The quiet release in February of the Preliminary Mayor's Management Report for FY 2010 -- a mandated report intended as a mid-year review and adjustment of mayoral budget plans -- comes amid increasing questions about how the Bloomberg administration manages data and addresses major social and economic crises. Rather than inform that debate, the new report simply ignores it. As a result, controversies surrounding school test scores, the rapid expansion of charter schools, and the role of parents in the schools are not addressed. Nor do we learn how the city might meet economic and social emergencies, such as the doubling of the unemployment rate in one year, to more than 10 percent, and a big escalation in homelessness.
The lack of substance in the management report is not a surprise since the mayor proposed -- unsuccessfully -- to eliminate the preliminary management report during the last mayoral charter revision commission in 2004-2005. Since that defeat the report has become an unfocused collection of old indicators, new indicators -- most of which serve to put the administration in a favorable light -- and random one-line "highlights."
For instance, in the mayor's top priority area, education, the report provides little sense of how the department manages programs and does almost nothing to hold the department accountable. Of 64 academic performance statistics, only 17 have actual data for the first four months of this fiscal year. Only 21 set targets for the current fiscal year. Of 21 "critical" statistics among the 64, only one provides actual data for the current year, and only three offer a target for the year.
The first four months of this school year have seen repeated parent objections to school closings, lack of parental access to school decision-making and the placements of charter schools in public schools, but the management report gives no indication of any of that. All the reader learns about parent participation is that the school system received nearly 119,000 calls on the 311 system. The two most frequent questions (38 percent) were about the school calendar and finding a school.
Also, we learn that phone calls to school parent coordinators increased by 37 percent. The latter fact could have some value as a management indicator: Why the dramatic increase in calls? What happened as a result? No answer.
The report's education section blends questionable state test data and in-house school-grading standards. For more than a year, articles in the New York Times and the Daily News have challenged the accuracy of state math and reading test scores as well as the city Department of Education's own method of grading schools. The report simply ignores these questions and makes the presumed success of schools on their Progress Reports (or school report cards, a "critical indicator" crafted by the department) the first "Performance Highlight": 92 percent of schools received grades of A or B. The reason? "Significant increases" in test scores. The management report stresses the test scores even though education department officials have said they expect to change the system.
One useful education indicator in the report is class size -- key for many reformers -- where actual data exists for the current fiscal year. But here, too, the facts don't lead to any useful comment about management. Since fiscal year 2007 class size in the crucial grades kindergarten through three has gone up an average of one student per class , although the department’s budget during that time has risen from $15.8 billion to $18.4 billion (and by $536 million in the past year).
Acknowledging the increase, the management report explains cryptically: "With school budgets decreasing this year while teacher salaries increased, DOE has managed to avoid massive increases in class size by working with schools to avoid cuts to classroom staff where possible."
That's it for analysis on class size. There is no word at all about another controversial topic: charter schools. With 99 charter schools currently in place and 100 more proposed by the mayor, the lack of any mention of them, let alone data on achievement and enrollment, is bizarre. Similarly, the report says nothing about another innovation, the creation of new small public schools.
The first "Performance Highlight" in the Department of Homeless Services section of the Preliminary Mayor's Management Report, like that in the education section, shows a 90 plus percent success: Some 94.3 percent of families with children who received preventive services in the first four months of the fiscal year 2010 did not enter the shelter system, an improvement over the previous year (92.6 percent).
But there is no reference to how many families received such aid. It is only in the third "highlight" that the report cites a 25 percent increase in the number of families with children entering shelter in those same four months. And one must turn two pages to an indicator table to find that the total number of entering families is 5,674, or 1,124 more than in the previous year. That same table shows a 34 percent increase (not addressed in the text) in families with children entering shelters in the previous full fiscal year (i.e., from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009).
How is the city responding to this extraordinary influx over the last year and a half? And why has homelessness increased so sharply when the administration undertook programs aiming at a substantial reduction in homeless families? No answers. All we learn is that the city is using federal money "to expand prevention and anti-eviction services in the community."
The report provides no indicators or comments about those who actually provide help to families and single adults in 201 privately run and 11 city-run shelters. The private agencies will spend over $700 million, or about 78 percent, of the department’s $915 million budget this fiscal year. But because reporting about contract agencies is handled by another mayoral agency, the Mayor's Office of Contract Services, the management report does not address the delivery of these services.
Details about nonprofit contracting, including management indicators such as performance ratings were, under former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, included in preliminary and final management reports. Now, the mayor's contract office publishes only a single report every September, entitled Agency Procurement Indicators, which, like the management reports, is more a jumble of data than a management review.
