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ELECTIONS 2020

THE SPECIFICS OF CJA'S MESSAGE TO THE CANDIDATES
& THE EVIDENCE THAT BACKS IT UP

 

On July 15-16, 2019, I furnished Governor Cuomo, Lieutenant Governor Hochul, Attorney General James, and ALL 213 legislators, via their 15 stipend-receiving legislative leaders, with a July 15, 2019 written NOTICE and substantiating analysis that the December 10, 2018 Report of the Committee on Legislative and Executive Compensation – on which their pay raises are based – was “a fraud on the People of the State of New York – and a larceny of their tax dollars”, violating a succession of penal laws,and that their duty was to void it, to return the pay-raise monies they had already received, and to initiate criminal prosecutions of the Committee’s four members and abetting attorneys. Among these members, Comptroller DiNapoli, himself a beneficiary of the Report’s salary increase recommendations.

None of the recipients denied or disputed the accuracy of the July 15, 2019 NOTICE and analysis, including the specified penal laws violated.  Instead, on December 1, 2019, the highest of the 15 legislative leaders – Temporary Senate President Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Heastie – delivered to the Governor an uncertified FY2020-21 legislative budget which, concealing that legislative salaries had been raised by the December 10, 2018 Report from $79,500 to $110,000 and that it had eliminated all legislative stipends other than for the 15 legislative leaders, sought $2,713,038 MORE for legislative salaries and stipends than the Report entitled them.  

Eight weeks after that, on January 21, 2020, Governor Cuomo publicly presented his FY2020-21 executive budget. Introduced by Lieutenant Governor Hochul, he spoke before an audience that included Temporary Senate President Stewart-Cousins, Assembly Speaker Heastie, Attorney General James, and Comptroller DiNapoli, all of whom the Governor introduced as “great”. He lauded himself and them for performing their “duty”, specifying having “constitutionally passed the budget on time”. He concealed that the Committee on Legislative and Executive Compensation had been rigged, referring to it as an “independent commission” – and stated that he supported pay raises for the Legislature, as if legislators were not already beneficiaries of pay raises.  Simultaneously, he released his appropriation bill for the legislative budget, without any accompanying recommendation that the Legislature correct the $2,713,038 overage for legislative salaries and stipends. Instead, in an out-of-sequence, mistitled section at the back of the bill, the Governor added 32 pages of supposed “reappropriations” for the Legislature – untallied, but seemingly totaling over $100,000,000. Among them, “reappropriations” of legislative salaries and stipends from past years.

On February 18, 2020, I testified about what was going on at a local budget hearing, presided over by Temporary Senate President Stewart-Cousins, who is my own state senator. My closing words were “These are penal law violations” – and the documents I handed up, in substantiation of my testimony, were:

(1)    provisions of the New York State Constitution pertaining to the fashioning and enactment of the state budget and the openness mandated for legislative proceedings -- Article VII, §§1-7, Article IV, §7, and Article III, §10;

(2)    CJA's July 15, 2019 NOTICE and analysis;

(3)    CJA's February 12, 2020 written statement to the Legislature as to its failure to hold any budget hearing on its own budget or even to post it on its Senate and Assembly websites, and furnishing 47 questions to be answered by Temporary Senate President Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Heastie about their uncertified December 1, 2019 FY2020-21 legislative budget and about the Governor's January 21, 2020 appropriation bill for the Legislature;

(4)    CJA’s written statement for the Legislature’s February 12, 2020 budget hearing at which the Judiciary's Chief Administrative Judge would be testifying, furnishing 50 questions for the Legislature to require him to answer about the Judiciary's December 1, 2019 FY2020-21 budget and about the Governor's January 21, 2020 appropriations bill for it -- the same bill as for the Legislature.

I also handed up copies of a February 18, 2020 letter I had written to Governor Cuomo, particularizing the fraud of the “simple numbers” he had touted at his January 21, 2020 address pertaining to the budgets of his “Partners in Government”: the Legislature, the Attorney General, the Comptroller, and the Judiciary – and identifying that two further letters would be forthcoming: one focused on the fraudulent, statutorily-violative, and unconstitutional December 10, 2018 Report of the Committee on Legislative and Executive Compensation and the other focused on the unconstitutionality of the Governor’s stuffing policy into his executive budget unrelated to fiscal matters and to any budget appropriations.  

These two subsequent letters, dated March 3, 2020 and March 18, 2020, were sent to the Governor – and, simultaneously, to the 15 stipend-receiving leaders of the Legislature.  Neither they, nor any other recipient of these letters, nor of the February 18, 2020 letter, denied or disputed their accuracy – or the accuracy of any of my correspondence to them, to the Senate Finance Committee, to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, to other legislative committees and to individual legislators pertaining to the FY2020-21 budget as to the larceny of taxpayer monies in the FY2020-21 budget, procured by a mountain of constitutional, statutory, and legislative rule violations.  Yet none took corrective steps. To the contrary, they all went full-speed ahead in enacting a completely “OFF THE CONSTITUTIONAL RAILS”, slush-fund executive budget for FY2020-21, with all the complained-about larcenies retained, whose brazen constitutional violations include its “three-men-in-a-room”, behind-closed-doors, deal-making finale between Governor Cuomo, Temporary Senate President Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Heastie – and the deceit that the budget thereby produced is “on time” or “timely”.

