state, but the case is being appealed. The governor’s new proposal would phase out this financing structure and impose lower-cost surcharges instead.

Among the state program’s biggest fans is Joan M. Donahue, 40, who was uninsured when she started a home care agency in Warren three years ago. She now has DirigoChoice for herself and her 17-year-old son, and three employees are enrolled. She also has two employees who cannot afford it and have not enrolled.

“I will absolutely stick with Dirigo,” said Ms. Donahue, who does not qualify for the subsidy. “This program needs healthy people who don’t get subsidized so it can prosper.”

The Dirigo program has already made one change that could attract people like Malvina Gregory, 31, a Spanish interpreter in Portland, who could not afford the subsidized insurance but may reconsider. Ms. Gregory was originally put off because it demanded full payment up front, and rebated the subsidy later; she went instead to a Portland program giving nearly free care, but is now afraid her income “will bump me over the limit” for that program.

DirigoChoice will now allow individuals to pay only their part up front. “The concept of Dirigo, I think, is phenomenal,” Ms. Gregory said. “I hope they are able to lower the premiums. There are a lot of folks like me that are in that bind.”

    Expensive Lesson for Maine as Health Plan Stalls, NYT, 30.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/30maine.html?hp

States Expand Children's Health Coverage

April 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:27 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Many states are making more children eligible for government-funded health insurance even as President Bush's health chief says families are relying too much on public money for the coverage.

The goal of the states is to allow more middle-class families to participate in the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The states are raising income limits so families once shut out because of their earnings now can qualify.

When the program began a decade ago, states could offer coverage to families whose income was not more than double the federal poverty level. Today, for example, that threshold is $41,300 for a family of four. A few states use a Medicaid-based formula that lets them insure more children than under the income limit.

Already, 18 states exceed the 200 percent level, with federal permission. Five more, plus the District of Columbia, could join the list this year, according to a survey by Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families.

New York lawmakers recently set an income limit of up to $82,600 for a family of four. Eligible families get some government help in buying insurance. The poorer they are, the greater the subsidy.

Other states considering significant expansions in eligibility include California, Ohio and Oklahoma. Florida and Oregon are considering modest expansions, the center reported.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said if other states followed New York's proposal, it would mean that 71 percent of the nation's children would be on ''public assistance.''

''SCHIP is being proposed in the spirit of the expansion of health coverage. But that isn't the reality,'' Leavitt said last week. ''For every 10 people that go on a publicly funded plan, six of them leave a private plan.''

Jocelyn Guyer, deputy executive director of the university center, said states have determined that public health insurance is better than no insurance at all. She said a range of studies shows that most children entering the program would otherwise lack coverage.

''State leaders are moving in a very different direction than the Bush administration is talking about,'' Guyer said. ''They see that even moderate-income families increasingly find that coverage is simply unaffordable, and that it's appropriate to have some subsidy.''

Guyer's organization conducts research but also advocates for more federal money for children's health insurance.

In 1997, Congress provided the children's insurance program with $40 billion over 10 years. The program now covers more than 6 million people, including about 640,000 adults. The families make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private insurance.

Congress probably will renew the program this year, with a contentious debate expected over how much money to spend.

A large expansion of children's health insurance is a priority for Democrats. They want to spend $75 billion over five years; the Bush administration is seeking less than half that.

States match federal dollars with their own. On average, states spend $30 for every $70 from Washington.

The administration wants the insurance program to help just low-income families. Leavitt said all states should enact plans that would provide other families with access to more basic insurance policies.

Those policies may not be as comprehensive as some families would like. For example, he said, they may not cover treatments once the care reaches a certain expense, but the policies would provide some protection.

Leavitt noted that Michigan was working on a plan that would pay as much as $35,000 in a year for health costs and could serve as many as 1.1 million people. Tennessee is developing what Leavitt described as a ''very basic'' insurance plan. The plan would cost $150 a month -- $50 from the insured, $50 from the employer and $50 from the state.

Guyer said many states considering expansions will scrap them unless Congress acts this summer to provide more money.

She cited Ohio and Oklahoma. According to the center, both states are considering proposals that would increase eligibility limits so families of four with an income under $61,950 could participate.

''It just comes down to the reality that in the absence of federal money, they really can't do this,'' Guyer said.

The Senate Finance Committee may take up a children's health insurance bill as soon as next month.

Legislation introduced last week by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, would allow states to expand coverage to families earning less than triple the poverty level, or $61,950 for a family of four.

Kennedy said the program ''has been a great success, but 9 million children in the United States still lack health insurance. This bill will make a real difference in their lives.''

------

On the Net:

Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families: http://ccf.georgetown.edu

State Children's Health Insurance Program: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/home/schip.asp

    States Expand Children's Health Coverage, NYT, 29.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Health-Insurance-Children.html

New Hampshire lawmakers approve gay civil unions

Fri Apr 27, 2007
2:53AM EDT
Reuters
By Brian Early

CONCORD, New Hampshire (Reuters) - New Hampshire lawmakers authorized same-sex civil unions on Thursday, in a bill that will complete New England's transformation into a unique U.S. region where gay and lesbian couples have some form of legal recognition and conjugal rights.

The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 14-10 along party lines to give gays and lesbians nearly the same rights as married couples. The bill sailed through the House of Representatives on April 4, and Democratic Gov. John Lynch said last week he would sign it.

New Hampshire, known for its official motto "Live Free or Die," will become the fourth U.S. state to allow same-sex civil unions when the law takes effect on Jan 1. The law marks a shift in the state's traditionally conservative politics.

New Hampshire outlawed same-sex marriages in 1987. In 2004, in response to neighboring Massachusetts' top court allowing gay couples to marry, the state passed a law that would not recognize gay marriages from out of state.

But last year's elections signaled important political change. Democrats gained majorities in the legislature for the first time since 1874, in a state that was long a stronghold of moderate Republicans amid the liberal bastion of New England.

"We will be perceived as a free, open and tolerant society," said Janice Crawford, executive director of the Mount Washington Valley Chamber of Commerce, which already produces tour guides denoting gay-friendly New Hampshire inns.

The bill brings the divisive debate over gay rights into the state that traditionally holds the first primary in the presidential nominating process. Opponents of the legislation said they hoped it would be blocked in court.

NEW ENGLAND LAWS

"I hope a lawsuit comes quickly so this will go away," said Sen. Bob Letourneau, a Republican. "This bill weakens marriage laws. Please don't tell me otherwise. It's a sad day for the state of New Hampshire."

Elsewhere in New England, Vermont and Connecticut recognize same-sex civil unions, which provide equal rights for gay couples in committed relationships but lack the full legal protection of marriage, and Maine offers gay couples some legal rights as partners.

Rhode Island's attorney general said in February the state will recognize any marriage performed in another state -- effectively recognizing the marriage of same-sex couples who are wed in neighboring Massachusetts.

New Hampshire will be first state to introduce same-sex civil unions without pressure from a court, but some locals said they expected the law to eventually end up in court.

"I don't have much faith it will not be reversed," said Tom Lavoie, 45, a realtor who is gay and likes the idea of gaining access to better health benefits through civil unions.

Sue McCoo, 54, of Concord added: It's a good thing because it's the right thing. ... It's not going to ruin any marriages."

Massachusetts is the only state where gay marriage is legal. In December, New Jersey became the third U.S. state to provide for gay civil unions. California, the District of Columbia and Hawaii each offer gay couples some legal rights as partners.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York praised state lawmakers for the bill.

New Hampshire lawmakers approve gay civil unions, R, 27.4.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2648255520070427

Texas Legislators Block Shots for Girls Against Cancer Virus

April 26, 2007
The New York Times
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, April 25 — A revolt by lawmakers has blocked Gov. Rick Perry’s effort to make Texas the first state to require sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

In a 135-to-2 vote that appeared veto-proof, the Texas House gave final passage on Wednesday to a Senate bill that bars the state from ordering the shots until at least 2011. Even many supporters of the governor resented Mr. Perry’s proposal as an abuse of executive authority.

“There was no public testimony — why we were jumping so fast into a vaccine that was not for a true communicable disease,” said Senator Glenn Hegar Jr., a Republican representing a district just west of Houston who sponsored the Senate bill to overturn the governor’s order. It passed 30 to 1 on Monday.

But Senator Leticia van de Putte, a Democrat from San Antonio who is a pharmacist and was the lone Senate vote for the vaccination program, said that with 400 deaths in Texas from cervical cancer each year, “I’m thinking of the women that will die because we didn’t act.”

Governor Perry, through his office, voiced regret at the legislative action but declined to say what his next step would be.

“The governor stayed true to his word to Texas women and continues to be their advocate,” said Krista Moody, a spokeswoman in Austin.

Mr. Perry, a Republican who was narrowly re-elected to his second full term in November, surprised almost everyone on Feb. 2 by bypassing the Republican-controlled Legislature and announcing the initiative.

He said he would sign an executive order directing the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to adopt rules requiring all 11- and 12-year old girls entering the sixth grade to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, starting in September 2008. The order allowed parents to let their daughters opt out of the program.

The vaccine, Gardasil, is manufactured by Merck, which was represented in Austin by the lobbyist Mike Toomey, who was chief of staff for Mr. Perry from 2002 to 2004.

The governor’s office denied any connection between the governor’s proposal and Mr. Toomey. A Merck spokesman declined to comment on the company’s lobbying.

But Merck, which had begun a campaign for Gardasil in legislatures around the country, reacted to growing opposition to proposed vaccine mandates by announcing in late February that it was dropping its legislative campaign.

While some health authorities and public advocates in Texas praised the governor’s order, many reacted angrily. Legislators argued that their authority had been usurped by the executive branch, which the state’s founding fathers intended as a weak branch of government.

On March 14, the Texas House voted 118 to 23 to prevent the health commission from issuing any vaccination mandate. But a Senate version of the bill, which prevailed Wednesday, provided that the ban would expire in four years, allowing lawmakers to revisit the issue. The next Legislature meets in 2009 and could vote to take up the issue then.

“We did not want to be the first in offering young girls for the experiment to see if this vaccine is effective or not,” said Representative Dennis H. Bonnen, a Republican from Angleton, who sponsored the ban in the House.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other health authorities, describe Gardasil as safe and effective when given as approved to girls ages 9 to 26 in three shots over eight months.

Some Texas political analysts said Governor Perry had miscalculated.

Harvey Kronberg, editor of the legislative Web site Quorum Report, said the governor had failed to consult his two leading fellow Republicans, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate, and the House speaker, Tom Craddick.

“This kind of imperiousness offended his base,” Mr. Kronberg said.

Bill Miller, an Austin lobbyist close to the Republican leadership, said the mixture of “under-age girls, cancer and sex” had proven too volatile.

    Texas Legislators Block Shots for Girls Against Cancer Virus, NYT, 26.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/us/26texas.html

Editorial

Mr. Spitzer and Gay Marriage

April 24, 2007
The New York Times

The news that Gov. Eliot Spitzer will soon introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage — what he calls “a simple moral imperative” — is welcome and could give new national momentum to this important cause. Mr. Spitzer would be the first governor in the nation to introduce a gay marriage bill. But if he is going to make a real difference, rather than simply checking off a box to fulfill a campaign promise, he will have to fight for the law vigorously.

Even in a progressive state like New York, this will be a steep political climb. So far, only Massachusetts has enacted a gay marriage law — after its highest court held that gay couples had a right under the State Constitution — and while there is a similar bill working its way through the Connecticut legislature, its prospects are uncertain. Civil unions or domestic partnerships involving same-sex couples are now recognized by a small but growing number of states, including Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, California, Hawaii and Maine. It is an indication of how big a challenge Mr. Spitzer faces that New York is not, and hasn’t come close to being, on this list.

Mr. Spitzer is right to be fighting for gay marriage. Civil unions and domestic partnerships are an important recognition of gay relationships by a state. But they still represent separate and unequal treatment. One federal study identified more than 1,100 rights or benefits that are accorded only to the legally married. That means that even in states recognizing civil unions and domestic partnerships, gay couples often have to use legal contortions to protect their families in ways that married couples take for granted. Gay couples may also be discriminated against when it comes to taxes and pension benefits.

The next step in building momentum for gay marriage in New York will be to get the State Assembly, which has a Democratic majority, on board. Speaker Sheldon Silver has said he will not take a stand until he talks with his fellow Democrats. But most of those Democrats have already publicly expressed support for gay marriage, so Mr. Silver has no excuse to delay. He should make it clear that he will join Governor Spitzer and press for the legislation’s swift passage.

The biggest stumbling block is likely to be, as it always is for gay rights measures in New York, the State Senate, which is controlled by Republicans. The majority leader, Joseph Bruno, has made it clear that he is against same-sex marriage, but he is also a pragmatist whose views on these issues have evolved and become more humane over the years.

Religious groups, particularly the Catholic Church, are likely to be the bill’s most outspoken opponents. It should be clear that these religious institutions have the right to refuse to marry anyone within their own religious houses. But they should not be allowed to dictate who can and cannot be married by the state.

Mr. Spitzer did not make gay marriage a priority in his first 100 days in office, and he did not mention it in his State of the State address or, more recently, when he laid out his agenda for the remainder of the legislative session. That may simply have been a pragmatic assessment that the bill would not pass right away.

Now that he is ready to move, we are eager to hear him speak out more on this issue. There will be nothing easy about championing this simple moral imperative. But it is a fight well worth the governor’s full efforts.

    Mr. Spitzer and Gay Marriage, NYT, 24.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/opinion/24tue1.html

N.H. Governor Backs Civil Unions

April 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:48 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- Gov. John Lynch said Thursday he will sign legislation establishing civil unions for gay couples in New Hampshire.

''I believe it is a matter of conscience, fairness and preventing discrimination,'' Lynch told The Associated Press.

New Hampshire would become the fourth state to adopt civil unions, following Connecticut, Vermont and New Jersey. Massachusetts established gay marriage.

Lynch had previously declined to take a public position on civil unions, though has supported expanding health benefits to same-sex partners of state workers. He came under fire from both sides for not weighing in -- especially after a delay last week of the Senate vote on the House-passed bill.

The Senate votes next week, and Lynch said he is confident the legislation will pass. It would authorize civil unions beginning next year.

Fergus Cullen, the state Republican Party chairman, wasn't happy with the Democratic governor's decision.

''The Democrats are going too far, too fast, and Governor Lynch is going along with them,'' Cullen said. ''These are not the actions of a moderate governor.

Democratic state Rep. Bette Lasky disagreed.

''It's never going too far when you give people their rights,'' she said, ''and I honestly believe that the majority of people in this state want to do just that and do not want to discriminate.''

    N.H. Governor Backs Civil Unions, NYT, 19.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-NH-Civil-Unions.html

Gay Rights Bills Pass Oregon House

April 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:17 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SALEM, Ore. (AP) -- Same-sex couples would receive the same benefits as married couples, and gays and lesbians would be protected against discrimination under bills approved Tuesday by the Oregon House.

The Senate is expected to pass the two bills and Gov. Ted Kulongoski plans to sign both.

The first bill would enable same-sex couples to enter into contractual relationships that grant them the same benefits offered to married couples under state law. The bill refers to the relationships as ''domestic partnerships.''

Oregon would join Vermont, Connecticut, California and New Jersey in offering civil unions or domestic partnerships to same-sex couples. Massachusetts allows gay couples to marry. Hawaii extends certain spousal rights to same-sex couples, along with cohabitating heterosexual pairs. The Washington Legislature last week approved a limited domestic partnership bill that's expected to be signed into law soon.

A national gay rights group called the Oregon vote part of a larger movement by state lawmakers to provide recognition for gay and lesbian couples.

''The country seems to be taking a fresh look at this issue,'' said Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry.

An opponent of the bill, state Rep. Dennis Richardson, said a fairer approach would be to allow a more limited range of marriage-style benefits to two people who live together.

''This bill is in fact marriage by another name,'' Richardson said.

The other bill that passed Tuesday would ban discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people in employment, housing and access to public accommodations. If it passes, Oregon would become one of 18 states with laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.

    Gay Rights Bills Pass Oregon House, NYT, 18.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Oregon-Gay-Rights.html

2 Months After New Jersey’s Civil Union Law, Problems Finding True Equality

April 13, 2007
The New York Times
By TINA KELLEY

Nickie Brazier called U.P.S., where she is a driver, to add Heather Aurand to her health insurance the day after their Feb. 22 civil union in New Jersey, knowing it would save them $340 a month. But U.P.S. said no. “They said it was because we’re not married,” Ms. Brazier recalled.

