Engine Company 204 A Struggle for Real Estate in Cobble Hill |
Engine Company 212 Another Fight in Williams- burg -- 30 Years Later |
Engine Company 209 A Muted Response in Bed-Stuy |
Engine Company 261 A Small Victory in Long Island City |
Engine Company 278 A Temporary Reprieve in Sunset Park |
Engine Company 36 Refusing to Give Up in Harlem |
A first-term mayor, facing a budget crunch, shuts a firehouse, assuring neighboring residents that their community will remain safe. But, within days of the closing, a blaze sweeps through a home near the shuttered company. Two men die.
Two years later, the closing becomes a key issue in the mayoral campaign with the challenger assailing the mayor's decision. The challenger wins and soon after reopens the firehouse.
This nightmare scenario happened when Mayor David Dinkins closed Engine Company 294 in Richmond Hill, Queens in January 1991.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, or at least his aides, must surely know this story. Yet in June of this year, Mayor Bloomberg shut down six engine companies - four in Brooklyn and one each in Manhattan and Queens (see articles on each one on our Community Gazettes.) He had promised to do so in his proposed budget, and he stuck to the decision even as he and the City Council agreed to restore many other slashed programs, such as funding to cultural institutions and senior citizen programs.
Last week, the fire department announced that the average response times - the time it takes for the first fire truck to arrive at the scene - have increased in five of the six communities where the fire companies were closed last May.
The news produced an intense reaction, as there was in May - as there has been ever since the city started closing firehouses in the 1970's The arguments against the closings have been loud and well publicized. Shutting a fire station, activists have argued, puts lives at risk and threatens a cherished community institution. Further, some say, it is a "slap in the face" to the 343 firefighters who died at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
On the day in May when the six companies were ordered to cease responding to radio calls, actor Steve Buscemi and hundreds of other protesters demonstrated in front of Engine Company 204 in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn (see story). That same morning at Engine Company 212 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Paul Veneski chained himself to the fire truck - as his father had done 30 years earlier to save the exact same firehouse. (see story). In East Harlem, an angry group of people stood outside Engine Company 36 holding banners that read, "They go, We die." (see story).
But supporters of the closings say that, despite all the local protests, the firehouses are not needed. The average city firehouse was built at least 75 years ago, when many neighborhoods had more people; when buildings burned more often; and when fire-fighting equipment was nowhere near as effective. Refusing to change an outmoded system, some argue, is an exercise in nostalgia that a financially strapped city simply cannot afford.
Whatever the validity of such arguments, they lack the emotional appeal of the entreaties of the anti-closing forces, leaving many people, even Bloomberg's supporters, wondering why he would risk his political future to save several million dollars in a $44 billion budget.
Are firehouses today's equivalent of the five-cent transit fare, something city officials and residents fought to preserve for decades, even though it bankrupted a basic city service? Or is the shutting down of the firehouses more analogous to the demolition of the original Pennsylvania Station in the 1960s, when the government destroyed a beloved building without much thought or reason?
WHY THEY SHOULD BE CLOSED
The New York City Fire Department today has 340 fire companies, staffed by more than 11,000 uniformed officers and firefighters. To members of the Bloomberg administration, that is simply more than is necessary.
Deputy Mayor Marc Shaw said this bluntly at a conference in December. The department was particularly "ripe for finding productivity savings... Firefighters," he said, "only fight fires five percent of the time;they're sitting around doing nothing the other 95 percent of the time."
The comment provoked outrage and made the news. But it helps explain why the administration proposed that a few of the firehouses be closed, and why a budget watchdog group like the Citizens Budget Commission approved.
"It was a great decision," says Douglas Offerman, senior research associate with the budget commission. "They should have done it a long time ago."
In the years since many firehouses were built, fire safety has improved dramatically, with the installation of such measures as metal stairs and sprinkler systems. The city now is far safer than it was even 30 years ago, a tribute, Offerman says, to "good fire fighting and a tribute to good building regulations."
