The Voice

There is a wolf in sheep’s clothing in the Senate’s recently approved health care reform package.

And if nothing is done, the wolf is going to take a financial bite out of many middle-class workers who, like UUP members, happen to have solid health coverage.

The Senate’s bill, which passed with so much fanfare on Christmas Eve, contains a 40 percent excise tax on health plans worth more than $8,500 yearly for individuals and $23,000 annually for families. For retirees ages 55 and older, the bill would tax individual plans worth more than $9,850 and family plans worth more than $26,000.

NBC “Today” show weatherman Al Roker believes he wouldn’t be where he is today without his SUNY Oswego degree and the guidance he received from a pair of former UUPers who helped swing open doors in broadcasting for him.

SUNY graduates have gone on to achieve greatness in science, medicine, business, broadcasting, arts and entertainment, and dozens of other fields.
There are Pulitzer Prize winners, astronauts, war heroes and top executives, many of whom credit SUNY for helping them get to where they are today.

Among the top-achieving graduates from SUNY’s 29 state-operated campuses are:

Albany—Gregory Maguire, author of the Wicked series, the basis for the Tony Award-winning Broadway hit musical;

Alfred—Brett Bodine, NASCAR driver;

Binghamton—Paul Reiser, writer/comedian/ actor, and Mario Paniccia, Intel inventor of world’s fastest silicon photonic chip;

Brockport—Justin Ziemniak, founder and editor of Computerlink magazine;

Buffalo—Terry Gross, host of NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and Wolf Blitzer, anchor of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports;

UUP members around the state can help their union help their students by donating to the UUP College Scholarship Fund and encouraging students to apply for the one-time awards.

“UUP has awarded nearly 70 scholarships to deserving SUNY undergraduates, many of whom have said the $2,000 scholarship made it possible for them to continue their SUNY education,” said UUP Secretary Eileen Landy, the officer liaison to the UUP committees charged with selecting students and raising money. “These students have demonstrated academic excellence and a commitment to social justice. It would be a shame if they had to drop out because they couldn’t pay tuition.”

The deadline for students to apply for this year’s scholarship is March 1.

Up to four scholarships are awarded to full-time SUNY undergraduates who have completed at least 16 credit hours and who have a GPA of at least 3.75. Other criteria include a minimum of three letters of recommendation, a 500-word essay and proven service to the community.

UUP is mounting an aggressive advocacy drive, prompted by indications that this will almost certainly be a difficult budget year.

Gov. David Paterson left that impression in his State of the State address Jan. 6, when he said, “This is a winter of reckoning for New York.” He blamed what he called “cultures of addiction to spending” for leading the state into its current fiscal crisis.

As The Voice went to press, the exact scope of the challenge facing UUP was not clear, since the governor had not yet introduced his Executive Budget. Given the suggestion from the governor that all areas of state spending faced the budget knife, significant reductions in state support for SUNY appeared more than likely.

State employees are now protected against discrimination based on gender identity and expression following an Executive Order signed Dec. 16 by Gov. David Paterson.

The action comes as welcome news to UUP, especially in the wake of the Senate’s defeat of the marriage equality bill that would have legalized same-sex marriage in New York state. The union supports the Gender Expression Nondiscrimination Act (GENDA) as part of its 2010 Legislative Agenda, regarding it as an important social justice issue.

GENDA would extend anti-discrimination protections to the general population based on employment, housing, education, credit and public accommodations. It would also designate crimes committed against individuals because of their gender identity and expression as hate crimes.

GENDA has been approved in the state Assembly, but has not come up for a vote in the Senate. (Donald Feldstein)

Tier V, the new public employee retirement plan for most state employees hired after Jan. 1, 2010, is now in place.

Gov. Paterson signed the bill into law in December shortly after its passage by both houses of the Legislature during a special session called to reduce the state’s budget deficit.

Notably, UUP has dodged the bullet—for now. The new tier does not apply to most new UUP members, the majority of whom enroll in an Optional Retirement Plan (ORP), which are not subject to Tier V. As a result, UUP bargaining unit members enrolled in an ORP will continue to contribute 3 percent of their income for the first 10 years of service.

This contrasts with the changes to the state’s two other pension systems. New hires who enroll in the Employees Retirement System (ERS) and the Teachers Retirement System (TRS) are required to contribute toward their pensions for the duration of their employment. ERS participants pay 3 percent; TRS participants pay 3.5 percent.

Farmingdale Chapter President Yolanda Pauze was a study in concentration as she sat in the cockpit of the new flight simulator, her eyes fixed on the computer screen straight ahead.

“Wow, this is amazing,” Pauze said. “It’s like being in an actual airplane.”

That’s why students and instructors at Farmingdale’s aviation program are so excited about the acquisition of the $90,000 simulator—a device the college wouldn’t have without the initiative and persistence of Farmingdale UUPer Barbara Maertz. Maertz was instrumental in helping the college secure a state grant that paid for the training device.

Each year, SUNY and numerous academic and professional groups honor hundreds of UUP members for outstanding accomplishments in their disciplines, on campus and in the communities. The Voice is pleased to recognize four of these members.

• Buffalo State’s Ann Colley was recently appointed to the rank of distinguished professor in recognition of her work as a leading scholar of the Victorian period. Colley is also the sole author of five highly acclaimed books published in the U.S. and abroad.

A Senior Fulbright Scholar in Poland and the Ukraine, Colley has a long list of accomplishments, including an invitation to write a scholarly review of all 19th century studies published in 2007-2008 for Studies in English Literature.

• SUNYIT’s Joanne Joseph, an associate professor of psychology, and Patricia Murphy, an assistant professor of social sciences and humanities, have co-authored Voices of Resilience: Breast Cancer Survivor Narratives from the Mohawk Valley, which is being used to help newly diagnosed breast cancer patients.

It’s been a year since UUPer Arturo O’Farrill won a Grammy Award for best Latin jazz album and he’s still jazzed about it.

“I’m still pretty amazed,” said O’Farrill, the director of the Purchase College Jazz Orchestra and head of Purchase’s Latin Jazz program. “We were up against some really big record companies. I guess ... we were lucky.”

It was a lot more than luck that O’Farrill’s 2008 album, “Song for Chico,” beat out the likes of Latin jazz masters Papo Vasquez, Nestor Torres and the Caribbean Jazz Project for the Grammy.