Dr. Kevin Slavin was able to sign his partner up for the health plan at the hospital where he specializes in pediatric infectious diseases but soon learned that both men’s benefits would be treated as taxable income — not the case for his married coworkers — and that his partner could not collect his pension if Dr. Slavin died.

Merissa Muench of Mount Olive, N.J., said her employer of seven years, a medical sterilization office where she is a technician, told her the company did not cover civil union partners.

“It just irks me that a guy they just hired, his wife — bing! — has health insurance,” said Ms. Muench, 30, who declined to name her employer for fear of being fired. “What else does the gay American community have to do to prove that we’re worth it just as much as you guys?”

Nearly two months after New Jersey became the third state to approve civil unions for same-sex couples, many are finding that all partnerships are not created equal, raising questions about whether the new arrangement adequately fulfills the promise of the State Supreme Court ruling that led to it.

In October, the court declared that the state’s Constitution “guarantees that every statutory right and benefit conferred to heterosexual couples through civil marriage must be made available to committed same-sex couples,” leaving it to the Legislature to decide how to do it. Lawmakers rejected the option of same-sex marriage, but pledged that “civil union couples shall have all of the same benefits, protections and responsibilities under law” that married couples have.

Nevertheless, residents who work for companies headquartered in other states, and those whose insurers are based outside New Jersey, have found it difficult if not impossible to sign their partners up for health insurance. Unions and employers whose self-insured plans are federally regulated have also denied coverage in some cases. Staff members in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms have questioned partners’ role in decision-making. Confusion abounds over the interplay of state and federal laws governing taxes, inheritance and property.

Then there are cases like that of the lesbian who was told that she was likely to be denied coverage for a mammogram after she added her partner to her insurance. The insurance company changed the employee’s designation to male since there was no spot on its forms for “civil union spouse.”

Some 229 couples obtained civil unions in New Jersey in the first month they were available. Gay-rights advocates say they have collected two dozen discrimination complaints, laying the groundwork for a legal challenge to the civil union law that would essentially re-petition the Supreme Court for same-sex marriage. The highest courts in Connecticut, which established civil unions in 2005, and California, where domestic partnerships offer benefits and protections like those provided by civil unions, are already considering similar cases.

“How can you call it equal protection when you have to go through hell maybe to get your civil union recognized?” asked Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, a gay-rights group. “Why should gay couples have to take those steps? That’s not equal protection under the law. That’s why we’re fighting for marriage equality.”

As Thomas H. Prol, co-chairman of the New Jersey Bar Association’s committee on gay issues, put it, “The word’s starting to spread that civil unions aren’t working in the real world.”

State officials attribute many of the problems to unfamiliarity with the civil union law’s provisions and its interaction with dozens of state statutes governing matters like adoption, workers’ compensation and hospitalization. They said it was far too early to judge the law a failure, and said they would work with couples and companies to resolve problems.

“This is uncharted territory, and we’re talking about an area of undeveloped law,” said J. Frank Vespa-Papaleo, director of the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights. Told about some of the couples’ experiences, he suggested that employers whose health insurance plans were governed by federal laws, for example, should provide civil union couples with the option of signing up with a comparable plan for the same fees.

Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, a Democrat from Essex County who was a lead sponsor of the civil union law, said he was “frustrated because the intent of the bill is not being met.”

“We’ve got a real problem, and the problem is the feds do govern some areas,” Mr. Caraballo said. “The truth is there’s nothing any of us can do about the federal law. To the extent we can make the law stronger on the state level, I assure you we’re trying it.”

Nathaniel Persily, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has published a study of same-sex marriage and public opinion, said “these kinds of difficulties were inevitable” when New Jersey created a parallel institution, noting, “Whenever there’s a sort of spotty civil innovation, it takes civil society some time to catch up.”

“The state has not sent the clearest signal,” Professor Persily added. “The fact that they are given different status under law brings up the possibility that private companies will also treat them differently.”

In some cases, though, companies have adjusted quickly after receiving complaints from couples or inquiries from their lawyers, or from reporters.

Timothy Zimmer, a computer programmer who works in Newark for a Massachusetts company he declined to name, said his insurance company, United Healthcare, had told him that his partner would not be covered even if they got a civil union.

“First, the NJ civil union is not deemed to be a marriage under NJ law,” the insurer wrote in an e-mail message to him. “Therefore there is no ‘spouse’ as defined in the MA plan. The MA law recognizes marriages between members of the same sex only for marriages performed in MA between MA residents. Since the NJ members are not ‘married’ under either NJ or MA law, there is no ‘spouse’ eligible for coverage as a dependent.”

Mr. Zimmer, 52, said in an interview last week, “Apparently the civil union law gave us all the rights of marriage, except the ones we really need.”

After being contacted by The New York Times, a spokesman for United Healthcare said Monday night that the company had reviewed a bulletin on civil unions from the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance, consulted the employer, and decided that civil union partners in New Jersey were the legal equivalent of spouses.

“It’s kind of nice if they do say yes,” Mr. Zimmer said Tuesday. “I’m used to the no.” He was still awaiting word yesterday.

Similarly, Cookie Van Pelt of Jackson, N.J., who works for Sam’s Club, said she was told that her partner, Jean Farr, could not be covered because “their medical benefits fall under federal law, and they won’t change for us.” But John Simley, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, which operates Sam’s Club, said the company allowed employees to choose between a self-insured health plan, which is federally regulated, and a health-maintenance organization that covers civil union partners.

Such self-insured plans, which are financed by employers rather than purchased from a state-regulated insurer, have caused problems for couples. Since they are governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, a federal law, insurers and employers often presume that the plans are also subject to the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

Sharon Mayhak said she was denied coverage by her partner’s employer, which has a self-insured plan, so she remains without insurance despite bad arthritis. (She refused to name the company.)

“The thing is my partner really likes her job, we are in our 50s, and this is not a good time to look for work,” Ms. Mayhak said a few weeks after she and her partner of 37 years were joined in a civil union. “We were told this is supposed to be equal in every way, and this is not equal.”

Ms. Brazier, the U.P.S. driver — who gave birth to twins five weeks ago and also has a 2-year-old son — remains in limbo amid mixed messages from her employer and her union. Norman Black, a spokesman for United Parcel Service, said that the company had offered benefits to domestic partners of its nonunion workers since 2004, but that hourly workers like Ms. Brazier were covered by the Teamsters under a self-insured plan.

A spokesman for Ms. Brazier’s union local said its lawyers were looking into whether it could do anything to push U.P.S. to provide partner benefits for its members.

“It’s been a strain,” said Ms. Aurand, Ms. Brazier’s partner. “We didn’t know all the loopholes — we were sure they’d let us go on.” But gay-rights advocates said federal law did not prohibit self-insured companies from providing benefits to same-sex couples. A 2006 report by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation found that more than half the Fortune 500 companies, most of which have self-insured plans, offered benefits to domestic partners.

“It’s the employer’s own choice to decide who’s a beneficiary, and the federal government doesn’t prevent employers from doing the right thing,” said Michele Granda , a staff lawyer with the Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. “Those employers are purposefully choosing to discriminate against their employees.”

While health insurance has caused the bulk of the problems so far in New Jersey, civil union couples are also beginning to grapple with the complex interactions of state and federal laws regarding other matters. Civil union partners filing taxes jointly in New Jersey have to file federal tax returns as if they were single, then calculate what they would owe on a joint federal return to figure their state credits and deductions, said Stephen J. Hyland, a lawyer and writer of “New Jersey Domestic Partners: A Legal Guide.”

“Civil union couples will most likely be treated as if they are single for purposes of qualifying for Medicaid, which can jeopardize the couple’s home if one partner needs nursing home care,” Mr. Hyland said.

Bankruptcy is governed by federal law, although state law determines how married and civil union couples hold title to their property.

Couples who drew up the equivalent of prenuptial agreements before registering as domestic partners may need to update the agreements before getting a civil union, which offers more legal protections, said Felice Londa, a lawyer in Elizabeth, N.J.

Then there are more immediate, if mundane, matters, like Ms. Londa’s frustration while shopping for dresses with her partner of eight years for their May 6 ceremony.

“We said we’re going to have a civil union, and one said, ‘Oh, is that some kind of business dinner?’ ” she recalled the saleswoman saying. “Nobody gets it.”

    2 Months After New Jersey’s Civil Union Law, Problems Finding True Equality, NYT, 13.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/nyregion/13civil.html

Massachusetts Offers Details on Health Coverage

April 12, 2007
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK

BOSTON, April 11 — Massachusetts is poised to become the first state to make it possible for 99 percent of its adults to be covered by health insurance, with an ambitious plan that sets limits for the premiums people would be expected to pay.

State officials said that under the plan, they expected that all but about 65,000 of the 328,000 adults who are currently uninsured would be able to get affordable coverage.

The proposal sets a sliding scale of affordability standards in which, for example, a single person earning $40,001 a year would be expected to pay no more than 9 percent of income, or about $300 a month, for health insurance; a single person earning $25,000 a year would be expected to pay a much smaller percentage, about 3.3 percent of income, or $70 a month.

The plan is expected to be approved by the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority on Thursday.

Jon Kingsdale, the executive director of the authority, the agency set up to administer the plan, said setting the affordability standards “was always the most difficult and innovative element” of the state’s groundbreaking health care law, passed a year ago.

The law required all residents to get health insurance or face a fine or tax penalty. But from the beginning, there was concern that available health plans might be too expensive for some people, or, that some affordable plans might provide skimpy coverage. Last month, the authority voted to require all plans to have substantial coverage, including prescription drug benefits, which raised further questions about how expensive the insurance would be.

“To do this right means we’re walking a tight rope,” Mr. Kingsdale said. “We don’t want to be too punitive, we don’t want to put too high a standard of affordability, but we don’t want to let too many people out of a universal requirement. We’ve been putting a lot of stakes in the ground, but this is the center pole that will allow us to put up the tent and get everybody covered.”

The plan, if approved Thursday, would still need to be presented at public hearings across the state and face a final vote in June. The proposal would cost the state $13 million more than the $200 million it was planning to spend.

This proposal changes premiums and subsidy rates that were established earlier. It would allow about 52,000 more low-income people to qualify for free or cheaper coverage. A person earning up to $15,315, one and half times the federal poverty level, would not have to pay anything under this proposal.

Individuals earning $30,630 to $50,001 would not be eligible for state subsidies, but they would not be penalized if they could not find health insurance priced at $150 to $300 a month. People who earn more than $50,001 would not be given a cap on insurance costs.

People who claim they cannot afford coverage under the new system could apply for a waiver.

The proposal represents a carefully hammered-out compromise. Business groups wanted to make sure that premiums for state-sponsored insurance would not be too much less than the employee contributions to an employer’s plan because they fear that people would flock to the government-sponsored plans, driving up the cost to the state. Advocates for poor people had wanted lower costs for more residents.

“It doesn’t go the whole way, but it’s good enough for today,” said John McDonough, executive director of Health Care for All, an advocacy group. “I know there’s a lot of trash talk around the country about, ‘Oh it’s falling apart in Massachusetts.’ It ain’t true. We are going to be far and away the state with the lowest number of uninsured by a country mile.”

Leslie A. Kirwan, the Massachusetts secretary of administration and finance, who is chairwoman of the authority’s board, said the support of advocates like Mr. McDonough was earned in part by action by Gov. Deval L. Patrick, who agreed to waive fees that more than 10,000 poor families were paying for their children to be covered by Medicaid.

“There were real doubts about whether we could forge a compromise that the advocates could embrace and also make sure that the business community embraced it,” Ms. Kirwan said.

An employers’ group gave the plan cautious support on Wednesday.

“It does seem that what the Connector is putting forth is reasonable, but I haven’t looked at all the details,” said Eileen P. McAnneny, vice president of government affairs for Associated Industries of Massachusetts, which represents 7,500 employers. “You have to be very careful — if you set up subsidies that are more generous than employer plans, that encourages employers to drop coverage. Health care costs are expensive for employers, too.”

Jonathan Gruber, an authority board member and economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had argued against expanded subsidies, saying they were unnecessary and costly to the state. Still, he said Wednesday that he would vote for the plan.

“If they’re going to throw money at an issue, they threw it in the right place,” he said. “That said, it is a lot of money, and going forward we’re going to have to be careful not to address all the problems by putting more money into it.”

For Andrea Peña, a single mother of three, the proposal would make possible better and more secure health care coverage. Ms. Peña, a 39-year-old dental assistant who lives in public housing in South Boston, has been receiving Medicaid, but the income from her two part-time jobs recently increased to above $20,000, threatening to disqualify her from state aid. Under the new plan, Ms. Peña would be eligible for free state-sponsored insurance that would provide better dental and vision coverage.

“Just imagine if something were to happen to me,” Ms. Peña said. “Thanks to this I don’t have to worry about that any more.”

    Massachusetts Offers Details on Health Coverage, NYT, 12.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/us/12mass.html

Full Federal Appellate Court Will Revisit Abortion Issue in South Dakota

April 11, 2007
The New York Times
By SUSAN SAULNY

A South Dakota law that would require doctors to tell women seeking abortions that the procedure would “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being” will be revisited today by the 11 judges of the federal appeals court in St. Louis.

The statute is among many abortion laws around the country requiring counseling and consent. Such laws have been upheld in the Supreme Court and in federal appeals courts, but a federal judge has blocked South Dakota’s law while she considers its constitutionality.

The appeals court hearing is a second take on an October decision by a three-judge panel of the same body, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, that the law should remain blocked because it supplements factual information with a value judgment. The full Eighth Circuit court, acting on an appeal by the state, agreed to reconsider whether to allow the law to take effect.

South Dakota’s attorney general, Larry Long, said the appeal was largely based on the one dissenting view on the three-judge panel: that the required disclosure was an obvious fact. The State Legislature, Mr. Long said, had defined “human being” to mean a member of the species homo sapiens, and that phrase does not include a value judgment.

“Human being is not a loaded phrase,” he said. “That definition everyone agreed was appropriate.”

Mimi Liu, a lawyer for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which brought the suit, said the law violated the First Amendment.

“We were surprised that the Eighth Circuit decided to rehear this case, but we believe that the law is one our side, as the panel already found,” said Ms. Liu. Planned Parenthood is the only abortion provider in South Dakota.

“What we are fighting is the imposition of a state mandated non-science-based script read by a doctor to a patient in an attempt to intimidate the patient,” said Sarah Stoesz, the chief executive for Planned Parenthood in the three-state region of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

The Legislature said the measure, which was enacted in 2005, was merely meant to fully inform women. It required that the statement about the life that would be terminated be made in writing, along with a dozen other statements, including some about the legal relationship between the mother and the fetus, and others about the increased risk of depression and suicide after abortions.

Patients would be required to sign each page of a written disclosure. Doctors would be required to certify whether they thought that the patient fully understood all the information.

The preliminary injunction blocking the law before it could take effect was issued in June 2005 by Judge Karen E. Schreier in Rapid City, S.D.

Judge Schreier wrote, “The South Dakota statute requires abortion doctors to enunciate the state’s viewpoint on an unsettled medical, philosophical, theological and scientific issue, that is, whether a fetus is a human being.”

The decision on the law’s constitutionality is still before Judge Schreier.

The full Eighth Circuit court’s decision on the injunction is not expected until late summer or early fall.

The fate of a different abortion law was decided in the November midterm elections, when a majority of voters in South Dakota rejected a broad ban on abortion.

    Full Federal Appellate Court Will Revisit Abortion Issue in South Dakota, NYT, 11.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/us/11abortion.html

Challenge to Emissions Rule Is Set to Start

April 10, 2007
The New York Times
By DANNY HAKIM

The fight over cars and carbon dioxide moves today from the Supreme Court to a federal courtroom in Burlington, Vt., in a case that automakers say could reshape vehicles sold on the East and West Coasts.

The industry is suing to block a 2004 California regulation on global warming from taking effect. The rule would require a 30 percent cut in emissions of greenhouse gases from cars and trucks sold in Vermont and New York, which follow California’s air quality rules, to be fully phased in by the 2016 model year.

In court filings, automakers have argued that regulating the emissions will increase pollution, cause more traffic deaths and lead domestic automakers to stop selling most of their passenger models in states that adopt such regulations.

The companies have disputed that global warming is a problem, even though they have acknowledged it in different forums as a serious problem. And they tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to close much of this case to the public.

“This is a huge issue to consumers, because it may well determine what vehicles are available for them to purchase,” said Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which includes General Motors, Toyota and most other large automakers. “If it’s a big issue for consumers, it’s a big issue to us.”

Environmental groups and the offices of the attorneys general in Vermont and New York, which is a party to the case, say the automakers are overstating the complexity and hardship of such a regulation.

