Category: News and Opinion

The non-farm employment numbers from the New York State Department of Labor are out for June. From June 2006 to June 2007, government employment in New York State rose by 4,500, while government employment in New York City fell by 2,400. Which means that government employment in the portion of the state outside New York City rose by 6,900 year-over-year. Again. No wonder the seniors outside New York City want more and more tax breaks. Of course, the rest of the state could point out that they suffered from the decline in government employment in New York City, since those outside New York City also hold a large share of the government jobs in it, and drive in to work. So NYC cutbacks had to made it up somewhere else.

Based on the congestion pricing debate, it looks like Bruno and Silver are looking for someone to blame for the transportation-related consequences of the debts and pension enhancements they enacted from 1990 to 2006 in order to pander to interests, hand out benefits, and make themselves popular, all the expense of a future no one cared about. Having apparently turned down Bloomberg's political gift, a funding source that he would have taken the heat for, they seem to have decided on Eliot Spitzer, who is the one person now in office who was not involved. And if Spitzer decides to bury his head in the sand rather than making the pain felt in 2008, when the legislature is up for re-election and he is not, they will succeed.

In the wake of his defeat on the issue of congestion pricing, Mayor Bloomberg called Senator Malcolm Smith and some pols gutless "I heard a lot of talk about the politics of congestion pricing … and all I kept thinking about was — some people have guts and lead from the front and some don't,"

I’d like to remind everyone that Bloomberg did not support congestion pricing in 2001 when he first ran for Mayor or in 2005 when he ran for re-election. He is now term-limited and can’t run for re-election.

I could write scores of Marty Markowitz stories; but I won’t; at least not right now. It would be fun though; it really would be. For full disclosure, let me state upfront that for many years, I was one of quite a few in the Crown Heights/ Flatbush community, committed to taking Marty Markowitz out of his senate seat (20 SD). We failed.

Marty was in office for about 20 years or so, in a district where minorities made up about 80% of the residents-with more than half of them either born in the Caribbean, or of parents so born. Some called Marty a comedian, others snidely remarked that he was a clown; lore has it that one Easter Sunday, he even ran around the black community in a white Easter-bunny suit. Needless to say: many of the more militant-black types thought he was an embarrassment. Well; I am not sure that those comments can hold up any more folks; Marty has been and continues to be: a winner (politically speaking).

Today the Democratic members of the New York State Assembly will take mass transit to Lower Manhattan and discuss how, in lieu of congestion pricing and without sacrificing the future through additional borrowing, they will fully fund the ongoing operating and capital needs of the transportation system (including the 2010 to 2014 MTA Capital Plan) and how, without unfairness or favoritism and with limited economic damage, they will ration those driving to congested parts of New York City to the level of traffic the road network can support. Or they will drive there, using their permits to park in restricted free on-street parking areas, and they will grandstand, be publicly disingenuous, continue to promise something for nothing and the expense of the future, and privately discuss deals to reward their supporters. In honor of Silver, Brodsky, Brennan et. al, or in fear of the future they will leave us with, I have decided to forego our transit system (with its uncertain future) and bicycle to work. Or at least part of the way to work, because I was unable to identify anyplace to safely park my bike in the vicinity of my office in deepest, darkest, priciest Midtown. The only place I found bicycles locked was to small trees, not a good idea. So I’ll ride six miles from Windsor Terrace to the Lower East Side, and take the subway from there.

At my brother’s suggestion, I took a look at some financial tables at www.crestmontresearch.com, including one showing bull and bear stock markets since 1900. Looking at the dates, and comparing them with what I remember of American history, it seems that the long term bull and bear markets identified by Crestmont correspond with the level of trust and confidence in corporate management as agents of the public good (and the often opposite level of confidence in government), not just with cycles of the economy. The economy affects how much profit business may earn, but Crestmont bases the onsets of long-term bull and bear markets on highs and lows in the price-earnings ratio, or how much investors are willing to pay for each dollar of earnings. This depends not only on the level of inflation and the return on competing assets, but also on public perceptions of what those earnings mean for the future, and whom they will benefit. Will they ultimately be paid to stockholders, or will most of them be diverted to top executives and interlocking directors? Are the profits coming at the expense of workers and customers, and thus likely to disappear in the long run as these seek better deals elsewhere, or are customers and employees happy, creating the potential for more productivity and better sales? Are the profits even real? To me, the table is the history of business gaining and then squandering the public trust. And for the past decade, business has been doing the latter, with a reaction building that has only just begun.

Bruno spokesman Mark Hanson said his boss is so disgusted by the treatment he has been getting from Spitzer that he may never again use state-owned aircraft.

Compared with many of those posting on transit geek sites I have participated in, and the signal engineers at New York City Transit where I once worked, I’m not an expert in subway and road capacity. But compared with those who have been making an issue of it, well, in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king, so I’ve elected to provide an overview of what I know in a post. Before getting technical, however, the most important thing about the capacity of the region’s rail transit service is this: there is more room on the tracks than the region will ever be able to use during most of the day; the only capacity problems are during the AM and PM weekday peak periods, and the only severe capacity problems are during the peak hour within those periods. Meanwhile, the streets of Manhattan and some parts of the outer boroughs are congested for much of the day, and in some cases increasingly congested as the day goes on. That is because during the AM rush hour, the capacity of the bridges and tunnels entering Manhattan, and their approaches, limits the number of vehicles on the streets, but as the day goes on more and more are present and trying to move. During peak hour most people are already taking transit, so congestion pricing is more likely to shift drivers to transit during the off peak period, when there is plenty of room to add more riders and, if needed, trains.

The mainstream media is now all over the housing bubble, but the housing market moves slowly, and we are a year or two away from really experiencing the bust. The fallout is likely to raise some rather nasty local government issues. First, the housing price boom, while sticking it to first time buyers, allowed local governments to increase property tax charges without voting to increase rates, but as property values and property transactions fall local governments will be left with a choice between service cutbacks and higher tax rates that they will have to vote for. There is already a property tax revolt underway in Florida, where soaring tax bills (exacerbated for tenants, commercial property owners, new buyers and snowbirds by rules that keep taxes low for long-time homeowners) are running into plunging property values. Indeed, fiscal problems are beginning to afflict local governments nationwide, despite a decent economy. Second, tightening lending standards and, in some markets, over-building is likely to lead to a glut of for-sale housing. The vacancy rate for owner-occupied housing is now at a historic high, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. So what will happen to the excess suburban housing? Will it be purchased by investors and subdivided into apartments, allowing the working class and perhaps even the poor to move to areas with good schools and available jobs, but reducing the fiscal insulation suburbanites receive from the less well off by living in separate local tax jurisdictions and threatening their property values? The free market is great, it seems, until it works to the disadvantage of the less well off.

Word came recently that a $2 billion expansion of the Javits Convention Center may not be good enough, and that only a $4 billion expansion will do. Per the New York Times “the Spitzer administration quickly concluded that the existing plan would have little economic effect and would provide only a modest amount of new exhibit space, while underestimating the potential costs by $1 billion. But even as the Spitzer administration’s review was under way, construction costs in the city were rising rapidly; city officials said delays were costing $17 million a month.” It has probably been about a decade since I was asked to write a memo on the convention business and NYC’s role in it while at a former job, but I suspect that what I found then continues to be true today. The biggest impediment New York City has in attracting virtually all conventions, and tourists in general, is the number, availability and cost of hotel rooms. At the time, New York City had fewer hotel rooms than Chicago, a city half the size. Last year New York City accounted for 2.7% of total national employment, but just 2.1% of total accommodations (hotel, motel, etc.) employment.