Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Topics

Topics

New City Council Bills


As a regular feature, Searchlight on City Hall looks at some of the new bills in the New York City Council. At the most recent meeting on April 5, 2006, council members introduced 15 new bills, many of which may never be passed into a law. Still individual council members hope their bills will at least generate public discussion - and result in some action - on the issues that concern them.

REVISITING STREET ELECTROCUTIONS
In 2004, a woman named Jody Lane was electrocuted when she stepped on a manhole cover while walking her dog in the East Village. In response, the City Council passed Local Law 44, which requires Con Edison to conduct routine inspections of wires and electrical infrastructure and make repairs within 24 hours. In addition, the Department of Transportation instituted random tests of electrical boxes and manhole covers on the city’s streets and sidewalks.

However, the legislation has not solved the problem. In recent months, more people and dogs have been shocked by stray voltage and others have been injured by exploding manhole covers. So the City Council is introducing another bill - known as the "Street Utilities Safety Act" (Intro 252) - in an effort to address the issue.

It would institute new requirements that companies maintain electrical-related covers to ensure that pedestrians are not exposed to stray voltage. It would also impose new penalties of $1,000 to $5,000 for companies whose electrical infrastructure is found to be dangerous.

IMMIGRANT VOTING RIGHTS
While the City Council has no official role in the immigration debate going on in Washington, some city lawmakers are trying to weigh in on the subject at the local level.

Councilmember Charles Barron has introduced a bill (Intro 245) that would give non-citizen immigrants the right to vote in local elections. The bill would apply to immigrants who have applied for citizenship, have "green cards," and have lived in New York for at least six months.

"From 1770 to 1920 immigrants were allowed to vote and when the complexion of immigrants changed, then the rules changed," said Barron.

According to the Department of City Planning, the city is home to 1.3 million non-citizens of voting age. While non-citizens pay taxes and are subject to other city laws, they are not allowed to choose their local elected officials. New York has a history of allowing non-citizens to vote on local issues: before the Board of Education was disbanded, non-citizen immigrants could vote in school board elections.

The bill, however, is not likely to become law any time soon.

Speaker Christine Quinn, who controls much of the council's legislative agenda and can effectively decide if a bill ever comes up for a vote, is opposed to the measure.

"I am not in favor of non-citizen voting," Quinn said at a press conference when asked about the measure.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said that giving non-citizen immigrants the right to vote in local elections would require a change in the State Constitution and would have to be passed by voter referendum.

HOSPITAL CLOSURES
Many hospitals in New York are struggling financially, and as a result, some are shutting their doors. Last year, for example, two hospitals in Brooklyn - St. Mary's and the Caledonian Division of Brooklyn Hospital in Flatbush - both closed.

As a result, Councilmember Letitia James has introduced a bill (Intro 251) that would require the department of health and the Economic Development Corporation to conduct a study on health care quality in neighborhoods that have lost hospitals.

The study would examine the "disparities in health care" received by city residents, as well as look into the impact of private hospital closures on publicly funded hospitals.

BANNING MILITARY RECRUITERS IN SCHOOLS
As the war in Iraq stretches on, military recruiters are struggling to find new applicants for military service. Councilmember Charles Barron, who is opposed to the war, wants to make it even more difficult. He has introduced a bill (Intro 246), which would prohibit military recruitment in New York City public schools and the City University of New York.

"Our black and Latino youth do not join the military for patriotic reasons," said Barron. "They go in for economic reasons to be cannon fodder for unjust wars. Let's opt the military out from our public schools."

Military recruiters target communities of color where students may see a military career as their best option, argues Barron.

Parents are often unaware that the under President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, schools must provide the military with names and addresses of all students, except for those who expressly request that their names be withheld from recruiting lists. The bill would also prohibit schools from providing information about students without the consent of a parent or guardian.

POSTAL STICKERS
When a postal delivery person is unable to deliver a package, they often leave a sticker on the door to notify the tenant. This practice is an invitation to criminals, argues Councilmember Simcha Felder.

