“The coronavirus isn’t just an excuse to implement bad policies with little or no debate. Officials can also use the situation to abandon good reforms. They do both in New York’s new $117 billion budget, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed in the middle of the state’s continued COVID-19 disaster. (599 New Yorkers died Sunday, bringing the state’s death toll of 4,159.) The budget implements a number of bad regulations while abandoning or scaling back some good ones. And the whole budget was hammered out behind closed doors and passed with very little discussion or debate. So: more rules telling New Yorkers what they can and cannot do (with a heavy emphasis on “cannot”), an unwillingness to trim even the lowest hanging fruit off the drug-war tree, and an unwillingness to introduce some transparency in police conduct, even as the state pushes another product—flavored vapes—into the black market, which will almost certainly lead to more arrests. They packed quite a lot into that budget.”
BILL TARLING – If the legislators weren’t on hand to cast a “NO” vote, their vote was automatically counted as if they voted in favor of passing the disastrous and corrupt budget bill
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