FDNY Foundation is one Human Services Council member organization (photo: FDNY Foundation)
Thousands of New York State residents depend on the state's non-profit human services organizations during times of disaster and unforeseen crisis. But unless we reinvest in this struggling industry, New Yorkers could find themselves left without resources in their greatest time of need.
Following the attacks of September 11th and the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, human services organizations emerged as indispensable first responders that know the intricate needs of their communities. They are on the front lines providing for basic needs like food and water, safe shelter, crisis counseling immediately following a traumatic event, and extended ongoing assistance related to housing, jobs, legal matters, finances and mental health.
Employees of human services organizations have embraced opportunities to support those victimized by disasters. After Superstorm Sandy, the State awarded a contract to provide case management services for victims who needed help with housing, health care, transportation, and a myriad of other services. The Disaster Case Management program has thus far served approximately 9,700 cases, 5,000 of which remain active.
Unfortunately, the majority of human services organizations are not adequately funded by the State. Since 2010, the State has cut $1 billion from this sector, leading to the loss of 27,000 jobs. In a recent survey of the state's non-profit sector, 42% of respondents said they do not have the resources to continue to operate over the next three years.
For nonprofits to assist in disaster response and recovery, they must be fiscally sound. After Superstorm Sandy, local organizations provided frontline assistance at a significant monetary expense with no guarantee that they would be reimbursed; in fact, in a survey after the storm, only about 20% of surveyed organizations expected to be reimbursed for services provided. After September 11th, nonprofits relied on deficit spending and endowments to buy what was necessary and serve where they could, but after Sandy, many felt that similar actions would put their organization's finances in jeopardy.
Our ability to react effectively to another disaster is very much in question. If another disaster like Superstorm Sandy were to happen tomorrow the human services sector would not be financially prepared to yet again address the immediate and ongoing needs of our communities. This is a very troubling situation.
Fortunately, a remedy lies in the state's $5 billion budget surplus.
The Human Services Council, an association of approximately 200 of the state's leading human services organizations, is currently leading a campaign calling on Governor Cuomo to include a $354 million investment in the human services sector in the next Executive Budget. This would ensure that organizations providing disaster relief have the tools to react effectively when needed, help stabilize the sector, and save jobs.
For five years, the State has deferred its statutory responsibility to provide cost-of-living increases to contracts for state-funded human services, a total loss of $354 million to the sector. This short-sightedness has translated to thousands of layoffs, no raises for the employees providing disaster relief services, and the severe straining of our state's system of human services delivery.
A strong nonprofit infrastructure is crucial to communities, especially in a disaster where nonprofits can be first responders. Nonprofits must have the resources to act when needed, and the current state of funding for human services has crippled our ability to serve. A $354 million investment by the State would alleviate these concerns.
With a virtually unprecedented state budget surplus of $5 billion projected for the next year, Governor Cuomo must not miss the opportunity to better equip human services organizations to ensure the well-being of our citizens - and to continue to leap to the forefront when disasters occur.
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by Allison Sesso, Executive Director, Human Services Council, Inc. Find her on Twitter @AllisonSesso
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(photo: @Uber)
The e-receipt from your last Uber ride isn't the only record of your trip. The base that dispatched your car records a "what, when, and where" of your journey, and that information is available to the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) upon request.
Soon, if the TLC's proposed rules are approved on Thursday, November 20, the agency will start storing that data on its servers and require bases to report regularly in a more efficient standardized format. As might be expected, the proposed rule change is letting an old simmering fight boil over: self-professed protectors of the free market, like Uber, are raising privacy concerns. But if Uber's comments at the TLC's October hearing are any indication, the for-hire car company is using privacy as a pretext for protecting its business interests. That makes me skeptical.
Uber is trying to vilify all data gathering when what it really wants to do is keep secret its market share. Data analysis is not inherently a bad thing, especially when accompanied by transparency, regulation, and indicia of trust.
It's hard to argue, as Uber has, that the change will intrude into driver privacy in the traditional sense. Except for identifying the car's home and dispatching bases, the information is already being recorded and required of all licensed for-hire cars in New York City. Plus, the TLC isn't interested in sensitive information about drivers, customers, or for-hire car companies. It isn't even asking for drop-off data, just pick up, base, and license information. And, in any event, the TLC gathers much more detailed information from yellow and green cabs.
But the rule may raise a different kind of privacy concern (and here, I'm relying on the work of privacy scholars like Helen Nissenbaum at NYU and Dan Solove at George Washington University Law School). Let's call it an accessibility problem. There's a big difference between, on the one hand, data being stored in fifty different dusty file cabinets at fifty different bases and, on the other hand, that same information being gathered together into one Excel spreadsheet and accessible on a government server.
I'm not referring to the statistically insignificant likelihood of a leak; any such concern is highly exaggerated. Rather, it's about access and the ease of analysis, aggregation, and (mis)categorization.
That is, admittedly, a very real concern. Recently, in the New York Times, Maryland Law Professor Frank Pasquale warned that an entire industry of data miners is pulling the floor out from under us as it skates by in the dark corners of the unregulated internet. He reminded us that real people can face real harms when sensitive information like prescription drug or medical histories gets tossed into the heap of a Kafka-esque "big data" regime.
