As reported by The Forward on 4.4.18:
Last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo picked up the phone and called the spiritual leader of the New York Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel, Satmar Grand Rabbi Aron Teitelbaum, to try to shake a compromise out of a recalcitrant state senator.
According to two people familiar with the negotiations, the call was part of an effort by Cuomo to convince the state senator, Simcha Felder, to compromise on his demand that the state budget end government oversight of the curriculum of Jewish day schools.
The call, part of a broader effort by the governor’s office to reach a compromise on the provision, appears to have worked.
“It came down to, at what point are we going to hold up the entire budget for the entire state of New York and have the entire state blame the Hasidic community,” said one person familiar with the negotiations. “It became too much pressure to bear.”
The version of the yeshiva oversight provision that made it into the budget, which passed over the weekend, has been greeted as a victory by the Hasidic community, but is studded with loopholes that seem to allow the state’s education department to continue to oversee yeshiva curricula.
Felder Tracker 