"Anyone who is a thief knows that the best house to rob is one with a sticker on it [because no one is home]," said Felder.

In an effort to address the issue, Felder has introduced a bill (Intro 247) that would prevent mail delivery personnel from placing "notification stickers" on the front doors of residences where no one is home. The bill would require delivery people to notify residents in a more discreet manner, perhaps with a note in a mailbox.

Felder and several colleagues introduced an identical bill in 2003, but it was never granted a hearing by the council.

PAINTING APARTMENTS
According to city law, a landlord must repaint or re-wallpaper the walls and ceilings of an apartment at least once every three years. However, some tenants complain that this never happens or, if it does, the landlord does not give sufficient notice of when the painting will be scheduled.

To address the issue, Councilmember Miguel Martinez has introduced a bill (Intro 0254) that would require that landlords who wish to repaint an apartment must inform the tenant at least one month in advance.

 

New York City Council Budget Response


Remarks delivered by Speaker Christine Quinn

Spring is in the air.

March Madness is over.

The Mets and Yankees are playing for keeps.

And the Knicks...well...not so much...

As we look at neighborhoods and communities across New York, one cannot help but feel optimistic about how far we’ve come and where we are headed as a city.

Crime is down to record lows. The unemployment rate is the lowest it's been since before 9/11 and more New Yorkers have jobs than ever before. We still have a long way to go, but our schools are getting better. On housing, we are beginning to deal with the crisis that affects so many across the economic spectrum. And we are budgeting wisely and responsibly for the future.

Now, the folks on the other side of City Hall certainly deserve a lot of credit for these gains. But so does every one of the fifty-one members of the City Council here today. We should be proud of how we've helped lead New York through difficult times - from recession and budget deficits to economic boom and record surpluses.

We are the People's House and we work hard everyday to meet our constituents' needs and concerns...in all five boroughs...in every community from Stapleton to Mott Haven. That's why, proud as we are of our achievements, we are not satisfied. Make no mistake, we have a lot more work to do.

For too many New Yorkers, the City is simply not affordable...Hard working, taxpaying, middle-class families are being squeezed out. The unemployment rate in many communities—especially among African-American and Latino men—remains unacceptably high. And the least fortunate among us worry every day about getting the basic necessities - food, shelter and health care.

President Kennedy said that the time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining. So now, while the sun is shining, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to make government better serve the people's needs.

We can - we must - make City Hall work even more effectively for our constituents. We can listen harder and make government smarter. We can expand programs that work and still demand accountability and results. We can end the dysfunctional budget practices of the past and begin real oversight of City finances. And, most importantly, we can learn from government's mistakes - and from tragedies - so that we do not repeat them.

Yes, we can be proud of achievements but we must not be satisfied.

That's why today in this speech and in the Council's formal budget response, we are outlining an ambitious, forward-looking agenda for kids, parents and seniors...to help businesses and to reform government...and to make all of us better Council Members for our constituents.

Full Day Pre-K
Study after study show how important it is for our kids to enter school ready to learn...that early childhood education is one of the most important factors in determining future success...it leads to higher math and reading scores and better school attendance - especially for children of low-income families.

In 1997, under the leadership of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, New York passed the New York State Universal Pre-Kindergarten Law with the goal of providing access to pre-k for every four-year-old.

Today, approximately 40,000 children are enrolled in the Department of Education's universal pre-k program. A vast majority of these, however, are only half-day programs. For many single-parent families, or for families in which both parents work, this half-day approach falls short.

To truly give young children the opportunities they deserve, we must offer as many four-year-olds as possible access to full-day pre-k.

Over the next three years, we propose making all half-day pre-k slots a full-day, at a cost $45 million a year.

Universal full-day pre-kindergarten is an attainable goal that will have a dramatic impact on the lives of our kids and assist our city's working families.

311 Education Hotline
To truly make all schools work, we must also increase parental involvement. Having parents play an active role in their children's education is key...and government must do everything it can to help them get involved and make it easy for them to get answers to critical questions.

