OCTOBER 2017 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 21
Opponents of the convention
include such unlikely bedfellows as
the trade unions, Planned Parenthood,
the New York Rifle and Pistol
Association (an NRA affiliate), the
Conservative Party, Environmental
Advocates and even the Long
Island Progressive Coalition.
“This is a diverse coalition of
groups that, frankly, have never
worked together,” said Carl Korn,
a spokesman for New York State
United Teachers, a federation of
more than 1,200 local unions. “I
don’t know the last time the AFLCIO
and the Conservative Party
were part of the same coalition.”
Operating as New Yorkers Against
Corruption, the coalition has raised
at least $635,000, including $50,000
from the teachers’ union and
$250,000 from a healthcare union,
according to New York Public
Interest Group.
Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan
(R-Smithtown) and Assembly
Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx),
two of the “three men in a room”
that run state politics, also oppose
the convention.
A bargain
Gerald Benjamin, a distinguished
professor of political science at
SUNY New Paltz and a member
of the Committee for a Constitutional
Convention, estimates that
the convention will cost taxpayers
about $70 million – a bargain, from
his point of view.
“We have a judicial system that
doesn’t provide justice. We have a
Legislature that’s embedded with
corruption. We have an executive
branch that’s aggrandizing itself
and its powers. We have a system
of elections that is managed in a
partisan manner and has produced
among the lowest turnouts in the
country,” the professor said. “So the
constitution is not working and the
people should say, ‘Hey, we want to
take a look at this.’”
However, for Dan Levler, president
of the 6,000-member Suffolk
County Association of Municipal
Employees, holding a constitutional
convention is like “opening a can
of worms.” He’s worried that his
union workers’ pensions and collective
bargaining rights could be
put at risk, a theme frequently put
forward by organized labor.
“Generally speaking, the people
who end up making these changes
are the ones who wrote the rules in
the first place,” he asserted.
A Siena College Poll released
Sept. 5 reported that 45 percent of
registered voters who were aware of
the convention favored the idea, 33
percent did not and 22 percent were
undecided.
Again, those were voters who were
aware of the debate. Almost 60
percent of those contacted by poll
said they were not.
Rumsey is a former senior editor of
the Press.
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The 1938 convention made meaningful improvements to the state’s
constitution, although the fixes helped balloon the document to
more than 50,000 words.
