ALBANY COUNTY — Politicians answered questions from the pulpit on Tuesday night.

A Regional Initiative Supporting Empowerment, ARISE, made up of 38 area congregations and community groups, held its sixth annual public meeting, packing Christ the King Church in Guilderland. ARISE aimed to get politicians to commit themselves publicly to support six initiatives.

Selecting voting machines for Albany County was at the top of the agenda on Tuesday. Dennis Karius spoke on the importance of implementing a reliable voting system in Albany County that would comply with the federal Help America Vote Act.

He favors an optical-scan system; he likened it to the way SAT tests are graded. A voter fills out a paper ballot, which is submitted to a scanner that reads and records the vote and the paper remains as a hard copy that can then be hand-counted later.

Seventy percent of New York State counties will likely opt for the Direct Recording Electronic, DRE, machines, said Karius. Unlike most states, New York is leaving the choice of machines up to individual counties.
"Electronic equipment is really not appropriate for voting because it needs to be programmed," he said. The companies that sell the machines have their own political interests, and programming in the machines can easily be rigged.
"Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks," according to a recent Princeton University study. "For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates," the study said.

A more long-term issue was second on the list; with big construction projects like the Albany convention center and rebuilding the Harriman office complex coming to the region, ARISE wants to ensure that low-income people in the region will get the job training necessary to work on those projects. Tom McPheeters, who spoke on the issue, asked that the state fund the job-training program.
"Don’t you think the Empire State could do that"" he asked.

In the same vein, ARISE president, Dick Dana, addressed the Tech Valley initiative and the jobs it will bring in his opening statement. He cited Austin, Texas, and the Silicon Valley in California as two examples of high tech industry gone wrong. In both of those places, he said, when the new jobs came, they went to people from out of the area who moved in, adding development pressure to the suburbs and further widening the gap between rich and poor.
Dana hopes to see a "pipeline" between local schools and job training centers to jobs in Tech Valley. "The jobs are going to be there, why not prepare our kids for them"" he asked.

The Liberty Partnership Program, LPP, supports kids who are at risk of dropping out of middle or high school. LPP reported a 97 percent graduation rate, with 84 percent of those kids going on to college, Paula Simpson said during her presentation, the third on the agenda. She wants an increase in funds from $12 million to $19 million so that the program can expand past Schenectady and Albany to Troy, Lansingburgh, and Cohoes.
"This is a program we should be investing in," said Dana. "This could be a pipeline."

For the fourth item, Deborah Dewey called for a New York State housing summit. The University at Albany has identified 840 abandoned buildings in Albany, she said. She asked candidates to commit to holding a housing summit before February of 2007, to developing a 10-year strategic plan for housing, and to sponsoring a regional compact bill to offer incentives for cities and suburbs to work together on housing issues.
Most of the candidates present — echoing the words of John McEneny, a Democratic state assemblyman who spoke first — said that the idea was good but the time line was unrealistic. Peter Lavenia, though, who was representing the Green party, asked that people remember all that Franklin Delano Roosevelt got done in his first 100 days in office. "A housing summit in 30 days is not unrealistic," he said.

ARISE has been pushing for the fifth issue on the list for years, a reform of the Rockefeller drug laws, which impose stiff penalties for small-time dealers. But Dana said on Wednesday that, even though it was on the agenda, drug-law reform is not considered one of the more pressing issues this year since the legislature hasn’t shown much support for it.
"The political winds right now just aren’t blowing in that direction," he said. Albany County’s district attorney, David Soares, has been very supportive of the reforms though, Dana said.
On Tuesday night, when asked for his continued support Soares said, "On this, you have my word."

The last issue on the list is one of the newest task forces that ARISE has put together, Dana said; it’s also the first federal issue that the group will take on.
"Immigration is a humanitarian crisis," said Lucia Gutierrez. She asked politicians to support legislation that provides a clear path to citizenship for immigrants and to oppose punitive legislation for immigrants.
In the six years that ARISE has been holding an annual public meeting, Dana said that this year had the biggest turnout of politicians, although earlier years have yielded a higher head count of citizens than this year’s 350. While he was pleased with the overall event, when asked if he was satisfied with the politicians’ responses, Dana said, "We’re never satisfied."