How can my child transfer if they are unhappy with their school? What middle schools are in my neighborhood?

As council members, we hear from parents all the time...mothers and fathers who are looking for information that will affect their kid's futures.

This is one of the most crucial - and personally important - interactions between citizens and city government... and it is often one of the most frustrating.

Today, we propose adding $1 million to help 311 so we can hire education specialists who will be able to help parents get answers and navigate the education bureaucracy.

311 is a terrific program...But 311 operators are not currently trained to answer parents' detailed questions. We need to change that.

Feeding Hungry Children
To give every single New York City child a fair shot at success, however, we must make sure that every single New York City child has enough food to eat. In this City of real estate booms and Wall Street bonuses too many children go to bed hungry. And too many wake up hungry...And too many go from one day to the next not knowing where their next meal will come from.

In 2004, an estimated 1.2 million New Yorkers—including more than 400,000 children—lived in hunger or in households where having food was always in question. In this City of such extraordinary wealth that is simply unacceptable. We, the richest City in the world, must be able to feed our people.

The first step is to make it easier for eligible New Yorkers to enroll in the Food Stamp program.

Right now, 600,000 people in the City qualify for food stamps but don't get them. The Administration has worked hard to enroll more families but we are still leaving nearly $1 billion in federal aid on the table in Washington and not doing nearly enough to help hungry families put food on the table right here in New York.

So, today, we're setting a goal of reducing the number of hungry New Yorkers by more than half. Over the next four years, we'll work to enroll 350,000 people in food stamps who already qualify but aren't getting them. We're going to draw on some ideas from Council Member Eric Gioia and the Investigations Committee.

Let's allow people to apply for food stamps on-line, reduce the number of office visits, and get applications at every City funded food pantry and soup kitchen.

When parents sign their children up for free school meals we're going to make sure they know that they could qualify for food stamps, too, because the income requirements are exactly the same. We're going to let them know where and how they can apply. And we're going to do the same for Medicaid eligible New Yorkers whenever they walk into one of the city's public hospitals.

Office of Hunger and Nutrition
To help implement these initiatives, we're allocating funds for a new city Office of Hunger and Nutrition to coordinate anti-hunger efforts.

By working across agencies, this office will also find solutions to the high rates of obesity that are plaguing our City, in particular low-income communities and children. This Office will work to bring healthier foods to all New Yorkers-- through increasing the number of farmers' markets and making sure they can accept food stamps—and support programs that encourage physical activity for our children.

In the Bible, Luke tells us "to whom much is given, much is required." In this City..in this day...every New Yorker must have access to three square meals, seven days a week..We can make this a reality.

Reforming Children's Services
It is our solemn duty as lawmakers to analyze and correct government's mistakes, shortcomings and sins of omission. These too often lead to human tragedies like hungry children....or like the death of seven-year-old Nixzmary Brown.

Mayor Bloomberg, Council Member Helen Foster and General Welfare Chair Bill DeBlasio have recommended smart and thoughtful changes in training and in the way the City treats high-risk cases like this one.

Today, we are proposing three initiatives that will help the City move faster and more effectively against child abuse.

First, we propose increased funding for child abuse units in the five District Attorney's offices. More resources will mean more thorough investigations and more rigorous prosecutions, and that means fewer at-risk kids.

Second, we propose expanded office hours at child advocacy centers in all five boroughs. These centers are at the front lines of investigating abuse cases...ACS, the NYPD, prosecutors, doctors and nurses are all located within these facilities so that the abused can be treated and abusers brought to justice.

Finally, we propose adding preventive services programs at 21 more Beacons schools to provide a better link between social services and at risk families.

By taking these sensible steps, we can improve communications, investigations and prosecutions...and we can save lives.

Bulletproof Vests for Police
Just as the Nixzmary Brown case tragically illustrated the need to constantly reevaluate and improve the way government works so did the murder of Brooklyn Police Officer Dillon Stewart.

