Albany's 'Mad Dash'

**Brian Lehrer** (0:11)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Coming up in our second hour this morning, it's season one, episode one of Ask the Mayor for the Mamdani Administration years. My questions and yours for the new mayor coming up for half hour at 11 o'clock. Please do not call now. We'll just ask you to call back at that time if you do. But looking forward to kicking off our latest Ask the Mayor series. Also today, we'll spotlight the primaries today in New Jersey and California, with a lot at stake, both locally and nationally, through those.
And now that it's June, some sunscreen recommendations from the New York Times Wirecutter as it's time to keep yourself and loved ones safe from skin cancer. Don't sleep on your sunscreen. Let's start in Albany, though, where this is going to be a very consequential week, three days actually. And it also sets up some of what we may need to ask the mayor about. Because this year's New York State budget was only adopted last week, not around April 1st, when it was due. The two moments when Albany actually gets things done, the budget at that time and the close of the session this week, have crashed into each other. Lawmakers are scrambling to finish by Thursday for the year.
Why? With one eye on the June 23rd primary elections. That's why nobody wants to be stuck in Albany when they could be home campaigning. What that means in practice is that some genuinely consequential legislation hangs in the balance in the next three days. Everything from New York's response to Trump's redistricting mores, a crackdown on the algorithm that may be changing prices for products based on who you are, new rules for ticket resellers, and more. WNYC and Gothamist New York State issues reporter Jimmy Vielkind is our man in Albany today, and he joins us now to talk about the mad dash. Hey, Jimmy, welcome back to the show.

**Jimmy Vielkind** (2:09)
Good morning, Brian. I just madly dashed into our booth here at the Capitol and ready to go.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:14)
Just in time. And listeners, with Albany about to make some decisions that could affect what you pay for groceries, who draws your congressional district, whether you can get a reasonably priced ticket to see your team or your favorite artist, we invite your phone calls to 1-2-4-3-3 WNYC. There's also a bill to regulate plastic packaging and packaging pollution generally, another one that would increase from 5 cents to 10 cents. The deposits on the bottles when you buy those at the store and cans.
So we invite your calls on any of those things or if there's something else on this end of session agenda that I haven't even mentioned, that you might be lobbying for or that you're afraid they may slip in, that you're watching closely, 2-1-2-4-3-3 WNYC, 2-1-2-4-3-3, 9-6-9-2, call or text. All right, Jimmy, let's go right to the redistricting amendment that was introduced late last night. It would let New York Democrats draw new congressional maps in time for the 2028 elections. What has to happen before then for New York to set this process off?

**Jimmy Vielkind** (3:27)
Well, it's a pretty cumbersome process actually to amend the New York State Constitution. First, you have to have one legislature pass a resolution like a bill, and then there has to be an election, and the next successively elected crop of legislators has to pass exactly the same bill or resolution.
Then the third step is that it goes on the ballot before voters who get to vote yay or nay. New York isn't an initiative in referendum states, so we don't have a lot of direct democracy here, but we do its way in on potential changes to the state constitution. So there is really a long road ahead, but lawmakers have been watching what's going on around the country, and Democrats say they want to kick off this process now so that maybe some changes could be in place, as you said, Brian, for 2028

**Brian Lehrer** (4:15)
As I understand it, the amendment would actually remove the state constitution's prohibition on drawing districts to favor incumbents or political parties. People with a long enough memory may recall that there was a, what was seen as a kind of non-partisan, bipartisan, good government move some years ago to make it harder to draw partisan districts. There was this sort of good government, you know, take partisanship out of redistricting as much as possible to avoid polarization movement around the country. And it got pretty far in New York State. It got into the law, into the constitution, although then it crashed in practice, right?