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You’ll
Eat What We Feed You
Assemblyman
Jack McEneny pulls genetically modified foods bill, dashing
hopes of enforcing GM moratorium this session
A group of activists stormed Hannaford supermarket in
Albany on Saturday, handing out fliers to shoppers to express
their opposition to the genetic engineering of food. The group
was trying to gain public support for two pieces of state
legislation that would require genetically engineered food
to be labeled and place a five-year moratorium on the planting
of GM crops in New York state.
“People
have a right to know what is in their food,” said Ed Kurtick,
member of the Nutrition Education Committee. “You and I should
know what we are eating, and from there make a choice if we
want to eat it or not. There is labeling for sugar and salt,
so why not genetically engineered food?”
But their hopes were partly dashed on Tuesday when Assemblyman
Jack McEneny (D-Albany) pulled his bill, which called for
the establishment of the moratorium, before it could go before
the agricultural committee for a vote. Meanwhile, the mandatory
labeling bill, which would require that any food manufactured
with genetically engineered materials acknowledge that on
its packaging, doesn’t look like it will see the light of
day in this year’s legislative session.
McEneny said that he knew he didn’t have the votes to get
his bill out of committee, and that’s why he pulled it.
“It
would just make those people [other legislators] who were
willing to vote for it vulnerable in their own districts,
and particularly with the Farm Bureau,” said McEneny. “You
just don’t do that to people when they are willing to give
you their vote.”
Chris LaRoe, spokesman for the New York Farm Bureau, said
that his organization is against both bills because such legislation
is unnecessary. Genetically engineered products, he said,
are already regulated by three different government agencies:
the Food and Drug Administration, the United States Department
of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency, all
of which, he said, have deemed the products safe for human
consumption.
“A
five-year hold on planting crops is unnecessary and would
put New York state farmers at a huge disadvantage to other
states who would not be required to follow suit,” said LaRoe.
He added that mandatory labeling comes across as a warning
rather than informative information, and it often confuses
consumers.
“Labeling
doesn’t say what the product is, just how it got there,” said
LaRoe. “We don’t need that because it has already been proven
safe.”
But not everyone believes that enough tests have been done
to prove the safety of GM foods.
Audrey Thier, pesticide project director for Environmental
Advocates, said that little is known about genetically engineered
foods, and that at this time, companies are not required to
test the products for toxicity or allergic reactions.
She pointed out that just last year soybeans that had been
engineered with Brazil nut genes almost made their way to
the shelves of supermarkets before it was discovered that
the beans would have posed a serious health risk to those
who are allergic to nuts.
“Soybeans
are engineered into so many different foods and are so widely
dispersed, how would we have ever figured out that this was
the source of a health hazard?” asked Thier. “You can’t do
[testing] after the fact. You must do it beforehand, and we
need to do this right now.”
Sarkis Haroutunian, chief of staff for Sen. Nancy Larraine
Hoffman (R-Syracuse), said that unless mandatory labeling
and a five-year moratorium on planting genetically modified
crops were first done at the federal level, the bill could
drive food processing companies, like Kraft, out of New York
state. Hoffman sponsors a Senate bill that would allow voluntary
labeling for genetically modified foods.
“Why
would these companies stay here when they can go to states
that don’t have such strict laws?” he added. “All of these
products cross states’ lines, so we need to do this on a federal
level if we expect it to make any kind of difference.”
But Their doesn’t buy into this argument.
“That
is the argument that is always trotted out when ever somebody
is trying to stop something at the state level,” said Thier.
“The state governments have to exercise their authority and
make progressive state policy that protects its citizens and
protects its farmers and protects its ecosystem. They can’t
pass the buck all the time.”
Thier also added that powerful corporate interests also have
a hand in why it is so tough to get these bills passed in
New York state.
“This
is an enormous cash enterprise,” she said. “There are huge
conglomerates whose livelihoods are based on this. Anything
that either casts aspersions or questions the wisdom of people
doing this, they have a big fat foot that comes right down
on it.”
—Nancy
Guerin
Same
as it Ever Was
Once
again, a permit-parking proposal is drawn up for the city
of Albany. And once again, it probably will be squashed by
state employee unions
Each morning as Jason Stratton drives home from working
the night shift as a security guard, he starts praying to
the parking God. Stratton, who gets out of work at 8 AM on
weekdays, lives on lower Hudson Avenue between Dove and Swan
streets in Albany.
“When
I pull around the bend by the dog park, I can just see cars
lined up waiting for someone to pull out so that they can
have a parking space,” said Stratton. “It is so infuriating
to finally get home and then have no place to park because
people who work downtown are taking up all the spots.”
Stratton said that some days he drives around for 30 minutes
looking for a spot and usually ends up parking in Washington
Park.
For anyone who lives in downtown Albany, Stratton’s daily
parking dilemma is all too familiar. While each year the notion
of a residential permit parking system gets thrown back and
forth between the city, the Legislature, the neighborhood
associations and the unions, it seems that it always ends
up getting thrown out the window. This year has been no exception
to the rule.
