Mixed Martial Arts supporters want to follow in the footsteps of breakout star Ronda Rousey by scoring “a quick knockout” in their effort next year to legalize the sport in New York.
Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Morelle, the bill sponsor, said he
intends to push for its passage within the first few weeks of the
legislative session rather than allow it to languish until the end of
the session as has happened in the past.
"My goal is to have this considered earlier rather than later so it
doesn't get caught up in other issues," Morelle (D-Rochester) said.
"I just don't want it to linger for six months and have to keep coming
back to the question of whether we're doing it or not," he said.
After amending the bill to include insurance protections for MMA
fighters who get seriously injured, Morelle believes he had the votes at
the end of the legislative session for passage.
But the measure never made it to the floor because some supporters were not in Albany in the waning days of the session.
New York remains the only state that still bans the popular, but controversial sport.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, an MMA supporter, has said he will let
his Democratic members decide the issue. He has left it up to Morelle to
try to build the necessary support.
"I think it's very close to having support in the Assembly," Heastie
told reporters in Buffalo last Wednesday. "But I think it will be a big
topic once we get back to Albany."
Opponents call the sport barbaric, anti-woman and homophobic, something
officials from the Ultimate Fighting Championship league vehemently
deny.
The state Senate has passed bills to legalize MMA the past six years. Gov. Cuomo has said he is open to legalizing it as well.
Some have said the holdup in the Assembly was mainly due to a union
dispute the UFC owners have with a Las Vegas culinary union, a charge
officials have denied.
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Patricia Lynch, a former top aide to indicted ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, is selling the influential lobbying company she founded in 2001, sources say.
MWW, a powerful public relations and crisis communications firm, is
close to finalizing the purchase of Patricia Lynch Associates, which for
years was among the state's three biggest lobbying groups, the sources
say.
Lynch, who is highly respected by Democrats and Republicans in Albany,
will stay on in an executive role, a source said. She is said to have
already moved into MWW's Park Avenue South offices in New York City.
MWW President Michael Kempner is an influential New Jersey Democrat who
has raised money for President Obama and Hillary Clinton.
"MWW has a huge national communications and strategy practice but had
no New York state or city government affairs practice," said one source
familiar with the deal.
Lynch's connections to Cuba through her firm's Panama office was also enticing, the source said.
Lynch’s firm in recent years has suffered from reduced billings,
layoffs and departures, and federal tax liens. In 2014, her firm fell to
10th among top lobbyists, though it still managed to take in a
respectable $4.2 million in client compensation.
Lynch's tax woes began after she shelled out more than $2 million
fending off a probe by Gov. Cuomo, who at the time was attorney general.
Cuomo in 2009 subpoenaed the names of companies that used Lynch's firm
to help win pension fund business from the controller's office. Her firm
agreed to pay $500,000 to settle the matter, though it did not admit
any wrongdoing.
A group charged with helping indigent inmates is using the reported
abuse of inmates after an upstate prison break to raise funds.
Prisoners Legal Services put up its solicitation on its homepage last
week shortly after the New York Times ran a story in which inmates claim
they were brutalized by guards in Clinton Correctional Facility
following the escape of two prisoners.
"If you are concerned about the prisoners referenced in the recent New
York Times article, please consider donating ...," the group wrote.
PLS Executive Director Karen Murtagh defended the post by saying her
organization doesn't have the necessary funding to handle the more than
10,000 requests for assistance every year.
"We struggle for funding every year," Murtagh said. "Anyway we can get
donations from private individuals helps us provides the services we're
tasked to provide to indigent prisoners.”
But a law enforcement source said using unproven allegations of
brutality to raise money is “unfortunate” and “should clearly raise
doubts about the legitimacy of their motives as well as the accusations
made by inmates in the New York Times article."
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