After peaking at more than 300 civilian fire fatalities in the early 1970s, such deaths dropped to around 100 in the late 1990s. Between 1980 and 1990, a Citizens Budget Commission report found, the number of structural fires (fires in buildings) dropped by 13 percent.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to solve the fire department's declining workload in the mid 1990s when he merged the department with the Emergency Medical Service. At that time EMS was responding to four times as many calls as the fire department.
Mayor Bloomberg's supporters would argue that he too has been trying to adjust the fire department to present-day reality -- but they also concede he was less than politically astute in making his case.
If much of the fire department is outmoded, wrote Newsday columnist Joseph Dolman, "why not do a total citywide remake?...A mayor might actually build a constituency for this idea."
Instead, the administration relied on a technical argument about response time. A fire department analysis predicted that, after the companies closed, response times in all of the affected communities except one -- the area served by Engine Company 261 -- would remain below the city average of four minutes and 46 seconds. In determining which fire houses to close, the department also reportedly considered how long it would take for a second engine company to reach a fire in the affected area as well as the company's total number of runs.
Last week, the fire department released statistics that showed that response times in June and July did increase in five of the six neighborhoods where fire companies were closed, but emphasized that the increase was minimal. In all but two communities, officials said, the response times were below the citywide average of 4 minutes 50 seconds
"The changes we have seen during the past two months are, for the most part, below our estimated increases, or in line with what we expected," said Fire Police Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta.
WHY THEY SHOULD BE REOPENED
Those who want the firehouse reopened say that the city's response time statistics are not reassuring and in fact they are misleading. They reflect only the time it takes the first engine company to get to a scene, while the department typically requires at least two engine companies and one ladder company at the scene of a blazing fire.
"They're still a long way from putting out the fire," said Stephen Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Union.
In the communities affected, the debate has done little to counter the fear of causing fatalities and the sorrow at losing community heroes.
Closing a fire station is "like Russian roulette," says Tom Butler, spokesman for the firefighters' union, the United Firefighters Association (http://www.ufalocal94.org). "You don't want to be the one instance where a life is lost. But, inevitably, these things happen."
The closing would not even be cost effective, the union said. The six closings are expected to save only about $8 million, since all the affected firefighters kept their jobs; they were simply transferred to other companies. In a $44 billion budget, the union said, that's "like a nickel found in your couch."
They disputed the arguments about response time. A study by the International Association of Fire Fighters said that the closings could increase response times by 30 seconds and by a minute if a second emergency occurred in the area simultaneously.
Some of the critics noted that response time only measures the time for the first fire truck to reach the scene and does not reflect how much time it takes for all the vehicles actually needed to put out the blaze to reach the emergency.
The numbers, they say, simply do not tell the whole story. "All the firehouses are connected," says Debora Jackson of nofirecuts.com, which tracks the firehouse closings. "Envision a balloon; every time you push on one area the other side gets stretched out. That's how the fire department works ...Fewer firehouses mean longer response times."
But to those who feel most passionate about the firehouses, the arguments about response time, staffing levels and demographics ignore the popular appeal of the firefighters. New Yorkers recount not only how they put out flames but also how they come when someone falls sick; how they befriended newly-arrived immigrants near one of the closed firehouses, in Sunset Park, going so far as to fix the plumbing in their homes (see story); how they calm children by rescuing toys stuck in trees.
Throughout the city, residents "have some sort of friendship or relation with the men in the firehouse that they probably don't have with the police," according to Terry Golway, the author of a history of the fire department, "So Others Might Live."
THE BATTLE
Closing firehouses has been a nearly bizarre pendulum swing between savings and safety, fiscal prudence and political reality, ever since Mayor Abe Beame, facing a frightening fiscal crisis, was the first to close them in the mid-1970's. Thirty-two were shut down in all; Beame served one term in office. His successor, Ed Koch, reopened a Brooklyn firehouse that Beame had closed. But then, citing a decline in fires, Koch closed some firehouses himself. Dinkins reversed Koch's closing of a South Bronx company, then saw his own closing of the Richmond Hill firehouse overturned by Giuliani.
