Author: Larry Littlefield

Since joining Room 8, I’ve spent much of my time writing about things I’m not happy about, generally about the policies of the State of New York. After all, it is those things that I want to see change. But I don’t want people to get the impression that I am dissatisfied with everything. Aside from my personal life, about which I have no complaints, there are many things that have gotten better in the past 30 or 40 years. In the holiday spirit, I’ve decided to list a few of those. "

Thirty or forty years ago, reasonable people thought it possible that a nuclear war would lead to human extinction in the near future. Sadly, the risk of a single nuclear, biological or chemical incident is much greater, thanks to the rise of international terrorism. But with the number of warheads greatly reduced and the Cold War over, extinction caused by a massive nuclear exchange seems to be off the table, at least for the foreseeable future.

Last week, there was a news splash about the city's population projection, with an overall gain but a decline in school-aged children. I read the fine print, and it appears that my former mates at City Planning did what I consider the right thing, and constrained the population forecast by land use. That is, since NYC is already developed at a high density, there are only so many housing units that can be added, and demographic trends are driven here (unlike in Texas) more by the occupancy of existing housing than by the amount of new housing. And here DCP used migration by type of person from 1980 to 2000 to see who would flee and who would move in. Therefore, the city's official population projection assumes that parents of school age children with the means to leave will continue to be driven out of NYC by bad schools and small housing units, as they were in my generation.

I downloaded the spreadsheet of member items for my Assembly Member, and found that he has magnificently bestowed on his district $386,000 over the past three fiscal years. Moreover, looking at the specific list of grants, I found there isn’t a howler in the bunch. He sent $4,000 per year to every school in the district (not just those in Park Slope but also those in Parkville), for things like after school enrichment, software, contacts with parents, “multi-cultural” books, programs in music, bookcases and file cabinets. He provided grants for computer training and gardening for senior citizens, along with day care and transportation. He funded Pap test for poor women, language training for immigrants, assistance with safe homes and
crime prevention, a newsletter for businesses, etc. etc., generally with grants of $3,000 to $6,000 per year. Who could be against such things? Goes this mean I agree with the Daily Politics poster that “Everybody seems to forget that one man's pork is another's ‘vital infrastructure improvement?’” Absolutely not!

According to press reports, Governor-Elect Spitzer is assembling a fully credentialed panel of wonks, lawyers and financiers. It’s good to know he will have a full supply of facts at his disposal, but facts are just the beginning of governing. First you have the facts. Then you have opinions about what the facts mean – hopefully the people Spitzer has hired will be truthful enough to distinguish between the two when advising him, or Spitzer will be sharp enough to realize if they are not. In the end, however, one has to decide what to do about the facts, and the right decision is generally not an automatic consequence of them. Decisions, unlike deals, also involve values, and it is in terms of values that the Governor-elect will have to speak if anything is going to get better. I am reminded of this because this a year ago New York City Transit was on strike, and our elected officials, particularly Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg, failed utterly to speak in terms of values.

These organizations have long maintained that housing is expensive in New York City because New York City's development regulations are extremely difficult and restrictive. It is a mantra repeated over and over. Well some bad news — a developer who builds all over the United States has moved into town, and when asked about development restrictions in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he gave the "wrong" answer.

WSJ:   Is it easier to build in the suburbs versus the city?

Mr. Toll:   It's easier in the city. The approval process is more professional in the city. The experts that you deal with are pretty much doing the assigned job, as opposed to the secret unassigned job to stop the growth, stop sprawl [in the suburbs].

You may have gotten the impression that I’m not a big fan or our elected officials at the state level, based on my view of the decisions (and more to the point non-decisions) they have made, and the deals they have cut. But unlike many commentators I’m not going to get all worked up about the legislature getting a cost of living pay increase after many years, just as I didn’t get all worked up about the City Council pay increase. We all expect, or at least hope for, annual increases in pay that keep up with the cost of living. It may be fair to suggest that our current state legislators have treated the general public with contempt, and do not deserve the increase. But my view is that one has to meet one’s own obligations before pointing fingers, and showing contempt for the legislature by cutting its inflation-adjusted pay isn’t doing so.

So the Independent Budget Office has found that New York City’s property tax system is unfair. This is not a surprise. In a fundamental sense, property taxes are a tax on property wealth, and “fairness” requires that the tax be charged equally to all residential and commercial property owners based on the value of that wealth. This, however, has run into another definition of “fairness,” one based on income, with concern that people with high property wealth relative to income (such as senior citizens and, in rural areas, farmers) could be taxed out of their homes. This post will propose a different way to balance "wealth" fairness and "income" fairness.

According to the New York Post, Governor Spitzer's first job is to wage war on Silver and Bruno. Although I don't usually agree with the Post, I too had concluded that things aren't going to get any better without the removal of all three men who spent the last 12 years in the room, hence my pre-election preference for Suozzi. But the election is over, and a war is not in the cards. Instead Spitzer is going to travel another road to change things.

To the extent that the public knew what it was doing, it voted for change from the inside, backed by an appeal to the people, in voting for Spitzer. All the insiders realized Spitzer was going to win, and got behind him, and will now be calling in their favors. Theoretically Spitzer will be able to tell them that he is on their side, but they've taken too much and have to give some back to everyone else. Otherwise, a Suozzi might be in their future. Theoretically existing privileged interests will look at his mandate and go along with his changes, extracting a few symbolic victories to save face. And that's how things will improve.

In the 1990s, the Pataki Administration brokered a deal between "business" and "labor." Unemployment insurance taxes were cut and unemployment payouts were raised, an "everybody wins" deal. Those who became unemployed and stayed unemployed in a booming economy when just about everyone was working got more money. And employers who were getting ready to lay people off and leave the state paid less in.

The only problem — New York was one of two states which failed to follow the guidelines of the U.S. Department of Labor and build up a big trust fund for hard times. Then the future arrived, and the state had to borrow from the federal government to pay benefits, and impose a massive unemployment insurance tax increase to pay it back, in a recession at the worst possible time. Those who left the state, of course, didn't have to pay the tax, but anyone dumb enough to start a new business here when we needed them most did.

A couple of years ago, a bump grew on my forehead. It didn't hurt, and by the time someone noticed it, it had stopped growing. Concerned friends and relatives began to push me to see a physician, fearing it might be cancer or some other dangerous condition. Finally I relented and my worst fears were realized — I had taken time out of my all-too-limited life to find that what I had was nothing more than a bump on my head. This didn't satisfy anyone, and I continue to be bothered about getting it removed. The question is whether I should do so, and whether everyone else should help to pay for it with tax dollars.

I spoke with my health insurance company, which said I would have to go to the doctor who would confer with the company on whether a removal was "medically necessary." My observation is that for purposes like this, "medically necessary" depends in part on how hard one is willing to push, and how adept at working the system one is. I also observe that if the procedure were not covered by insurance and I paid for it myself, I would probably pay less that the insurance company would be charged.