It is the contracts office, rather than the city agencies, that monitors human services contract agencies. This is a huge assignment.
The most recent contracts report, issued in September 2009 notes that in fiscal 2009 the city worked with 1,463 nonprofit human services providers, representing $10.8 billion in contracts. Typical of the report's style, the only references to homeless services (whose $600 million in contracts last year made it the ninth biggest contract agency) are simple program descriptions of two small contracts in Brooklyn.
Less than two pages of the September report are devoted to non-profit human services "vendor compliance." The report notes, "While these vendors generally work tirelessly and effectively on behalf of New Yorkers in need, there are infrequent -- but serious -- cases of abuse that shake the public's confidence in the integrity of the nonprofit sector." In addition, some contract agencies "experience significant fiscal management challenges." The report does not offer any information on who those agencies might be or what challenges they might face.
As a result, eight years into its tenure, the Bloomberg administration has created what it calls "a relatively new addition to [its] vendor responsibility reviews," a Capacity Building and Oversight initiative. Of the 1,463 nonprofit human services providers, 673 (with 4,390 contracts) have contracts worth over a million dollars, the basic threshold for scrutiny by the initiative.
Apparently Capacity Building and Oversight does not yet have any results to share with the public. But the contracts report promises us, "About 98 percent of the total dollar volume" of human service contracting will ultimately be covered by this new review process.
The preliminary management report gives even shorter shrift to economic development, a key policy area. In its two pages the report on the city's Economic Development Corp.has only one reference to job loss in the city.
It appears as the last of six "Preliminary Performance Highlights": The unemployment rate in the first four months of this fiscal year was 10.1 percent, up from 5.9 percent during the same period a year ago.
The one-sentence response to this disturbing statistic: "The increase is principally the result of the large job losses associated with the recession that began in August 2008."
The highlights section does not discuss what the city can or might do about alleviating the unemployment problem. But it does include a 90 plus percent performance statistic: As of Oct. 31, 2009, nearly 92 percent of all property managed by the Economic Development Corp. was occupied.
The one big political battle that the Economic Development Corp. was engaged in this fiscal year, the plan to develop the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, gets no mention. That plan, which promised the creation of 2,000 jobs, foundered on the mayor’s refusal to accept a requirement that all companies in the projects pay their employeees a living wage -- $10 an hour with benefits, $11.50 an hour without benefits.
The contracting office's September report puts the mayor's decision on the armory contract in an interesting context. The city has 176 contracts, worth $134 million, that the contracts office monitors to assure compliance with the city's own living wage law. These contracts apply to such services as day care, home care, Head Start, and food services -- but not to retail jobs in the Bronx.
But the management report is not about political controversy. Nor is it about management accountability. It has become a reluctant, bureaucratic exercise that avoids policy and political discussion.
If it has any coherent goal, it seems to be a search for, or creation of, positive indicators that show 90 plus percent performance success. The creation of a new charter revision commission, in theory, would be a welcome opportunity to review the current city charter mandate for management review. But there is a near-zero percent chance, given the administration's lack of interest in any public discussion of its management practices, that such a review will take place.
Glenn Pasanen, who teaches political science at Lehman College, has been in charge of Gotham Gazette's finance topic page since 2001.
Last month, colleagues began telling Maria Rizera -- one of 16 Spanish-speaking workers at the Staten Island E-ZPass call center -- that, unless she began taking calls in English only, her job was going to get a lot tougher. To protest what they see as wage discrimination, Rizera's coworkers were walking away from the Spanish language line.
"People just kept quitting the Spanish queue, and I stuck on until, all of a sudden, I was the last one at the call center taking these calls," Rizera said. "And I looked at my paycheck that week, and said, 'I can’t keep doing this.'" So Rizera quit speaking Spanish on the job, and people seeking help from the call center can receive it only in English.
This reduction in service is the result not of a budget cut but of a dispute between 292 employees at the recently unionized call center, and the private company that operates the center, Texas based Affiliated Computer Systems, which merged with Xerox last month. In May, the call center workers voted to join a union. Within 24 hours of the vote, Affiliated Computer Services –- which handles all administrative aspects of the E-ZPass system under contract to public transportation agencies -- announced employees would no longer receive hourly wages. Instead they would be paid a piece rate, based on the number of calls they handled. After the pay-per-call system went into effect in August, paychecks of Spanish speaking workers quickly slid below that of their coworkers because Spanish calls take longer to complete.
