Take the pledge, Albany is told

Sounding a “battle cry” targeted at state lawmakers up for election this fall, a business-led protest group will ask candidates to pledge their support of reforms to change a “dysfunctional” government in Albany or face defeat by “fed-up” voters in November.

Accompanied by a dance-band orchestra, several hundred persons rallied Thursday evening at the Hilton Rye Town in Rye Brook for the Westchester County Association”™s Call to Action campaign. Seeking to make state legislators fiscally responsible and more accountable to taxpayers and to stop a decade-long exodus of overtaxed residents and overtaxed and overregulated businesses from New York, the WCA has allied with several business advocacy and good-government groups statewide to shake up Albany”™s entrenched political culture.

Calling state government “totally dysfunctional” this year in its inability to adopt a state budget, WCA Chairman Alfred B. DelBello told the alternately cheering and politicians-jeering crowd the Call to Action campaign aims “to wake up our state legislators, tell them that we”™ve had enough, we”™re angry, the state has to turn around.”

“We need a state that attracts business, not sends business away,” said DelBello, a former state lieutenant governor and partner at DelBello Donnellan Weingarten Wise & Wiederkehr L.L.P. in White Plains.

A more recent addition to WCA”™s campaign alliance, former New York City Mayor Edward Koch told protesters, “We have a chance of prevailing this year” with reform measures in Albany. “The reason is, this is a year when every incumbent is part of the endangered species ”“ and the key is, they know it. They are scared to death they”™re going to lose their jobs. Feeding at the public trough is all they care about.”

Koch, the oldest speaker at the rally, got a standing ovation as he shuffled onstage to the music of “New York, New York” from the Gerard Carelli Orchestra of Bedford Hills. “I”™m 85 years old and I need this like a hole in the head,” he said jokingly of his renewed activism and political lobbying in Albany.   ?A colorful three-term mayor, Koch recently started New York Uprising with other prominent civic and political leaders in New York City. His good-government group has joined forces with the WCA and its Call to Action partners, which include Rochester-based Unshackle Upstate, the Long Island Association Inc. and the state office of the National Federation of Independent Business.

The WCA has incorporated the Uprising group”™s key issues in the fourfold pledge that all candidates for state elected office will be asked to sign in advance of the Nov. 2 election and a series of fall debates sponsored by the WCA. Candidates”™ response to the pledge request will be posted on the website CalltoActionCampaign.org.

Koch said his group already has pledges of support from 80 state lawmakers on one reform measure, nonpartisan legislative redistricting. Incumbents and their electoral opponents are being asked to support creating an independent commission to draw up new district lines based on population data from the 2010 U.S. Census. Legislative redistricting is a once-every-decade requirement that has long been controlled by incumbents and majority parties protecting their voter bases and jobs.

In the election-year push for pledges from lawmakers, “We are much further ahead than I ever thought we would be,” Koch said. “I truly think we will be victorious.”

Call to Action volunteers also will ask candidates to pledge in writing to act as follows:

• Commit to a balanced budget, adopted on time and with no increases in taxes, fees, assessments or borrowing.
• Pledge not to vote for any unfunded mandates for school districts and municipalities.
• Fully disclose all outside income.

“Our goal is to apprise the voters about where the incumbents and challengers stand on this critically important issue so that they make informed decisions on Election Day,” DelBello said in a rally statement.

“The Call to Action is a battle cry,” Robin Murphy, co-owner of Maid Brigade cleaning service in Valhalla, told protesters. “I”™m here because I”™m fed up” with state legislators “who can”™t balance their checkbooks” and ignore small businesses and federal officials “using capitalism as their whipping boy,” she said.

“We have a call to action, and sitting this one out is just not an option,” said Murphy.