For most of us, bees are a common insect – we see them around flowers, buzzing by our heads, and sometimes even stinging us. However, bees play a critical role in the natural world: they are responsible for pollinating 80% of flowering plants. In the US, honeybees pollinate $15 billion in agricultural products each year, including more than 130 types of fruits, nuts, and vegetables.

They play a vital role in producing food for wildlife, maintaining soil health, and keeping water clean, in addition to their role in pollinating agricultural products. Bees are one of the most important pollinator species to our food security and ecosystems.

There are more than 1,000 plants grown for food, spices, beverages, medicines, and fibers that require pollination. Without the help of bees, the world would be without such well-loved foods as chocolate, coffee, peaches, almonds, tomatoes, blueberries, strawberries, apples, pumpkins, melons, vanilla and many other fruits, nuts, and vegetables.

Yet bees are at risk.  In 2007, honey bees began disappearing. Beekeepers across the United States reported that adult worker bees were leaving their nests, queens, larvae, and resources with no apparent cause. Large, industrial beekeepers suffered dramatic losses.

In North America, four species of bumblebees are in decline, and one is already extinct. Far less is known about the situation with solitary species. Recent evidence suggests that as many as 700 of the 4,000 bee species in the United States are facing devastation.

There are multiple reasons for the devastation of the bees: diseases, parasites, pesticides, loss of habitats, are among the top reasons. Of those, the use of pesticides is the one we can control the most.

Neonicotinoids (or neonics for short) are a class of pesticides that have been linked to bee die-offs. Neonics are a relatively new class of pesticides that hit the market in the 1990s, billed as being less harmful to mammals and other vertebrates. They’re a synthetic, neurotoxic pesticide applied directly to the soil or as a seed coating and used widely in agriculture, residential use, golf course maintenance, and in pet flea and tick treatments. As their use has climbed, so too have studies revealing that they threaten birds, bees, aquatic creatures. Potential human health risks remain under investigation. 

Wild bees living and foraging near crops grown from neonic-treated seeds showed large population die-offs in a study funded by pesticide manufacturers.

Honey bees are reared and managed for their honey production and ability to pollinate crops, among other services. Research shows the insecticides kill worker bees, reduce immunity of the hive and leave colonies without their queens. Neonics attack bees’ brains, impacting their ability to sleep, forage, fly and even find their way home.

As researchers uncovered more about the threat neonics pose to bees, policymakers began to act. The European Union placed restrictions (including bans) on several neonics for outdoor uses because of the risks to bees. And some states in the U.S. already have some restrictions (or bans) on the use of neonics.

New York has taken steps to limit the use of neonics. Earlier this year, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), citing the dangers to pollinators, restricted the use of neonics.  

New York State lawmakers went one step further during the 2023 legislative session and approved the Birds and Bees Protection Act. This legislation would ban the sale or use of corn, soybean, and wheat seeds coated with neonics beginning in 2026. In addition, the bill commissions a study on the feasible alternatives to toxic pesticide use to be submitted to the Governor and Legislature no later than January 1, 2025. The bill also provides the commissioner of the DEC the authority to temporarily suspend the ban if there’s a lack of a commercially available alternative for a specific seed; and allows the DEC to provide a use exemption if there is an environmental emergency that no other less harmful pesticide could effectively address.

The use of neonics in seed treatments pose risks to bees (and other pollinators) since they can move from the targeted pest areas. For example, planter dust, which is generated during and shortly after planting treated seeds, contains high concentrations of neonic insecticides. Dust can move beyond field margins and land on flowers and other vegetation and potentially expose non-target insects (including bees and other pollinators). Neonics are highly soluble in water, which facilitates movement beyond field borders via drainage and runoff. Studies also show that neonic contamination in water bodies has a negative effect on arthropod communities, which are the bases of local food webs.

A report by researchers at Cornell University concluded that the most common uses of neonics in New York, which pose substantial risks to pollinators, provide little to no benefits to users and can be replaced by safer alternatives. Supporters of the Birds and Bees Act argue that the bill will help stop approximately 80-90% of the total outdoor neonic use from entering the environment.

The bill will land on the governor’s desk sometime this year. How she acts on the bill may well determine the future of bees in New York.  Let’s hope she protects the bees.

In his State of the Union address, President Biden focused part of his comments on the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs.  In his remarks he noted that the drug companies are  “unfairly charging people hundreds of dollars.”  The President was drawing a line in the sand that he would veto any measure that weakened the ability of the federal government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare recipients.