“It’s that sky-is-falling approach, but the sky didn’t fall with catalytic converters,” Attorney General William H. Sorrell of Vermont said, referring to the antipollution technology forced on the industry in the 1970s.

Last week, in a 5-to-4 decision in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court ruled that the agency has the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases in automobiles. The Bush administration has long opposed that.

Instead, more than 12 states, including California, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont, have already or are in the process of moving to regulate such emissions.

California has the authority to set air-quality rules, and Northeastern states have long chosen to follow those rules instead of Washington’s. The Supreme Court victory was important for the states, because the approval of the environmental agency is needed before California can regulate emissions involving global warming.

Automakers have sued to block the California regulation in federal courts in California, Rhode Island and Vermont, though just the Vermont case has gone forward. That case is scheduled to enter the trial phase today.

The battle has exposed fault lines among automakers. Two trade groups representing the major manufacturers are involved in the suit, one dominated by domestic producers and one by foreign.

They have clashed in their legal strategies, and just G.M. and DaimlerChrysler, two of the more outspoken companies opposing the new regulation, are directly listed as plaintiffs. The trade groups had initially sued separately but are now plaintiffs in a consolidated suit.

The main legal argument uniting the industry is their contention that states cannot regulate carbon dioxide emissions because that would be little different from regulating fuel economy, and Washington has the sole authority to set mileage standards. The recent Supreme Court ruling, however, appeared to undermine that argument.

The industry estimates that the new regulation would impose a 50 percent increase in fuel economy for passenger cars and small sport-utility vehicles but a more modest increase for large trucks, effectively making it harder for a company like G.M. to bring smaller vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu into compliance than its Hummers.

An expert hired by automakers said, according to court filings, that DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor and G.M. “will need largely to exit” from the passenger car and small truck markets.

Environmental groups say the industry is ignoring the potential effects of its move to bolster alternative fuels like ethanol, as well as the advent of hybrid electric technology and other technologies.

Automakers argued in a court filing in January that “defendants make unsubstantiated predictions that global climate change is having a number of alarming adverse effects.”

Michael J. Stanton, the president of the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, a plaintiff group, said in an interview the position did not represent the views of the mostly Asian automakers who are his constituents, some of whom are trying to create “eco-friendly” reputations.

“We believe that there is enough information out there to address climate change and we know that cars — passenger cars and light trucks — contribute, and we want to be part of the solution,” Mr. Stanton said.

The regulation California adopted in 2004 was to begin taking effect with 2009 models and to be phased in over eight years. President Bush and Congress more recently discussed fuel economy rules that could potentially accomplish similar reductions for gases tied to global warming, though no firm plan is in place.

Among other points, the industry says more fuel efficient cars could be dangerous, because they will be cheaper to drive and lead people to drive more and potentially have more accidents.

“Everybody’s getting a good laugh out of the safety claim,” said David Bookbinder, a lawyer for the Sierra Club, which is a party to the case. “Detroit is saying it’s a bad idea for everybody to drive more.”

    Challenge to Emissions Rule Is Set to Start, NYT, 10.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/us/10dioxide.html

Changing of Guard in Senate as 11 Step Down in New Jersey

March 26, 2007
The New York Times
By RONALD SMOTHERS

TRENTON, March 23 — None of them are getting any younger. Some of them have one eye on the future and the other on the aggressive United States attorney. And for others, several long looks at their younger challengers have helped them make up their minds.

For one reason or another, in an otherwise politically becalmed year, the New Jersey Senate is about to lose 11 of its 40 members, including the longest-serving legislator in the state’s history.

“That’s remarkable,” said Tim Storey, a senior research fellow with the National Conference of State Legislatures. “And to see that in the middle of the decade is a surprise,” he added, explaining that it was usually redistricting every 10 years that caused such wholesale departures.

Despite the retirements, no drastic change is expected in the Democrats’ slim 22-to-18 majority. The three Democrats and eight Republicans who are retiring come from generally safe districts.

But with so many high-ranking and long-serving legislators leaving, there is bound to be a change in the way the Senate goes about its business.

Among the Democrats not returning are Wayne R. Bryant of Camden County, a former chairman of the Budget and Appropriations Committee, and two longtime legislators from Hudson County, Bernard F. Kenny Jr., the majority leader, and Joseph V. Doria Jr., a former Assembly speaker who was elected to the Senate in 2004.

On the Republican side there is Senator Robert E. Littell of Sussex County, who with 40 years of service is New Jersey’s longest-serving legislator. And William L. Gormley, 60, a highly regarded 29-year veteran and one-time Judiciary Committee chairman known for a savvy give-and-take with Democrats, said last month that he would step down.

Yet this year is not at all like 1974, when an anti-Republican reaction to the Watergate scandal caused 24 senators to retire or be defeated, shifting control to the Democrats. A similar turnover took place after Gov. Jim Florio, a Democrat, pushed through an unpopular tax increase in 1992. Twenty Democratic senators retired or were defeated because of their support for the tax increases, and soon after, Mr. Florio lost his re-election bid.

That said, political researchers found that the 27.5 percent retirement rate this year was higher than normal in states without term limits. Mr. Storey said that such departures usually average 20 percent nationwide.

The raft of retirements comes at a time when New Jersey lawmakers are staying in office longer. Of the 5,406 Assembly and Senate members in the state’s 230-year history, 416, or 7.7 percent, served at least 10 years, and most of those have served in the last 40 years, said Peter J. Mazzei of the state’s Office of Legislative Services.

And to take it one step farther, Mr. Mazzei said, 55.8 percent of state lawmakers currently in office have served at least 10 years. The average service of the 11 retiring senators is more than 20 years.

He said that from 1776 to the mid-1960s members of the Legislature usually served one to three terms. During much of that time, he explained, geography determined political destiny because Senate districts were defined by county lines. County party chairmen were the kingmakers, doling out opportunities to run for local office to the party faithful.

“In the past, the bosses saw it in their interest to pass the goodies around,” said State Senator Leonard Lance, 54, the Republican minority leader and a student of the State Legislature. “They didn’t want anyone to get too powerful and that was with both parties.”

But after a United States Supreme Court decision in the 1960s established the one-person, one-vote doctrine, Mr. Mazzei said, such county-based boundaries collapsed, giving way to districts that embraced one or more counties and elections in which the candidate — and not the party — was central.

After the Supreme Court decision, the state bodies “emerged from their slumber” and became more active in policymaking, said Mr. Storey, the researcher for the National Conference of State Legislatures. Consequently, they were more attractive places to be, and lawmakers stayed longer and longer.

Yet despite the power they may have gained, state senators attribute the high number of retirements this year in part to age and burnout. The average age of the retirees is 68 — 10 of the 11 are at least 60.

Of course, advancing age or not, the reasons for leaving vary.

In the case of the two Democratic senators from Hudson County — Mr. Kenny, 60, with 20 years in the Legislature, and Mr. Doria, 60, with 27 years as a lawmaker — there is an additional incentive: stiff challenges.

The same is true for Mr. Littell, 71. A courtly and moderate lawmaker in failing health, he was facing a primary challenge from Guy R. Gregg, 57, an outspoken assemblyman from the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

And there are more pressing reasons. Mr. Bryant, 59, who has been a lawmaker for 25 years, is being investigated by the United States attorney for New Jersey, Christopher J. Christie. He is looking into whether Mr. Bryant received a $38,000 no-show job from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in exchange for helping the school obtain state grants.

And Martha W. Bark, 78, a Republican from Burlington County who has been in office 12 years, announced that she was retiring amid an ethics investigation into allegations that she held two no-show consultancies with county agencies in an effort to increase her state pension. The charges were never resolved by an ethics commission, which said it lacked jurisdiction, but the questions persisted.

Mr. Lance, whose father was both an assemblyman and a Senate president, said that this was the “largest bunch” to retire in his time and that the Senate would be losing a lot of “institutional memory.”

Ingrid W. Reed, director of the New Jersey Project of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, said that in many ways the retirements could be seen as the start of a “generational change in the Legislature.”

Some departures resulted from ethnic and racial changes in districts like Mr. Doria’s, where black voters have been regrouping in the Jersey City portion of the district to mount a strong challenge. Mr. Doria, who is the mayor of Bayonne, also faced strong challenges from Hispanics and others in his mayoral race.

But Ms. Reed did not discount the increased attention being paid to the work of the Legislature because of questions about ethics that are chasing lawmakers away.

Alan Rosenthal, a political scientist and expert on state legislatures who works at the Eagleton Institute, said that by his count, five of the departures were “involuntary” for reasons of ethics or the “feel of the hot breath of opponents on their necks.”

This is especially true of the minority party in the Senate, he said, because the “old days of collegiality are gone.”

“The Republicans have no footing now and with no footing it is no fun,” he said.

Senator Leonard T. Connors Jr., 77, the mayor of Surf City for the past 41 years, says the increasingly partisan tone prompted him to step aside after 25 years in the Legislature.

“I am disappointed and don’t see where we are accomplishing very much,” said Mr. Connors, whose son Christopher, an assemblyman, has been picked to assume the Senate seat. “When I was a boat captain, I would never leave shore without a compass. Our state doesn’t have a compass, and I just figured it was time to move over and let someone else try.”

The four other senators who are stepping down, all Republicans, are Walter J. Kavanaugh, 73, of Somerset County; Henry P. McNamara, 72, of Bergen County; Robert J. Martin, 60, of Bergen County; and Joseph A. Palaia, 80, of Monmouth County.

As for Mr. Doria, he said that in addition to the desire to spend more time with his family, he was leaving because he recognized that based on changes in his district it was time to move on.

But he is also angered by the level of public cynicism about the Legislature and the state itself.

“After a while it begins to demean the service, and you wonder what it is all about,” he said. “It is grinding on your psyche. It seems that all of us forget that the institution of the Legislature is important and needs good people involved in the process.”

    Changing of Guard in Senate as 11 Step Down in New Jersey, NYT, 26.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/nyregion/26retire.html

Louisiana Governor Won’t Seek 2nd Term

March 21, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, March 20 — Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, politically battered by a shaky post-Hurricane Katrina performance, announced Tuesday that she would not seek election to a second term this fall.

The Democratic governor’s announcement ends months of speculation in Louisiana political circles, fueled by dismal poll ratings that showed her capturing barely a third of the vote against a Republican challenger, Bobby Jindal, a congressman from the New Orleans suburbs.

In a brief televised statement from the governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge, Ms. Blanco said: “While so many still suffer, I am choosing to do what I believe is best for my state. I will focus my time and my energy for the next nine months on the people’s work, not on politics. After much thought and prayer, I have decided I will not seek re-election as your governor.”

Ms. Blanco never recovered from the widespread sense that developed in the hurricane’s immediate aftermath: that she was overwhelmed by the catastrophe, and flustered by it. Louisianians placed blame for a slow recovery partly on her and on policies that produced meager results. Most recently, her Road Home aid program, which has helped only a tiny fraction of ruined homeowners, has come in for particular criticism.

With Ms. Blanco, 64, out of the race, the attention of Democrats is now likely to be focused on former Senator John B. Breaux, who remains popular in the state and who has hinted for weeks that he would run if the incumbent did not. His entry would complicate matters for Mr. Jindal, who had been considered a near shoo-in against Ms. Blanco.

Mr. Breaux, now a lobbyist in Washington, was considered a conservative Democrat known for his close ties to leaders of both parties, and many in Louisiana are hoping he will have more influence with the Bush administration and with Congress than did Ms. Blanco. Mr. Breaux had no immediate comment on the governor’s announcement, other than to wish her well, but is likely to be called on to summon up the coalition of blacks, rural Cajuns and urban Democrats that has aided the party’s candidates in the past.

Under Louisiana’s idiosyncratic system, candidates of all parties will run together in an open primary on Oct. 20, with a runoff between the top two finishers following if no candidate exceeds 50 percent of the vote.

Republicans have already begun attacking Mr. Breaux, who served 14 years in the House and 18 more in the Senate, over his lack of a residence in Louisiana. He has long been absent from the state, and a television advertisement suggests that he may not meet its residency requirements.

With Ms. Blanco’s having fared so poorly in polls against Mr. Jindal, whom she defeated in the 2003 runoff, political veterans spoke of Tuesday’s announcement as all but inevitable. The hurricane hardly enhanced the reputation of any of the state’s politicians, but with Ms. Blanco the damage appeared to be most severe. Katrina undid her.

“Her political business was over with,” said Roy Fletcher, a consultant in Baton Rouge. “It was over with two weeks after the storm. She lost any aura of competence she could have had prior to the storm.”

Ms. Blanco’s first year and a half in office were quiet. She pushed modest agendas in an often-recalcitrant Legislature, with partial success. Her personal warmth and small-town Cajun roots helped her build coalitions among the independent-minded lawmakers, many of whom had served with her in the Louisiana House.

But then with New Orleans submerged by flood that the storm had brought, she appeared on television with tears welling in her eyes, calling for prayer. It was not the picture of decisive leadership that desperate Louisianians were yearning for. She appeared overwhelmed by events.

With the state reeling in the aftermath, Ms. Blanco was criticized for waiting weeks before calling the Legislature into session. Then she failed to get quickly behind reform of the state’s dysfunctional levee boards, an issue that seized the public imagination in New Orleans. A state board that she created, the Louisiana Recovery Authority, or L.R.A., has had only a limited effect as an agent in reconstruction.

But perhaps her biggest failure in the public’s eyes was the Road Home program, which she set up to distribute some $7.5 billion in federal aid to homeowners. Though more than 115,000 people have applied for the grants, hoping to get as much as $150,000 to rebuild, only 2,300 have begun to get access to the money.

Homeowner groups have berated the governor for months, and just last week federal officials told the state that it was not disbursing the money properly. “I don’t know right now the best course of action,” the News Orleans daily, The Times-Picayune, quoted her as saying, a remark that did nothing to mitigate her reputation for indecisiveness.

“The only things she could come up with were the L.R.A. and the Road Home, and both of those have been debacles,” said Mr. Fletcher, the Baton Rouge political consultant.

Wayne Parent, a political scientist at Louisiana State University, said: “It definitely seemed like anything she did couldn’t pull her above the perception that she was doing things wrong. It’s been a very rough 17 months for her.”

Leslie Eaton contributed reporting.

    Louisiana Governor Won’t Seek 2nd Term, NYT, 21.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/us/21louisiana.html

Texas Lawmakers Vote on Cancer Vaccine

March 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:59 a.m. ET
The New York Times

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Texas lawmakers are fighting to block the governor's order requiring that sixth-grade girls be vaccinated against the virus that causes cervical cancer, with the House giving key approval to a bill to make the shots strictly voluntary.

Gov. Rick Perry's executive order has inflamed conservatives who say it contradicts Texas' abstinence-only sexual education policies and intrudes into family lives. Some critics also have questioned whether the vaccine has been proven safe.

The House voted 119-21 on Tuesday to approve a bill that would keep the vaccine off the list of required shots for school attendance. The measure was likely to get a final House vote Wednesday to send it on to the state Senate.

The 119 votes for the bill Tuesday would be more than enough to override a veto by the governor.

The vaccine protects girls against some strains of human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually transmitted virus that causes most cases of cervical cancer. A February report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that one in four U.S. women ages 14 to 59 is infected with the virus.

Perry's order directed Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins to adopt rules to vaccinate all girls entering the sixth grade as of September 2008. Parents could have refused the shots for their daughters.

Lawmakers said the governor circumvented the legislative process.

The bill adopted Tuesday ''will not take away the option for a single girl or a single family in this state to choose to vaccinate a child,'' said Republican Rep. Dennis Bonnen of Angleton, the lead author of the bill. ''It simply says a family must make that choice, not a state government.''

The governor's office has estimated that only 25 percent of young women in Texas would get the vaccine if it is not mandatory.

Critics also have argued that the vaccine, called Gardasil, was too new and its effects needed to be further studied before mandating it for Texas schoolgirls. The Food and Drug Administration approved Gardasil last year.

Elsewhere, a New Mexico bill that requiring the shots for sixth-grade girls is expected to be signed by the end of this week by Gov. Bill Richardson, spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said. And Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has said he would sign a similar bill passed by his state's Legislature.

Although the Wyoming Legislature recently rejected a request for $4 million specifically to fund HPV vaccination, the state's Department of Health intends to continue offering the vaccine to eligible girls with existing funding until the money run out.

In other states, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick's budget proposal, unveiled in February, proposed offering free shots in a voluntary program to all girls ages 9 to 18. A California Assembly committee on Tuesday put off voting on a bill that would require girls entering the seventh grade to be vaccinated against HPV.