Since August, union,CWA Local 1102, a branch of Communication Workers of America, says it has been pleading for the company to come to the bargaining table to settle this and other matters in a formal contract. But Affiliated Computer Services/Xerox refuses to recognize the union, an action CWA calls illegal.
Last week, all 14 workers in one of the call center's most pro-union sections, the tags department, were fired. The firing came only days after seven tag department employees stood up from their desks for 60 seconds while working to demonstrate their wish for the managers to recognize the call center’s union.
With allies in city and state government, Communications Workers are currently waging a campaign to encourage the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the New York State Thruway Authority to drop their contracts with Xerox/ACS, a corporation the union says has gone "rogue."
For two centuries, per-unit pay has been an explosive subject between labor and management. Employers say it rationally ties pay to performance. Workers say the system degrades work quality and leads to confusing and inequitable pay systems.
So go the arguments on Staten Island today.
Under what management calls the ABC (Activity Based Compensation) system, a series of new stipulations affect weekly pay. These include the number of calls made, at 87 cents per completed call; call quality, based on management's listening in on random calls; and monitoring electronically how promptly the workers clock in and out of work.
"Our primary focus here is our customers -- customer experience is paramount," said Kevin Lightfoot, a spokesperson for ACS. "The new system gives our agents the capability of answering questions quickly and efficiently."
Lightfoot added that three quarters of the workers at the Staten Island call center now make more money than they did before the piece rate system.
The union disputes this number and accuses the system of leaving workers in the dark on how wages are determined, and causing the discrimination against Spanish-speaking workers and customers.
"For a year or so there was a lot of talk about the ABC system. Everyone was pretty scared for their wages," said Isaac Colinares, who has been working at the call center since 2007. "Then the management put it in place, and our pay became very inconsistent. My paychecks go up and down weekly. There are too many variables involved, so no one knows what's going on and the management can't explain it to anyone. It's a mess."
Workers also expressed exasperation over new automatically filed pay penalties.
"Now if I clock in two minutes late, or take my lunch break five minutes late because a customer call took longer to complete, they deduct from my paycheck," said Rizera. "I don’t think that’s really fair."
Then there is the Spanish language problem. Because the E-ZPass website is exclusively in English, many Spanish-speaking calls require translating the website into Spanish. These calls occupy over twice as much time as calls in English, making working the line a burden that several workers described as being financially untenable.
ACS does pay Spanish-speaking call center workers $25 every two weeks in compensation. Rizera said this additional pay did not come close to adjusting for the estimated weekly hundred-plus dollar deficiency in her paycheck that made her ultimately quit the line.
"Because ACS will not bargain with the union, the 16 Spanish-speaking workers have taken it upon themselves to improve their situation," said Tim Dubnau, the Communications Workers' organizer for District 1. "This is the definition of a labor dispute."
According to Lightfoot, ACS was not aware that workers were quitting the Spanish queue until the union's recent press conference on the issue.
"We have not heard any reports of Spanish-speaking callers having been denied help,” Lightfoot said. "Now we’re working with the government agencies to look at how to solve the problem."
Lightfoot added that, of all the customers E-ZPass deals with, 0.15 percent are Spanish-speaking.
"Regardless of their work, absolutely no one is getting paid less than $12.50 an hour," Lightfoot said, referring to the current "parachute period," which sets a floor for wages while management and workers get used to the ABC system.
Although ACS insists that it will not lower the $12.50 wage floor, workers are worried.
In 2005, ACS purchased a call center in Auburn, Wash. Soon after, the company instituted its ABC system and workers filed a complaint, claiming that, under the piece rate system "the plaintiffs have suffered lost wages and economic loss."
In a public statement released by CWA, Mary Sump, one of the plaintiffs in the Washington suit against ACS, said, "ABC meant minimum wage for me. There were also so many issues with my pay after ABC, and I could never get a straight answer from the company. About half or more of my coworkers were forced to quit because of the loss of wages under ABC."
Lightfoot said he has no knowledge of wages dropping or of employee discontent at the Washington State call center.
Linda Parsons, executive director of Utah Jobs With Justice, said that she knows of at least several customer service representatives making minimum wage at another Affiliated Computer piece-rate based call center, this one in Salt Lake City, Utah. Parsons added that 50 percent of workers at the call center make no more than a dollar over minimum wage, and called the conditions at the Utah call center "close to that of a sweatshop."
Workers at the non-unionized Salt Lake City call center refused to speak on record for fear of being fired.
