Dear Speaker Miller,
As the Council prepares its response to the Mayor's preliminary budget, we urge you to continue to emphasize the impact of the proposed cuts on children and families, especially reduced support to our public schools, to child care programs and to summer youth, senior, and library programs. We believe that we must consider every option to protect our children and families, and we commend your insistence that everything -- including revenue programs -- be considered as the Council seeks solutions to the budget crisis.
The Mayor's preliminary budget -- and the recent announcement of an additional $500 million in possible reduced spending -- simply cuts too deep. New York City's kids must come first. School governance issues aside, classes are too big, the city's teachers remain underpaid, buildings are overcrowded, and supplies are inadequate, outdated, or unavailable. Under the Mayor's preliminary budget, thousands of children will lose access to day-care slots and after-school programs. In a time of crisis, we cannot stop investing in our children's future to cover holes in the budget.
Of course, no one wants to raise taxes, and we support a thorough analysis at all agencies to eliminate waste and identify savings. At the same time, a "Children's First" budget would acknowledge that in tough fiscal times, we should all be prepared to make hard choices. We urge you to incorporate the three proposals below into the Council's response to the Mayor's preliminary budget to protect New York from an even greater deterioration in essential services. These proposals have been chosen because of their fairness, their economic impact, and their capacity to raise money to protect vital services:
Reinstating the commuter tax, a .45% tax on the income earned in New York City by non-residents. According to the Mayor's estimates, the repeal of this nominal tax will cost New York City $410 million this upcoming fiscal year.
Increasing the rates of the City's personal income tax by 1% on income over $200,000 and 2% on income over $250,000. This is a fair, effective way to raise over a billion dollars.
Reinstating 10% of the stock transfer tax. By placing a tax of up to a half-penny on stock transfers and by capping the tax at $35 for any transaction, the City could raise $800 million for its schools and other services.
We further suggest that the Council consider the possibility of implementing these tax increases for a limited period of time.
Taken together, these three modest tax increases would generate over $2 billion in new revenue to protect our children and our other city priorities. Investors, commuters, and wealthy New Yorkers have prospered in the past few years -- thanks to both the economic boom of the late 1990s and the extraordinary Bush tax cuts enacted last year. We believe, in these extraordinary times for New York, that they will support a "Children's First" agenda. If the Mayor believes that these New Yorkers are unwilling to help their city after last year's devastation, he has underestimated their patriotism and civic-mindedness. Far more destructive to our City will be devastating cuts to our schools, our child care programs, and our mental health and youth services.
We believe the three proposals outlined above represent the only fair alternative to the Mayor's preliminary budget, an alternative that will protect our children and free up scarce funds for other important city services. We strongly urge you to ensure their inclusion in the Council's response to the Mayor's preliminary budget.
Margarita Lopez (Dist 2), Christine Quinn (Dist 3), Eva Moskowitz (Dist 4), Gale A. Brewer (Dist 6), Robert Jackson (Dist 7), Phil Reed (Dist 8), Bill Perkins (Dist 9), Miguel Martinez (Dist 10), Larry Seabrook (Dist 12), Maria Baez (Dist 14), Joel Rivera (Dist 15), Helen Foster (Dist 16), Jose Serrano (Dist 17), John Liu (Dist 20), Hiram Monserrate (Dist 21), Eric Gioia (Dist 26), Leroy Comrie (Dist 27), James Sanders Jr. (Dist 31), Diana Reyna (Dist 34), James Davis (Dist 35), Albert Vann (Dist 36), Bill de Blasio (Dist 39), Yvette Clarke (Dist 40), Tracy Boland (Dist 41), Charles Barron (Dist 42), Kendall Stewart (Dist 45), Michael Nelson (Dist 48).
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Community Boards and The Internet
Two-thirds of all New Yorkers are said to be online. But many of them can only access the Internet from work, a library, a school, or a community technology center. Many technology experts believe that the efforts to cross the digital divide should include getting more computers in private homes.
Perhaps it is ironic that if this happens, -- if more New Yorkers can stay at home and still get online -- more will become active participants in their communities.
That, anyway, is the hope of the members of New York's community planning boards, and they are preparing for it. About ten out of 59 community boards have web sites, and one group is reaching out to the rest. It is called the Prototype Community Board Website Development Project, and its aim is to improve the ability of under-funded and short-staffed community boards to communicate with each other and with their communities. The program is currently supported by new Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) Commissioner Gino Menchini.