Suffice to say that just in terms of salary increases, the cost to taxpayers, since 2012, when the first commission-based “force of law” salary increases began, which were for judges – and for district attorneys because their salaries, though paid by the counties, are statutorily-linked to judicial salaries – is about HALF A BILLION DOLLARS.  Most of this amount is attributable to the August 29, 2011 Report of the Commission on Judicial Compensation and the December 24, 2015 Report of the Commission on Legislative, Judicial and Executive Compensation – and these are as fraudulent, statutorily-violative, and unconstitutional as the December 10, 2018 Report of the Committee on Legislative and Executive Compensation.  All three are “false instruments”, as defined by Penal Law §175.35, and in virtually identical respects -- and CJA's March 3, 2020 letter highlights this (at p. 6), with the substantiating proof as to the August 29, 2011 and December 24, 2015 commission reports embodied in CJA's declaratory judgment action & two citizen-taxpayer actions, all "thrown" by fraudulent decisions of New York judges financially interested in preserving their judicial pay raises & the larcenous, slush-fund, Judiciary budget embedding them.  The record of these lawsuits –  a perfect “paper trail” from which to indict and convict the constitutional officers of New York’s three government branches for “colluding to secure for themselves undeserved, unconstitutional pay raises by an unconstitutional commission scheme” – about which I gave DISPOSITIVE oral and written testimony before the Committee on Legislative and Executive Compensation at its November 30, 2018 hearing – is accessible from CJA's webpage for that testimony CJA's July 15, 2019 analysis of the Committee's December 10, 2018 Report furnishes the direct link at page 5, footnote 4.

 

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WEBPAGE LINKS:
 

2020 LEGISLATIVE SESSION

2019 LEGISLATIVE SESSION

Background Primer for the Candidates

* * *

1.
webpage for CJA's March 3, 2020 letter to Governor Cuomo --
"Your January 21, 2020 address on the Executive Budget -- Part II:
The so-called 'independent commission [that] proposed pay raises
for New York's elected officials because we performed' --
& your other related slides and claims about public trust
in government, transparency, & 'nothing to hide'"



2.
webpage for CJA's July 15, 2019 NOTICE to Legislators,
with substantiating ANALYSIS --

"Your Duty to Void the December 10, 2018 Report
of the Committee on Legislative and Executive Compensation that Boosted Your Salaries"


In a nutshell: 
Here is a partial recital of why the December 10, 2018 Report is statutorily-violative:
(1) no claim that current compensation was not "adequate"
(2) no claim to have "take[n] into account all appropriate factors"
(3) no examination of "compensation and non-salary benefits" -- only salary
(4) no examination of performance of Gov; Attorney General, Comptroller --
&, as to the Legislature, the substitution of a prospective ban/restriction on outside income;
(5) no findings as to CJA's November 30, 2018 testimony


3.
The Legislature's UNCERTIFIED budget for FY2020-21, transmitted to the Governor
by a one-sentence December 1, 2019 letter signed by Temporary Senate President Stewart-Cousins & Assembly Speaker Heastie


4.
webpage for CJA's evidentiary presentation to Temporary Senate President Stewart-Cousins & other Senators at the February 18, 2020 local public forum on the budget

5.
webpage for CJA's March 18, 2020 letter to Governor Cuomo --
"Your January 21, 2020 address on the Executive Budget -- Part III: 
GOOD NEWS DURING THE CORONAVIRUS EMERGENCY--
You Can Chuck Six of Your Seven 'Article VII Bills' Because They are Unconstitutional. 
Here's why based on analysis of the Court of Appeals' 2004 plurality, concurring,
and dissenting opinions in Pataki v. Assembly/Silver v. Pataki, 4 N.Y3d 75"
 

6.
      
  CJA's webpage for its DISPOSITIVE oral & written testimony
before the Committee on Legislative & Executive Compensation
at its November 30, 2018 hearing


The fraudulent, statutorily-violative, unconstitutional, "false instrument"
AUGUST 29, 2011 & DECEMBER 24, 2015 COMMISSION REPORTS
that raised the salaries of NY's judges -- & of district attorneys



RECORD:  2012 -- CJA's declaratory judgment action
CJA v. Cuomo, Skelos, Senate, Silver, Assembly, Schneiderman, DiNapoli,Lippman...
(Bronx Co. #302951-2012; NY Co. #401988-2012)

                  

RECORD:  2014 -- CJA's FIRST citizen-taxpayer action
CJA v. Cuomo, Skelos, Senate, Silver, Assembly,Schneiderman, DiNapoli 
(Albany Co. #1788-2014)

RECORD:  2016 -- CJA's SECOND citizen-taxpayer action --
CJA v. Cuomo, Flanagan, Senate, Heastie, Assembly, Schneiderman, DiNapoli, DiFiore
(Albany Co. #5122-2016)

7.
The district attorney pay raises, PAID BY THE COUNTIES,
arising from the judicial pay raises


* * *
SPECIAL TOPICS

The Legislature's no-discussion vote, this year,
on the Legislative/Judiciary Budget Bill & the pay raises they embed --
& in prior years

The Legislature's no-discussion vote, last year,
in tandem with the budget,
on the resolution giving raises to the Governor & Lt. Governor








 

 

 

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