Good morning. It’s Tuesday.
Given the fact that we are smack in the middle of a winter storm warning that is scheduled to continue until around 8 a.m. tomorrow, it might be hard to hear this, but….Welcome to SUNSHINE WEEK!
So, yeah. We are not, in this instance, speaking of the Vitamin D-related sunshine, but rather the sort that is the best disinfectant, along the lines of “letting the sun shine in” and illuminating the inner workings of the halls of power – mostly in government – so the public knows how their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent.
National Sunshine Week has been celebrated every March since 2005. It was started by the American Society of News Editors — now known as the News Leaders Association — and has since grown into a full-blown initiative to promote open government.
In the middle of this week (spoiler alert) is National Freedom of Information Day. It’s held on March 16, which also happens to be the birthday (in 1751) of James Madison, America’s fourth president who is widely viewed as the Father of the U.S. Constitution. He was also a staunch defender of open government, writing in 1822 in a letter to William T. Barry:
“(A) popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
Madison also believed that the advancement of knowledge was the “only Guardian of true liberty.”
Before there was Sunshine Week, there was Sunshine Sunday, which was launched in the Sunshine State by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors in 2002 after some of the state’s lawmakers pushed for new exemptions to the public records law. (Ah, Florida, you haven’t changed a bit).
The idea caught fire among those who (proverbially speaking) buy ink by the barrel. The very next year, the idea of holding a a Sunshine Sunday at the national level was was raised at an ASNE Freedom of Information summit. But attendees didn’t feel that a single day would bring sufficient attention to the need to preserve open and unfettered public access to government.
And thus, Sunshine Week was born.
It’s traditional during this week for those who care about this sort of thing – members of the media, civic groups, nonprofits, schools, libraries etc. – sound the alarm about encroachments on open government (like, say, the Legislature exempting itself from FOIL) through forums, op-eds, news stories, letters to the editor, press conferences etc. and so forth.
You know, by exercising their First Amendment rights.
Ain’t democracy a beautiful thing?
We already went through the weather. There are a lot of cancellations and states of emergency in place. Don’t go out unless you have to. Keep pets indoors. Hopefully you already did the bread and milk thing.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden sought to calm market and taxpayer jitters, saying Americans can have “confidence” in the banking system after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
“Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe,” Biden said at the White House. “Your deposits will be there when you need them.”
Biden explained he had instructed his team to protect U.S. workers and small businesses and detailed their actions to protect customers’ deposits and not put taxpayer dollars at risk, to hold those responsible accountable, and not protect bank investors.
The government took drastic action to shore up the banking system and make depositors of two failed banks whole. It quickly drew blowback.
Officials with Signature and Silicon Valley banks, which regulators seized in recent days, had called for looser financial requirements for midsize banks.
Across the country, banks of various sizes are battling market turmoil as customers rushed to withdraw their deposits and investors, worried about more bank runs, dumped bank stocks.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the takeover of Signature Bank by federal regulators on Sunday “was not a bailout” that puts state taxpayers at risk.
“This is an unusual circumstance,” Hochul said. “But the main message I want to deliver is that New Yorkers should have confidence that their money is secure, and wherever they have chosen to bank, that that is protected.”
Biden is trying to appeal to the humanity of lawmakers pushing anti-LGBTQ legislation, calling efforts to restrict transgender rights in Florida “close to sinful” and suggesting federal laws should be passed to protect those rights in all states.
Biden made those remarks during an interview with The Daily Show – his first since taking office.
After unveiling details of a major submarine deal with Britain and Australia aimed at countering China, Biden said he expected to speak to Chinese leader Xi Jinping soon, but would not say when.
The Biden administration is approving a huge oil-drilling project on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope, a major environmental decision the president that drew quick condemnation as flying in the face of his pledges to slow climate change.
Several top Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, heavily criticized Biden after the announcement that the Willow project had been approved.