Union organizers see the Spanish-line issue and last week's firing of the tag department workers as the most recent phases of a complicated effort to create an effective union at E-ZPass. During the union drive last year, the National Labor Relations Board filed complaints against Xerox/Affiliated Computer Systems for alleged intimidation of union supporters, and the unlawful firing of a union supporter. The Communications Workers claim also that overtime pay was taken away from a union-supporting department, and that the company intentionally disseminated misinformation to affect the outcome of the union election.
Affiliated Computer denies that it meddled in the election.
Lightfoot said that last week's firings simply represent part of an effort to make the call center more efficient by replacing the department’s human labor with a computerized system. "We automate. We make our systems more efficient," Lightfoot said. "That's just what we do."
Although the National Labor Relations Board has officially recognized the Staten Island call center's union, the company refuses to bargain, arguing that all E-ZPass workers in New York State should have been included in the vote. Xerox/ACS has taken this appeal to the National Labor Relations Board in Washington. To the union's consternation, Xerox/ACS says it will not come to the bargaining table as long as the appeal awaits its hearing -- a decision no one expects will come soon.
With only two of its five members currently serving -- a Democrat and a Republican, who generate mostly one-to-one deadlocks -- the National Labor Relations Board is debilitated. A two-year impasse over appointments has created an enormous backlog of labor disputes. There is no telling how long Affiliated Computer's appeal could wait for a verdict.
Arguing that the case has no legal foundation, the Communication Workers accuse the company of obstructionism in exploiting the currently non-functioning National Labor Relations Board as a pretext to defy labor laws.
The National Labor Relations Act requires companies to recognize and bargain with unions certified by the Labor Relations Board, like the call center union. The New York State Constitution, reiterating the National Labor Relations Act, also states employees "have the right to organize collectively through representatives of their own choosing."
The union now believes its last option is to convince the New York agencies to drop their contracts with the firm.
"The laws are not being enforced, so now we need the authorities to step in and resolve the situation," said Pete Sikora, director of special projects for CWA District 1. "This is as close as you can get to legal certainty without a verdict."
The city’s contract with Xerox/ACS does allow the city "suspend, postpone, abandon or terminate the contract at any time and for any reason,” as long as the private contractor is given 45 days notice." The contract, which is identical for all the different agencies involved with ACS/Xerox, does not, however, specify in what languages other than English E-ZPass must provide services.
None of the agencies involved seem poised for action. "The situation is between ACS and the call center,” said Joyce Mulvaney, spokeswoman for MTA Bridge and Tunnel. "There’s litigation pending so it’s not something we’re commenting on."
Motivated by the Staten Island dispute, Assemblymember Jose Peralta introduced a bill yesterday that proposes to mandate Spanish language service in all privately operated customer service centers on contract with New York State and city agencies.
"The MTA and Port Authority did not appear to even notice when their contractor for E-ZPass cut Spanish language service entirely," said Peralta in an email. "We need a legislative guarantee of good customer service for all New Yorkers."
There currently are no laws ensuring that publicly contracted customer service centers serve Spanish-speaking customers.
Other elected officials have pledged their support to the Staten Island workers and expressed frustration at what they see as privatization run amok.
"It is a disgrace that a private company is exploiting a public franchise with no regard for a large segment of the population," said Queens City Councilmember Julissa Ferreras" in an email. "It is a shame and a scandal that the MTA, the Port Authority and the Thruway Authority have not brought pressure to bear on Xerox/ACS to negotiate with its workers, pay them fairly, and restore service to Spanish speakers."
Last Friday, in reaction to Xerox/ACS’s firing of the tag department workers, State Sen. Diane Savino and other Staten Island officials held a press conference outside the Staten Island call center.
"Xerox/ACS must immediately reverse its illegal firings and improve customer service at E-ZPass," said Savino. "Xerox/ACS's dismal record of treatment of their employees is compounded by their current pay-per-call scheme, which forces workers to rush through calls, causing customer service quality to suffer."
Xerox/ACS says that it is trying to place the 14 tag department workers in other departments, but there are no guarantees.
For now, although the call center's union remains very active, bargaining still takes place only between Xerox/ACS management and its individual employees. The high unemployment rate raises cost of job-loss, and call center workers feel the lack of bargaining power.
"I'm not sure what to expect next, but I'll go with the flow," said Colinares. "I don't think I really have a choice in the matter."
The din of lobbyists and legislators pressing flesh, asking for favors, making promises and issuing assurances floats into Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch's office. The Monday after the week-long Presidents' Day break, things are bit busier, a bit louder than usual in the capitol as Senate session gets underway.