So far, Mayor Bloomberg cannot be accused of such vacillation. As budget discussions continued throughout this winter and spring, the mayor held firm to his closing plan. He rejected proposals that private corporations and individuals contribute funds to keep the stations open.
In February, the mayor and Council Speaker Gifford Miller announced the formation of a seven-member panel to review the closings. The commission voted to approve the closings, with the five members appointed by the mayor and fire department voting yes and the two named by Miller voting no. Neither the mayor nor the commission detailed the findings.
Unwilling to accept what seemed to be inevitable, some opponents took to the streets, and others to the courts. A group of politicians filed suit charging that the city did not conduct a formal environmental review and did not follow required city procedures such as notifying affected community boards. State Supreme Court Justice James Starkey largely rejected the complaint, although he did rule that the city should have notified the Roosevelt Island Community Board of the closing of Engine Company 261 in Long Island City, which serves the island. Starkey did not, however, demand that 261 remain open, and it has in fact closed (see story).
At the same time the court was hearing arguments, the mayor and City Council were hammering out a budget deal. While the accord restored many programs, the final budget did not call for keeping the companies open.
"Not everyone gets everything they want but that's democracy," said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the mayor.
But others say the mayor's staff was adamant about keeping the six companies closed. Councilmember Bill deBlasio, an opponent of the closings, said the mayor had indicated that, even if the money were put back in the budget, he might not spend it.
The firehouses have closed, but local protests continue, with plans to appeal the court ruling and institute legal action. If Mayor Bloomberg has recently started sounding optimistic about the city's financial recovery, the protesters are sounding optimistic too -- the improved financial picture is yet another reason, they say, why their firehouses should be saved.
From Gotham Gazette's Community Gazettes, a look at each of the six firehouses closed in May 2003: |
|
Engine Company 204 A Struggle for Real Estate in Cobble Hill |
Engine Company 212 Another Fight in Williams- burg -- 30 Years Later |
Engine Company 209 A Muted Response in Bed-Stuy |
Engine Company 261 A Small Victory in Long Island City |
Engine Company 278 A Temporary Reprieve in Sunset Park |
Engine Company 36 Refusing to Give Up in Harlem |
also: from Gotham Gazette's NYC Books: FDNY Bookshelf A list of books about the Fire Department of New York |
Three official fiscal monitors have given New York City’s adopted budget for fiscal year 2004 generally favorable reviews, but two private budget groups are rather harsh, giving the Mayor and City Council grades ranging from “B” to “F“. City Comptroller William C. Thompson in a July report (pdf format) says the budget “charts a reasonable course toward current-year balance.” The State Financial Control Board’s July 24 staff report calls the budget “an achievement of no little note,” and State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi says in his July report on the city’s finances that “the city has demonstrated its ability to manage the budget during difficult times.”
On the other hand, the Citizens Budget Commission, a conservative nonpartisan civic organization, and City Project, a progressive nonpartisan public policy organization, attack several elements of the adopted budget, if from quite different perspectives. The commission’s City Budget Report Card gives a “B” for the budget’s transparency and timeliness, “C” for productivity, “D” for budgeting responsibly (i.e., too much spending), and “F” for tax policy (a high city tax burden “grows even higher”). City Project gives the adopted expenditure budget a “B”, for saving essential services, and the revenue budget a “D-“, for the “temporary and largely regressive nature of its revenues, and its over reliance on debt refinancing and funding shifts.”
Looking ahead, the five new reports highlight several interconnected issues that will be crucial to budget discussions over the next year – issues such as future budget gaps, a squeeze on human service spending, and city tax burdens. The official monitors, for instance, worry about the large deficits beginning in fiscal year 2005 – approaching $3 billion in 2005 and $4 billion in 2006 and 2007. Although those gaps are significantly less than the $7+ billion deficit the adopted budget filled, Thompson says the “city’s options going forward are limited.” The monitors cite problems like increasing mandated costs in non-service areas (pension, health insurance, and debt service in particular) and the Financial Control Board worries about the economic impact of increasing tax burdens.