Biden’s biggest peacetime U.S. defense budget request of $886 billion includes a 5.2% pay raise for troops and the largest allocation on record for research and development, with the war in Ukraine spurring demand for more spending on munitions.
Biden said former President Jimmy Carter asked him to deliver his eulogy after he dies, before recognizing that he “shouldn’t say that.
“I spent time with Jimmy Carter, and it’s finally caught up with him. But they found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated, because they found a breakthrough,” the president continued, likely speaking of Carter’s long cancer battle.
Hate crimes in the U.S. rose sharply in 2021, with victims most commonly targeted because of their race or ethnicity, the FBI said after earlier incomplete data had suggested a decline.
The FBI recorded a total of 10,840 hate crime incidents in 2021, up from 8,052 in 2020, according to a supplemental addition to the agency’s annual hate crimes report.
The data is far from complete and the actual numbers are likely to be higher, experts tracking the rise in bias-fueled violence said.
Former President Trump is officially declining to offer testimony in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s probe into the hush-money payment to adult performer Stormy Daniels made before the 2016 election.
Michael D. Cohen, a crucial witness in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal investigation into Trump, testified in front of a grand jury yesterday, as prosecutors near a likely indictment of the former president.
Trump lashed out at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, using his 2024 debut speech in Iowa to rehash his longtime 2020 campaign claims and attack his would-be political rival days after the Florida Republican made an appearance in the Hawkeye State.
DeSantis may be a rising star among Republicans, but the way Trump’s arrival brought downtown Davenport to a halt yesterday suggested the former president remains, at least for now, the center of the party’s galaxy.
DeSantis has sharply broken with Republicans who are determined to defend Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, saying that protecting the European nation’s borders is not a vital U.S. interest and that policymakers should instead focus attention at home.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader who suffered a concussion in a serious fall last week, was released from the hospital and will move to a physical rehabilitation center before returning to the Senate, according to his office.
China will resume issuing visas to tourists and other foreigners, a significant step in the country’s move to rejoin the world and leave its stringent Covid restrictions behind.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced criminal charges against a founder of a Chicago-based COVID-19 testing lab that allegedly made over $83 million in fraudulent federal health claims for COVID tests.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the Covid-19 virus will be one of the very first serious pathogens that today’s infants—and all future infants—meet.
Actress Tilda Swinton opened her keynote appearance at South by Southwest by sharing her pleasure that the pandemic had gotten to a point where audience members at the event didn’t have to wear masks anymore
Pfizer has agreed to pay $43 billion for biotech Seagen and its pioneering class of targeted cancer drugs, as the drugmaker braces for a steep fall in COVID-19 product sales and loss of exclusivity for some top sellers.
Eisai Co.’s new Alzheimer’s disease drug Leqembi will be covered by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the first major insurer to agree to pay for the drug since its approval by U.S. regulators earlier this year.
Gov. Kathy Hochul mobilized the National Guard and declared a state of emergency ahead of a winter storm expected to dump two to four feet of snow in parts of the state in the next two days.
The state and utility companies across upstate made plans to confront widespread power outages as a storm bringing a one-two punch of heavy, wet snow and powerful wind closed in on the region.
Hochul said expanding charter schools in the state is necessary to give parents options about their children’s education after vehement pushback from Democratic lawmakers and labor unions against the governor’s budget proposal.
Hochul effectively threatened Albany Democrats with a late state budget ahead of an expected rebuke of her proposals to overhaul cash bail limits and expand charter schools in New York.
The budget watchdog organization the Citizens Budget Commission of New York (CBCNY) has released its recommendations to the state Legislature as each house prepares to release its one house spending plans.
Democrats in the state Senate will attempt to thwart Hochul’s proposal to raise yearly tuition at the state’s public college and universities by jettisoning a plan that would tie tuition to the Higher Education Price Index or 3%.
The group American Opportunity revealed it was launching a multi-faceted effort to support Hochul’s budget with TV and digital ads as well as mailers. But who is funding the organization, created as a 501(c)(4) non-profit, won’t be known until the summer.