Ravitch's office has two doors. One dark, wood-paneled entrance stands at the end of a short hallway that functions as a senators' lounge. Right now -- and whenever the Senate is in session -- this space is home to gabbing lobbyists and legislators and to silent sergeants-at-arms who check for proper identification. The other of the two portals opens directly into the Senate chamber at the side where the Democratic caucus sits. Ravitch is tucked away amid the bustle but occasionally pops out one door or the other to quickly shake hands or confer with someone.
With New York facing a fiscal crisis of staggering proportions -- and with critics believing the state government is not up to dealing -- many hope that Ravitch comes to the rescue and takes a central role in budget negotiations. Almost universally respected, Ravitch, that line of thinking goes, could force the governor and legislative Republicans and Democrats to make the hard choices they need to confront right now. The question is whether his boss, Gov. David Paterson, will give him the opportunity -- and if he does, whether Ravitch can pull the rabbit out of the hat one more time.
There is no question that Ravitch is popular -- he is known as the man who saved New York, after all, not just once, but on multiple occasions.
In 1975 Ravitch resurrected the nearly insolvent New York State Urban Development Corp., as its chair.
In 1979 Gov. Hugh Carey gave Ravitch the chance to work his magic again as the chair of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Again Ravitch was credited with not only saving the authority's finances but expanding the system to include Metro North.
More recently, Ravitch was named to head a commission to find revenue streams for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. His recommendations were hailed by advocates but largely dismissed by senators.
Finally, Ravitch was tapped again to save the day last summer when Paterson named him lieutenant governor in a controversial gambit to resolve the struggle for control of the Senate.
But now the state is facing even bigger problems -- the kind that could leave the entire state insolvent. The state Assembly thinks that the governor's revenue projections are short by $1.2 billion. The Senate estimates revenues to be about $743 million behind expectations.
So, Ravitch is again working to save the day. He has been holding meetings about his long-term fiscal plan for New York, a plan he is set to unveil in the coming weeks. Ravitch, though, isn't saying much publicly about that long-term plan. Right now, New York's finances need immediate saving, and not a whole lot seems to be getting done about it.
Today in his office Ravitch seems a bit worn down. The lieutenant governor has had a busy day. He addressed the conference of mayors in the morning, visited a new nanotechnology site and then had a meeting on the fiscal plan followed by a steady stream of less formal meetings in his Albany office.
Meanwhile, he's suffering from a head cold. He takes long, pregnant pauses between sentences, as if there are certain thoughts he needs to swallow back down before speaking.
"When my friends, who are mostly not in politics but in professional life, ask me if I'm having a good time, I tell them it's a fascinating time, intellectually. Is it a nice time? My interest in public service going back to UDC was saving things from catastrophe, making sure the government could continue to provide services essential for people who had no other alternative, who were dependent on government," Ravitch said.
But now he thinks government may no longer be able to provide those services, because of the economy.
"We are going to have to make very tough decisions, not just this year but the following year. Can you imagine being the governor, being David Paterson, my friend, or anyone else sitting there in January with a $15 billion deficit with 90 days to address it?"
Even when asked about the financial situation of the MTA, the organization he once saved, Ravitch treats it as just another casualty of the economy -- an unavoidable consequence of these harsh times. "I don't mean to belittle the situation and I do care a great deal about the MTA. I do believe (increased fares) would have a negative impact on a population already suffering a very high unemployment, but all of the possible actions have impacts that are negative. When people say lets find another solution, I say let's find out what it is."
Ravitch said he personally would not go ahead with Paterson's plan to raise the payroll tax in New York City from 0.34 percent to 0.54 percent, while dropping it from 0.34 percent to 0.17 percent in the suburbs. "At this point leave well enough alone," he said.
He recalled, "When I first got involved this summer, I shared David Paterson's view that we were in a serious economic bind, but there were a lot of people of good faith, friends of mine in the legislature, who said, 'Aww, Dick, we're in a recession and we'll be out of it in a year or so. So we just have to get through the next year or so.' To which I responded, 'Bullshit.' We've experienced a longer-term decline, and of course we’re going to come out of it, but we’re coming out of it much more slowly."
Ravitch said that federal stimulus funds will have only "built the cliff higher for us," when they finally run out.
The problems with the state's finances don't stem just from the recession but from long-standing, systemic problems. Ravitch points out that Medicaid costs are going up at four times the rate of inflation and health care costs at six times the inflation rate. "Medicaid costs are squeezing out education and infrastructure. We’re getting squeezed out, because the federal government decided, quite properly, that people should have access to good health care."
