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“I am extremely pleased that Governor Cuomo has made the passage of marriage equality legislation one of his top priorities for this legislative session.  With polls now showing a clear majority of New Yorkers supporting marriage equality, I am more and more optimistic that if the Senate Majority allows the bill to come to the floor for a vote, it will have a good chance of passing.

“I strongly support marriage equality as a basic civil rights issue.  Under current New York law, lesbian and gay couples are denied the basic protections provided to heterosexual couples. Denying gays and lesbians access to those benefits and protections – as well as the many responsibilities which come with civil marriage – is a violation of the fundamental principle of equal protection under our State constitution.

“Those who argue against marriage equality usually base their arguments either on 1) religious grounds or 2) their belief that marriage should be reserved for relationships centered around procreation and child rearing. The first argument fails to recognize both the separation of church and state and the fact that many denominations do in fact already recognize same sex marriages.  And the second argument is just plain silly…

Full Statement On Marriage Equality

In a year that has seen Women’s Reproductive Rights come under attack at the National and State levels, Senator Liz Krueger and members of the NYS Legislature have mobilized to create a Bipartisan Pro Choice Legislative Caucus (BPCLC), coordinating their efforts to ensure that such attacks will never gain traction in New York State.  In their first public event, a mere two months after forming, the BPCLC joined with pro choice advocates and health providers throughout the State to host the Reproductive Rights and Information Fair, an event highlighting the BPCLC’s desire to shed more light on complex issues surrounding reproductive rights.

• Task a 15-member Empire State Performance Commission with designing a performance based management and budgeting blueprint that will streamline government and end waste and fraud that has plagued programs and services (S413).
• Remove fiscal manipulations that have allowed for the distortion of State finances, by requiring both the Executive Budget proposal and Enacted Budget to be balanced according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). This will end the practice of balancing the budget on a “Cash Basis,” which blurs the State’s actual fiscal reality by only looking at what money the State has “in pocket” at a given time, while ignoring the money it owes (which is often a large sum). GAAP Budgeting will “fundamentally realign recurring spending with recurring revenue to restore the State’s fiscal health” as recommended in a recent report by the state Comptroller (S414).
• End New York’s status as the only state with a budget date prior to the federal tax collection date. Currently, the State balances the budget based on assumptions, rather than on hard numbers. Shifting the start of the fiscal year to June 1 will allow for proper fiscal planning (S418).

By Megan Finnegan

Gov. Cuomo’s push, plus public opinion shift, raises bill’s chance of passage

Two years after the stunning defeat of a marriage equality bill in the State Senate, advocates and politicians are gearing up for another run at making same-sex marriage legal in New York.

With popularity high and momentum strong after passing an on-time budget, Governor Cuomo has made it a priority to introduce and push for the passage of new legislation to allow same-sex marriage. A recent poll from Sienna College shows that 58 percent of registered voters support the measure, with only 36 percent in opposition, and proponents are seizing on those numbers to persuade the public as well as elected officials on the fence that now is the right time to give gay marriage a legal stamp of approval.

Full Article & See What Liz Has to Say