But those real dangers are just not applicable here, and it is disingenuous for a company like Uber, which admitted at the TLC's October meeting that it was chiefly concerned with keeping secret its market share data, to turn all information gathering techniques into automatic evils.
Trip data is not as sensitive as, say, a list of prescription drugs we take. Nor is it anything like our telephone call history or our Facebook passwords. The TLC's requested information is sufficiently general so as to make it inordinately difficult, if not impossible, to find out who drove whom where and for how much. Drop-off and fare data, again, are not included.
Plus, this data could provide all sorts of benefits for the TLC and for New York City: from making it easier to keep customers safe, identify dangerous drivers, and investigate customer complaints, to helping determine which City neighborhoods are underserved by for-hire cars, assess the continued value of old laws in a world with a vibrant for-hire market, and evaluate new TLC programs, to name just a few. Data can be a wonderful tool, if used appropriately.
The question then is not whether this data collection should happen at all; rather, it is how it happens. We want information gathering to happen in a manner that protects our interest in privacy, inspires public trust, and serves the TLC's mission and the general welfare.
To those ends, the TLC should continuously fine-tune its protocols to ensure that it is a trusted guardian of trip data. And it is doing just that. It has narrowly tailored the rule to provide it with the minimum amount of data necessary to achieve its public safety goals. The TLC has appropriately balanced privacy interests with its other obligations by limiting what could be released under a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. It has developed internal protocols to keep trip data secure so that only employees who need access to these data to do their jobs would have the login and password to access the data. And it is approaching this policy change by being transparent about what is being requested, how it is being stored, and what could be released.
Privacy interests are fundamental to who we are as a society, and governments need to take them seriously by seeing themselves as stewards of our information. But data collection can open doors: it can help us create a more intelligent, more efficient, more just society. It will take a public-private partnership to do that. Manipulating the public by waving the privacy flag, however, is not good corporate citizenship.
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Ari Ezra Waldman is Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School. You can follow him on Twitter at @ariezrawaldman
The author, Bertha Lewis, left (photo: @Vote_Bichotte)
A recent New York Times column examined "The Source of New York's Greatness," and its conclusion was no surprise: our greatness comes from our status as the preeminent melting pot, both culturally and economically. We are home not just to doctors, lawyers, and bankers, but to bodega owners, shoe shiners and deli chefs. So I wonder what one of our great orators would say about the New Dime Bag?
New Yorkers, YOU BEEN HAD! A ten cent tax on plastic bags, specifically the regressive tax introduced by Council Members Brad Lander and Margaret Chin, is counter-intuitive, and hurts the working class and small business owners that make our city strong. Our communities are still struggling to make ends meet, still suffering economically from the recession, and still suffering from the effects of Hurricane Sandy. We shouldn't be asking our citizens to hand over any more of their hard-earned money at the grocery counter, especially when their communities won't reap the benefit of their investment.
New Yorkers, YOU BEEN TOOK! It is hard enough for our city's working families to balance multiple jobs, multiple children, and a checkbook, without having to also worry about whether or not they remember to bring a reusable bag. Council Members Lander and Chin have tried in part to alleviate this issue by proposing to waive the tax for those on food stamps. Unfortunately, this "remedy" creates more problems than it solves. Despite an exemption for SNAP recipients, New York's working poor must still pay this tax.
New Yorkers, YOU BEEN HOODWINKED! Additionally, many small businesses are opposed to this legislation, as they would be unnecessarily burdened to enforce it. The bill is very clear on how businesses will be fined, but is conveniently vague on how small business owners should keep track of their plastic bag compliance. The bill does not mandate any sort of paper trail to help businesses prove that they are in fact complying with the new tax. Why are we making things more confusing for our small businesses, instead of helping them run more efficiently?
New Yorkers, YOU BEEN LED ASTRAY! This bill is supposed to help the environment, but the goals don't match up to reality. Plastic bags make up only 2% of the waste stream, and are nowhere near the top of the list of glaring environmental priorities for our citizens. Reusable bags are also produced overseas from petroleum, a process that is harmful to the environment. Additionally, plastic bags are 100% recyclable, and are reused in a number of ways around the house.
New York City Council has RUN AMOK! If Council Members Lander and Chin really want to make an impact, they should focus their efforts on causes that more directly benefit constituents. A recent survey found that, by a margin of 2:1, voters believe taxing plastic bags is a distraction. New Yorkers think job creation (24%), affordable housing (22%) and quality public schools (18%) are the most important issues for lawmakers to address.
Bag tax supporters like Lander and Chin hurt their constituents by further supporting the punitive and regressive tax on plastic shopping bags. Before writing and supporting legislation, our elected officials should take the time to think through their actions and consider the range of effects their proposals will have on their communities, and not just themselves. Think about all New Yorkers. DUMP THE DIME BAG!
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Bertha Lewis is President and Founder of the Black Leadership Action Coalition (BLAC).
Do you have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Send it to Executive Editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.