The political group founded by Upstate New York businessman Martin Babinec has decided to stop endorsing candidates, less than two years after it launched with a reform agenda, and will shift to advocate for legislative changes in the political system.
Senate Democrats are including a measure in their budget proposal that would rescind the longstanding tax abatement MSG owner James Dolan has enjoyed for more than four decades.
Albany lawmakers are looking to throw NYCHA a lifeline this week, proposing to add millions of dollars to the state budget to give public housing tenants the same financial aid struggling private-sector renters got during the pandemic.
Politically-powerful union leaders in New York are stepping up their push to to get more worker protections included in Hochul’s ambitious plan to boost housing.
The controversial plan to build an AirTrain link to LaGuardia has been killed after a review by the Port Authority. Instead, a three-member panel said in a report issued yesterday, the PA should improve access through increased bus service.
A review found that the project’s cost had ballooned to $2.4 billion, more than five times initial estimates for what was a pet project of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Ed Cox who served as the New York state Republican Party chairman from 2009 to 2019 was unanimously re-elected to his old job during a vote at the Marriott in Albany.
Cox immediately declared the state GOP won’t back a candidate in the 2024 presidential primary, including Trump.
Former Rep. Lee Zeldin’s political action committee announced its first batch of early endorsements for the 2024 election cycle as the 2022 Republican nominee for governor dips back into the political realm.
Assemblymember Juan Ardila, a Queens Democrat, has been accused of allegedly sexually assaulting two women on the same night in 2015.
Mayor Eric Adams renewed his push to convert office space to apartments by pressing Hochul and state lawmakers to loosen restrictions around such conversions.
Mayor Adams’ administration said that it will approve higher salaries for municipal workers in high-attrition jobs and respond faster to hiring requests, moving to address a staffing crisis that has challenged city agencies.
The Adams administration is opening two new mega-migrant shelters this month amid a seemingly never-ending influx of asylum seekers from the U.S. southern border.
One is set to open in Times Square’s vacant Candler Tower office building, which was once home to a 24-hour McDonald’s restaurant long billed as the busiest and most profitable of its kind in the US.
Adams defended his repeated calls for more spirituality in schools while slamming social media — specifically the Chinese-owned company TikTok because he said it exposes children to the worst of society.
The NYPD has decided to crack down on its already-thinning, overworked ranks by rooting out cops who grow their beards too long, drink coffee on the job and don’t empty their garbage cans quickly enough.
ISIS-inspired terrorist Sayfullo Saipov was given the mercy he didn’t offer the eight victims he mowed down on a Manhattan bike path with a rented truck — being spared the death penalty.
Last week, after they were confronted with lab results showing New York cannabis products had significantly less THC than advertised, state regulators revoked a stop-gap testing measure they’d designed to speed up the recreational market’s kickoff.
The shift came after NY Cannabis Insider shared lab tests with state cannabis regulators which showed that five of the eight highest-potency strains of legal marijuana in the retail industry contained at least 25 percent less THC than their labels indicated.
The board of directors for the State Troopers PBA met behind closed doors last week and voted to part ways with the union’s longtime political director, Gordon Warnock, amid an ongoing investigation of the organization’s finances and business dealings.
Overall, 54 percent of Upstate New York CEOs who responded to the latest Siena poll said business conditions have worsened over the last year.
City of Rensselaer residents should expect low water pressure for the next day or two as the city tries to find and repair a major water main break near the intersection of Washington Avenue Extension and Exit 8 of Interstate 90
Looking for tickets to the NCAA Tournament games at MVP Arena? You’ll need to hit the secondary market.
Finding downtown parking for Friday’s NCAA basketball tournament games at the MVP Arena might be difficult so shuttle buses will be run from parking lots at the University at Albany’s uptown campus and the W. Averell Harriman State Office Building Campus.
Syracuse, New York, was named the “Best Bar Town” in America by Barstool Sports in a March Madness-style online competition between 64 towns and cities across the U.S.
