Today’s Good News: Eliot Spitzer
When a politician or candidate gets unremittingly bad press, you can bet that he or she is doing something right. In this case, the new governor of New York is doing a lot of things right, and proving what a difference it can make when someone real gets elected. The first Spitzer achievement I heard about, not long after he took office in January, was a move to cut the price of phone calls from prisons to a normal level. You may not know about the mountains of injustice and indignity heaped on prisoners, most of whom are poor, but one has been that they charge far more than market rate for prisoners to make phone calls. (I have no idea where the money goes.) So that was a small thing, but an important one, and definitely something that most governors would never bother with.
The second thing I heard was that he had taken down some barriers to women- and minority-owned businesses getting contracts with the state. Â Something that I’m sure ruffled some well-connected feathers, but that sends a message that he cares about giving opportunities to those who need and deserve them.
The third, and not a small thing at all, was campaign finance reform passed in Albany. Of course, it isn’t everything that one could have wished for.  But the Brennan Center, NYPIRG, League of Women Voters, and Citizen Action all praised the bill, and how often do such groups get to celebrate when taking on such entrenched interests at the core of our political system? A couple of highlights:
- Significant reductions on contribution limits to state candidates
- Prohibits contributions from registered lobbyists
- Creation of enforcement unit at the Board of Elections
- Disclosure of bundling
- Greater public access to campaign finance information
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