    Texas Lawmakers Vote on Cancer Vaccine, NYT, 14.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Cancer-Vaccine-Texas.html

Where Tobacco Ruled, Smoking Ban Gains Ground

March 12, 2007
The New York Times
By THEO EMERY

ADAMS, Tenn., March 8 — A century ago, a battle called the Black Patch War raged across Robertson County, where Rick Gregory’s ancestors grew tobacco. In the vicious fight over prices, nightriders with rifles raided farms and dynamited equipment. Tobacco barns burned in the night, and salted beds lay fallow.

That tobacco war ended long ago, but in recent years, the crop grown in places like Robertson County has fueled another battle, this time over smoking, that has reached far beyond the rich tobacco fields along the Kentucky border.

Tennessee will probably become the first major tobacco-growing state to pass a comprehensive smoke-free-workplace law. Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, proposed the ban in February. He also wants to triple taxes on cigarette sales and to use some of the money for smoking prevention.

The proposals show how far public policy toward smoking has shifted, even in tobacco-friendly Robertson County, Mr. Gregory said.

Mr. Gregory, 56, worked in his family’s fields as a youngster and put himself through college on tobacco profits. Now a historian and a smoking opponent, he says the battle over tobacco is over. This year, he said, there will be none planted in his farm’s rich bottom along the banks of the Red River.

“I think the fact that the governor will support a smoking ban shows not only the change that’s taking place in Robertson County, but the change that’s taking place in the state as a whole,” he said. “Politically it would have been suicide, until fairly recently.”

Mr. Bredesen said he proposed the ban because he felt the time was right. The harmful effects of smoking are well documented, he said, and tobacco’s declining clout in the state has now made it possible.

“It’s something you couldn’t have done in Tennessee a decade ago,” Mr. Bredesen said. “I think people are ready for it. Everything is not seen through the prism of being a tobacco state.”

The legislation is expected to pass this year because of its support — if qualified — in the General Assembly from both the House speaker and Senate president, and important business groups, including the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce.

Not everyone, however, is thrilled. Paul McKinney, who grows only a small amount of tobacco on his farm, compared the proposal to forbidding alcohol and unhealthy foods.

“I can see raising the tax and getting more money,” Mr. McKinney said, “but if you’re planning on just banning tobacco altogether, you’re killing the goose that’s laying the golden egg.”

Tennessee’s dependence on tobacco has made the state one of the most hostile in the nation to tobacco regulation. As antismoking laws spread, Tennessee has given free rein to smokers. The only restriction aside from a few local regulations is a year-old ban on smoking in state buildings.

Washington, D.C.; Puerto Rico; and 22 states have passed bans on smoking in bars, restaurants, or all workplaces. The top tobacco growing states — North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and South Carolina — have not passed such legislation, according to Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, an advocacy group based in Berkeley, Calif.

“What’s exciting here is that we’re seeing more activity in what is traditionally tobacco country,” said Annie Tegen, senior program manager for the group. “Times are definitely changing, and just because they grow tobacco there does not mean that they’re not going to take public health seriously.”

Gary Nolan, a spokesman for the Smokers’ Club, a national property rights group, said the possibility of such a law in a tobacco state is unusual, but not surprising. Tobacco, Mr. Nolan said, is the “enemy du jour” for smoking opponents, who he called “antis.”

Tobacco’s falling fortunes can be seen in Tennessee’s annual crop statistics. The state’s peak tobacco year — for both burley, a light-colored tobacco used for cigarettes, and dark-fired tobacco used for dipping — was 1982, when farmers harvested 178 million pounds valued at nearly $307 million, data from the federal Department of Agriculture show.

In 1999, the harvest was 122 million pounds, valued at $239 million. After a 2005 federal tobacco buyout compensated growers who backed out of the industry, farmers last year harvested 49 million pounds, worth $93 million, the statistics show.

The state agriculture commissioner, Ken Givens, a former tobacco farmer who once headed the Agriculture Committee in the State House of Representatives, said there had been a sea change in tobacco’s role in state politics. As recently as 10 years ago, politicians seeking to regulate tobacco could expect to be pilloried.

“The profitability is gone,” Mr. Givens said, “and a lot of farmers have simply exited the program and are not doing it anymore, so it’s not like a golden crop.”

In times past, tobacco was the economic engine in places like Robertson County. Visitors to Springfield, the county seat, about 30 miles north of Nashville, drove beneath enormous archways on the city’s north and south sides that read “World’s Finest Dark Fired Tobacco.”

The signs are gone, and around the city rolling farmland once famous for the quality of its tobacco is sprouting residential neighborhoods, the deep red dirt smoothed into future lawns around neat rows of new homes.

In Springfield, the Courthouse Cafe faces the town’s historic square. On a recent afternoon, about half the customers smoked as they chatted around tables and along the lunch counter.

Gwen Copeland, a 52-year-old waitress, slid into a bright yellow booth and lighted a Kool Mild 100, leaning over for spoonfuls of sundae offered by a customer’s young daughter. Ms. Copeland does not feel any ambivalence about the proposal.

“Well, I think it’s a free country, and I should be able to smoke if I want to,” she said, adding, “It used to be a free country. Now you can’t do anything.”

A few doors away, tobacco is the centerpiece of the Robertson County History Museum. An exhibit displays photos of tobacco barns and warehouses, antique pouches and cigarette tins, and an 1892 Winchester nightrider rifle. A plaque on the wall reads, in part, “Robertson County can always remember when tobacco was king.”

A museum employee, Peggy Mofield, leads the way to the museum’s basement, flicking on overhead lights to show more relics: an old desk from a tobacco company, a sheaf of dried leaves on top, and a low hand cart called a duckbill beside it, piled with baskets stenciled with the words “tobacco pride.”

Ms. Mofield, 72, said she quit smoking 20 years ago for health reasons. She agreed that a tobacco ban in Tennessee would have been unthinkable a few years ago. But the grip of tobacco companies has weakened, she said, and knowledge about smoking’s harmful effects has widened.

Tapping her temple with her index finger, she smiled and said, “We’re getting smarter.”

    Where Tobacco Ruled, Smoking Ban Gains Ground, NYT, 12.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/us/12tobacco.html

 Court Rejects Strict Gun Law as Unconstitutional        NYT        10.3.2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/washington/10gun.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Court Rejects Strict Gun Law as Unconstitutional

March 10, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

Interpreting the Second Amendment broadly, a federal appeals court in Washington yesterday struck down a gun control law in the District of Columbia that bars residents from keeping handguns in their homes.

The decision was the first from a federal appeals court to hold a gun control law unconstitutional on the ground that the Second Amendment protects the rights of individuals, as opposed to the collective rights of state militias. Nine other federal appeals courts around the nation have rejected that interpretation.

Linda Singer, the District’s acting attorney general, said the decision was “a huge setback.”

“We’ve been making progress on bringing down crime and gun violence,” Ms. Singer said, “and this sends us in a different direction.”

By contrast, advocates of gun rights praised the decision, by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, saying it raised the prospect of a national re-evaluation of the meaning of the Second Amendment and the rights of gun owners. They said the District of Columbia would have to begin procedures to allow handgun possession in private homes unless yesterday’s decision was stayed.

Lawyers on both sides of the case said it had created a conflict among the federal courts of appeal on a significant constitutional issue, making review by the Supreme Court likely. The Supreme Court last considered the issue in 1939, and there are only scattered hints about how the current justices might rule.

The majority in yesterday’s decision pointed to a 1998 dissent in which “at least three current members (and one former member) of the Supreme Court have read ‘bear arms’ in the Second Amendment to have meaning beyond mere soldiering.” They were former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in 2005, and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia and David H. Souter.

In a 1996 dissent while serving on the federal appeals court in Philadelphia, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., now a justice of the Supreme Court, wrote that he would have struck down a federal law regulating the possession of machine guns under the commerce clause of the Constitution.

If the Supreme Court were to adopt the District of Columbia Circuit’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, gun control laws and gun prosecutions around the country could be endangered.

The case decided yesterday was brought by Dick Heller, a guard at the Federal Judicial Center who was permitted to carry a gun on duty and wanted to keep one at home. His application was denied by officials in the District of Columbia.

Mr. Heller challenged provisions of the District’s law, one of the most restrictive in the nation, that almost always banned the registration of handguns, that prohibited carrying handguns without a license even from one room of a home to another and that required lawfully owned firearms to be kept unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.

In a 2-to-1 decision, a panel of the District of Columbia Circuit court ruled those provisions unconstitutional.

The decision relied on what has so far been a minority interpretation of the Second Amendment, though one that has been embraced by the Justice Department in the current administration and by some constitutional scholars.

The Second Amendment says, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The basic question in the case was whether the first clause in the amendment limits the last one. Most federal appeals courts have said that the amendment read as a whole protects only a collective right of the states to maintain militias.

In yesterday’s decision, the majority focused on the final clause, saying that the amendment broadly protects the rights of individuals to own guns.

“It seems passing strange,” Judge Laurence H. Silberman wrote for the majority, “that the able lawyers and statesmen in the First Congress (including James Madison) would have expressed a sole concern for state militias with the language of the Second Amendment. Surely there was a more direct locution, such as ‘Congress shall make no law disarming the state militias’ or ‘states have a right to a well-regulated militia.’ ”

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which hears appeals from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, also embraced the individual-rights view of the Second Amendment in 2001. But it did so in an aside in a ruling that allowed a gun prosecution to go forward.

By contrast, said Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and one of Mr. Heller’s lawyers, “the D.C. opinion is unequivocal.”

In a statement on its Web site, the National Rifle Association called the decision a significant victory that “affirmed that the Second Amendment of the Constitution protects an inherent, individual right to bear arms.”

The immediate consequence of the decision, Mr. Levy said, is that “D.C. will have to implement a process for enabling people to keep handguns in their houses.”

Speaking to reporters yesterday, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said the District was reviewing both the impact of the decision and the next steps it would take in the litigation. “Today’s decision flies in the face of laws that have helped decrease gun violence in the District of Columbia,” Mr. Fenty said at a news conference. “We intend to do everything in our power to get this decision overturned.”

Ms. Singer said it was small comfort that the decision, if not the potential sweep of its reasoning, was limited to guns in the home. “They’re often dangerous in the home,” she said. “Kids can be injured. And they often don’t stay at home.”

Judge Silberman, writing for the majority yesterday, said the decision’s reasoning still allowed “reasonable restrictions” on the ownership and use of guns, and he gave some examples. It is “presumably reasonable,” he wrote, to prohibit drunks from carrying weapons and to ban guns in churches and polling places. Judge Thomas B. Griffith joined the majority decision.

Judge Silberman concluded that the Second Amendment protects an individual right just as the First Amendment protects free speech and the Fourth Amendment bars unreasonable searches.

The majority rejected the District’s argument that the Second Amendment should apply only to the kinds of guns in use at the end of the 18th century.

Lawyers on both sides of the issue say the Supreme Court’s 1939 decision on the Second Amendment supports their views.

Judge Silberman wrote that the decision, United States v. Miller, “did not explicitly accept the individual-right position” but did implicitly assume it.

In dissent, Judge Karen L. Henderson said the Miller decision unambiguously declared, in her words, that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms relates to those militia whose continued vitality is required to safeguard the individual states.” Judge Henderson added that the District of Columbia is not a state, meaning that the Second Amendment does not apply to it.

Judge Silberman was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Judge Henderson by the first President George Bush and Judge Griffith by the current President Bush.

For many decades and under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the Justice Department said the Second Amendment protected only collective rights. The Bush administration reversed that longstanding position, saying the amendment protects the gun ownership rights of individuals, subject to a few restrictions.

Patricia Riley, a Justice Department official in the office of the United States attorney in the District, said yesterday that her office was “studying the decision and analyzing its effect on gun prosecutions.”

    Court Rejects Strict Gun Law as Unconstitutional, NYT, 10.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/washington/10gun.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Pennsylvania trial is first test of local immigration law

Thu Mar 8, 2007 5:01PM EST
Reuters
By Jon Hurdle

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania town's efforts to crack down on illegal immigration will be challenged by civil rights campaigners in a landmark federal trial beginning on Monday that could signal whether such local laws across the country can stand up to legal challenge.

Hazleton, a community of about 30,000, set the tone for dozens of other towns across the United States when it passed a law last year imposing penalties on businesses that hire undocumented aliens, and fining landlords who rent to them. The city council also declared English the official language.

Opponents of the law -- which has not been implemented because of a court injunction -- say it discriminates against anyone who appears to be foreign or who speaks no English. They say it has created a climate of fear where immigrants, whether legal or illegal, have been harassed, businesses have closed, and some people have left town.

Backers of such laws say the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants drive down wages, burden social services, increase crime and fail to assimilate into U.S. society.

About a third of Hazleton's residents are immigrants, mostly from central America. Around a quarter of the immigrant population is thought to be illegal, according to civil rights campaigners.

The trial is the first to test a local immigration law in a U.S. federal court, said Kristina Campbell, a staff attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is following the case.

WIDELY WATCHED CASE

Amid stalled efforts by Congress and urging by the White House to enact comprehensive immigration reform, similar measures have been passed or are being considered by around 70 other communities, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, a plaintiff in the Hazleton suit says.

Cesar Perales, chief counsel of the PRLDEF, said the trial is being watched by many such communities for guidance on whether their laws will survive a court challenge.

"Unless we strike down this type of ordinance, there will be others," Perales told reporters on a conference call.

Other plaintiffs include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Hazleton Hispanic Business Association, and a number of anonymous plaintiffs who say they have lost business or been harassed because of the law.

Kris Kobach, lead attorney for the City of Hazleton, denied the law is discriminatory. He said the law requires officials to reject any claim of illegality based on national origin, race or ethnicity.

Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, who led the campaign for the Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance and has become a national figurehead for anti-illegal immigrant campaigners, said as much as half the town's Hispanic population has left since the law was first passed in July 2006.

"The town has become quieter, there seems to be a calm across the city," Barletta said. He denied that the local economy has been hurt by the exodus.

Kimberly Lopez, a former Hazleton resident, said she and her husband closed their Hispanic grocery store in the town after business halved in response to the law.

"They were running scared," she told Reuters. "A lot of our customers said they were going somewhere else."

The trial takes place in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in Scranton, Pennsylvania before Judge James Munley.

(Additional reporting by Tim Gaynor in Phoenix)

    Pennsylvania trial is first test of local immigration law, R, 8.3.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0823236320070308

Conn. Bill Would Force MySpace Age Check

March 7, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:46 p.m. ET
The New York Times

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Connecticut lawmakers unveiled legislation Wednesday that would require MySpace.com and other social-networking sites to verify users' ages and obtain parental consent before minors can post profiles.

The bill comes a day after a man was sentenced to 14 years in prison for using MySpace.com to set up a sexual encounter with an 11-year-old Connecticut girl. It was one of the first federal sex cases involving the popular site.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who met with other attorneys general on Tuesday, said 10 to 20 other states are considering similar legislation.

''The technology is available. The solution is financially feasible, practically doable,'' he said. ''If we can put a man on the moon, we can check ages of people on these Web sites.''

Under the proposal, any networking site that fails to verify ages and obtain parental permission of users under 18 would face civil fines up to $5,000 per violation. Sites would have to check information about parents to make sure it is legitimate. Parents would be contacted directly when necessary.

MySpace did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The bill, which is scheduled for a public hearing on Thursday, would apply to any organized online networking organization, including chat rooms.

Parents, school administrators and law-enforcement authorities have been increasingly warning of online predators at sites like MySpace, whose youth-oriented visitors are encouraged to expand their circles of friends through messaging tools and personal profile pages. It has more than 100 million registered users.

The site has responded by expanding educational efforts and partnerships with law enforcement. It also adopted new restrictions on how adults may contact the site's younger users and has helped design tools for identifying profiles created by convicted sex offenders.

The site's current policy bars children under 14 from setting up profiles. Users who 14 or 15 can display their full profiles -- containing hobbies, schools and any other personal details -- only to people already on the teen's list of friends. Others see only the bare-bones profile, listing username, gender, age and location.

But MySpace relies on users to specify their age.

News Corp.'s MySpace is the largest social-networking site, with more than 100 million registered users.

    Conn. Bill Would Force MySpace Age Check, NYT, 7.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-MySpace-Dangers.html

Child Health Care Splits White House and States

February 27, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 — Governors clashed with the White House on Monday over the future of the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, an issue that some members of both parties said was as important as money for the Iraq war.

In the session at the White House, when President Bush reported on progress of the war, governors pressed him to provide more money so they could guarantee health insurance for children. In response, administration officials said states should make better use of the money they already had.

Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia, a Republican, said afterward, “Health care for children ought to be a priority, irrespective of anyone’s views on the war.”