Had he been wearing an up-to-date bulletproof vests...Dillon Stewart might still be alive today.

Council Members Maria Baez and Vinnie Gentile have been vocal advocates of giving our officers the equipment they need to do their jobs safely. Today, we are proposing to spend $9.9 million so that our officers can have up-to-date, secure protective vests. Vests that may save their lives one day.

Funding for District Attorneys
I know I speak for a vast majority of New Yorkers in praising the Mayor's call to hire more police officers. Crime is down thanks in large part to the courage of the cops on the beat.

But as we all now know "In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime...and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders."

The district attorneys, and thousands of ADAs who work for the public good everyday, deserve a lot of credit for making this a city of law and order. And I'd like to recognize and applaud Queens District Attorney Richard Brown and Manhattan DA Bob Morgenthau - the real Adam Schiff.

We need to make sure they and all the city's district attorneys have the resources they need to do their jobs. This cause has been championed by Public Safety Chair Peter Vallone, and you know what, he's right.

That's why, today, we are calling for restoring $17 million to the City's five district attorneys to begin to bring their funding back to pre 9/11 levels. There's simply no point in arresting more suspects if our district attorneys don't have the resources they need to fully and quickly prosecute them.

Tax Cuts for Small Businesses
Making government work better for people means making it work smarter...it means learning from our mistakes...it means expanding programs that work... And, yes, it means cutting taxes for individuals who need help most and companies that create jobs so that this City can continue to boom.

The Council has long advocated for property tax relief for seniors on fixed incomes. This year, Comptroller Bill Thompson, Council Members Leroy Comrie and Lew Fidler have proposed a rebate for low and middle-income seniors - a goal we all support.

The companies that need relief most -- the businesses that are the engine of our economic growth - aren't giant corporations, but small businesses in every borough and in every community. To help these small businesses grow and thrive, the state and federal governments have long exempted them from corporate income and franchise taxes. But in New York City, residents who own unincorporated businesses or S-corporations - many of these small companies - are taxed not once but twice.

For almost ten years, the Council has fought to correct this by providing a partial personal income tax credit for unincorporated business owners. Next year, we're proposing to expand it.

And we propose the creation of a new credit to S-Corporation owners who currently get no tax relief at all. These tax credits will give business owners another reason to locate here...to grow here...and to create good jobs here.

Manufacturing Jobs
While we pay special attention to small companies, we also need to take steps to promote and protect our manufacturing jobs. We don't assemble cars or airplanes, but in New York City there is a place for manufacturing in niche markets—like couture fashion, high-end furniture and printing.

This year, we're introducing a multi-faceted approach to strengthen New York City's manufacturing base:
- Creating investment tax credits for manufacturers that purchase new equipment;
-Expanding the Relocation Employment Assistance Program to include moves from areas recently rezoned for residential use;
-And increasing the Industrial Business Zone credit to $3,000 per employee to encourage manufacturers to move into industrial areas.

Manufacturing jobs are good jobs that provide stable incomes and career paths for thousands of New Yorkers. We need to do everything we can to keep them here.

Ending "Budget Dance"
This year, the City faces a healthy surplus. It might be tempting to propose these tax credits and policy initiatives without regard to the bottom line. But it wouldn't be fiscally responsible.

That's why we have identified more than $180 million dollars in the Mayor's budget that can be eliminated - including removing projected surplus funds associated with judgments and claims, delayed capital projects and the City's energy budget. We are committed to making responsible choices on both sides of the budget ledger—every year.

Finally, I want to end my remarks today by calling once again for a reform proposal that I believe will have a tremendous long-term impact in making government work better for people.

My colleagues, we must reform the budget process once and for all and put an end to the annual budget dance...this is the only way that we can truly end the culture of lobbying at City Hall and bring real accountability to government.

The annual budget dance has two partners and two steps.

The Mayor leads with an executive budget and proposed cuts. The Council follows with a response and proposed restorations. The list of cuts changes a bit from one year to the next and the amount swings with the City's economic fortunes. But the roles and the steps are the same year after year after year.