Notable Cuts In The Adopted Budget
The city’s new $43.9 billion budget for 2004 includes about $3.2 billion in new taxes and fees and nearly $900 million in cuts in basic municipal services. (Another $1.2 billion includes new revenues, re-estimates in spending, staff reductions where the service impact is unclear, and cost-shifting to non-city sources). The budget also reflects a final surplus in fiscal year 2003 of $1.3 billion (largely the result of the November 2002 increase in property taxes), which was used to pre-pay 2004 expenses.
Several cuts are notable. Hevesi points out that city funding for the Department of Education has been reduced by $495 million (“nearly the lowest level permitted under state law”) just as the new department faces higher state and federal educational standards.
The uniformed agencies’ budgets (police, fire, corrections, sanitation) are reduced by $505 million, with the police force to be reduced by 2,100 in 2004.
Libraries take a big hit, with most now open only five days a week instead of six. The Administration for Children’s Services is also hit hard. Hevesi says that since fiscal year 2002, the agency has experienced the most cuts among social service agencies – both in percentage and absolute dollars: “Between July 2001 and April 2003, the city reduced planned funding in FY 2004 for child welfare services by $54 million, and for child care by $107 million…partially offset by an increase of $19 million in community development block grant funds.” The results, among others, include cuts in child welfare contract agency payments, fewer beds, fewer child care slots, higher child care costs for parents, and cuts in crisis services. The mayoral/City Council negotiations in June restored only $11.6 million in city funding for child welfare and $10.9 million for child care.
Future Spending
In the face of such substantial cuts in schools, libraries, and child welfare, it is sobering to see the projected spending priorities in the monitors’ reports. For example, the Hevesi report notes that although spending in 2004 actually grows by 8.2 percent, far above the rate of inflation, the great bulk of the increase is in areas such as pension, health insurance, and debt service costs. Pension costs are projected to grow by $927 million (61 percent) in 2004 alone, and debt service by $663 million (20 percent).
The pressure of such non-discretionary spending only increases over the longer term. The City Comptroller’s report shows how these expenditures (including Medicaid and legal claims on the city) are projected to grow by 51 percent ($5.9 billion) over the next four years. Over the same four-year period, salaries and wages of the city’s workforce are projected to fall by 4.6 percent. City funding of public assistance is estimated to fall by 11.6 percent. And the city’s remaining $11 billion OTPS (other-than-personal-service) budget – over half of which represents the city’s huge contracted-services budget – is projected to fall by just over one percent over the next four years.
The four-year projections in the adopted budget, according to the Thompson report, add up to a fiscal year 2007 city budget that looks like this:
· 2007 Expenditures $49.5 billion
· 2007 Revenues 46.2 billion
· 2007 Budget Gap ($3.2 billion)
However, the City Comptroller (like the other monitors) sees a lot of risks in the projections, and says the 2007 deficit could approach $4 billion.
Tax Burdens
The conventional political wisdom at the moment is that the large tax increases in the 2004 budget preclude any new taxes as the city begins to fill these out-year budget gaps. If this view persists, especially in the face of the huge non-discretionary spending increases, the pressures to cut core city services are likely to be severe. In this context, it is interesting that both the City and State Comptrollers at least begin analyses of the actual tax burdens now facing individuals and businesses. The results of these studies – and two others -- provide initial important data.
The new personal income tax surcharge is a three-year tax increase, in effect from January 1, 2003 to December 30, 2005. According to the State Comptroller, it will produce $644 million in 2004. Who pays? Only singles with adjusted gross income of $100,000 and couples with income over $150,000. For those earning over $500,000, their effective city income tax rate (taxes paid divided by income) rises from 3.65 percent to 4.45 percent. This is a progressive change in tax rates. But the State Comptroller report puts the increase in the larger context of recent federal tax reductions. Those paying the new city surcharge are net winners:
· Couples earning $200,000 will net $3,066: They will pay $1,252 more in city income taxes, but $4,318 less in federal taxes.
· Couples earning $600,000 will net $14,937: They will pay $4,418 more in city income taxes, but $19,355 less in federal taxes.