Georgia will exhaust its allotment of federal money for the Children’s Health Insurance Program within three months, Mr. Perdue said. Thirteen other states expect to run out by September, according to data released here at the winter meeting of the National Governors Association.

Governors said the Clinton and Bush administrations had encouraged them to expand children’s coverage and had granted waivers allowing them to cover parents and even some childless adults.

Having successfully expanded the health insurance programs in their states, some governors now suggest that the Bush administration is pulling the safety net out from under many children.

In his budget this month, Mr. Bush said he wanted to return the program to its “original objective” of covering children with family incomes less than twice the poverty level. Budget documents note that 16 states cover children above that level and that “one state, New Jersey, covers children up to 350 percent of the federal poverty level.”

A family of four is classified poor if its annual income is less than $20,650.

An influential member of Congress said Monday that he would not be taking up White House proposals to restrict eligibility and financing for the child health program.

“I have absolutely no intention of moving the president’s proposals through our subcommittee,” said the lawmaker, Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey.

Mr. Pallone is chairman of the Health Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has authority over the children’s program.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday that “Democrats in Congress understand the urgency” of the problem and would provide money to the 14 states that did not have enough to cover their current enrollment. Although Mr. Bush would reduce federal payments for adults and for children with family incomes above 200 percent of the poverty level, Mr. Pallone said states should have discretion to cover children above 200 percent of the poverty level and adults in some circumstances, too.

“In New Jersey, we made a decision to go up to 350 percent of the poverty level, because we have the highest cost of living in the country,” Mr. Pallone said.

Likewise, he said, New Jersey found that covering adults increased the likelihood that their children would stay on the rolls.

“The hallmark of all this is flexibility,” Mr. Pallone said. “A robust Children’s Health Insurance Program is an important part of any effort to try to achieve universal coverage.”

The federal government spends $5 billion a year on the program. Mr. Bush wants to continue that level, and he is seeking an ”additional allotment” of $4.8 billion over the next five years.

States would need substantially more to continue their programs with current eligibility rules and benefits. New estimates from the Congressional Budget Office show that the states face shortfalls of $700 million this year and a total shortage of $13.4 billion from 2008 to 2012.

Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont, a Republican, said the Bush proposals would jeopardize his state’s phenomenal success in covering children. In Vermont, he said, fewer than 4 percent of the children are uninsured, and “we don’t want to lose ground.”

Bush administration officials emphasized that states received a fixed amount of federal money each year, and they said individual children did not have a legal entitlement to benefits. Michael O. Leavitt, secretary of health and human services, said he would work with Congress to find “a short-term solution” for states exhausting their allotments this year. He said states could avoid shortfalls by managing their programs better.

In his experience as governor of Utah, Mr. Leavitt said, “when we were out of an allotment, we just discontinued enrolling people until we had room.” Likewise, he said, states could cover more people if they provided less comprehensive benefits.

Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio, a Democrat, said: “If we don’t get the money we need, children will go without coverage.”

“In the meeting with the president and Secretary Leavitt,” Mr. Strickland said, “when questions were raised about children maybe having to be removed from the program or eligible children not being able to participate, we were told that that was basically a management problem.”

Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, a Democrat, said that under the president’s proposals “we will end up having fewer children covered.” That prospect “was chilling to some of us,” Mr. Corzine said, adding that states wanted to avoid “rationing health care to our most vulnerable and our most needy.”

Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, said Mr. Bush’s budget request was “clearly insufficient” to continue coverage for the six million children enrolled in the program.

Many governors want to expand the program, which they see as a foundation for their efforts to expand coverage generally.

Mr. Rendell framed the issue as a choice, asking: “Should we be giving tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires or should we be giving health care to children? Should we make health care for children, at the very least, an entitlement?”

Domestic policy is in a straitjacket because of the cost of the war, the cost of tax cuts and the president’s plan to balance the budget within five years, Mr. Rendell said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican, said federal aid was essential to his $12 billion plan for universal health coverage. Mr. Schwarzenegger said that in a private meeting he told the president, “We need the federal government’s help.” He did not say whether he got a commitment.

    Child Health Care Splits White House and States, NYT, 27.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/washington/27govs.html?hp

Democrats in State Capitols Push Antiwar Resolutions

February 16, 2007
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 15 — Frustrated by the inability of Democrats in Congress to pass a resolution opposing President Bush’s policies in Iraq, state legislators across the country, led by Democrats and under pressure from liberal advocacy groups, are pushing forward with their own resolutions.

Resolutions have passed in chambers of three legislatures, in California, Iowa and Vermont. The Maryland General Assembly sent a letter to its Congressional delegation, signed by a majority of the State Senate and close to a majority of the House, urging opposition to the increase in troops in Iraq.

Letters or resolutions are being drafted in at least 19 other states. The goal is to embarrass Congress into passing its own resolution and to provide cover for Democrats and Republicans looking for concrete evidence back home that anti-Iraq resolutions enjoy popular support.

“The end of this war has to start sometime and somewhere,” the president of the Iowa Senate, John P. Kibbie, a Democrat, said Thursday. “And stopping the expansion of these troops needs to happen now.”

The activity was spurred in a conference call last month that included state legislators; Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts; and advocacy groups like the Progressive States Network and MoveOn.org.

Mr. Kennedy said pressure by the states would push Washington to oppose the Iraq plans of the Bush administration. “Your voices, your calls, your e-mails and your resolutions have an impact on the debate,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Many Republicans in state legislatures have remained silent on the resolutions, seeing no advantage in signing or voting for them. Others have called the actions essentially votes of no confidence in the troops on the ground.

“These resolutions are a colossal waste of time,” said Kris Kobach, chairman of the Republican Party in Kansas, where a resolution was killed in committee. “Legislatures are spending valuable and limited time acting in an area where they have no authority. If all we are doing is sending messages, we should be concerned about the fact that soldiers are being told that their states are not behind them. I think that is particularly troubling.”

Many resolutions use language from the Progressive States Network that apes language in a proposed resolution in Congress that says President Bush should obtain explicit Congressional approval before adding troops in Iraq.

Other resolutions go further, calling for a deadline for departure, immediate troop withdrawal or stopping the financing of the war. The votes have largely fallen along party lines — Democrats for and Republicans against — although there have been exceptions. In North Dakota, a Democrat and a Republican are sponsoring a resolution urging Congress and Mr. Bush to “disengage American combat forces in Iraq.”

In a vote on Thursday in the Iowa Senate, Republicans insisted on a voice vote rather than a roll call on a resolution to condemn the increase in troops. The measure, which passed, is headed to the House, where its fate is uncertain.

The resolutions, much like the ones that Congress is considering, are nonbinding and have little effect beyond politics. But the states’ debates function as an echo chamber for the debate over withdrawing troops from Iraq and help demonstrate growing concerns on the war.

“These resolutions have generated an incredible amount of local media,” said Joel Barkin, executive director of the Progressive States Network, a liberal group that works to influence bills. “So they raise awareness that this is a local issue. But it is aimed at pressuring the Congress.”

In California, Democrats and Republicans in the State Senate spoke passionately about a resolution that passed on Tuesday.

“As a people, we are getting fed up and want to express it and not be haunted by the effects of silence,” said State Senator Carole Migden, Democrat of San Francisco, who sponsored the resolution. “We are trying to capture the mood of the people and offer some guidance as to how the largest state in the union is disposed in the matter.”

State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, Republican of Temecula, an opponent of the measure, said: “This resolution talks about not only opposing the troop increase but cutting off their funding. It lays bare the Democrats’ true intentions. So they can stop the platitudes about supporting the troops but not supporting the mission. They want us to lose this war.”

In states where Republicans control the legislatures, passage of such antiwar resolutions seems unlikely. Kansas lawmakers held a perfunctory hearing, only to have the committee chairman, Senator Pete Brungardt, Republican of Salina, say he would not schedule a vote.

“A number of people felt that was a rather public vote without an upside,” Mr. Brungardt said. “There is not really a winning answer for them.”

    Democrats in State Capitols Push Antiwar Resolutions, NYT, 16.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/us/16pressure.html

N.Y. Governor Escalates Feud With Legislature

February 9, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER and DANNY HAKIM

ALBANY, Feb. 8 — The battle between Gov. Eliot Spitzer and the state lawmakers erupted into an all-out war on Thursday, as the governor began to visit the districts of fellow Democrats in the Legislature to assail their decision to make one of their colleagues the state’s top financial officer.

During a swing through Syracuse that was originally scheduled for the governor to promote his budget priorities, Mr. Spitzer denounced a local assemblyman, William B. Magnarelli, for reneging on the agreement that the Legislature had made to select a comptroller from a list of qualified candidates put forward by a screening committee.

“Bill Magnarelli is one of those unfortunate Assembly members who just raises his hand when he’s told to do so, and didn’t even bother to stand up and say, ‘Whose interest am I representing?’ ” he told The Post-Standard of Syracuse on Thursday.

It was, by Albany standards, a shocking breach of etiquette for a sitting governor to lambaste a colleague from his own party in his home district.

And it reflected a sharp escalation of the take-no-prisoners approach that has characterized his administration in its first six weeks. During that time, he has derided what he portrayed as the “Rip van Winkle” years of former Gov. George E. Pataki, privately told the Assembly minority leader that he was a “steamroller” who would roll over anyone in his way, and infuriated his fellow Democrats in the Assembly by accusing them of “cronyism” in the fight over the new comptroller.

The battle between the new Democratic governor and Democrats in the Assembly heated up on several fronts Thursday. The governor canceled a getting-to-know-you lunch with Assembly Democrats next Monday, as well as a $10,000-a-head fund-raiser next week for the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee.

And his budget tour included several stops in the districts of Assembly Democrats who had sided with the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, in the comptroller battle — including some who hold seats in swing districts where the Republicans could be expected to make inroads. An aide said that the governor might criticize their votes on the comptroller at more of these stops.

With the public, Mr. Spitzer has indeed been a steamroller. He won a landslide victory in November, and this week he helped elect a Democrat to a State Senate seat in Nassau County that has been held by Republicans for decades. In Albany, though, only 212 people matter: the lawmakers he needs to enact his budget and his ethics proposals.

Aides to Mr. Spitzer say his aggressive style, willingness to engage, and outspokenness in his first weeks in office are all part of his strategy to push his agenda through a famously recalcitrant Legislature: that way, they believe, he can capture the public’s attention, and enlist it on his side. But lawmakers in Albany rarely face close elections, so, as many of Mr. Spitzer’s predecessors can attest, it can be very hard to put political pressure on them.

Taking the case directly to the people could have its limits, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California found out.

Mr. Spitzer said in an interview on Thursday that his outspoken approach to governing was rooted in his belief that if the facts are on his side, the public will support him in his reform efforts. He compared his current political battle with the Legislature to some of the battles he waged with Wall Street during his years as the state attorney general.

“A status quo does not want itself revealed, whether it’s to investors, shareholders or voters,” he said. “It pushes back in a strenuous way. My response every time is, let’s just get out the facts, what are we trying to do and why. And I have this very simple-minded belief that we will win by presenting those facts.”

The governor likened his interaction with the Legislature to a chess game. “This is a game that will have many moves and will take time to play out,” he said. “Now the board is set. It is now clear who is genuinely for reform and who is not.”

Lawmakers, though, fear that Mr. Spitzer will continue to approach his job as governor like a prosecutor, an approach some lawmakers say could cause the Legislature to dig in its heels further, and lead to the gridlock that has paralyzed Albany for years. And when it comes to passing laws, passing the budget, ensuring an on-time budget or a late budget, the lawmakers hold all the cards.

The governor’s bellicosity has stunned lawmakers. “The tone of the governor’s comments are just awful,” said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester County Democrat who was in the running for the comptroller post. “It is one thing to have an argument, but to attack Billy Magnarelli personally — it isn’t politics.”

“It is absolutely possible to agree or disagree with the governor or the speaker without being morally inferior,” he said “We will listen with respect to the governor when he speaks respectfully to us, and we will do what we have to do to serve the public’s interest.”

Assemblyman Magnarelli tried to strike a conciliatory tone. “While I did not see eye to eye with the governor on this issue, we have agreed on several key reform measures this year,” he said in a statement.

Trying to break the hold that Speaker Silver has on his Assembly members, aides to the governor began reaching out Thursday to individual Assembly members, defying the usual protocol for negotiating only through the leadership.

The aides were telling lawmakers that the governor could have unilaterally appointed a comptroller before the Legislature went into session on Jan. 3, but chose not to, said one aide who was making calls. They also told lawmakers that Mr. Spitzer had asked for permission to directly address the Democrats in the Assembly about the comptroller selection, but was refused by Mr. Silver. And they told members that the Assembly was blocking their proposals for campaign finance laws, overhaul of the workers’ compensation system and civil confinement legislation

“We’re telling them, you are balking at doing further reform,” the aide said.

William T. Cunningham, who worked in the administrations of Govs. Hugh L. Carey and Mario M. Cuomo, said Mr. Spitzer was acting very much the way he said he would in his campaign — and compared his confrontational approach to a predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt.

“Roosevelt came in saying he was going to be a reform governor,” Mr. Cunningham said. “He immediately got into a fight with Senator Platt, the head of the Republicans, a powerful political boss in the state. History remembers Teddy Roosevelt. You have to be a knucklehead like me to remember Boss Platt.”

But Mr. Cunningham, who was also a communications director for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, noted that it could be hard to balance the public battles with the need to get things done. “The Assembly and Senate each have a moat around them, and governors have to figure out how to bridge that,” he said. “Sometimes you get them to lower the drawbridge, sometimes you have to lay siege. Sometimes, a little of both.”

Jeffrey M. Stonecash, a political science professor at Syracuse University, said he thought Governor Spitzer’s more direct, confrontational approach could ultimately help the public figure out what is at stake in policy battles they tend to tune out.

“My following of Cuomo and Pataki was that they were always engaged in an indirect, inside Albany process of working through issues,” he said. “I think it’s probably healthier for the state’s political process if he’s out in front, saying, ‘Here’s what I want to do; here’s what they’re not doing.’ ”

To Brooke A. Masters, the author of a biography of Mr. Spitzer, “Spoiling for a Fight” (Times Books, 2006), the contours of Mr. Spitzer’s first weeks in office were unsurprising. “Not only is he a combustible guy, but he came in saying he was going to blow things up,” she said. “To a certain extent, he would disappoint the people who elected him if he weren’t throwing bombs.”

But Ms. Masters said there may be a method to his combativeness. “I think Spitzer’s fight-picking is more calculated than people recognize,” she said. “He is obviously an energetic guy who does like to yell at people, but some of his fights are deliberate and are part of a strategy.”

    N.Y. Governor Escalates Feud With Legislature, NYT, 9.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/09/nyregion/09spitzer.html?hp&ex=1171083600&en=a199b615aacaf25a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Statehouse Journal

Less Is More, but in Idaho, Not for Long

February 9, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

BOISE, Idaho, Feb. 2 — When Gov. C. L. Otter took office last month and immediately halted construction work on the state Capitol his objections went beyond the $130 million price tag for the renovation and addition.

“My concern is also about the expansion of government,” said Mr. Otter, a Republican. “When you have more space, bureaucracy doesn’t like an empty office. It creates a vacuum. It sucks people into it, and all of a sudden you’ve got to have more people.”

The governor has since reached a deal with the Republican-controlled Legislature to cut the project in half, allowing construction to go forward, although not until the new individual offices for legislators are removed from the blueprints.

Yet if Mr. Otter won this round, he might well savor the moment because Idaho’s government is growing whether or not government buildings grow with it.

In a conservative state that has long viewed government with suspicion, that still means conflict. But even the governor’s fellow Republicans concede that the momentum here shifted years ago from bait-and-bullet to New West boutique. As with so many other decreasingly rugged places in the inland West, there is more of everybody in Idaho now: techies, Democrats, immigrants, environmentalists. Ten thousand people showed up at Boise State University last month to hear Al Gore talk about global warming. Ten thousand people. To hear Al Gore. In Idaho.

The state’s population, almost 1.5 million, is up nearly 50 percent since 1990 and some projections show it gaining another 50 percent or more by 2020.

While the growth has brought a sophisticated new economy, it has also brought demands for more spending on education and transportation and concerns about high taxes, too much development and a trampled environment.

And a ton more government.

In 1991, the state budget was $900 million. This year it is $2.6 billion. In 1985, there were 11,876 state employees. In 2005, there were 17,528.

In 1985, the number of pages of legislation passed was 759. Last year it was 1,581.

The public spaces where many of the issues are aired, however, are the same small hearing rooms, some with a single row of chairs for the public, where part-time lawmakers and a few interested stakeholders once wrangled largely over matters of mining, farming and logging.