American drug prices are the result of myriad factors, one of which is the nation’s system for allowing patents for medicines.  Granting a “patent” bestows an exclusive right “for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem.”  In the area of drugs, it allows a company the exclusive right to sell a medicine approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States.

During this patent-protected period, drugs are exempt from normal price competition – usually from “generic” drug companies.  Thus, the manufacturers can charge whatever prices they want in order to maximize profits and reap the rewards of their investment.

The rationale for the patent system was to encourage and incentivize innovation.  Companies that successfully bring new therapies to the market can be rewarded handsomely. 

Yet, nowadays most companies are no longer innovating new medications.  Instead, they’re monopolizing existing ones.  For example, it is estimated that as much as 80% of new patent applications are not for new medicines but are for minor changes that allow companies to argue that the drugs are “new.”

Allowing new patents for essentially old drugs extends the period in which price competition is prohibited, resulting in higher costs for patients.

These increased costs impact many Americans.  Two-thirds of U.S. adults rely on prescription drugs.  And one in four people struggle to pay for them.

When people can’t afford their medicines, they often have to decide whether to skip doses or not fill their prescriptions.  High prices impact all insured people, not just those taking medications. Because drug expenses make up 20 percent of health insurance costs, when drug prices go up, so do premiums.

But policymakers can change that by doing more to allow generic competitors to come to market.  Savings from new generic drug approvals are dramatic – $10-20 billion annually.  That’s the power of a competitive marketplace.  Unfortunately, abuse of the patent laws by pharmaceutical companies undermines price competition.

Patents are meant to spur innovation.  But the monopoly-pricing granted by a patent isn’t meant to last forever.  Too often drug makers spend significant time and money obtaining new patents to gain protections for medications already available – thus blocking access to generics and biosimilars.  And while a wrongly-granted patent can be challenged in federal courts, these challenges take years and come with a median cost of $3.5 million per case.

So, what should be done?  Clearly, the Congress must push both the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the FDA to more closely examine what gets patented and eliminate incentives for drugmakers to game the system by obtaining frivolous patents.  More vigorous regulatory oversight – and whatever needed additional resources – is a critical step that must be taken.

Also, there needs to be a public database combining both agencies’ information on new and pending patents and their related drugs.  Regulators and academics need a one-stop shop for reliable information on FDA and USPTO applications and decisions.  A more robust database could inform solutions to barriers that keep drug competitors off the market.

There is growing bipartisan support for tackling this problem.  Republican and Democratic Senators have called on the patent office to crack down on the practice of granting multiple patents for minor variations on a single invention, which they said drug companies have sometimes used to stave off generic competition for decades.  According to the Senators, “The Patent Act envisions a single patent per invention, not a large portfolio based on one creation.”

Regulators must heed their call.  Unless action is taken, too many Americans will be stuck with making the cruel choice between paying for needed medicine or food.  No one should have to be forced to make that choice.

While lawmakers, public officials, lobbyists, and reporters have a reasonably good sense of how much and where New York State government spends money, there is very little publicly available about how well Albany delivers services.  When it comes to spending money, legislation is introduced, hearings are held, financial plan updates are issued.

New York State government does not issue a publicly available, comprehensive report on whether that money is being well spent.  The concept of such a government compiled report is not hypothetical.  New York City government does it.

That report is called the “Mayor’s Management Report (MMR).”  Compiling the data and the public reporting of the MMR is mandated by the New York City Charter.  The MMR serves as a public account of the performance of City agencies, measuring whether they are delivering services efficiently, effectively and expeditiously.

The report is a way to hold government publicly accountable for its performance in using taxpayers’ dollars for services and programs.

New York State government needs just such a report for all of its services and programs, but perhaps nowhere is it more important than when it comes to measuring progress toward the state’s climate goals.

In 2019, Governor Cuomo and former Vice President Al Gore held an event to commit the state to ambitious climate goals as part of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).  The goals set were; to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 40% by 2030 and 85% by 2050; and require 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040.

Elected officials agreeing to goals that are years away is not new. 

In 2004, then-Governor Pataki had the state’s Public Service Commission adopt a goal to achieve 25% renewable energy for electricity by 2013.  That goal was increased to 30% by 2015 and then to 45% under then-Governor Paterson.  In 2015, the state met the goal to achieve 30% renewable energy, but not the revised goal of 45%, which New York has yet to achieve eight years later.  And the lion’s share of renewable energy produced in New York today is the result of hydroelectric power generated from plants built decades ago.