The whole thing feels a lot like the movie Groundhog Day.

The truth is, we end up fighting over only a tiny fraction of the City's budget. The City Charter, when it was rewritten in 1989, envisioned something very different.

The Charter Revision Commission envisioned an expense budget in which every agency budget is broken out by particular program, purpose or activity, accompanied by statements of the goals each was designed to accomplish and the amount of funds allocated. The Administration was supposed to provide the City Council with explanations of the impact a proposed level of funding would have on those individual programs. But that has never happened. The budget process today is virtually identical to the one the 1989 commission sought to reform.

For the most part, agency budgets are overly broad and don't detail individual programs. In many agencies, all personnel funding is stuffed into a single budget line - instead of being broken out into individual units of appropriation. The descriptions of programmatic objectives are often nothing more than a list of the programs themselves.

So there's no transparency, no way for us to tell exactly how taxpayer dollars are being spent, and no way to ensure that we're doing all we can to meet New Yorkers current needs.

If agency budgets were presented in the way the charter mandates, the budget debate could truly be one about priorities. And Council committees could do a better job of oversight and more effectively evaluate programs throughout the year.

Instead, we just go back to the same old budget dance. Well, starting this year, under the leadership of Finance Chair David Weprin and together with Mayor Bloomberg we are going to end the dance.

We're going to reform the process and start clearing up the unit of appropriation muddle so that we can start evaluating every program and base funding decisions on these criteria:
-Does the program fill a real need?
-Is it serving people effectively?
-Is there better way to help New Yorkers?
-Has the program already served its purpose?
-Given the City's fiscal situation and the array of competing priorities, can we still afford the program? And at what level?

We're going to make spending decisions not based on who has the most connected lobbyist...but based on whether the program truly works.

 

Ending the budget dance is absolutely critical to bringing transparency to the budget itself...to protecting taxpayers and eliminating waste...and to better serving the New Yorkers we're elected to represent.

Yeah there were a few snowflakes yesterday but spring is in the air today... Optimism abounds in the streets of our City and in this chamber. New York has come a long way back but we won't rest until we bring it a lot further.

Now that the sun is shining, let us work together to repair the roofs of all New Yorkers.

 

 

 

 

 

Education, Housing, Health...And The 2007 Budget


Last year, one million New Yorkers - one out of every eight people in the city - visited a soup kitchenor food pantry because they were hungry. So it seemed like a reasonable question to ask why Mayor Michael Bloomberg cut $2 million in funding for these programs in a year when the city government has a $3 billion surplus.

The response from the Bloomberg administration to this question asked by City Councilmember Bill DeBlasio at one of the budget hearings completed last week, however, wasn't so straightforward.

Human Resources Administration Commissioner Verna Eggleston argued that it wasn't really a "cut." If the City Council wanted to allocate additional money like it did the year before, she said, it was welcome to.

Then, Eggleston said others - the state and federal governments and private charities - could pitch in money to feed hungry New Yorkers.

Finally, she argued that providing meals is just a small part of a larger fight. "I have found no scientific correlation between feeding someone and reducing poverty," she said.

DeBlasio never did get his answer, and the real issue was never addressed.

The number of people seeking food from soup kitchens and food pantries is up 40 percent from five years ago. But funding for these programs has remained the same. In the city's $52 billion budget, less than .01 percent ($12 million) is allocated to fund emergency food programs.

In the last few weeks, New Yorkers have heard and read much about new initiatives in the city budget:
• The mayor plans to hire 800 more police officers
• The State Legislature wants to authorize $11 billion for the city to build new schools
• And the city is hiring more caseworkers in the hope of preventing the death of another child like Nixzmary Brown, the 7-year-old who was killed by her stepfather.

How do the budget priorities match up to the concerns of everyday New Yorkers?

Children
Education
Crime
Health
Housing
Sanitation
Poverty

CHILDREN

In early January, the local news was dominated by the story of a seven-year-old girl named Nixzmary Brown, who was allegedly beaten, tortured and killed in her home by her stepfather.