To make matters worse, according to Ravitch, the state has relied on one-shot injections of borrowing or cash transfers to balance the budget. "Eight out of ten years we were not structurally balanced. Our expenditures did not match our recurring revenues. We used over $20 billion in one-shots. It isn't sustainable," he said.
Ravitch is very good at playing the role of a messenger of sobering, even damning economic news. His tone, conviction and no-nonsense sincerity, combined with the wealth of his experience as a businessman, make him a very effective doomsayer. And legislators say they would like to see him increase his role. They like dealing with Ravitch and see his knowledge of the economy as invaluable.
With the current huge rift between Paterson and the legislature, some legislators would simply rather deal with Ravitch than Paterson. Paterson has slammed legislators as incompetent and unwilling to make hard choices, while legislative leaders have questioned Paterson's ability to lead and snubbed him behind the scenes.
"I'm not sure that is a fair way of characterizing it," Ravitch says, referring to the reported lack of communication between his "friend David Paterson" and the legislature. "I will tell you this: The problem is so profound, so without precedent, there is not a single valid choice about the budget that could possibly get a single person elected to public office. Having said that, how does a group of people, many of whom went into public life because they thought and believed government could do good things for people, deal with this kind of reverse economics?"
A number of legislators say Ravitch could work to repair the bridge between the legislature and the governor. "If the governor let the lieutenant governor negotiate on his behalf, he would be very well served," said Sen. Neil Breslin.
"He has that kind of personality, that kind of charm, that's difficult for anyone to turn him down,' Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told the New York Times last year. "They may never agree with him but it’s very difficult not to sit with him and not hear his case."
Some legislators say privately that Ravitch is disillusioned and even angry at Paterson for the way the governor has handled the state's financial situation. Last fall the Post reported that Ravitch was dismayed that Paterson was not publicly proposing significant budget cuts for fear of public backlash.
Ravitch seems to bounce back and forth between his friendship with Paterson, his friendship with legislators and his desire to make significant headway to save the state from financial peril. Solving the problem, he said, "will take a degree of collegiality between the legislature and governor and Democrats and Republicans that hasn't existed before, and I hope it happens because the people will suffer if it doesn't. I mean, prolonging this agony and avoiding making unhappy decisions doesn't solve anybody's problem. Let me put it to you this way: I talk to the legislative leadership; obviously, I talk to the governor."
When asked if he sees himself functioning as a gateway between Paterson and the legislature, Ravitch bristles, but smiles a bit. "I'm fully prepared if it's useful to do that. I don't think that David Paterson has a problem communicating. I think the problem is, as I suggested, it's very, very difficult."
Reminded that some legislators have gone out of their way to snub Paterson, Ravitch responded, "And there have been times he's gone out of his way to characterize the legislature in ways they don't like. Right? That's why I refer to the fact that collegiality, not conflict, has got to be part of the solution here. But one of the things that is nice about politics is most ill feelings don't last long."
"Morgan is scowling," he said, referring to Morgan Hook, a Paterson spokesperson who is sitting in on the interview, "so he may not agree with me," laughs Ravitch.
Ravitch says legislative leaders are currently trying to solidify their estimate of the budget deficit. Public revenue discussions are set to begin later this week.
Legislators, though, will have to be rational about the state's financial situation, he said. "I had one distinguished legislator say to me, 'Dick, I'm not gonna vote for cuts or taxes.' To which I said, 'Where are you gonna find the fairy godmother?'"
On balance, Ravitch believes most legislators want to do a good job. "I think the general press' characterization of them as corrupt people is grossly inaccurate. It is not my sense at all. Yeah, there are some bad apples from time to time and altogether it's a hell of a life. A legislator makes $75 grand. I know a lot of them very well and they could make more money elsewhere. They are in this game because they want to make the world a better place. Sure, they have personal ambition, but they aren't in it to make money."
He is loath to make a prediction as to when a budget deal might actually be reached. "We could be making progress. We could get delayed. It's even conceivable we might not have one at all."
Ravitch also does not want to predict what he might do when his term is up at the end of year. "I haven't really decided what I'm gonna do, except probably do some teaching and some writing, for sure." Hook interjects, "And more golf!"
Ravitch agrees. "Once we get a budget done I hope to play some this summer. I have possible golf days with many members of the legislature. It’s my way of saying, 'OK, let's pass this goddamn budget!'"