Category: News and Opinion

DATELINE: Boynton Beach Florida

I sorta thought I could go thru the rest of my vacation w/o posting again, but every time I killed some dead time on the web, little items kept piling up. My apologies for anything a day late or a dollar short.

One might expect that when times are tough in the private sector, and more and more people have more and more needs, New York City’s health and social services spending would increase. But in fact that often isn’t the case. In particular, the Administration for Children’s Services has a recurring cycle. It is usually cut first and deepest (vying with parks and infrastructure) in recession until, after a lag of a few years, a notorious case of child torture and death that the agency was too overwhelmed to stop hits the media. Then there is a “reform” and increase in funding. But one type of spending in this general category increases relentlessly – Medicaid spending on senior citizens. That spending, however, is by the State of New York, not the City of New York, a fact that affects how it is presented in the city budget.

One New York City service where arguments over the quality of work and the effect of the budget have involved real, rather than threatened, changes is the Department of Sanitation. In the fall, Sanitation Workers’ Union head Harry Nespoli warned that as a result of budget cuts, his members would not be able to clear the snow in a snowstorm. And sure enough, when New York City was hit by a major snowstorm the day after Christmas 2010, the snow was not cleared. So how much was the Department of Sanitation budget cut from FY 2008, before the onset of the recession, to FY 2011, the current fiscal year? Anyone want to guess?

Memo to Beck:

1) It is not "Reformed" Judaism; it is Reform Judaism.

2) My great tolerance for accepting and respecting the religious beliefs of others (no matter how facially foolish they may seem), something which I learned during my Reform Jewish education, has kept me from making rude comments about your religion; I am sorry you were not taught to do the same. We minority religions who call others gentile have a rather large stake in spreading the doctrine of tolerance and acceptance.

While the initial conflict over the New York City budget has been about teacher layoffs, the Mayor has said that the one agency that must be protected is the Police Department, and one can expect the City Council to propose additional spending cuts on other things to prevent the firehouse closings in the proposed budget. As it is, the head of the Police Benevolent Association and the Unformed Firefighters Association have let it be known that since New Yorkers are cutting their budget, they can expect to be left to be victimized by criminals and die in fires more often. So how much less will we citizens be spending in exchange for this lower level of protection? The spreadsheet attached to this post gives an indication.

This post is an overview of spending on New York City’s Department of Education, based on New York City budget documents, with a spreadsheet provided as an attachment to this post. Residents of New York City and their parents are going to hear a great deal about budget cuts in the next few months, with the teacher layoffs and early point of controversy in the budget. But in fact total spending on the Department of Education increased 14.8% from FY 2008, before the start of the recession, to FY 2011, and its personal services spending increased 9.7%, while the consumer price index increased 4.3%. In exchange the number of teachers was reduced by 5,000. According to the FY 2012 budget proposal, total spending will once again increase by 4.5% and personal services spending will increase 2.2%. Still the number of teachers is proposed to be reduced by another 6,000. For a total teacher reduction of 13.8% — in exchange for an increase of spending on personal services of 12.1% over the four years. So what happened?

Last night the Knicks obtained Carmelo Anthony in a trade with the Denver Nuggets. All in all it was a trade that had to be made. In the end the Knicks may have paid a “tad” too much for “Melo”; given that they had to throw in lots of cash: but I'm not going to bitch about that. The Garden needed this player as much as Sarah Palin needs some more college credits: real bad. Plus, the Knicks obtained a few throw-in players who will be quite useful  over the next year or two (namely, Billups, Williams, Carter and Brewer); useful off the bench, or  useful as trading-fodder.

Last week’s votes in the Congress are more evidence that the growing power of Republican moderates is just a wishful thinking by those who are always looking for the thoughtful moderates who will save the day.

On Friday night, the House voted to prohibit all funds for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and its affiliates. Not funding for abortion but all funds!

The city budget has been released, and no doubt we are going to spend the next few months hearing about all the things the government is no longer going to do for us. Leaders of public employee unions, in particular, may be expected to talk about all the services the people of New York City no longer deserve because they aren’t paying enough. They will demand that we pay more. So you might expect, particularly given the devastation of the financial crisis, that New Yorkers are paying less. But it isn’t so.

The best way to see this is to look at the NYC “Budget Summary” documents from January 2008, with an estimate of FY 2008 spending on page 48, and the just released “Budget Summary” from February 2011, with an estimate of spending for this fiscal year (FY 2011) on page 49 and a proposal for FY 2012 on page 50. To his credit, since Mayor Bloomberg has taken office he has provided a summary of what each agency actually costs, including not only wages but also fringe benefits, contracts, pensions, debt service, and judgments and claims. Most of the pension and fringe benefit data had previously just been lumped together for all agencies combined. With the FY 2008 data, we can look back to Census Bureau data for FY2008, comparing NYC with staffing and pay by function with local governments elsewhere, and public school spending in more detail, to provide background for what has changed since. A discussion follows.