Hello fellow kossacks!
I will be casting my vote in New York City this evening. Of course, when voting for candidates, I will be casting an all-Democratic ballot, including de Blasio. But I'm still debating over constitutional amendments. A list of amendments, including summaries and full texts, can be found here: http://www.elections.ny.gov/...
I need people with better understanding of the issues to give me some feedback. If anyone has any comments or corrections, please let me know! I'm especially confused on proposals four and five, so if anyone knows more about them, please help me out in the comments.
On issue one, I don't really like casinos, but I don't really see enormous public interest in banning them, so my inclination is to vote yes and allow a few casinos to pop up.
On issue two, it sounds as if it's mainly just a technical correction to unify rules that help disabled veterans get jobs in the civil service, which seems like a good idea to me.
On issue three, I honestly have no clue what this is about. My current interpretation is that it allows municipalities to discount sewage investments from the accounting of public debt because sewage investments have an independent stream of revenue, which would effectively increase the borrowing limits of municipalities. Is there a major downside to this? I'm inclined to vote yes.
On issues four and five, there appear to be some land swaps going on, and I honestly have no idea what the context is for this and why these are being proposed. Can someone give some context? I'm a little leery of land swaps, but if there's a compelling public interest (or at least no compelling public disinterest) then I would be fine with it. I just need to know if this is a good deal for the state, not a sweet deal for some coal mining company and some private property owners coming at the expense of the state. Any additional info would be appreciated!
Issue six just seems to be an increase in the maximum age of judges, which doesn't seem too contentious to me, so I'm inclined to vote yes.
Please help me decide on the above issues, especially four and five, because these sorts of incremental issues of state governance can be almost as important as who happens to be mayor! Thanks for any help I get in deciding. :)