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Opinion

The Next Mayor Needs To Make Job Creation A Priority


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Okay, stop us if you’ve heard this one: A guy walks into a New York City employment assistance office. He’s just been laid off, and he’s terrified. At the assistance center, he receives a cursory assessment of his interests, skills and barriers. No one there has a record of whether this is the first time he’s used the workforce system, or whether he has already received multiple services — the city has no system-wide data bank.

He’s given a voucher to attend a training class in an occupation he’s interested in and heads off to one of those proprietary schools he’s seen advertised on the subway. But after completing the training, it turns out that few employers are hiring right now for that type of job — the city workforce system doesn’t always use up-to-date labor-market information.

He’s then sent off to several interviews with employers where his skills are not a good match — his job counselor doesn’t have a close relationship with local employers and doesn’t know what they’re really looking for.

Soon he’s discouraged and decides that the workforce system is not worth his time and local employers are frustrated because they’re not seeing any candidates with the right skills — the system is not fully meeting the needs of either job seekers or businesses.

This story will be repeated all too often unless the next Mayor of New York City redesigns the entire workforce system. Though the Bloomberg Administration significantly improved the workforce system the past several years — despite decreasing federal and state financial support — the current system has likely improved as much as it can within the limits of its siloed and fragmented framework.

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With New York City’s unemployment rate hovering at 9 percent, the next mayor will make job creation for all New Yorkers a top priority. And yet our next mayor will face an even greater challenge: Public funding for workforce development is in steady decline—the city’s Workforce Investment Act (WIA) dollars were more than cut in half over the past decade, with many in Congress urging still further cuts—while the city’s job growth will likely continue to lag behind its population growth.

In response, the New York City Workforce Funders (a collaborative of NYC foundations investing more than $55 million annually into workforce development) and The Clark Foundation commissioned an independent Workforce Strategy Group to “re-envision the New York City workforce system.”

A Workforce System That Works

The good news is that our next mayor will have the power to redesign New York City’s workforce system into an innovative engine for job creation that serves both employers and jobseekers: The Strategy Group just published “Re-envisioning the New York City Workforce System,” which proposes an entirely new framework for how the workforce system could serve both businesses and jobseekers across the five boroughs.

The re-envisioning document frames five key recommendations for all the mayoral candidates to consider:

  1. Appoint a “job czar, ” reporting directly to the mayor, to oversee all workforce resources in the city under one office.
  2. Establish a network of nonprofit workforce partnerships, responsible for coordinating funding streams and putting programs into practice.
  3. Realign financing to reward long-term job outcomes, so that more workers stick with jobs once they are placed in them.
  4. Design a universal data system, to eliminate redundancy and help programs make informed decisions about what works to create jobs.
  5. Create a formal Council of Workforce Advisors made up of foundations, businesses, unions and non-profit organizations to advise the mayor on creating a 21st-Century training and employment system.

Re-envisioning the New York City Workforce System is a blueprint that the next Mayor can use to deliver on the promise of job creation across all five boroughs of New York City.

David LaGreca is executive director of VCG Governance Matters and co-chaired the New York City Workforce Strategy Group, along with Steven Dawson, strategic advisor to PHI. The Workforce Strategy Group included a diverse range of workforce stakeholders with decades of experience in the city’s workforce system. As a volunteer group, its charge was not to articulate the vision for the future, but rather a vision, one intended to engender spirited debate within the workforce, employer, philanthropic and public policy communities. Copies of Re-envisioning the New York City Workforce System are available at: http://www.reenvisionworknyc.org/.

Image courtesy of Thompson Rivers, used under Creative Commons license. 

We Need a Public Health Mayor


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When I walk around the city, listen to people describe their experiences, and observe my own family members, I grow disheartened. Too many New Yorkers are unhealthy because they have inadequate housing, are living in poverty, are unemployed or have low paying jobs, lack access to quality education and nutrition, are bearing inequitable environmental burdens, lack access to open space and safe areas for exercise. These “social determinants of health” adversely affect their health status.

New York needs a “Public Health Mayor” who will address these issues.

Municipal leaders are charged with promoting the health and safety of their city's residents. New York City is no different and, with a diverse city like the Big Apple, it is surely not an easy responsibility for any mayor to tackle.

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However, it is unacceptable that almost 2.5 million New Yorkers have been characterized as “medically underserved” — lacking sufficient primary and preventive care services — and that major gaps in public-health status persist in our city. These gaps were very apparent the day after Superstorm Sandy, when parts of the city’s health care system operated full swing while others were virtually immobilized.

Our next mayor must focus on eliminating health disparities, particularly in immigrant communities and communities of color. This can be done by ensuring the availability of culturally and linguistically appropriate services; improving access to health care for immigrants, the uninsured, and the underinsured; promoting effective primary care and prevention services; helping individuals with disabilities and chronic illnesses like HIV/AIDS; protecting resources for women’s health, children’s health, mental health, and early intervention; and developing a high-quality and diverse workforce within the healthcare industry; addressing issues impacting sex workers; and key parts of the Affordable Care Act incentives healthy outcomes, especially for vulnerable communities.

We need assurances that the next mayor will continue to support the public health and hospital system, with health services in medically underserved communities.