In his preliminary budgetpresented in January, Mayor Bloomberg responded to criticism of the Administration for Children's Services by boosting funding for the agency's efforts to investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect.

The mayor committed increase spending by 20 percent - hiring 250 new case workers and creating a new system of tracking cases of abuse and neglect.

But even the mayor admitted that the changes and the additional funding may not be enough to prevent future incidents.

"What really happened with Nixzmary Brown is, her parents killed her," he said. "We as a society didn't recognize the danger the child was in and respond fast enough, obviously."

While child advocates have generally praised the decision to increase funding for this and other programs, like new foster care initiatives, they are concerned about cuts to other areas that they say will hurt children.

Overall, the budget cuts a total of $100 million for children's services including a decrease of $75 million in funding for day care - equal to about 9,000 slots - due to expectations of less state and federal aid, according to an analysisby the Citizens Committee for Children.

EDUCATION

For years Brooklyn's Midwood High Schoolhas had the dubious distinction of being one of the city's most crowded schools. About 4,000 kids jam into a building intended for 2,300. To accommodate the hordes, the school employs a complicated schedule with some kids arriving as early as 7 a.m. while other don't start school until late morning. For years, the city has promised "relief" in the form of an annex with science labs, libraries and other facilities that would free up space for classrooms in the main building. But relief has never arrived.

This year the city once again declared its intentionto build the annex - part of its five-year capital plan for schools. But the approximately $30 million project became enmeshed in the battle between the city and the state over how much money Albany should give the city to build, maintain and operate schools.

Since the Giuliani administration, the battleground for the education budget has shifted. In the 1990s, many education advocates saw City Hall as the villain. But even in tight times, the Bloomberg administration has cut deeper into the budgets of other agencies in order to spare schools. And this year the administration proposed a small increase. City Council members and education advocates would still like the city schools to have more money for smaller class size, universal pre-Kand improved school facilities.

Most lawmakers and education advocates expect the majority of the money to come from Albany, not from City Hall.

Despite the problems in the schools - high dropout rates, low achievement in middle schools and thousands of elementary school students who struggle with the most basic reading and arithmetic - this year's proposed operating budget for the city's more than 1,100 public schools offers no major new programs, cuts - or major controversies.

The mayor's preliminary budget for the 2007 fiscal year includes a $14.9 billion operating budget for the nation's largest public school system, about $148 million more than the current budget. Much of it will go to benefits for teachers as part of the contract with the teachers union. Other increases go to:


• school safety as the department hopes to hire an additional 286 school safety agents
• special education, where more early diagnoses of children with autism is contributing to a rise in costs
• and planning for more new small schools.

"Overall," Chancellor Joel Klein said at recent hearing on the education budget, "we expect schools to receive about the same level of funding as last year, unless they experienced changes to their registers, average teacher salaries, or special education enrollment."

The council seemed to accept this business as usual budget. At the hearings, no council member voiced strong objections, with most using the forum to express support for their favorite causes: Lewis Fidler calling for more gifted and talented programs, for example, and Simcha Felder asking the chancellor to consider selling off what the council member considers excess school buildings.

Although it seems unlikely, things could change before the adoption of the final budget on June 30. An analysis (in pdf format) of the Department of Education budget by the Independent Budget Office notes that the department has instituted a number of policy changes that could boost costs. These include the extension of the school day, generally for students needing additional help, as well as the opening of 36 new small junior and senior high schools and the expansionof translation services for parents who do not speak English.

The state legislature's proposed budget averted a possible showdown on the capital budget by setting up a plan to borrow $11.2 billion in funding for school construction and improvements over the next five years. The funding - if it materializes -- should allow the city to proceed with its five-year $13 billion plan(in pdf format) to build new schools and improve existing ones.

CRIME

The crime rate in New York City is at an all time low. The number of crimes has fallen nearly 25 percent since 2001; the number of murders, subway crime, and robberies are all down.