Incidentally, those couples that make $100,000 and $150,000 – who won’t pay the surcharge – are getting $1,442 and $2,534 reductions in federal taxes, respectively. The State Financial Control Board’s July report ignores this larger context and warns that if the three-year income tax surcharge is not allowed to expire in 2005, it “could well have counterproductive consequences for the economy and for the city’s ability to balance its budget in the long run.”
The tax burden imposed by the new property tax rate increase is much harder to determine. In broad terms, according to the State Comptroller, half of the $1.7 billion increase is paid by commercial and utility properties, 35 percent by condo, coop and rental properties, and the balance by one-, two-, and three-family homeowners (so-called class 1). Factoring in the November 2002 18.5 percent rate increase and assessment increases, the State Comptroller says, “the average real property tax bill for class 1 homeowners has increased to $2,490, which is $591 (or 31.1 percent) higher than in FY 2002.” Since class 1 homeowners have long been protected by a number of technical details in the property tax law – resulting in lower effective tax rates than in surrounding counties – and since the November increase was the first average rate increase in 11 years, further analysis is necessary to understand the full consequences of this hefty homeowner tax increase.
The City Comptroller’s report is interesting also for an ambitious attempt to measure tax burdens in New York City. One dense chart (p. 19) shows four measures of actual and projected tax burden over the 1992 to 2007 period. The measures:
· Taxes per capita
· Taxes per worker
· Taxes as a fraction of gross city product
· Taxes as a fraction of personal income
The report notes that from 1992 to 2001, all four measures grew slowly or declined, “very likely due to the tax cuts in the 1990’s.” In 2002 they all fell, because of the recession and 9/11. Not surprisingly, they all show rises in 2003 and especially in 2004.
To take only the most common measure – taxes as a fraction of personal income, the measure which Rudy Giuliani used regularly to mark his success in reducing taxes – city residents paid an average of 10 cents for every dollar earned during the early 1980s, then 8.5 cents in city taxes for every dollar earned in 1991 and 7.5 cents in 2001, an average annual decline of 1.3 percent. The new taxes will increase this rate by six percent in 2003 and seven percent in 2004.
So what to make of this? On this most common measure, it looks as if in 2004 city residents will have roughly the same tax burden they had from 1991 to 1993, another period suffering from recession and big budget gaps.
What may be different now is the effect of the property tax increase. After 11 years of a frozen average property tax rate, the sudden 18.5 percent increase has exposed how incredibly complex and inequitable the city’s property tax system is. The Citizens Budget Commission report card, for instance, says that the property tax burden on commercial properties is three times that on single-family homeowners. A new report from the New York Public Interest Research Group illustrates the inequitable impact of assessment practices on class 1 homeowners. Another new study, by the Independent Budget Office (in pdf format) , shows how the new tax on absentee landlords will have an unfair impact on poorer neighborhoods. Renters and certain coop and condo owners also get a bad deal, as shown in earlier Independent Budget Office reports and an earlier Gotham Gazette finance column.
The official monitors suggest that at least in the short run the city is in reasonable budget shape. That gives decision-makers some time to examine more closely charges from the political right and the political left that the new taxes are excessive and/or unfair. A comprehensive look at the property tax is the natural place to begin. Budget balance also gives them some time to determine more accurately how several substantial budget cuts affect children in schools, libraries, and the various human service agencies designed to serve them.
Glenn Pasanen, former associate director of City Project, teaches political science at Lehman College of the City University.
After several weeks of negotiations with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the City Council adopted a $43.7 billion budget for fiscal year 2004 on June 27. The final changes were relatively minor, as the mayor agreed to restore $115 million in cuts, on top of the $90 million he restored earlier in June. The New York Times' front-page news story on the agreement on June 26 reported that the new city budget "was remarkable not for how many services were cut, but how few." (The Times' story also quoted Gotham Gazette's June finance column, when I praised the mayor for a bold $3 billion tax revenue package that minimized the cuts and "avoided a fiscal meltdown.")