Now, although the Legislature is still part-time, people squeeze into the back of hearing rooms, huddle in doorways or crowd around speakers that broadcast committee discussions out into the rotunda. (The volume dial on the speaker outside one hearing room was turned all the way up to 10 this week.)

“It was designed to not have very much public participation in the process,” Speaker of the House Lawerence E. Denney said of the Capitol.

While there now are more citizens who follow the Legislature, more people are paid to participate as well. About 75 lobbyists were members of the Idaho Legislative Advisors when Jan Eyth first started serving coffee and snacks in the group’s tiny lounge on the Capitol’s fourth floor in 1985. Now, Ms. Eyth said, there are more than 150 members, and there are more than 300 registered lobbyists in the state.

Still, some say, interpret this change carefully.

“You know what lobbyists are?” said Russell Westerberg, a lobbyist from Soda Springs who came to Boise as a state representative in 1975. “They’re the people that the people have to pay to protect them from the people that they elected.” He added, “It’s still Idaho; the government that governs least, governs best.”

The Capitol, in which a light-filled rotunda is lined with bright marble, once housed the Legislature, the governor’s office, the Supreme Court and even a mineral laboratory. Now, some key offices, including parts of the secretary of state’s office, are hidden in windowless corners of the basement or they have moved out.

The state spends $13 million a year renting about 900,000 square feet of private office space.

All of that eventually prevailed upon Mr. Otter, to a degree. Under the compromise with the Legislature, which had approved the expansion a year ago, new underground wings will be reduced in size and many new offices will be cut. Larger hearing rooms will be built, however, and renovations at the Capitol will go forward.

Still, neither side claims to be happy with the deal, and no one is certain whether much money will be saved. The commission overseeing the project has asked to see a revised budget before moving forward. That could take weeks.

In the meantime, as the Legislature debates lowering grocery taxes, restricting elk ranching and building a new prison, it also is preparing to move out of the Capitol.

The Legislature, which had planned to hold its 2008 and 2009 sessions in temporary quarters in two aging buildings, including the former Ada County Courthouse, now probably will be there through the 2010 session because of the delays in construction.

The governor, whose office on the second floor of the Capitol has one of the few fireplaces in the building, says the state should renovate the older buildings and use them permanently for offices. Under the compromise, he agreed to move some of his staff out of the Capitol.

Mr. Otter, a former three-term congressman, took few specific stands in his campaign for governor last fall, but he did run commercials saying the expansion project was wasteful. He said he would “run government the old-fashioned way, lean and smart.” Back then, he said he would rather spend the expansion money, more than $40 million of the overall amount, on education and other needs.

In an interview in his office on Friday, he popped up from his chair to retrieve photographs of a schoolyard cluttered with temporary classrooms. Then he showed a picture of the state Capitol in Texas, whose underground expansion wings were a model for the Idaho plan.

“This is where they want kids to spend nine months,” Mr. Otter said. “This is where they want to spend three months.”

Senator Robert L. Geddes, who is the president pro tem and one of the leaders of the expansion project, conceded that legislators could only put up so much of a fight, even in a changing state.

“The vision of a grandiose Taj Mahal being built for the comfort of me,” Mr. Geddes said, “that doesn’t sit real well in my conservative district.”

    Less Is More, but in Idaho, Not for Long, NYT, 9.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/09/us/09statehouse.html?hp&ex=1171083600&en=0a360b26df298051&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Florida to Shift Voting System With Paper Trail

February 2, 2007
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH and CHRISTOPHER DREW

DELRAY BEACH, Fla., Feb. 1 — Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans on Thursday to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of Florida’s counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election. The state will instead adopt a system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines in time for the 2008 presidential election.

Voting experts said Florida’s move, coupled with new federal voting legislation expected to pass this year, could be the death knell for the paperless electronic touch-screen machines. If as expected the Florida Legislature approves the $32.5 million cost of the change, it would be the nation’s biggest repudiation yet of touch-screen voting, which was widely embraced after the 2000 recount as a state-of-the-art means of restoring confidence that every vote would count.

Several counties around the country, including Cuyahoga in Ohio and Sarasota in Florida, are moving toward exchanging touch-screen machines for ones that provide a paper trail. But Florida could become the first state that invested heavily in the recent rush to touch screens to reject them so sweepingly.

“Florida is like a synonym for election problems; it’s the Bermuda Triangle of elections,” said Warren Stewart, policy director of VoteTrust USA, a nonprofit group that says optical scanners are more reliable than touch screens. “For Florida to be clearly contemplating moving away from touch screens to the greatest extent possible is truly significant.”

Other states that rushed to buy the touch-screen machines are also abandoning them. Earlier this week, the Virginia Senate passed a bill that would phase out the machines as they wore out, and replace them with optical scanners. The Maryland legislature also seems determined to order a switch from the paperless touch screens, though it is not clear yet if it will require the use of optical scanners or just allow paper printers to be added to the touch screens.

On Monday, Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, plans to introduce a bill in Congress that would require all voting machines nationwide to produce paper records through which voters can verify that their ballots were recorded correctly. A majority of House members have endorsed the proposal, and the changes have strong support among Senate Democrats. Mr. Holt’s bill would also substantially toughen the requirements for the touch-screen machines that have printers, and experts say this could give even more impetus to the shift toward the optical scanning systems.

Mr. Crist, a Republican, at times drew whoops and applause when he announced his plan at the South County Civic Center in Palm Beach County, the epicenter of the 2000 election standoff and home of the infamous “butterfly ballot” that confused many voters. The touch screens had replaced the punch-card systems that caused widespread problems that year.

“You should, when you go vote, be able to have a record of it,” Mr. Crist told a few hundred mostly older citizens at the civic center, in Delray Beach, where many residents said they accidentally voted for Patrick J. Buchanan in 2000 instead of Al Gore because of the confusing ballot design. “That’s all we’re proposing today. It’s not very complicated; it is in fact common sense. Most importantly, it is the right thing to do.”

Mr. Crist’s renunciation of touch-screen voting one month after he replaced Jeb Bush as governor of the nation’s fourth-most-populous state, suggested that the fight for paper voting records, long a pet project of Democrats, might become more bipartisan. Mr. Crist made the announcement with Representative Robert Wexler, a Democrat from Delray Beach who has ardently led the movement for a paper trail and has attacked Republicans along the way.

“I support this plan 100 percent,” Mr. Wexler said before introducing Mr. Crist. “This governor means what he says, and he’s coming to Tallahassee and he’s spreading the message throughout Florida that this isn’t about Republican or Democrat, it’s not about this ideology or that; it’s about unifying people and doing what’s right for the people of Florida.”

The 15 Florida counties that have adopted touch-screen voting in recent years, including Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Hillsborough, would move to optical-scan voting under the proposal before the presidential election of 2008. The plan would give them the option, however, of using touch-screen machines during the state’s two-week early voting period that precedes Election Day, if the machines are modified to provide a paper trail. Those counties represent 54 percent of the state’s registered voters. Broward County alone has bought about 6,000 touch-screen machines in recent years, and Palm Beach County has about 4,500.

Mr. Crist said county election supervisors would explore how to make optical-scan voting easier for blind people and for those who speak foreign languages. In some cases, they have been able to vote without assistance on the touch-screen machines.

Asked how he felt about discarding tens of millions of dollars worth of touch-screen machines just years after they were acquired, Mr. Crist said, “The price of freedom is not cheap. The importance of a democratic system of voting that we can trust, that we can have confidence in, is incredibly important.”

Election experts estimate that paperless electronic machines were used by about 30 percent of voters nationwide in 2006. But their reliability has increasingly come under scrutiny, as has the difficulty of doing recounts without a paper trail. Federal technology experts concluded late last year that paperless touch-screen machines could not be secured from tampering.

Some states had bought early versions of the paperless machines before the 2000 recount, and one of them, New Mexico, switched last year to optical scanners. But most of the machines in other states were purchased with federal money provided under a 2002 law that required states to upgrade from old punch-card and lever systems.

New York is planning to buy either screens with printers or optical scanners, New Jersey is adding paper trails to its touch screens and Connecticut is buying the optical scanners. A recent survey by Election Data Services, a Washington consulting firm, estimated that 36 percent of the nation’s counties have bought electronic machines, including some with printers attached, while 56 percent have the optical scan systems.

Mr. Holt said his bill would require the return to paper ballots by next year’s presidential primaries, and it would authorize $300 million in federal money to upgrade the machines. Some state and county election officials say it could be difficult to make such sweeping changes by then.

But, Mr. Holt said, “it depends on how badly we want to do it. The public is getting very impatient here.”

In Sarasota County last November, more than 18,000 voters who used touch-screen machines did not have their votes recorded in the close Congressional race between Vern Buchanan, the Republican, and Christine Jennings, the Democrat. Mr. Buchanan took office last month after a recount gave him a 369-vote victory, but Ms. Jennings has sued.

Former Governor Bush, President Bush’s younger brother, generally defended touch-screen voting during his tenure and said skeptics had fallen prey to “conspiracy theories.” But leading up to the 2004 presidential election, the Republican Party of Florida sent out fliers urging voters to use absentee ballots because of the absence of a paper trail.

Experts say the optical scanners are less expensive than the touch-screen systems. But Kimball W. Brace, the president of Election Data Services, said optical scanning systems had had a slightly higher rate of voter error than touch screens.

Abby Goodnough reported from Delray Beach, Fla., and Christopher Drew from New York.

    Florida to Shift Voting System With Paper Trail, NYT, 2.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/us/02voting.html?hp&ex=1170478800&en=9f5342a78ef82375&ei=5094&partner=homepage

In the Tennessee Senate, a Historic Shift of Power

January 27, 2007
The New York Times
By THEO EMERY

NASHVILLE, Jan. 26 — Over the last year, members of the Tennessee legislature have witnessed a number of updates. Plasma televisions that broadcast legislative sessions now line corridors in Legislative Plaza, where many lawmakers have their offices. Smoking has been banned from the building although the two activities it used to cloud, lobbying and political arm-twisting, remain.

But a sign of perhaps the most significant change can be found outside Room 1, the office of the Senate speaker, where the nameplate on the wall has been replaced for the first time in 36 years.

Earlier this month, senators voted out John S. Wilder, an 85-year-old Democrat who had been speaker since 1971, choosing instead Ronald L. Ramsey, the first Republican to lead the body since Reconstruction. In Tennessee, the powerful Senate speaker is also lieutenant governor, and next in line for the governorship.

Back-room politicking and shifting loyalties played a role in the ouster of Mr. Wilder, who comes from a wealthy West Tennessee cotton family and who flew his own plane to the capital. Until he was voted out, he was the nation’s longest serving state legislative leader, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The change reflects a reality in the South: rising Republican strength in state politics, said Prof. Merle Black of Emory University, a co-author of “The Rise of Southern Republicans.”

Since Barry Goldwater’s campaign for the presidency in 1964, the South has reliably voted Republican in presidential races, except for 1976 and to a lesser degree in 1992, but Democrats maintained power in state and local elections.

“It’s really only been in the 1980s and accelerating in the 1990s, that white voters in the South have identified themselves more as Republicans than as Democrats,” Professor Black said, adding, “Mr. Wilder represents the persistence of Democratic strength in states like Tennessee.”

As recently as the early 1990s, Democrats controlled every Southern legislature. That changed in 1994, when voters in North Carolina and South Carolina elected Republican majorities in their Houses, and Florida elected a Republican majority in its Senate, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Today, Republicans control both houses in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, while Democrats control those in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina. In Mississippi and Tennessee, Democrats control the House and Republicans the Senate.

Beginning in 2005, Republicans held a one-vote majority in the Tennessee Senate, which temporarily grew to two votes when a Democrat switched parties last year and then lost his seat last fall. But the Republicans were denied the leadership two years ago when two Republicans, Micheal R. Williams and Tim Burchett, voted for Mr. Wilder. Mr. Wilder then named Mr. Williams to the No. 2 leadership post in the Senate. This time around, both senators voted for Mr. Ramsey, and it was a Democrat, Senator Rosalind Kurita, who played the pivotal role in Mr. Wilder’s leadership defeat when she startled colleagues by voting for Senator Ramsey. Ms. Kurita said her decision was a “vote of conscience” because Republicans had been undemocratically denied the leadership in 2005. Although she said it was not a reward for her vote, this time it was Ms. Kurita who received the No. 2 position, speaker pro tem.

Mr. Wilder’s exit from the speaker’s chair is the end of an era of sorts, said Mark Byrnes, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University.

“I think it does mark a close of a chapter of Tennessee history,” Professor Byrnes said, “that more of the old-style, less partisan — if not bipartisan — politics is on its way out.”

Professor Black predicted that as older Democrats left the Southern political landscape, “Republicans will probably pick up more seats as we proceed through this decade.”

Mr. Wilder won his first Senate race in 1959, served one term, then returned in 1967 to a political career that has continued uninterrupted. When first elected speaker, he pledged to shun “petty” partisanship, according to a newspaper account at the time. He fended off later challenges by enlisting the loyalty of Republicans, who received plum committee assignments.

In recent years he seemed not to care about his image or the fact that politics is increasingly media-driven. He referred to himself in the third person and was known for his befuddling speeches. He ruminated regularly about “the cosmos,” and in 2002, famously rambled about “bed devils” during a speech.

But there has never been any doubt that he was a crafty politico who reveled in his position.

“You’ve got to figure that he’s wily as all get out if he’s survived in this position for 36 years,” said John G. Geer, a Vanderbilt University political science professor. “He probably knows every nook and cranny of the State Legislature.”

Mr. Ramsey praised his predecessor, but said the Republicans’ time had come in Tennessee.

“John Wilder had done a good job for 36 years,” he said, “but leadership needed to change, and I think both sides would agree with that.”

Last week, movers carted furniture from Mr. Wilder’s former offices and stacks of boxes filled his new, more modest quarters, which he shares at least temporarily with another senator.

As Mr. Wilder walked slowly down the hall after a meeting, he waved off questions about his ouster and its meaning.

“I’m a state senator,” he said, one finger raised, “and I’m going to be the best state senator that I can be.”

    In the Tennessee Senate, a Historic Shift of Power, NYT, 27.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/us/27tennessee.html

A Proposal to Ban Spanking Sparks Debate

January 21, 2007
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 20 — As a general rule, legislators tend to begin their attack on bills once they have actually been written. But not much proposed legislation involves the backsides of children.

A Democratic assemblywoman from Mountain View says she will submit a bill next week — once it is officially drafted — proposing that California become the first state in the nation to make spanking of children 3 years old and under a misdemeanor. Penalties could include child-rearing classes for offenders to one year in jail.

Just the mention of the bill has become a minor statewide perturbation, sparking denouncements from many Republican lawmakers (the State Senate minority leader, Dick Ackerman, declared, “I’m trying to pick a word other than crazy, let me see, not well thought out.”), heated debates among parents (“A bill should be passed to allow other parents to smack the parents of undisciplined children,” wrote one Internet poster) and some self-reflection on behalf of the governor, whose proclivity for calling others girly men has been replaced of late with dialoguing about his feelings.

In an interview with The San Jose Mercury News, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that as a child he “got smacked about everything. That was the way Austria worked.”

The governor said that when disciplining his four children, he and his wife, Maria Shriver, declined to spank. “I think any time we try to pass laws that say you’ve got to protect the kids, it’s, in general, always good,” he added.

The bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Sally J. Lieber, said that her office had been inundated with calls since word of the proposed bill — which she will probably introduce next week — surfaced. The majority of the calls, she conceded, were against such legislation, which she said she found puzzling, since it covers only the state’s youngest and most vulnerable children.

“I have to question why our society holds so tightly to physical discipline among the very young,” said Ms. Lieber, who does not have children. “We’re very addicted to violence.” She said that the rejection of a bill that would remove the latitude of parents to physically discipline the smallest of children was analogous to protests against the protection of women of domestic abuse.

The speaker of the assembly’s office said it could not comment without reading an actual bill.

Roughly 15 countries have laws banning corporal punishment, and numerous states, including California, forbid spanking in schools. Proponents of such laws argue that spanking — especially for young children, who cannot connect the punishment to the crime — is ineffective at best, and cruel at worst. Opponents of this type of law argue that parents, not the state, should be the arbiter of how children are disciplined at home.

“California has garnered a reputation over the years of supporting these extreme legislative measures,” said Bill Maze, a Republican assemblyman from the Central Valley. “Disciplinary action is up to the parents. This is a wrongheaded measure, and there is zero support among the Republicans I have talked to.”

When it was pointed out to Mr. Maze that the Republican governor had shown some support for the measure, citing his own upbringing, Mr. Maze countered, “The only thing I can say about him is that I guess he needed some discipline, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten where he is today.”