A report released last week by the state Comptroller showed that the state is not moving at the pace necessary to meet the CLCPA goals.  While the Hochul Administration – and its predecessor – ballyhooed its approval for new solar and wind projects, the Comptroller’s report found that due to the nation’s longest timetable for project completion, “Since 2015, only approximately .294 gigawatts, or 3.1%, of the total renewable electricity generation capacity under contract awards have become operational.”

In addition to long timetables from approval to operation, the report found about 11% of renewable energy projects between 2005-2023 have been cancelled.   Thus, announcements of projects are no guarantee that they will actually happen.

The result?  In 2021, 3% of New York’s energy was generated by wind and another 3% by solar.  Both well short of the pace needed to meet the goals of the CLCPA.

The state’s pace toward achieving its goals is not because the goals are too ambitious.  The goals were based on science.  The world’s experts have made it clear that in order to avoid the most devastating consequences of climate change, each nation must commit to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this century – which is exactly what the CLCPA did.

The problem is with government processes and lobbying by the oil industry and its allies who throw up roadblocks, advance disinformation campaigns, and supply sympathetic lawmakers with talking points to undermine the momentum to achieve the necessary climate goals.

Which brings us back to the report card mentioned earlier.  The public needs to weigh in and it can’t cut through the smog of oil industry public relations efforts if the government is unwilling to honestly, objectively report on what it’s accomplished.  In the face of stiff industry opposition, climate progress will only come about from determined public pressure — and that pressure requires a motivated public armed with accurate information.

A government that is more concerned about controlling the narrative and obscuring its slow progress is not the leadership New Yorkers deserve – and need.  While the Comptroller has done an important public service by reviewing the state’s recent work on renewable energy, it’s no substitute for an annual comprehensive Climate Report Card.

New York – like the rest of the nation – spends enormous amounts of money on health care.  Yet states’ health care spending varies greatly.  According to the most recent data provided by the federal government, per capita personal health care spending ranged from $7,522 in Utah to $14,007 in New York.  Per capita spending in New York State was 37 percent higher than the national average ($10,191).

When it comes to spending on health care provided by hospitals, New York spends the second most, behind only California.  Some of that spending is, of course, the result of more generous coverage benefits, but a second set of federal data about the quality of the care offered by New York hospitals raises some troubling questions.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services publishes Medicare.gov/Hospital Compare, which reports the quality of the nation’s hospitals to the public. It gives each hospital one, two, three, four, or five quality stars, with one-star hospitals being the worst and five-star hospitals the best.  The overall rating summarizes a variety of measures across 5 areas of quality into a single star rating for each hospital. (The 5 measures are mortality, safety of care, readmission rates, patient experience, and timely and effective care.)

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Hospital Care Compare is a consumer-oriented website that provides information on the quality-of-care hospitals are providing to their patients. This information can help consumers make informed decisions about health care.  Hospital Care Compare allows consumers to select multiple hospitals and directly compare performance measure information related to heart attack, emergency department care, preventive care, and other conditions.

According to the Hospital Care Compare about 15 percent of the nation’s 4,654 star-rated hospitals earned five-star status.

Here in New York, of the 194 hospitals, only 11 (5.7%) received a 5-star rating.  19 received a 4-star rating, 35 received 3 stars, 48 received 2 stars, and 25 received a 1-star rating – meaning that they provide the worst quality of care, according to the feds.  Interestingly, 56 hospitals were reported in the “not available” category, which presumably means that they provided insufficient information to be ranked.

Why does this matter?  Poor quality care is not only a waste of money, but it can also have devastating consequences for patients.  The costs of substandard care are well-documented.  In November 1999 the Institute of Medicine report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, was released.  It documented a veritable epidemic of preventable deaths in United States hospitals.  In September 2009, the director of the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, wrote this about To Err Is Human: “Let me be clear: I am just as frustrated as my colleagues in the public and private sectors with our slow rate of progress in preventing and reducing medical errors.”  Then in 2013, a widely-covered study published in the Journal of Patient Safety reported that nearly 400,000 U.S. hospital patient deaths each year were preventable.  

The CMS star ranking illustrates problems in hospital care in New York.  According to experts, New York’s hospital care ranks poorly when compared to the rest of the nation. 

