NYS Constitutional Convention Update.

In ten months (November 7. 2017), New York State will have a Constitutional Convention referendum to determine if the state will have a Constitutional Convention and appoint delegates.  The delegates are elected on November 8, 2018 and the Constitutional Convention is connived on  April 2, 2019, where each and every referendum is voted on in the November 2019 election day. Any amendment that is approved probably comes into effect on January 1, 2020.

Apparently, Governor Andrew Cuomo's support of the Constitutional Convention has cooled considerably since 2015 and in his latest budget, the Governor even failed to include funding for the Con-Con Commission that's needed to organize the Constitutional Convention.  Without funding, it will be very difficult to publicize and propose different amendments.  Moreover, the Democratic Assembly have shown little interest in supporting the Constitutional Convention.  Even the Senate Republicans are lukewarm in their support since they can see an amendment of reducing large corporate donations being approved under the Constitutional Convention.

While the State must have a Constitutional Convention every twenty years.  Hopefully, with the lack of supportive politicians in both sides of the aisle and a Governor who seems to not to be so anxious in funding the Constitutional Convention, it will go down to the same overwhelming defeat as in 1998.

That brings me to our union leadership's appeal to have the members increase their COPE contributions so that they can more effectively lobby for the Constitutional Convention's defeat.  While, the union's appeal is understandable if the COPE funds were only used to for the defeat of the Constitutional Convention, the truth is our union leadership uses our COPE contributions to fund many different organizations, many of them I do not support or should not be funded.  Remember this?

 Until our disconnected union leadership starts to ask its members where our dues and COPE contributions should go to, they get no COPE money from me.

 How to withdraw from COPE can be found Here.