Crain’s rates the NY budget’s winners, losers

Will Bredderman reports for Crain’s New York Business

The ritual struggle over the state’s fiscal plan ended this weekend—with a $175 billion result.

Who budged on the budget, and who’s in the money? Read on.

WINNERS

1. Campaign consultants: That giant “cha-ching” heard Sunday morning from Buffalo to Montauk was the sound of dollar signs popping into the eyes of political strategists, pollsters and palm-card wizards. The budget committed $100 million annually toward public financing of state elections, devolving responsibility for designing such a system on an as-yet unnamed commission. Presumably the panel will create something like the city’s program, which matches every dollar from small contributors with $8 from taxpayers.

The argument for matching funds is that it reduces the influence of the rich and allows for outsiders to upset the status quo. What it seems to actually do is encourage hopeless or spurious candidacies and enrich political professionals without shaking the power of entrenched incumbents.

Recall this year’s 17-candidate dogpile of public advocate hopefuls. No more than four contenders were viable; the remainder were vanity campaigns or opportunities for the ambitious to build name recognition for future races at public expense. The Campaign Finance Board ladled out $7.1 million in matching funds, much of which fed the lobbyist-consultant-adviser-strategist complex that operates out of the average voter’s sight.ADVERTISING

The all-but lawless state races are nobody’s democratic ideal, but last year saw more than a dozen legislators defeated in either primary or general elections. By contrast, in 2017—when every city office went up for bid—just one sitting official lost her job to an upstart challenger. It seems the public finance system does not compensate for the structural advantages of incumbency.

It’s possible matching funds have reduced the influence of deep-pocketed interests. But the past decade of city politics has also witnessed the astounding expansion of independent expenditures, which let unions and business interests spend unlimited amounts on materials promoting the candidate of their choosing. These IEs too require an internal infrastructure of experts and advisers, and thus also help pay for the summer homes and college savings accounts of the consultant class.

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Pregnant whale washes up in Italian tourist spot with 22 kilograms of plastic in its stomach

By Gianluca Mezzofiore, CNN
Updated 0954 GMT (1754 HKT) April 1, 2019

The sperm whale was found washed up on the Italian island of Sardinia.

(CNN)The carcass of a pregnant sperm whale that washed up in Sardinia, Italy, last week had 22 kilograms (49 pounds) of plastic in its stomach, and was carrying a dead fetus, the country’s environment minister and a marine life non-profit organization said.Luca Bittau, president of the SeaMe group, told CNN the beached mammal’s remains contained “garbage bags … fishing nets, lines, tubes, the bag of a washing machine liquid still identifiable, with brand and barcode … and other objects no longer identifiable.“

“She was pregnant and had almost certainly aborted before (she) beached,” he said. “The fetus was in an advanced state of composition.”

The whale had 22 kilograms (49 pounds) of plastic in its stomach.

The whale had 22 kilograms (49 pounds) of plastic in its stomach.The dead animal, which was eight meters (26 feet) long, washed up on a beach in the Sardinian tourist hotspot of Porto Cervo.Bittau said the cause of death would be known after histological and toxicological examinations carried out by veterinarians in Padua, northern Italy.

Sergio Costa, Italy’s environment minister, said in a Facebook post: “Are there still people who say these are not important problems? For me they are, and they are priorities.”

The dead animal was found in waters off the Sardinian tourist hotspot of Porto Cervo.

The dead animal was found in waters off the Sardinian tourist hotspot of Porto Cervo.

“We’ve used the ‘comfort’ of disposable objects in a lighthearted way in the past years and now we are paying the consequences. Indeed the animals, above all, are the ones paying them,” he continued.

Costa also referred to the recent approval by the European Parliament of a law banning a wide-range of single-use plastic items, such as straws, cotton buds and cutlery, by 2021.

“Italy will be one of the first countries to implement it,” he promised. “The war on disposable plastic has begun. And we won’t stop here.”

Last month, a young whale was found dead in the Philippines with 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of plastic bags in its stomach.

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Federal judge in Alaska blocks Trump’s arctic offshore drilling expansion as lawyers ramp up legal challenges

The ruling restores Obama’s orders putting large parts of the Arctic off-limits to offshore drilling and throws Trump’s oil and gas lease sale plans into question.

Sabrina Shankman

SABRINA SHANKMAN reports for inside climate news

 

MAR 30, 2019
Arctic oil drilling. Credit: Sergey Anisimov/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Environmental lawyers are challenging several Trump administration efforts to expand oil and gas drilling, especially in the Arctic. Many of those involve concerns about climate change. Credit: Sergey Anisimov/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The government’s pell-mell race to open up new areas for oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters is running into legal obstacles mounted by conservationists and climate advocates.
Through litigation and procedural maneuvers, opponents of fossil fuel expansion are hoping to overturn key elements of the no-holds-barred oil and gas boom that President Donald Trump and his cabinet have pressed for from the moment they took office.
In the latest case, a federal judge in Alaska sided with environmental groups in a lawsuit over offshore drilling late Friday. The Arctic offshore areas in question—parts of the Outer Continental Shelf in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas—had been protected from fossil fuel drilling by an executive order issued by President Barack Obama. Trump had overturned that order in 2017, and the administration was hurtling toward a lease sale there that it hoped to hold later this year.
The judge determined that Trump didn’t have the authority to revoke Obama’s decisions to withdraw those areas from leasing, or an area of canyons Obama withdrew from leasing in the Atlantic Ocean. That would require action by Congress, the judge wrote.

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Federal judge in Alaska blocks Trump’s arctic offshore drilling expansion as lawyers ramp up legal challenges

The ruling restores Obama’s orders putting large parts of the Arctic off-limits to offshore drilling and throws Trump’s oil and gas lease sale plans into question.