Last Thursday, a hearing was held before Assemblymen John
McEneny (D-Albany) and Ronald Canestrari (D-I-Albany) and
Sen. Neil Breslin (D-I-L-Albany) to discuss, once again, a
bill that would create a residential parking permit system
for the city of Albany.
The bill would give the city the power to implement a residential
parking-permit system, which would allow its residents to
park full time in their neighborhoods while limiting the amount
of time that visitors could park in the area. It would cover
a one-mile radius around the Empire State Plaza.
But without the support of the state’s two biggest employee
unions, Civil Service Employees Association and Public Employees
Union, the bill has a slim chance of ever becoming a law.
And once again, just as they have done for the past 10 years,
the two groups came out in opposition to the revived permit-parking
proposal.
“It
simply is the wrong plan at the wrong time,” said Denyce Duncan
Lacy, director of public relations for PEF. “The state has
just moved thousands more employees to downtown Albany. They
have some parking but there is not enough, so where are our
workers expected to park?”
In 1999, PEF President Roger Benson said that his union would
drop its opposition to a residential parking plan if the city
would provide replacement parking for its union members. For
each space that the city would create, PEF would trade for
a residential parking permit.
Lacy said that Benson still stands by his word. When the city
built two parking garages in downtown Albany just last year,
many residents were hopeful that this could be the start of
the negotiations. But many, like Alice Oldfather, president
of the Center Square Neighborhood Association, are giving
up hope that the unions will ever accept any version of the
legislation.
“They
will always make excuses,” said Oldfather. “They haven’t shown
any willingness or initiative to address the problem that
was emphasized at the hearing. Legislation has got to stop
using the unions’ opposition as a fig leaf for their inaction.”
Lacy added that while the two new garages did provide a limited
amount of parking spots for state workers, the waiting list
to get into them is so long that it’s projected to be nine
years before new spots open up. Plus, she said, state workers
are expected to pick up the monthly cost of parking in these
lots.
“These
state employees did not ask to be moved to downtown Albany,”
said Lacy. “There was a concerted effort as part of this plan
between the city of Albany and the state to try to help revitalize
downtown. We don’t think it is fair to be asking our employees
to subsidize that move.”
But Oldfather said that a price for parking might be the only
incentive that will alleviate the parking problem for those
who live in the surrounding neighborhoods.
“If
we have parking permit, state employees will pay for parking
or they will take public transit,” said Oldfather. “If they
don’t have that incentive, then they are just going to keep
using our streets as their parking lot.”
McEneny, who sponsors the permit-parking bill in the Assembly,
said that the missing equation to the problem is that many
people have such strong resistance to sharing rides with each
other or taking public transportation.
“We
also have a dirty little secret going on,” said McEneny. “People
who have permits to park in the garage are choosing on a bright
sunny day to park on the streets so that they don’t have to
wait in the line to get into the garage, which I think shows
very little social conscience.”
Albany is the only state capital in the Northeast form Maine
to Maryland that doesn’t have a residential parking system
in place.
—N.G.
Protest
for Palestine
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Joe Putrock
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More
than 100 protesters gathered in front of the Armory on Washington
Avenue in Albany last Wednesday to protest Israeli policies
in the Middle East. The protesters, who were gathered by numerous
social-action organizations, including Vets for Peace, Jewish
Voices for Peace, Campus Action and the Social Justice center,
were calling for a peaceful compromise to the ongoing battle
over the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Israel
and Palestine have been fighting for years over who is the
rightful owner of that land. The protesters’ message was that
they would like to see “the end of Israeli occupation of Palestinian
lands.” Simultaneously, a group of counterprotesters carried
signs of their own.
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Joe Putrock
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Beyond
George, Carl and Andy
In
New York State politics, it’s not easy being Green.
Especially when trying to advance the state’s most important
issues, according to recently announced Green Party gubernatorial
candidate Stanley Aronowitz. Aronowitz, a New York City resident
and professor at the City University of New York Graduate
Center, has participated in the past at speaking engagements
with the Democratic candidates vying for a run against Gov.
George Pataki this fall, state Comptroller H. Carl McCall
and Andrew Cuomo. Aronowitz claims the issues he wants to
advance this year are simply not engaged in New York’s political
forum.
“I
see very little difference between the Democrats and Republicans,
no startling set of ideas,” Aronowitz said. “If candidates
aren’t talking taxes, aren’t talking cessation of the Rockefeller
drug laws, aren’t talking about ending the death penalty,
they aren’t talking about the future of the state of New York.”
Aronowitz’s main campaign pledge is to reconfigure the state’s
tax structure to adequately support New York’s environmental,
educational and health-care needs. Though he has yet to work
out a detailed program for restructuring the tax system, Aronowitz
believes that taxpayers making more than $50,000 a year should
pay more taxes on a graduated basis.
Though taking over the governor’s office is ultimately the
goal of Aronowitz’s campaign, receiving the 50,000 votes necessary
to ensure the Green Party an automatic spot on ballot for
the next four years comes in a close second.
“We’re
here to stir up the voters,” Aronowitz said. “We’ll get the
50,000.”
—T.D.
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Columns
& Opinions
