Legislature could deny funding for Spitzer's driver's license plan

The Buffalo News ^ | 10/16/07 | Tom Precious

[Mount Athos]

As Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer’s approval rating continues to drop, a major component of his controversial new policy to permit illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses could be killed by the State Legislature.

Lawmakers could deny money to fund the policy.

The state’s motor vehicles commissioner, David J. Swarts, said that it will be “absolutely incumbent” to obtain funding to proceed with the biggest phase of the Spitzer plan, in which a potential pool of more than 300,000 illegal immigrants could obtain driver’s licenses if they have valid foreign passports.

That gives the Legislature, which must approve all state funding for the fiscal year beginning April 1, considerable power over the issue.

There will be little desire in at least the Republican-led Senate to open the purse strings for Spitzer to carry out the policy, judging from a combative Senate committee hearing Monday that featured four hours of confrontation between Swarts and lawmakers.

For the governor, the policy is not helping his standing among voters: 54 percent gave him a favorable rating in a new Siena College poll, with 36 percent having an unfavorable opinion of his performance.

That is down from his January ranking of 75 percent favorable and 10 percent unfavorable.

The Siena poll also found that 72 percent of New Yorkers who are aware of the issue oppose the policy, which is being implemented in two phases beginning in December, and only 22 percent support it.

The results mirror a Buffalo News/WGRZ-TV Channel 2 poll last weekend of Erie County voters that Spitzer dismissed as “fundamentally wrong and misleading.”

Swarts defended the plan against criticism that it could help terrorists or others intent on breaking the law to obtain a valuable form of identification, but Republican lawmakers tore into him during an oftencombative question-and-answer period.

One senator, Transportation Committee Chairman Thomas W. Libous, R-Binghamton, suggested that the budget would not get done if Spitzer insists on trying to fund his new policy in the state’s spending plan for 2008.

“At this rate, if we don’t have good discussions, I can see the budget ending up in December of next year — maybe,” he warned. He said Spitzer has shown “a bit of arrogance here in jamming down the public’s throat that this [policy] is good for you.”

The funding issue could be critical for Spitzer. Asked after the hearing whether the program’s second phase — opening driver’s license applications to all eligible illegal immigrants — can occur if the Legislature blocks funding, Swarts said, “That will be an interesting challenge.”

Swarts would not say how much the program will cost. However, funding is critical for new security equipment and additional employees, he said.

The commissioner added that the program also envisions changing the current practice in which an applicant does not have to be a resident of the state to get a driver’s license. Monday, he said the Department of Motor Vehicles can change the residency rule through a policy change and not have to worry about going to lawmakers.

That is a change, however, from what Swarts and aides to Spitzer were saying just a week ago, when they insisted that the Legislature must approve any residency change. Swarts said the state has not yet figured out how residency will be proved.

Critics of the policy at the hearing also denounced, as Swarts confirmed, that there is no system in place at the DMV in which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or FBI officials are directly informed if an applicant for a driver’s license submits fraudulent paperwork. Swarts said such incidents are reported to the State Police.

The Spitzer administration sought to portray the new policy as protecting homeland security while making roads safer by getting more people now driving without licenses tested and presumably insured. They touted new technology that will help verify documents submitted by license applicants, including foreign passports.

“I just love to see how you’re going to verify them,” Sen. Martin J. Golden, R-Brooklyn, said of passports coming from Iran, Iraq and other global hot spots.

The Siena poll found nearly two-thirds of New Yorkers saying the Spitzer policy is a security risk. Swarts blamed “fearmongering” and misleading information put out by opponents, whom the Spitzer administration has labeled as “anti-immigrant.”

“Once the public understands we’re actually enhancing public safety, we think that the public will recognize that this policy is common sense,” Swarts told lawmakers.

The hearing came as The Buffalo News reported Monday that the Spitzer administration three weeks ago quietly dropped a requirement that foreign visitors in the country legally be provided licenses with a stamp identifying them as temporary visitors along with the expiration date of their visas. The Spitzer administration last week declined to say how many such licenses have gotten the stamp since it the program was begun about a year after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Monday, Swarts put the number of such licenses at 20,000. The temporary visitors, no matter if their visas are as brief as six months, are given the full, eight-year New York license.

Swarts ignored Republicans urging him to tell Spitzer to delay or halt a policy that was crafted in secret, without public input from county clerks, who have to enforce it at the local level, or law enforcement groups. But Swarts dismissed what he called the “hysterical rhetoric that serves only to play on people’s fears.”

