Capital: Poll – Voters say separate ethics, education from budget

By Jimmy Vielkind 

ALBANY—Voters offered a mixed appraisal of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s various budget proposals, but a new poll finds a majority believe he should separate his proposed changes to the state’s ethics and education plans from the $141.6 billion spending plan currently under negotiation with lawmakers.

The Siena Research Institute found 56 percent of the 800 voters surveyed wanted to see the education plans dropped, and 54 percent wanted to see ethics addressed as a separate bill.

Cuomo, a Democrat, has said he won’t approve a budget that isn’t linked to a five-point ethics plan that includes forcing lawmakers to disclose their law and business clients. He’s also yoked a proposed $1.1 billion increase in school aid to changes to teacher evaluation and tenure laws, an increase in the amount of charter schools in the state, the extension of tuition assistance to undocumented immigrants—known as the Dream Act—and a tax credit on donations to private and parochial school scholarship funds as well as public schools.

Read the rest of the story at Capital

Photo Credit: Comme Sisyphe by Honoré Daumier (displayed in the Brooklyn Museum) Photo of lithograph on newsprint courtesy of Wikipedia