Keeping crime down is a priority for Mayor Bloomberg - and he is demonstrating that this year in his budget.

The mayorannounced that New York City will add 800 police officers and 400 civilians to the police department, which currently has 36,450 officers. It is the largest expansion of the force since 1993.

Bloomberg said the new officers are needed because the city is growing: 125,000 new residents have moved in since 2001 and an additional 200,000 new residents are expected over the next five years.

The addition of 1,200 employees will cost the city $33.8 million in the next fiscal year, doubling by the next fiscal year, and nearly tripling by 2010. The mayor also argues that hiring new police officers will help reduce overtime costs, which now total about $250 million a year.

But some question if hiring the new officers will affect the crime rate - more cops do not necessarily translate into less crime. New York City already has almost twice as many cops per resident as Los Angeles and almost six times the officers per square mile. And Washington DC has far more cops per resident than New York, but one of the highest crime rates of any large city. (For more, read Gotham Gazette's crime topic page)

And adding more police officers is not even guaranteed to reduce the cost of overtime. At City Council hearings, Commissioner Ray Kellytestified that hiring new officers does not mean that overtime costs will go down.

The mayor's critics say that the police department will have troubleattracting new recruits when the starting salary is only $25,100 a year. The number of applicants who signed up to take the February 2006 test dropped by 31 percent over last year.

And hiring more police won't change how many New Yorkers feel about the cops who patrol their neighborhood.

This year, the mayor wants to cut the budget of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent agency that investigates police misconduct. The agency would lose 24 of its 184 investigators under the mayor's proposed budget.

This marks the third straight year that the Bloomberg administration has proposed such a cut in investigator staffing, but the City Council has stepped in and funded the 24 positions each year.

The numbers of complaints about police misconduct in the first few months of this year are up 14 percent. At the same time, it is taking longer to investigate claims of misconduct. In 2005, it took an average of 293 days to investigate a claim, up from 243 days in 2003. Police officers cannot be disciplined if more than 18 months have elapsed from the date a substantiated incident occurred.

HEALTH

In his budget two years ago, Mayor Bloomberg significantly increased the funding that the city dedicates to its 11 public hospitals. As part of that plan, there is $150 million in additional aid in this year's budget.

Still, the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which manages the public hospitals, ran a deficit of $573 million this year. It is expected to grow to $889 million by 2010.

Many hospitals in New York are struggling, and there are differing opinions about how to solve this problem. The public hospitals say the problem is the 435,000 uninsured patientsthey serve each year, knowing that if these patients do not pay, the hospitals themselves must absorb the cost of the care they provide them.

Within the hospital system and across the state, aggressive efforts to enroll people without health insurance have been successful. Still, the Health and Hospitals Corporation is hoping for a lot of help from elsewhere - it estimates that it will need $382 million in combined state and federal aid.

If the hospitals do not get the aid they are counting on, they will soon be unable to cover their expenses. This would mean the city might have to bail them out - or patients would have to deal with service cuts.

Also in the proposed health budget is the mayor's major new initiative to treat diabetes. He has allocated $1.2 million each year for the next five years to better track people with the disease and get them the help they need.

But critics say the mayor may be undermining his efforts in other areas of the budget.

In the parks budget, for example, the mayor wants to charge fees at six public recreation centers. However, a recent studyby the Independent Budget Office found that the fees discouraged New Yorkers from using the recreation centers. At 20 centers where the city instituted fees in 2002, membership fell by 13 percent in the first year after fees were imposed. The drop was steepest at the centers with pools, which now charge $75 a year; membership there fell by 22 percent.

The six centers where the new fees would be imposed are all in neighborhoods with high rates of obesity and diabetes, prompting some to question the mayor's priorities.

"We're all very interested in people's health, well-being and quality of life," Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaumtold the New York Times. "The city may see the fees as a way of increasing the revenue, but I don't think it's worth the price you pay to people's health."