The national think tank, the Leapfrog Group, issued a report this year looking at hospitals’ quality of care nationwide.  Unfortunately, the Leapfrog Group found that New York State ranked 37^th nationwide in terms of quality, with only 11 percent of hospitals receiving an “A” grade according to their ranking.

Why do New York hospitals perform comparatively so much worse?  In July 2019 the director of Leapfrog Group, explained what she knew about New York’s hospital safety:

“The system as a whole didn’t seem to have emphasized safety. We’ve seen other states work together and look at what’s working well at other states and implement it. It just doesn’t seem to be happening in New York. It has to be front of mind every single day in a hospital.” 

These analyses raise serious questions for New York’s new Health Commissioner, such as why did New York State hospitals rank so poorly?  What has the New York Department of Health done to respond to the national rankings that have consistently found poor quality in state hospitals? 

Meaningful responses to those questions will help ensure that New York patients – and taxpayers – are being protected.  The toll in taxpayer dollars and human lives is too great for these not to be front-burner questions.

New York’s massive $230 billion state budget ranks second only to California.  To a considerable extent that ranking reflects New York’s population – the fourth largest number of residents among the states.

And New York being New York, the state budget process is idiosyncratic, with the state’s fiscal year starting April 1^st – three months after the start of the legislative session.  This is in contrast to the 46 states that began their fiscal years on July 1^st.  As a result, the Legislature has little more than two months after the governor presents her proposed budget in January to analyze the proposal, hold hearings, approve budgets for both the Assembly and the Senate, and then negotiate a final budget agreement by April 1^st.

That short timetable is a handy justification for a budget process that largely shuts out the public.  The public hearings held to receive input are essentially from the relevant agencies; public involvement is very limited, and the hearings are held during the day in Albany when most New Yorkers are at work.  The budget negotiations are conducted in secret and the final agreement is usually passed through a loophole in the state Constitution that allows lawmakers to approve the budget without going through the normal three-day waiting period before the vote.

But there’s more.  The deliberations are only on items that are considered “on-budget.”  There are additional categories that are considered “off-budget” and thus not subject to the same scrutiny as the approved final budget. 

Beyond that, New York State has hundreds of quasi-governmental agencies, known as public authorities and public benefit corporations that can be off-budget.  Although these entities are created by and for government to provide government services, they are described as independent and not held to the same standards of public review as the state government itself.

While there are watchdogs that monitor the spending activities of off-budget items and authorities, the sheer scale of government services provided by these entities allows many activities to fly under the radar of normal accountability.   

If the powers that be find accountability inconvenient and wish to limit the oversight provided by government watchdogs, laws are changed or necessary funding is withheld.  Which is exactly what has happened in New York.

Much of this off-budget and authorities’ spending is directed to so-called economic development projects.  While much of the state’s efforts to boost economic development are well-intentioned, there is very little in the way of rigorous analyses conducted to see if these programs deliver what is expected of them. 

A report issued last week by the think tank Citizens Budget Commission, dug deep into the state’s publicly-available information to quantify how much the state is spending on economic development.  Their report found that state and local governments combined to spend nearly $11 billion annually on “tax breaks and direct spending” to stimulate economic development and that amount is expected to rise to at least $13 billion by 2025.  The report observed that “New York State and its localities’ spending on economic development programs has long exceeded spending in nearly every other state.”  The report concluded, “State and local economic development spending continues to increase without sufficient evidence that these programs cost-effectively create jobs or are more beneficial than alternative uses of the funds.”

The lack of public accountability in such spending does not simply mean that money may be wasted.  It was that combination of unaccountability and secrecy that resulted in one of the biggest scandals in the Cuomo Administration.

A combination of shadowy spending by public authorities, limits on outside oversight, campaign contributions, and hot-wired lobbyists, resulted in the convictions of Cuomo campaign donors and staff.  Although the convictions were eventually overturned by the US Supreme Court’s decision to rein in federal prosecutors, there can be no doubt that the opaque nature of these types of programs are too often not designed to benefit the public interest.  Indeed, they invite corruption.

July is the month when state agencies and the Hochul Administration begin to develop their proposed budget to be released in January.  The governor would do well to heed the reports issued by watchdogs both inside government and outside to make New York’s spending more transparent and accountable to the public.  Doing so will not only boost trust in government, but it will also reduce the risk of future corruption scandals.