“The policy change is critical to ensuring the safety and security of New Yorkers, and the governor would never abdicate this foremost obligation simply to appease those peddling fear and hatred,” Spitzer spokeswoman Christine Anderson said after the hearing.

The new policy ends a post- 9/11 program in which all license applicants had to submit a Social Security card or a letter of ineligibility from the Social Security Administration. Spitzer wants to require legal residents to still use a Social Security number, but illegal immigrants can show a valid foreign passport instead.

The program’s first phase, beginning in December, involves about 150,000 people who lost their licenses when the Social Security requirement kicked in several years ago. The second phase, involving a potential pool of between 300,000 to 500,000 people, will make licenses available to illegal immigrants.

The issue of voter fraud has also been a rallying point for opponents, which Spitzer allies call a red herring. Opponents fear that a license will enable illegal aliens, who cannot vote, to obtain a voter registration card by showing their state license. Swarts said such a scenario “should not happen” because election boards should not treat licenses as proof of citizenship. Lawmakers, though, worried that many boards let voters use driver’s licenses to register and vote, though it is a crime for someone to vote if not eligible.

Senate Republicans, reacting to criticism that the hearing was packed with opponents, promised more hearings, including looking into Spitzer’s contentions that the change would cut insurance costs by reducing accidents involving uninsured drivers.

Critics at the hearing pursued the theme that the policy would undermine security efforts by relaxing the requirements for getting a license, which they called a “breeder” document because it is used to obtain other forms of identification, bank loans, pistol permits and use of domestic airlines.

“It’s as though the governor lives in a different world than the rest of us,” said Peter Gadiel, president of 9/11 Families for a Secure America, whose son was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center.

Although he has been criticized as anti-immigrant, he touted his own immigrant roots, warning of another terrorist attack and the consequences if a New York license from the new policy was used to help carry it out.

“The blood of those victims will be on his hands,” Gadiel said of Spitzer, while promising to “remind the country of the role of Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Swarts” in enacting the new licensing program.

[SatinDoll]

Wow! Gov. Spitzer sure looks like a butt sphincter after this fiasco.

[Jeff Chandler]

Before, too.

[Nathan Zachary]

You’d think that if they had valid passports in the first place, they would cross the border legaly, as a tourist.

You’d think that presenting them now without an entry date stamped on it in order to apply for a drivers license, would result in an immediate arrest, since it would be proof they entered the country illegally, a felony offense.

The stupidity of politicians in the country is amazing.

[stephenjohnbanker]

I think Spitzer is toast.

[WoofDog123]

Spitzer has never shown any ability to compromise - he has been bullying and authoritarian in all of his public office dealings. Is the NY GOP able to actually deny him funding, or will they roll?

[gakrak]

Amen, and on top of his overwhelming arrogance he said he didn’t need the approval of the legislature or senate to implement his plan. He said he will implement in Dec. regardless. What a flamer. Amen.

[Flintlock]

Anybody surprised?
I didn’t think so.

BTW—Notice how this takes the spotlight from his IMPEACHABLE behavior in spying on Bruno?

[Travis McGee]

QUISLING: a synonym for traitor, someone who collaborates with the invaders of his country.

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Current federal law 8USC 1373(a) PROHIBITS SANCTUARY CITIES. It reads as follows:

"Notwithstanding any other provision of federal, state, or local law, a federal, state, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual."

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U.S. Constitution, Article 4 Section 4:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,

and shall protect each of them against Invasion;"

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Invasion: \In*va"sion\, n. [L. invasio: cf. F. invasion. See Invade.] [1913 Webster]

1. The act of invading; the act of encroaching upon the rights or possessions of another; encroachment; trespass.

[metmom]

ping

[gubamyster]

ping

[Reaganwuzthebest]

The latest from Spitzer has him really going off the deep end now. How did this mentally unbalanced individual ever get as far as he has? At the rate he's going he'll be out of office long before the next election by means of the Evan Mecham treatment since we can't do it the Gray Davis way:

SPITEFUL SPITZ KOS HEALTH $$ IN ID SPAT

ALBANY - Gov. Spitzer yesterday played vicious hardball with his chief opponent in the battle over driver's licenses for illegal aliens - canceling $300,000 in state-funded health-care and education projects in Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco's district, The Post has learned.

[SatinDoll]

GASP!!

In all seriousness, this man is talking crazy! He definitely has a Hitler complex. The question is, can New York state save itself from this looney.

(Notice I didn’t say “Left-wing looney”. I believe this man has real and serious tyrant delusions, a la Napoleon.