SABRINA SHANKMAN REPORTS FOR INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS

MAR 30, 2019

Arctic oil drilling. Credit: Sergey Anisimov/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Environmental lawyers are challenging several Trump administration efforts to expand oil and gas drilling, especially in the Arctic. Many of those involve concerns about climate change. Credit: Sergey Anisimov/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The government’s pell-mell race to open up new areas for oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters is running into legal obstacles mounted by conservationists and climate advocates.

Through litigation and procedural maneuvers, opponents of fossil fuel expansion are hoping to overturn key elements of the no-holds-barred oil and gas boom that President Donald Trump and his cabinet have pressed for from the moment they took office.

In the latest case, a federal judge in Alaska sided with environmental groups in a lawsuit over offshore drilling late Friday. The Arctic offshore areas in question—parts of the Outer Continental Shelf in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas—had been protected from fossil fuel drilling by an executive order issued by President Barack Obama. Trump had overturned that order in 2017, and the administration was hurtling toward a lease sale there that it hoped to hold later this year.

The judge determined that Trump didn’t have the authority to revoke Obama’s decisions to withdraw those areas from leasing, or an area of canyons Obama withdrew from leasing in the Atlantic Ocean. That would require action by Congress, the judge wrote.

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NY mandates food-waste recycling, bans plastic bag

Cole Rosengren reports for Waste Dive


The New York state legislature passed multiple waste-related policy changes in its $175.5 billion FY20 budget deal over the weekend.
A proposal from Gov. Andrew Cuomo to expand the list of accepted products in the state’s container deposit program wasn’t among them, but two other key items moved after years of effort.
Effective January 2022, any establishment that generates more than two tons of food waste per week must separate material for donation and arrange for inedible scraps to be taken to an organics recycler within 25 miles. Temporary waivers will be granted by the state based on factors such as cost and distance.
Effective March 2020, the state will prohibit distribution of any “plastic carryout bag” (with some exemptions) and allow cities or counties to implement their own five-cent fees on paper bags. New York City, among other local governments, is now expected to take that step.
The last days of the budget season in Albany are often hectic, with many policies getting added or dropped, and this year’s negotiations were no exception. As details emerged into the weekend and final votes were taken on Sunday, it became clear legislators had made multiple significant changes to environmental policy. Some attribute this to the fact that the New York Senate is now controlled by Democrats for the first time in multiple years.
While the plastic bag ban has been getting most of the attention, the organics mandate is arguably an even bigger change. Once enacted, New York will become the sixth state to pass some version of an organics diversion mandate – following California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont.
Similar versions of this proposal have been backed by Cuomo and other state lawmakers for multiple years, but repeatedly got cut from final budget deals and weren’t taken up separately in prior legislative sessions. If the policy works as intended, it will put a notable dent in waste volumes for areas of the state that don’t already have commercial diversion mandates in place — all but New York City — and encourage the development of more regional processing infrastructure. Currently, much of the city’s organic material is traveling to other Northeast states.
The policy’s passage also comes with some compromise. The required distance between covered generators and organics recyclers (which will also include animal feed) has been reduced from previous lengths of 50 and 40 miles down to 25. Hospitals, nursing homes, adult care facilities and grade schools are also exempted from complying at all. Ongoing opposition from the healthcare industry was said to be a key issue in 2018. Next, the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation is required to determine if sufficient capacity exists by June 2021 before covered establishments are expected to make arrangements for compliance.
That said, the plastic bag news is also notable. Following a 2016 ballot referendum in California, and a de facto ban in Hawaii across every county, New York is the only other state to enact such a policy to date. After the back-and-forth drama that involved New York City passing its own plastic ban/paper fee in 2016, the state legislature overriding that in 2017 and a Cuomo-appointed task force yielding minimal results in 2018, this move is seen as a long time coming. Supporters believe it will lead to a broader culture change around reusable bags, especially if the New York City Council can seal the deal with its own paper bag fee.
As for Cuomo’s pitch to expand New York’s bottle bill for the inclusion of non-alcoholic beverage containers such as juice, tea-based beverages and sports drinks, there has been little attention given to its demise. Stiff and concerted lobbying pressure from the NWRA, every major recycler in the state, multiple counties and even some environmental groups — all concerned about losing valuable local revenue on PET bottles and aluminum cans — appears to have been successful.

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Tesla building solar array at Frederick County, Md landfill

Landfill SolarContractors pour concrete into steel that will support the racking for a solar array on top of a landfill cell at the Frederick County landfill. Staff photo by Bill GreenSteve BohnelSteve Bohnel reports for the  Frederick News-PostA prominent company known for its electric cars is building a solar array at Frederick County’s landfill, which will power multiple county facilities in Maryland.

    Mike Marschner, the county’s special administrative director and the project manager, said Tesla is building the array of solar panels after three or four years of working through permitting with state and county officials.The panels, which are being placed on top of a geosynthetic cap at one of the facility’s closed landfill sites, will produce a maximum of about 1.9 megawatts of power. A total of 7,776 photovoltaic modules will produce 3,669,961 kilowatt-hours of energy in the array’s first year — enough to power about 10 county buildings or facilities, roughly 20 percent of the county’s general building power needs, Marschner said.Marschner said the county entered a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement with Tesla, where it will pay 6.6 cents per kilowatt-hour during that time span. The county is not purchasing additional power through the agreement, but rather using the array versus other forms of energy such as steam or coal.The power will be routed off the landfill site by Potomac Edison, through a virtual net metering system. That system allows the county to receive solar credits for excess solar power produced.“The value to us, because you are in this virtual net metering mode, is we don’t pay for certain things that you normally pay for when you’re buying commercial power from the power company,” Marschner said, adding those could be fees and other charges from Potomac Edison.Read the full storyLike this? Click to receive free updates

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