Commentators were quick to point to likely future problems: the adopted budget itself says the city faces a $1.8 billion deficit for fiscal year 2005, and the City Comptroller's May report and State Comptroller's June report on the mayor's executive budget projected a possible 2005 deficit of about $3 billion. The comptrollers and other monitors will fine tune those projections in coming weeks, but the general fiscal outlook at the moment seems much more positive than a year ago, when the 2003 budget unraveled almost immediately after its adoption.
Looking ahead, however, one area -- city and state support for public education -- deserves special monitoring. The 2004 education-budget cuts, sold as modest and focusing on management changes, raise a number of questions about fairness and actual impact. Governor George Pataki's repeated attacks on state aid to schools and higher education, foiled in part by the state legislature, continue. For instance, in June the City University board of trustees, controlled by the governor, increased tuition by 25 percent in the city's four-year colleges. On the brighter side, there is good news for the city in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity's victory in the state-court decision that finds the state's education funding system unconstitutional. How the governor responds to the remedial order in that case will be the big education budget story in the next year.
Budget 2004
The mayor's restoration of $90 million in services and the council's additional $115 million led to general relief among human service advocates.
The zoos were saved, 2,300 day-care slots were restored, and 11 child health clinics were saved. Current recycling was not only saved but will be expanded. Council favorites like the Vallone CUNY scholarship and infant mortality programs were restored. Libraries and cultural institutions and programs got substantial, but not full, restorations.
A full accounting of restorations and remaining cuts awaits analysis by the various monitors. What everybody knows now is that six firehouses closed by the mayor will not be re-opened -- a long-running story that apparently had more to do with bureaucratic and political positioning than saving money. What got much less publicity was the layoff of about 4,000 city workers, most of them paraprofessionals and school aides in the department of education. In addition, the extensive use of attrition will cost the city thousands of additional jobs. The New York Times' Eric Lipton pointed out that the police force will dip to 37,500 officers in the new fiscal year, down more than 3,000 from its peak three years ago.
Looking Ahead: Education
While there is already concern about the next fiscal year's (2005) budget deficit -- officially set at $1.8 billion by the mayor and likely to rise quickly as various risks, especially new labor costs, are factored in -- there seems to be breathing room for the mayor and his agencies, at least to maintain existing services. If there is a major question mark about the impact of the new budget, it may be in public education. Not only did the department of education take an inequitable share of staff layoffs, its total dollar "savings" will be by far the largest among city agencies.
With the huge education budget now under the direct control of the mayor, there is some hope that its traditional bureaucratic walls will crack a bit and improve public understanding and influence. According to April's executive budget, education will represent approximately $12 billion of the city's budget in 2004, about $5 billion of it city money. (State aid is about $5.8 billion and federal about $1.3 billion.) The executive budget claimed that cumulative education savings for fiscal year 2004 from actions since January 1, 2002 could total $983 million. Although reduced somewhat in the adopted budget, the original reduction plan represented nearly 20 percent of the city's share of education funding.
Trying to figure out how school services will be affected by nearly $900 million in reduced city funding will be a huge challenge. The plan itself provides little detail. According to the April executive budget, decisions made before February 1, 2003, will produce such savings in 2004 as:
• $66 million from administration reductions
• $64 million from cost shifting to federal and state agencies
• $96 million from cutting low-priority programs
• $60 million from re-estimating salaries and enrollment
• $35 million from better purchasing
• $180 million from a per capita reduction to the schools
The post-February actions for 2004 -- part of the $600 million contingency plan the mayor blamed the city labor unions for -- included cutting nearly 2,400 staff, most by layoffs, to save $83 million. Other actions included cutting teacher sabbaticals ($35 million) and more summer school cuts ($13 million). (Another $120 million in education cuts, part of the mayor's draconian $1 billion contingency plan for 2004, were abandoned in the adopted budget.)
The dry language of these budget statements begs the issue in several cases about the actual impact of the actions. The loss of teacher aides, elimination of "low-priority" programs (teacher mentoring, summer school, summer camp), cuts in per capita spending, and the loss of professional development that goes with dropping teacher sabbaticals all seem to be potentially damaging.