Ms. Lieber appears undaunted by the criticism of her proposal. “Right now the law is very unclear,” she said, noting that jurors are specifically instructed to take into account that California gives parents discretion on punishment that is not outright abuse. “It makes a lot of sense to me to set a very bright line in this area.”

    A Proposal to Ban Spanking Sparks Debate, NYT, 21.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/us/21spank.html

Anti - Smoking American Milestone Reached

January 20, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:15 a.m. ET
The New York Times

RENO, Nev. (AP) -- Thirty years after it began as just another quirky movement in Berkeley, Calif., the push to ban smoking in restaurants, bars and other public places has reached a national milestone.

For the first time in the nation's history, more than half of Americans live in a city or state with laws mandating that workplaces, restaurants or bars be smoke-free, according to Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights.

''The movement for smoke-free air has gone from being a California oddity to the nationwide norm,'' said Bronson Frick, the group's associate director. ''We think 100 percent of Americans will live in smoke-free jurisdictions within a few years.''

Seven states and 116 communities enacted tough smoke-free laws last year, bringing the total number to 22 states and 577 municipalities, according to the group. Nevada's ban, which went into effect Dec. 8, increased the total U.S. population covered by any type of smokefree law to 50.2 percent.

It was the most successful year for anti-smoking advocates in the U.S., said Frick, and advocates are now working with local and state officials from across the nation on how to bring the other half of the country around.

In a sign of the changing climate, new U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi banned smoking in the ornate Speaker's Lobby just off the House floor this month, and the District of Columbia recently barred it in public areas. Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Louisiana and New Jersey also passed sweeping anti-smoking measures last year.

''That's how life is now. They're banning smoking everywhere,'' said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., an occasional smoker.

Susan Burgess, the mayor pro tem of Charlotte, N.C., said what's fueling the push is a U.S. Surgeon General's report released last June that found just a few minutes inhaling someone else's smoke harms nonsmokers, and separate smoking sections don't offer enough protection.

She said the report gave momentum to the anti-smoking front even in North Carolina -- the nation's No. 1 tobacco state -- and influenced Nevada voters to approve a ballot measure banning smoking at restaurants, bars that serve food, and around slot machines at supermarkets, gas stations and convenience stores. Nevada, where gambling and smoking had been assumed to go hand in hand, previously had one of the nation's least restrictive smoking laws.

''The Nevada vote shows that when people are given accurate information about the dangers of secondhand smoke, it's almost a no-brainer'' they'll support smoking controls, said Burgess, founder of the anti-smoking group Smokefree Charlotte.

Not all elected officials and business owners embrace the cause. They maintain such laws drive away smoking customers and cut profits.

''There's a fear that we would lose restaurant business to nearby towns if we passed a smoking ordinance,'' Moline, Ill., Mayor Don Walvaert said. ''Before acting, we would need real proof that cities have not experienced business losses because of smoking regulations.''

Nevada's smoking restrictions have been challenged in state court by a coalition of businesses. Opponents say the ban, which does not apply to the gambling floors of casinos on and off the Las Vegas Strip, is unconstitutional, vague and unenforceable.

In Columbia, Mo., one business owner displayed his displeasure at a new local ordinance banning smoking with a sign: ''Smoking allowed until Jan. 9, City Council banning beer next, and hopefully, karaoke!''

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. plans to continue to fight smoking bans at adult-only businesses because it thinks such restrictions infringe on the rights of owners and adversely affect business, spokesman David Howard said from the company's headquarters in Winston-Salem, N.C.

But Columbia Mayor Darwin Hindman said studies show bans will not force smoking customers to go elsewhere. The Surgeon General's report reached a similar conclusion.

''I don't think it's a legitimate fear that bars and restaurants will lose business,'' Hindman said. ''From what I've read, smokers keep going to bars and restaurants even after smoking is banned. Smoking restrictions should be based on health issues anyway.''

Amy Winterfeld, health policy analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures based in Washington, D.C., said smoke-free legislation is pending in at least seven states.

''When you see an issue like this passing in a number of states it does give it momentum in other states,'' Winterfeld said. ''It's certainly possible that a number of states will take it up this year.''

------

On the Net:

Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights: http://www.no-smoke.org

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.: http://www.rjrt.com 

    Anti - Smoking American Milestone Reached, NYT, 20.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Smoke-Free-America.html

Spitzer Selects a Black Jurist for Top Court

January 15, 2007
The New York Times
By SEWELL CHAN

Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced yesterday that he would nominate Theodore T. Jones Jr., a black judge who has served in Brooklyn for 17 years, to a seat on the Court of Appeals. It is the new governor’s first appointment to the state’s highest court.

In August, Mr. Spitzer’s predecessor, George E. Pataki, declined to renominate Judge George Bundy Smith, whose term expired in September, leaving the Court of Appeals without a black jurist for the first time since 1985.

At a news conference in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Spitzer said he believed that the government should reflect “the diversity of our society,” but added that “race, gender did not play a role in my selection process” and that he only considered “who would be the best jurist.”

Justice Jones, 62, was elected to the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn in 1989 and re-elected in 2003. He has handled criminal and civil cases and is now administrative judge of the court’s civil term.

Justice Jones became something of a public figure as the judge assigned to handle the legal matters surrounding the three-day New York City transit strike in 2005.

Defying an injunction issued by Justice Jones, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union shut down the city’s subways and buses for 60 hours. Last April, he fined the union $2.5 million for violating the Taylor Law, which prohibits public employees from striking, and sentenced its president, Roger Toussaint, to 10 days in jail for contempt of court.

At the news conference, Justice Jones said he felt honored to be selected, given the strong credentials of the six other nominees under consideration. “I am profoundly aware of the importance of this nomination,” he said. “I cherish the position in which I find myself.”

If confirmed by the State Senate to a 14-year term, Justice Jones would replace Judge Albert M. Rosenblatt, who was appointed by Mr. Pataki in 1998. Judge Rosenblatt left the court on Dec. 31, having reached the mandatory retirement age of 70.

Mr. Spitzer, who is a Democrat, said that he told Joseph L. Bruno, the leader of the Republican majority in the State Senate, on Saturday about his intention to nominate Justice Jones and that Mr. Bruno made “very affirmative comments” about the selection.

A spokesman for Mr. Bruno, John E. McArdle, said yesterday that Mr. Bruno had told Mr. Spitzer “that the Senate would move in a deliberate and expeditious way to review the nomination.”

The appointment drew the praise of Andrew M. Cuomo, the state attorney general. “Governor Spitzer has made a well-reasoned selection from a field of fine candidates and I am pleased that the court will again begin to reflect some of the diversity that is representative of our state,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement.

The Court of Appeals has seven members. During his 12 years as governor, Mr. Pataki, a Republican, appointed six members, leaving a major mark at the helm of the state judiciary. (One of them, Judge Richard C. Wesley, resigned in 2003 to accept a federal judgeship and Judge Rosenblatt retired.)

To replace Judge Smith, Mr. Pataki in August nominated Eugene F. Pigott Jr., a white Republican who sat on an appeals court in Buffalo. Judge Pigott was confirmed by the State Senate.

Of the six current members, four were appointed by Mr. Pataki and two — Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye and Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick — were appointed by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, a Democrat.

The terms of the four judges named by Mr. Pataki will not begin to expire until 2014. Judge Kaye’s term expires in March and Judge Ciparick’s will expire next year. (Judge Kaye will turn 70 next year, so even if Mr. Spitzer reappoints her, he will soon have another chance to name the chief judge.)

Justice Jones was born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens. His mother was a teacher and his father worked on the Long Island Rail Road, becoming a station master at Pennsylvania Station.

Justice Jones graduated from Hampton University, a historically black college in Virginia, and St. John’s University School of Law in Queens. He was in the Army from 1967 to 1969 and served in Vietnam. He was admitted to the state bar in 1973 and was a criminal defense lawyer at the Legal Aid Society and a law secretary for Judge Howard A. Jones of the State Court of Claims. He also worked in private practice.

He lives in New City, Rockland County, with his wife, Joan, who joined him at the news conference, along with their two adult sons, Theodore III and Wesley, and other relatives.

Mr. Spitzer, who as attorney general represented the state in litigation against the transit workers’ union over the strike, said, “For the public, that was probably the first significant opportunity to see Judge Jones’s demeanor and thinking and methodology.” (He declined to assess Justice Jones’s rulings in the strike.)

In another case that attracted some publicity, Justice Jones in June 2002 upheld a jury verdict that held the Jewish Defense Organization, a militant group, liable for defaming Steven Rombom, a private investigator, on several Internet sites.

As the state’s highest tribunal, the Court of Appeals interprets the State Constitution and rules on the limits of governmental power.

Long seen as liberal, the court has moved to the right during the past decade, although its decisions are often unpredictable. In 2004, the court effectively invalidated the death penalty statute. Last year, it ruled that same-sex couples did not have a right to marriage under the State Constitution.

Also last year, it ended a landmark legal battle over school financing, ruling that at least $1.9 billion more had to be spent each year on the New York City public schools, far less than the $4.7 billion a lower court had called the minimum needed to give city children the chance for a sound, basic education.

This year the court is expected to revisit the death penalty and to consider grandparents’ visitation rights.

Justice Jones was one of seven lawyers — six of them judges — whose names were presented by the State Commission on Judicial Nomination on Nov. 30 as candidates to succeed Judge Rosenblatt. (The commission has 12 members; the governor, the chief judge and the Legislature each appoint four.)

The New York State Bar Association found all seven to be “well qualified,” its highest rating for judicial nominees.

The other candidates were Juanita Bing Newton, administrative judge of the New York City Criminal Court; George F. Carpinello, an Albany lawyer; James A. Yates, a State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan; and three justices of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court: Richard T. Andrias, Steven W. Fisher and Thomas E. Mercure.

Mr. Spitzer was required to make a nomination by Jan. 15; the Senate has 30 days from receiving the nomination to confirm or reject it.

    Spitzer Selects a Black Jurist for Top Court, NYT, 15.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/nyregion/15judge.html

Schwarzenegger takes center stage

in U.S. health reform

Fri Jan 12, 2007 9:39 PM ET
Reuters
By Lisa Baertlein

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to extend health insurance to California's 6.5 million uninsured could help put universal health coverage back on the national agenda at a time of political change in Washington.

Doubts have been voiced about whether the celebrity governor would be able to fully fund the ambitious, $12 billion proposal he put forward on Monday.

But after more than a decade since the last big national health care reform push, Schwarzenegger's timing just may be perfect with a new Democrat-run Congress taking over in Washington and presidential elections less than two years away.

"We're really seeing the return of universal health coverage to the national dialogue," Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the uninsured, told Reuters.

"It propels the discussion and puts more pressure on national candidates, Congress and the president," she said.

The proposal announced by California's Republican governor -- a budding reformer who has also crossed party lines to back a state law aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions -- would require everyone in the state to carry insurance and tax doctors, and hospitals and all but the smallest companies that do not provide health benefits.

Insurers would no longer be able to deny coverage based on age or pre-existing health conditions and overhead would be limited to $15 of every $100 in premiums. The state would also need its federal funding increased to the tune of more than $5 billion to pay for the proposed plan.

Massachusetts, which has a population about as large as California's ranks of uninsured, last year became the first state to pass a law requiring all individuals to buy health coverage.

Employers are the main provider of health insurance in the United States, where the government pays for the care of the elderly and the poor. Nearly 47 million Americans lack health coverage, a number expected to continue to rise as the skyrocketing cost of health care drives up insurance premiums.

Since killing former President Bill Clinton's proposal for universal health coverage in 1994, U.S. lawmakers have failed to address the health care crisis.

In the current spiral, rising insurance costs are prompting employers to cut coverage, swelling the ranks of uninsured and overwhelming hospital emergency rooms with very sick people who cannot pay and who, by law, cannot be turned away.

'INTERLOCKING PUZZLE'

As federal lawmakers grapple with national issues such as the war in Iraq and the threat of terrorism, governors in states like Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont already have adopted plans to cover virtually everyone.

States set a precedent for similar efforts in the early 1990s, when Wisconsin's then-governor led welfare reform efforts that resulted in a major federal program that helped states cover children from low-income families.

Schwarzenegger, nursing a broken leg from a holiday ski accident, has received kudos for bringing relevant interest groups -- doctors, insurers, hospitals, small business, unions and the Democrats that control the state legislature -- to the table.

"Health care reform is an interlocking puzzle ... if someone tries to take their piece out, it doesn't work. I think it reflects his understanding that, at the end of the day, it's not his plan," said health care consultant Peter Harbage, who participated in the discussions.

Doubts about funding plague any reform effort, and the Schwarzenegger plan is no different.

"Ultimately, the question here is whether there is enough money to guarantee that people have access to a quality health plan," said Jacob Hacker, a Yale University political science professor and author of "The Great Risk Shift," about Americans' increasing health care cost burden.

"The answer, it seems pretty clear, is no."

    Schwarzenegger takes center stage in U.S. health reform, R, 12.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2007-01-13T023938Z_01_N12213199_RTRUKOC_0_US-CALIFORNIA.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-3

As States Innovate,

Schwarzenegger Blurs Lines

January 12, 2007
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 11 — So, who is Arnold Schwarzenegger anyway?

Is he an extreme environmentalist, proposing California be the first state to limit carbon dioxide emissions from cars? Or a foe of wildlife, with his desire for above-ground water storage, announced hours after his move to limit emissions?

Does his heart bleed for the disadvantaged, as suggested by his call for universal health care? Or does he turn a hard eye toward entitlements, as his plan to cut welfare benefits for children seems to indicate?

In many ways, Mr. Schwarzenegger is sui generis, a celebrity-turned-politician hurled toward the center by California’s Democratic majority. And since he can never run for president, his governorship is most likely the outlet for his more audacious ideas.

But Mr. Schwarzenegger’s recent leadership is also the largest example of a growing movement in which state leaders are crossing party lines to get things done. While partisan polarization limits activity in Washington, D.C., state governments are addressing issues the federal government has not tackled.

Massachusetts was first, with a Republican governor and a Democratic-led legislature compromising on an expansive health care law. Colorado — with bipartisanship — and Georgia both passed restrictive immigration bills last year after Congress could not. Indeed, 32 states approved 84 immigration laws in 2006, out of a record 570 immigration bills introduced, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Nearly 30 states have passed bills raising the minimum wage, many through ballot initiatives, but many others via legislatures. And last year alone, more than a half-dozen states tightened restrictions on relations between lawmakers and lobbyists.

“In recent years as we have seen gridlock in Washington,” said William Pound, the conference’s executive director, “you have seen the pressure building on states to do something. I think you are going to see even more of it in the next couple of years, because we are on a wave right now with the states being innovative on policy. And frankly the Congress and the federal government have financial problems.”

Often, the most effective approaches fly in the face of core political party values. Mr. Schwarzenegger is promoting ideas that offer something for everyone in Sacramento to love, and to despise.

“There is method to the madness,” said Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. “The middle is a place of much inconsistency. The fact that no one knows exactly where Arnold is on the political spectrum means that everyone can imagine that he is closer to them.”

The challenges Mr. Schwarzenegger faces for being, as he calls himself, “post-partisan,” and pushing the legislation he craves, were evident Tuesday night in Sacramento when he addressed the Legislature.

His plans for spending money — on new bond issues, on health care, on the environment — were met with grimaces from many Republican colleagues, who were buoyed by his promises to build more prisons and increase college tuition, ideas that offend more liberal lawmakers.

Right before the speech, State Senator Abel Maldonado, a Republican, cornered Mr. Schwarzenegger’s communications director, Adam Mendelsohn, to complain about part of the governor’s health care plan that would charge businesses that have more than 10 workers but do not provide health insurance.

“Your district has a lot of E.R.’s full of” illegal immigrants, Mr. Mendelsohn said, pointing out that those patients cost taxpayers money.

“I’ve got a lot of family businesses in my district,” Mr. Maldonado countered.

At the same time, the State Democratic Party was attacking the governor’s budget as stingy and unfair.

Yet partisan cross-dressing is in vogue in many states.

“Arnold wants to cut emissions, cover everyone’s health insurance, possibly reduce prison crowding by sentencing reform,” said William T. Cunningham, who helped run both of Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaigns for mayor of New York on themes of social liberalism and fiscal restraint.

“Eliot Spitzer wants to cut property taxes and reform the Medicaid system due to its costs,” Mr. Cunningham added, referring to New York’s new Democratic governor. “Republicans domestically used to be the law and order guys and the Dems were the education and social service guys. All that has changed.”