There are many moral arguments for public health issues to be one of the incoming mayor’s top priorities. However, I also recognize the insufficiency of those arguments. It is also important to understand the economic case for action. Small investments in prevention can stave off higher future health costs. Mayoral leadership on public policy recommendations like paid sick days only makes our workforce more productive and improves the health of our fellow New Yorkers. Providing social supports to pregnant and parenting women and families has been shown to improve birth outcomes, and avoid costly ongoing infant medical costs. The next mayor can ensure the sustainment of low-cost or no-cost measures that can jumpstart local efforts to address public health concerns and issues.

Whatever your opinion is about the current mayoral administration’s priorities around public health concerns, there is still a need for a systematic, comprehensive and holistic approach that truly involves planning from the ground up.

A “Public Health Mayor” must recognize the indispensable role that community members and labor play in improving health care throughout the city, and through leadership must create an environment that includes community voices in the decision-making and policy-setting processes.

In appointing people to positions such as the Commissioner of the Department of Health and Mental Health, the mayor can exercise this type of leadership by selecting people who value community input and support community-led approaches to closing the gaps in health status. This can only be successful if the “Public Health Mayor” devotes sufficient attention to these issues, commits the necessary revenue and resources, ensures transparency in spending and operations, and provides accountability for public health programs.

We must recognize that a great city like New York can only fulfill its promise of greatness when it is better for everyone on all economic and social justice issues. For many of our community partners, the Mayor can make a profound effect on access to health care, prevention, wellness and other health issues. The next mayor must be a “Public Health Mayor” who will make addressing public health issues as one of the his or her highest priorities.

Anthony Feliciano is the director for the Commission on the Public’s Health System, whose mission is to fight for equal access to quality healthcare for everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, language spoken, diagnosis, or the ability to pay. CPHS coordinated a coalition of community, labor, academic, professional organizations and individuals who sponsored a New York City Mayoral Candidate Forum on Important Public Health Issues on January 16th, 2013. 

Taking A Stand To Restore Paralysis Research in New York State


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There seems to be no greater punishment than paralysis.

It’s easy, lazy even, for me to say -- so many people struggle with horrific illnesses and severe physical challenges. It’s impossible to rank one over the next. But people with spinal cord injuries, and their families, experience a unique, constant anguish.

I found this to be true on July 4, 1998, the single worst day of my nearly 29-year life.

My brother Jeff, then 17, had always been the type to self soothe teenage hormonal episodes with sports — lacrosse, basketball, snow boarding, you name it.

It was with his typical confident skill that he effortlessly dove into the shallow end of a swimming pool. I don’t need to close my eyes to remember what it looked like -- a clean move, one he’d made so many times before.

One simple dive, and our world collapsed. Drowning. My parents’ screams as they jumped into the pool fully clothed. The shock of witnessing a grown boy lifeless and blue, cradled in my mom and dad’s arms.

In an exceedingly cruel twist of fate, athletic Jeff fractured his neck, injured the C1-C2 vertebrae in his spinal column, and at 17 became a high level quadriplegic.

To think about that day is to forget how to breathe, and each flash brings with it an almost unimaginable anguish.

Jeff has battled to adapt to his new life in the years since — navigating a wheelchair, operating a phrenic nerve pacemaker — and the daunting social isolation that comes from being dependent on 24/7 care.

As his sister, and not his primary caregiver, it is agonizing to see his spirits diminish and not know how to respond. As the years go by, his body and soul continues to atrophy. The boy that ran to the field as I would the stage is now imprisoned in his body, a shell of what could have been.

I spent the night of his accident an anxious, bewildered 14-year old, pacing the bedroom of a family friend, realizing there was a great chance Jeff would die, and nothing I could do would save him.

And yet, he survived. Nearly 15 years later, he is alive. And what remains is an extraordinarily intelligent, well spoken, man. A man with life I once thought was lost forever.

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To consider his medical situation “lucky” is to have a measure of grace I do not comprehend. And yet, his story is not over. There are scientists and medical researchers in my state, New York, devoted to the hope that one day Jeff will be reborn again. That there will be a cure for paralysis -- that perhaps a family, years from now, will have treatment options that have yet been discovered.

The New York Spinal Cord Injury Research Program has raised over $70 million for spinal cord research since 1998. This money was raised through moving violation penalties that were put aside into a state fund specifically geared toward spinal cord research grants. And yet, due to political maneuvering beyond my comprehension, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo followed former Governor David Paterson in rerouting these necessary research funds into the state’s general fund. The money is available, but the leadership needed to maintain this financial commitment to paralysis research is gone.

Cuomo’s office said there are no plans to restore this vital funding to spinal cord research. This is absolutely unacceptable, and insulting. As a result of his inaction, potential cures have stalled without the necessary funding needed for scientific growth. Governor Cuomo, this funding must be restored for the 2013-2014 budget.

We must take a stand for the 5.6 million Americans with a form of paralysis. We must take a stand for the researchers currently paralyzed in a pool of red tape.

Take a stand. So that Jeff, one day, can join me.

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Sarah Galli is the Founder & Executive Producer of Born for Broadway, whose mission is to engage college campuses in raising funds for paralysis related organizations through performance, with an annual Broadway gala showcasing the performances of both established Broadway performers as well as up and coming talent. She also co-chairs the Political Advocacy Network for WIN.NYC, dedicated to empowering young, pro choice, Democratic women. For more information, please visit www.bornforbroadway.com. Image of Jeff courtesy the author. Photo by Kenie Huber. Used by permission. 



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