Beyond doubts about the impacts of these budget actions is the larger question of the adequacy of current city spending. Certainly, there is little new spending in the 2004 education budget. The new required curriculum will cost $20 million, a new system for disruptive students nearly $6 million, and a class-reduction effort in the middle schools $14 million, according to the Independent Budget Office's March 2003 report on the preliminary budget for 2004.
Looking further ahead, the Independent Budget Office's May analysis of the executive budget shows education spending almost flat between 2003 and 2007, averaging only 0.2 percent annual growth, well below anticipated rates of inflation. This is alarming in the context of the 1990s: a January 2001 IBO study of education spending in the 1990s showed that real (adjusted for inflation) spending per pupil declined steadily throughout the Dinkins and first Giuliani terms (1990-1997), and had only regained the 1990 level in the 2000 fiscal year.
A New $3.3 Billion Question
Given the current cuts in education spending and anticipated flat spending for years ahead, the June decision of New York State's highest court in the 10-year-old Campaign for Fiscal Equity case is especially timely.The campaign argued that the state's education-funding system was unconstitutional and that it under-funded New York City schools. The court agreed.
As reported by in Gotham Gazette's education topic page, the court's remedial order requires the state by July 30, 2004 to 1) determine the actual cost of providing a sound basic education, 2) reform the state funding system to ensure adequate funds for every city school, and 3) establish an effective accountability system to make sure the reform works. This is obviously a tall order and one that no doubt will affect many other, if not all, state school districts in any implementation plan. (For an excellent essay on this likelihood, see William Hammond's column in the New York Sun, June 30, 2003.)
The Independent Budget Office, at the request of Councilmember David Yassky, has twice done an analysis of what a resolution of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case might cost, using a State Education Department model (from an unreleased Department study) to determine educational adequacy. As IBO deputy director George Sweeting testified on their most recent analysis, on September 23, 2002 before the City Council, with adjustments for higher costs and greater needs in New York City, the spending difference between the city's public schools and those in the [state's] high-performing districts [is] $3,029 per pupil. With the city system's enrollment of 1.1 million students, IBO concludes that equalizing the city's spending with the level in [those] districts would require $3.3 billion.
The scope of a $3.3 billion equity goal underscores the marginal, patchwork actions in the city's current education budget. Until the state comes up with funding at this kind of scale, the city will be playing catch-up in education budgeting. (There is at least some chance that the city itself may be required to increase its efforts as well.)
The CUNY Case
Offsetting the good news in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, the CUNY board of trustees on June 23 raised tuition for students in the four-year colleges of CUNY by $800, or 25 percent. The move followed Governor Pataki's huge cut in state aid to the state and city universities and the state legislatures' decision not to restore the cuts.
This is significant, first, because it threatens to push many lower-income, minority students out of CUNY. (Full-time students who are income-eligible can receive Tuition Assistance Program grants, but the protections for tens of thousands of part-timers are much less. See testimony by the Professional Staff Congress for more detail) It is also significant because it shows again how little the governor believes in public education, an ominous sign in terms of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case. (The recent restoration of most of the governor's proposed major cuts to city elementary and high schools was done by the state legislature, not the governor.)
The City University of New York decision is also another reminder of the conflicts in the Pataki-Bloomberg relationship. The university's board of trustees, for instance, is not, as one might expect, city run. The board is made up of 17 members, two of them ex-officio, representing students and faculty, respectively. Of the 15 appointed members, the chairperson and nine other members are appointed by the governor. The mayor appoints the other five members. Currently three of the five mayoral members are left-over Rudy Giuliani appointees (including former deputy mayors Joe Lohta and Randy Mastro). The mayor seems powerless in this context.
So as the new fiscal year begins, there is, first, a good chance that the mayor';s strong stand on promoting tax revenues to minimize service cuts will stabilize the city's fiscal condition, at least for the near future. And secondly, there is now, with the state court's decision on state education funding, an opportunity for the mayor to show similar strength -- by pushing the governor and state legislature to do the right thing for public education in New York City.
Glenn Pasanen, former associate director of City Project, teaches political science at Lehman College of the City University.