In his spate of policy and budget announcements this week, Mr. Schwarzenegger showed many sides to his political form, proposing to insure all citizens, but also to end welfare grants for children whose parents do not participate in return-to-work programs. He called for helping criminals reform, but cut drug treatment programs.

He also said he would ask state regulators to require petroleum refiners and gasoline sellers doing business in California to cut by 10 percent the emissions of heat-trapping gases, even as he pushed for the water storage methods opposed by groups that argue that above-ground storage disrupts the surrounding environment. “We are not waiting for the federal government to act,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said. “We are not waiting, period.”

Other states have reached the same conclusion. Last summer, Georgia and Colorado enacted extensive laws intended to curb the effects of illegal immigration. “Immigration is the best example of where the feds bear the lion’s share of the responsibility and have done almost nothing to fulfill that responsibility,” said the speaker of the Colorado House, Andrew Romanoff.

Georgia’s omnibus law, which goes into effect in July, makes many requirements of employers and workers. “People were frustrated that federal government was not acting swiftly enough,” the State Senate spokeswoman, Merri Brantley, said. “We are among the fastest-growing immigration states in the nation.”

In the interest of protecting residents from identity theft and privacy invasion, 35 states have enacted legislation in recent years requiring companies or state agencies to disclose security breaches involving personal information. The federal government has yet to pass comprehensive legislation on the issue.

Other states have also passed or are seriously considering emissions standards, renewable energy requirements, education overhauls and comprehensive health care packages. On some of these issues, California — led by its governor — may simply be furthering its role as the nation’s policy petri dish.

Mr. Schwarzenegger “is showing what leadership can be when it is nonpartisan,” said Mr. Mendelsohn, his communications director. “It is where the country is.”

    As States Innovate, Schwarzenegger Blurs Lines, NYT, 12.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/us/12calif.html

Schwarzenegger Orders Cuts in Emissions

January 10, 2007
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and FELICITY BARRINGER

SACRAMENTO, Jan. 9 — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday that he would ask regulators to require the state’s petroleum refiners and gasoline sellers to cut by 10 percent the emissions of heat-trapping gases associated with the production and use of their products.

The order for cuts, which the governor wants completed by 2020, follows California’s trademark pattern of hitching its environmental aspirations to its market muscle. It also represents one of the first examples of a state or a national government regulating the fuel in its passenger vehicles as part of a strategy to reduce both emissions that contribute to climate change and dependence on foreign oil.

The plan, which Mr. Schwarzenegger delivered to legislators Tuesday night in his State of the State address, was the second part of a one-two policy punch the governor announced this week. On Monday, he proposed providing health care to all the state’s residents, which unlike the emissions plan is subject to approval by the Legislature.

“Our country has been dependent on foreign oil for too long,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said in his address. “I ask you to set to motion the means to free ourselves from oil and from OPEC. I ask you to encourage the free market to overthrow the old order. California has the muscle to bring about such change. I say use it.”

The executive order asks state air regulators to take up the governor’s challenge. The California Air Resources Board will be responsible for drawing the blueprints to carry out the order, with the help of advisers from the University of California, Berkeley.

It is the first example of the practical impact of a deal made last summer between the Legislature and the governor to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 25 percent by 2020. The transportation sector is responsible for about 40 percent of the state’s carbon dioxide emissions, state officials said, and cars make up about half that amount.

The 10 percent cut in emissions would be accomplished, experts said, largely through the use of alternative fuels, like ethanol and other gasoline blends, which would be provided by the refineries and other producers.

Hal Harvey, the environmental program director for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, called Mr. Schwarzenegger’s plan “a really big deal.”

“In my opinion there are no successful rules anywhere in the world, except Brazil, to get carbon out of fuels,” Mr. Harvey said. “It is the big, hairy unmentioned problem with cleaning up carbon.” The European Union, he added, is considering a similar rule.

Environmentalists expected the order to turbocharge the market demand for corn-based ethanol and biodiesel fuels, and for natural gas, and to jump-start the introduction of experimental fuels like cellulosic ethanol, which is made from plant waste or nonfood crops like switch grass or wood chips.

The contemporary environmental movement links clear air goals to potential profits, and Mr. Schwarzenegger’s order, with input and support from lobbyists from Environmental Defense, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Hewlett Foundation, mirrors that approach. The companies or industries that stand to benefit financially from his plan include producers of corn-based ethanol, biodiesel and other, more experimental forms of renewable fuels.

Mr. Harvey and Fred Krupp, the president of Environmental Defense, said they hoped that the California approach would be a template for other governments, whether in state capitals, in Washington or abroad.

The plan, Mr. Harvey said, is unusual in its focus on the so-called cradle-to-grave emissions associated with each fuel. In the case of ethanol, this can mean carbon emissions generated in the production of fertilizer, in the planting and harvesting of corn, in distilling the fuel and, finally, in transporting it to the distributor and burning it in a car.

Thus, two otherwise identical gallons of ethanol could have different greenhouse-gas ratings, if one were refined using carbon-intensive coal-fired electricity, while the other was refined using relatively carbon-light electricity from natural gas.

At a technical briefing on Tuesday, Bill Jones, the chairman of the board of Pacific Ethanol, a fuel producer, and the former Republican leader of the California Assembly, praised the effort as “the most comprehensive, well-thought-out plan I have ever seen.”

The governor’s staff said his mandate had the support of the oil industry. But that support was clearly not unanimous. Jay McKeeman, a spokesman for the California Independent Oil Marketers Association, which represents about 85 percent of the state’s fuel distributors, said the order required too much of his industry and not enough of the automakers.

“This initiative seems to focus strictly on fuels,” Mr. McKeeman said. “And of course a whole part of this equation has to be the technology that uses the fuels. That is at least as important as the carbon content of the fuel.”

The auto industry, in turn, believes California has asked plenty, and has sued the state over environmental rules. Charles Territo, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said the trade group had not taken a position on the proposal, but added: “Currently there are more than nine million alternative fuel automobiles on the road. In 2007, manufacturers are offering 60 different models for consumers to purchase.”

“Manufacturers,” Mr. Territo said, “must recognize that we need to reduce our reliance on foreign sources of oil.”

Mr. Schwarzenegger, who is recovering from a broken leg and appeared somewhat in pain on Tuesday, used his address to hit on other policy goals for the year, including changes to the state’s health care system, the creation of thousands of new classrooms and continued investment in infrastructure.

Calling California’s severely overcrowded prison system a “powder keg,” he said he wanted the state to consider prison construction and hinted at the establishment of a sentencing commission to address the problems that have led to overcrowding.

He also suggested that the Legislature consider an overhaul of the state’s redistricting system, which heavily favors incumbents.

“You will not benefit politically from this,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said. “I will not benefit politically from this. But the people will benefit from this.”

Jennifer Steinhauer reported from Sacramento, and Felicity Barringer from Washington.

    Schwarzenegger Orders Cuts in Emissions, NYT, 10.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/us/10calif.html

California’s Governor Seeks Universal Care

January 9, 2007
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 8 — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday proposed extending health care coverage to all of California’s 36 million residents as part of a sweeping package of changes to the state’s huge, troubled health care system.

A total of 6.5 million people, one-fifth of the state’s population, do not have health insurance, far more than in any other state. At least one million of the uninsured are illegal immigrants, state officials say.

Under Mr. Schwarzenegger’s plan, which requires the approval of the Legislature, California would become the fourth and by far the largest state to attempt near universal health coverage for its citizens. The other three states are Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont.

The governor outlined his proposal to an audience of health care experts and reporters via satellite from Los Angeles. He made it clear that a variety of mechanisms would be used to provide all Californians with insurance and that the responsibility of providing it would fall on the government, employers, health care providers and the uninsured themselves.

The plan, which Mr. Schwarzenegger estimated would cost $12 billion, calls for many employers that do not offer health insurance to contribute to a fund that would help pay for coverage of the working uninsured. It would also require doctors to pay 2 percent and hospitals 4 percent of their revenues to help cover higher reimbursements for those who treat patients enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program.

“Everyone in California must have health insurance,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said.

As he made his proposal, the federal government announced that health care spending in 2005 showed the slowest growth in six years. [Page A13.]

Mr. Schwarzenegger’s plan includes elements that quickly provoked opposition from many powerful interests, including doctors and the governor’s Republican colleagues in the Legislature.

But the speaker of the State Assembly, Fabian Núñez, a Democrat, said in a statement, “I’m glad the governor is on board with coverage for all kids.”


Over the last two years, state legislatures have grown increasingly concerned with how to provide health insurance to citizens as the number of employers offering coverage has fallen and the number of workers entering fields where health insurance is not an option has grown.

Because of its great size, California is likely to set the stage for a national conversation about health care this year.

“This is a very significant proposal,” said Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation. “It is not just children he is talking about. It is really dealing with the whole problem of the uninsured, with concrete positions to raise revenues to pay for that coverage, and the philosophy of shared responsibility. I think this shows health care is going to be a major issue in the 2008 presidential election.”

In many ways, Mr. Schwarzenegger’s proposal mirrors the plan in Massachusetts, the most comprehensive of its sort, which is projected to cover about 515,000 of the state’s 550,000 uninsured. The law enacted there transformed a $1 billion pool that had long paid for health care for uninsured patients into a mechanism to help subsidize insurance for those who could not afford it.

In many states, spending on Medicaid, the federal government’s health program for the poor, has surpassed that for education in recent years. In New York, Gov. Eliot Spitzer has vowed to insure all the state’s children and enroll all eligible adults in Medicaid. And New Jersey is among a handful of states considering some form of universal coverage.

Under Mr. Schwarzenegger’s proposal, Medi-Cal would be extended to adults who earn as much as 100 percent above the federal poverty line and to children, regardless of their immigration status, living in homes where the family income is as much as 300 percent above that line, about $60,000 a year for a family of four. Medi-Cal is currently limited to adults with children, and children with documented residency are covered if their family’s income is up to 250 percent above of the poverty line.

Adult illegal immigrants would continue to be barred from Medicaid benefits but would still be entitled to health services from their counties and the state’s hospital system.

Employers would have new responsibilities as well. Businesses with 10 or more workers that choose not to offer coverage would be required to pay 4 percent of their total Social Security wages to a state fund that would be created to subsidize the purchase of coverage by the working uninsured. The cost of such coverage would be measured on a sliding scale depending on what an employee earned, and employees would be able to pay for it using pretax dollars.

This component seems intended to give employers an incentive to offer health insurance, and to level the playing field between employers that do not offer insurance — and are therefore essentially paying lower wages — and those that do.

“If you look at where the uninsured lie,” said Laura Tobler, a health policy analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures, “most of them are working, and most work for small businesses.”

On the provider side, the governor’s plan contains privileges and responsibilities. Doctors and hospitals, which have long complained about Medi-Cal’s low reimbursement rates, would benefit from a $4 billion increase in annual reimbursement. But the state would tax doctors 2 percent of their total revenues, and hospitals 4 percent, to help pay for the greater reimbursement.

The proposal would prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to people because of their age or health status. They would also be required to put 85 percent of their profits directly into health care services.

Aides to the governor said financing for the program would come from roughly $5 billion in federal money the state believes it will be owed through restructuring of its health care programs, and through a redirection of state money that now goes toward what is basically charity care, among other measures.

The chief executive of Blue Shield of California, Bruce G. Bodaken, described what might happen once the Legislature began to debate the governor’s proposal.

“Taking each part separately, there’s something for everyone to hate,” Mr. Bodaken said. “But taken as a whole, there’s a lot to like.”

The governor’s plan signals a growing trend among state legislatures. “What we are seeing this year,” said Enrique Martinez-Vidal, acting director of the State Coverage Initiatives, a program that assists states looking to expand health care programs, “is that instead of just trying to take on reform in an incremental way, there are some states trying to do this in a comprehensive way, by trying to get buy-ins from all the different players.”

But it is likely to set Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, on a collision course with many state lawmakers from his party, who are the minority in the Legislature.

“Some of the areas he put out there we are probably not going to support,” said State Senator Dick Ackerman, the minority leader. Among his concerns, Mr. Ackerman said, were the coverage of illegal immigrants, which he said his members would not support, and a tax on doctors or providers.

“We don’t think taxing folks is something that is popular in California,” he said in a telephone interview from Sacramento. “But this isn’t going to be an up-or-down vote on one bill. It will be a debate. And we welcome it.”

    California’s Governor Seeks Universal Care, NYT, 9.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/us/09calif.html

Massachusetts Swears in

a Black Democrat as Governor

January 5, 2007
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK

BOSTON, Jan. 4 — In a ceremony rich with gestures of openness and symbols of conquering adversity, Deval L. Patrick, the first black governor of Massachusetts, took his oath of office on Thursday. He promised far-reaching changes in attitude and policy and asked people to “see our stake in each others’ dreams and struggles as well as our own, and act on that.”

In the state’s first outdoor inauguration, part of four days of events intended to include people across the state, Mr. Patrick, the first Democratic governor here in 16 years, said, “For a very long time now we have been told that government is bad, that it exists only to serve the powerful and well-connected, that its job is not important enough to be done by anyone competent, let alone committed, and that all of us are on our own.”

“Today we join together in common cause,” he said, “to lay that fallacy to rest.”

Mr. Patrick takes over from Mitt Romney, a Republican, who is planning to run for the presidency, and already Mr. Patrick has revealed many positions that oppose Mr. Romney’s. The former governor did not attend the inauguration.

Mr. Patrick has said that he will restore $383.6 million in budget cuts made by Mr. Romney to social services and other programs, that he will reverse the former governor’s agreement authorizing the state police to arrest illegal immigrants, and that a Romney-endorsed effort to remove some Massachusetts Turnpike tolls is unrealistic.

Mr. Patrick also said he might revoke some of the 200 11th-hour appointments Mr. Romney made to boards and commissions.

And, while Mr. Romney strongly backed a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, Mr. Patrick spoke out strongly against it this week, even as the legislature gave it first-round approval.

While the legislature is heavily Democratic in this heavily Roman Catholic state, many Democrats are more conservative than Mr. Patrick on issues like same-sex marriage. He also faces a budget deficit of about $1 billion. And it will not be easy to put into effect the state’s new health insurance reform.

“I’ve never seen a governor who has such high expectations on him as Deval Patrick,” said Jeffrey Berry, a political scientist at Tufts University. “Democrats regard him as something of a demigod. They expect him to be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and pay for social services.”

Paul Watanabe, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, said: “I think he’s going to find that governing is a lot more challenging than being a candidate. And that the demands placed upon him by large numbers of individuals — a record number of people that voted for him — are going to be difficult to meet.”

Mr. Patrick also faces criticism over his inauguration celebrations. While much was inclusive — the open-air ceremony, a town-meeting-like “youth inaugural” for students, and upcoming ceremonies in five other cities — there was also a gala whose cost was paid for largely by corporate donors, who were allowed to give up to $50,000 each.

At the inauguration itself, however, on one of the balmiest January days in memory, the tone was full of possibility, pride and humility. In a state where the legacy of busing and segregation still stings, Mr. Patrick, reared in poverty on the South Side of Chicago, took the oath on a Bible given to John Quincy Adams by Africans from the Amistad slave ship whom Adams had helped free.

Four previous Massachusetts governors were present, as was L. Douglas Wilder, the former governor of Virginia and the only other black since Reconstruction to have been a governor.

The populist timbre, and the high expectations of Mr. Patrick, were sounded early, with a benediction by Rabbi Jonah Pesner describing the multicultural electorate and the problems of poverty, violence and discrimination.

“Behind every face hides so many secrets — painful secrets of suffering,” Rabbi Pesner said, urging the governor and the people to create “a commonwealth rebuilt, repaired and redeemed.”

Among the crowd was Derward Jacobs, 60, who is disabled and who drove his scooter to the State House because “I felt like I should be here.”

George Greenidge Jr., 35, leader of an alliance of black colleges, said, “Today is a beacon of hope.”

Mr. Greenidge added that Mr. Patrick had “re-engaged a constituency that really never was involved in state politics, especially people from lower economic backgrounds.”

Beth Gilbert, 52, of Norfolk, Mass., acknowledged the steep demands that confront Mr. Patrick, saying, “When you elect a Republican governor, part of their bargain is they don’t really believe that government can solve the people’s problems. That’s probably what’s led to higher expectations here.”

Mr. Patrick signaled he was aware of the difficulties.

“I am an optimist, but not a foolish one,” he said. “I see clearly the challenges before us.”

He added: “Change is not always comfortable or convenient or welcome. But it is what we hoped for, what we have worked for, what you voted for, and what you shall have.”

    Massachusetts Swears in a Black Democrat as Governor, NYT, 5.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/us/05boston.html