Following up on last Friday's announcement of a $9.18 living wage in Tompkins County, today's Ithaca Journal looks at three people's efforts to get by on wages at or close to the living wage, including two Freeville residents.
At the state level, Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton was appointed chairwoman of the New York State Assembly Legislative Task Force on Women's Issues by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and hopes to have the task force research "family health and nutrition issues" in particular.
Also at the state level, Jay Gallagher examines legislative process reform, and concludes that "Not much has happened yet on the legislative-reform front, but that doesn't mean nothing will happen." Some things did change in January, but I can comfortably agree with Gallagher that:
as the reformers noted this week, most of the changes made so far were low-hanging fruit. Neither the power of the majority parties nor the primacy of the legislative leaders has been touched.
Real change hasn't happened - yet.
Posted by simon at June 6, 2005 8:03 AM in Ithaca Journal , labor , politics (state)