Category: News and Opinion

Grapevines and Pumpkinvines – Part One/2007

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So, I have changed the name of this particular column; and it’s not just to mess with my detractors in blogland with their demeaning satire. It’s also because I will try to go beyond the first-hand experiences and insights, and get into some more of the mundane political gossip and innuendo floating around out there, in between the grapevine and the pumpkin vines (since in many instances things do relate); especially since there are times when I get little or no corroboration / collaboration for some of my pieces- from those in power or those in the know. I will try to get to the analysis behind the analysis, if you catch my drift. So call or e-mail Cousin Rocky with scoops folks/lol.

This full column is dedicated to the race to replace Yvette Clarke, in New York’s 40th council district.

Mike’s Chutzpah

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In Mayor Bloomberg’s State of the City speech, he proposed the following – “let's work with our partners in Albany to abolish the anti-democratic Public Authorities Control Board.” This is a result of the Board stopping his plan to build a stadium for the Jets in Manhattan. I’m reminded of the old joke that the definition of chutzpah is when a person murders his parents and then asks for mercy because he’s an orphan. The only reason that the Board was involved in the stadium decision is because Mike did not want the normal democratic land use procedure to cover his dumb idea. Mike did not want to go through ULURP and require a City Council vote because he wasn’t sure he and the Jets could buy off (I mean persuade) a majority of the Council to approve it.

NY State to NYC: You Don’t Deserve It, or You Don’t Need It, or We Don’t Have It

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The New York State Department of Labor has released Current Employment Survey data for December. And it appears that school districts in the rest of the state celebrated the Court of Appeals decision in Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, which held that New York City had been shortchanged by the state school aid formula by billions of dollars over the decades but also that the Court would allow this practice to continue without doing anything about it, in the usual way. By putting more people on the payroll to be “held harmless” later in any reorganization of the way state school aid works. From December 2005 to December 2006, local government elementary and secondary school employment rose by 2,300 in the part of New York State outside New York City, but fell by 800 in the city. During the entire 1990 to 2006 period, December public school employment is up by 9,800 in the city, a decline relative to enrollment growth, and up by 68,700 in the rest of the state. In that time, local government employment as a whole is down 18,600 in New York City but up 106,600 in the rest of the state. A spreadsheet is attached, and just for interest’s sake, and to give people some idea of the state’s priorities, I’ve included a tabulation of “shared sacrifice in tough times” that shows how local government employment changed in New York City and the rest of the state from 1994 to 1996, and from 2002 to 2004.

History Repeats

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Every day or so, there’s been a complaint by lodged by Republicans who seem to be shocked and disturbed that Governor Spitzer is trying to help his fellow Democrat, Craig Johnson, win the upcoming Special Election for State Senator in Nassau County. This is sometimes accompanied by the insinuation that Spitzer did something underhanded by appointing Republican State Senator Mike Balboni as his top aide on homeland security, which created this vacancy.

I’m surprised that nobody has pointed out that an almost identical situation occurred at the beginning of the Pataki administration when the shoes were on other feet.

NYC Public School Spending: Way Up Compared With The U.S.

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In a prior post, I showed how far New York City lagged beyond the rest of New York State in public school spending in FY 2005, with a conservative cost of living adjustment applied to Downstate expenditures. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau for Fiscal Years (FY) 1997 and 2004, however, we find that inflation-adjusted per-student current expenditures for the city’s schools increased 46.7% from the former year to the latter. And whereas the city’s per child current spending was 2.3% below the national average in FY1997, it was 19.2% above average in FY2004. The spreadsheet is attached, and I'd rather have you download that than read the rest of this post. Once you have, to compare your explanations to mine, my overview of the breakdown by type of spending follows.

Raising Taxes in a Recession

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The newspapers are reporting that the Mayor will join the City Council in calling for big tax increases during a recession, when people can least afford it. What? Didn't they in fact call for tax breaks, likely to be temporary, when the economy is strong and unemployment is low? Yes, but the first follows from the second, time after time. And the state is doing the same thing with transit fares, holding out for a big increase at the worst possible time rather than lifting the fares year by year as labor costs rise. So when property taxes are once again jacked up when you can afford it least, and elected officials say they have no choice, remember that they did have a choice. They are making that choice right now.

They Walk Among Us

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Today is Monday, 15th January, 2007. It is a public holiday. It’s the day that most states have set aside for the celebration of MARTIN LUTHER KING’S birthday; but it’s actually a day for celebrating the man’s life-accomplishments over his thirty-nine years on earth. MLK was born on January 15th, 1929, and by the time of his assassination on April 4th, 1968, he had -like many of the great humans who have walked among us- evolved into a person of civility, compassion, dedication, determination, decorum and humanity; amongst many of the qualities (or is it “virtues”) that single such people out.

A Question for Joe Hynes

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This week’s story in the Village Voice about former Brooklyn County Leader Clarence Norman selling judgeships begins with a little history.

The darker secret was that the bench itself had been bought, that its polyester black robes were on a perpetual special-sale rack, that smarmy party bosses, ensconced at 16 Court Street across from the supreme court they ruled, demanded cash tribute to "make" a judge. The district attorney, Joe Hynes, who first heard the rumor 36 years ago when he was a young prosecutor running the office's rackets bureau, said in 2003 that he'd have to be "naive to think it didn't happen," that it was "common street talk that this has been going on for eons."