HOUSING

A recent surveyfound that there are 62,773 millionaires in Manhattan, which sounds like a lot until it is compared to another statistic: the average price of an apartment in Manhattan is nearly $1 million.

So where do the 8.03 million other New Yorkers live?

The cost of housing is one of the primary concerns for city residents. Half of New York City renters pay more than 30 percent of their incomes for housing, and nearly a quarter pay more than half of their incomes for housing.

The city's housing crunch is particularly difficult for low-income New Yorkers who are finding that they have fewer options. As of April 2005, more than 128,000 were on a waiting list for federal Section 8 housing vouchers, the federal housing subsidy that helps thousands of low-income New Yorkers pay their monthly rent, and nearly 150,000 were on the waiting list for public housing.

Since he took office in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg has committed to building and preserving 165,000 new affordable homes and apartments by the year 2013 - what he bills as "the largest municipal affordable housing plan in the nation's history." The mayor has also made efforts to address homelessness and has created a rent subsidy program called Housing Stability Plus. In the last few years, Bloomberg has also offered homeowners a $400 rebate.

But criticssay the mayor is ignoring other critical housing issues.

For every new affordable apartment built, the city loses others as rent-stabilized apartmentsdrop out of the state-controlled system.

Bloomberg has not fought in Albany for the repeal of the Urstadt Law, which gives the state power over rent regulations, arguing that the city can not afford to administer the system.

"Bloomberg seems perfectly content to preside over the demise of the rent regulation system," Michael McKee of Tenants and Neighbors, a statewide tenants' coalitiontold Gotham Gazette. "I don't think he has any inkling of how important it is to the future of the city. And his failure to fight to reverse the phase-out of rent regulation is going to prove deadly to the city."

SANITATION

Few New Yorkers think about garbage in the city except when their street or sidewalk is littered with it, or they get a ticket for not separating out their recycling.

But each year the cost of dealing with the 50,000 tons of trash the city produces each day increases - and it adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars that could be spent on things like education, health care, housing - or even returned to residents in tax cuts.

This year the mayor and the City Council are supposed to agree on a new plan for disposing of the city's garbage. So far the debatehas focused on how to get it out of the city (barge vs. truck), which neighborhoods should handle the trash (ie, South Bronx vs. Upper East Side), but it looks like dealing with the garbage will only get more expensive.

In 2007, the city has budgeted $294 million for waste export, $16 million more than last year.

POVERTY

Twenty percent of all city residents - 1.8 million people - live below the poverty level. And there are signs that poverty is growing worse every year.

There are dozens of government programs - job programs, food stamps, homeless shelters, and public health insurance - that all meant to address this issue. But overall funding for services for the poor is not increasing.

When city government officials talk about poverty, they often focus on one statistic - how many people are on the welfare rolls. By that measure alone, things are getting better in the city. The number of people receiving public assistance in New York continues to drop. Currently, about 405,000 people receive benefits, down from 462,000 in 2002.

However, this doesn't mean more people are getting jobs or making enough to live day to day.

New federal welfare to work requirements could present additional problems for New York City this year.

The Department of Human Resources Administration estimates that the state could be fined up to $237 million for failure to meet welfare-to-work requirements; New York City would have to pay up to two-thirds of this amount.

Another challenge is getting people to use the food stamp benefits they are entitled to. Currently, 1.1 million New Yorkers are on food stamps, up 37 percent since 2002. However, the United States Department of Agriculture estimates that another 300,000 people are eligible.

"These numbers do not mean that New York has widespread starvation as now exists in places like Ethiopia or North Korea," said John Charles Dwyer of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. "But it does mean that 1.2 million New Yorkers are skipping meals, reducing portion sizes, choosing between food, rent, utilities, and health care."

RELATED ARTICLES:

The 2007 New York City Budget

 

The Mayor's Underwhelming Budget For 2007 by Glenn Pasanen  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Print Friendly and PDF

Editor's Choice


Gotham Gazette: New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
Gotham Gazette: 
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
Gotham Gazette: 
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Gotham Gazette: 
City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years