The Battle for .NYC
Community Board leaders are trying to build support for the .NYC (pronounced dot NYC) Campaign, an effort to secure the top-level domain name .nyc for New York City. In April 2001, Community Board 3 in Queens passed an Internet Empowerment Resolution that has recently gotten the support of Queens Congressman Joseph Crowley. Now, the challenge is to convince the three NYC Congressmen that serve on the House Commerce Committee -- Representatives Ed Towns (10th), Eliot Engel (17th) and Vito Fossella (13th)--of the importance of the .NYC Campaign.
Currently, organizations in New York City use generic domain names like .com, .edu, .gov and .org to identify their presence on the Web. However, .nyc would allow citizens to find local organizations more easily on the Internet and bring local control to the communications network. For example, if managed by city government, the .nyc domain name would raise much needed revenue for the city by registering domain names categories such as schools.nyc, libraries.nyc, government.nyc or shopping.nyc. The domain could also be managed by a local private sector or third-party organization. In addition, the .nyc domain name could help to build a powerful brand on the Internet for the New York. Currently, Los Angeles has secured the .la domain name that was originally issued to the country Laos.
The international domain name system is managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit, private-sector corporation. Recently, ICANN has been criticized for being slow and inefficient and lacking transparency and is currently trying to reform. Thus, the organization has issued far fewer domain names than expected this year. New York City can assert its influence in the organization primarily through the United States Department of Commerce. Therefore, if community boards are serious about the battle for .nyc, they will need to raise awareness among communities and congressmen in the 10th, 17th and 13th districts.
Pay Phone Update
On March 11th, Verizon raised pay phone rates to 50 cents for an unlimited local call up from 25 cents for a three-minute call. This is the first rate increase since 1984 and New York was the last state to increase prices. In 1996, most states increased pay phone prices to 35 cents as a result of deregulation in the phone industry and recently all have adopted the 50-cent rate. Verizon cites competition from new communications technology such as cell phones as the primary reason for increasing the price of calls on its 110,000 pay phones. While Verizon is committed to keeping pay phones in communities where they are needed, the 50-cent rate may prevent the poor from using the phones. An additional 50 cents will be charged for directory assistance from pay phones.
Cable TV Update
Cable television subscriptions are up three percent as a result of the destruction of the antenna on the north tower of the WTC. Currently, about 21 percent of households get television over the airwaves rather than through cable. As a result, over the next five years New York City will pocket $51 million in franchise fees from cable companies. This will help aiding in the city's recovery from the budget crisis. For every $10 per month a cable customer pays, 50 cents goes to the city in franchise fees.
Cable Internet Access Update
The FCC recently exempted cable companies from having to allow Internet service providers (ISPs) access to their lines. According to the Federal Communications Commission, this step was necessary to promote investment and growth in high-speed Internet access. However, this move contradicts the FTC conditions of the AOL Time Warner merger that required the company to open its lines to other ISPs in order to increase competition in the cable market. This highlights an important difference between the telecommunications and cable markets. Historically, telecom has been widely regulated while cable has not. This may mean less choice of ISPs for consumers in New York.
Laura Forlano is a doctoral student studying communication technology policy at Columbia University.
You may not know it, but you are living in the capital of electronic government, or one of them anyway. But, how many of us have actually looked up a restaurant?s health inspection or paid a parking ticket online? What does being the hub of e-gov really mean for New Yorkers? Can it help us solve the budget crisis?
New York City ranks second in the first annual Digital Cities Survey by the Center for Digital Government and Government Technology magazine. The survey compared New York with other cities of more than 250,000 people and ranked them as follows: Honolulu took first place; Chicago, New York and Seattle were second; Colorado Springs and Houston were fifth; Charlotte, Indianapolis and Tucson were seventh and Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego and Tampa ranked tenth.
In addition, New York City won first place in the Center for Digital Government's national 2001 Best of the Web competition has won over 25 other awards for their use of telecommunications and technology in local government.
So, New York City is good at e-gov, but what exactly is it? Most simply, e-government is the adoption of communications technology by the public sector to deliver information and services. Just as technology has allowed the private sector to increase efficiency, when applied in government, technology has the potential to greatly streamline bureaucracy. The stages of building an e-gov from a bricks and mortar government are relatively simple. First, the focus is on online access to content and forms, next on the ability to conduct transactions, and, finally, on creating comprehensive portals or one-stop government sites.
NYC.gov is the city's main e-government portal. The site has more than 30,000 pages of content and 100 online transactional services. Online transactions include paying parking tickets, viewing property statements, obtaining birth and death certificates, or finding out your recycling and garbage collection schedule. The ability to access information and conduct transactions online was extremely important after September 11 when many New Yorkers found e-mail and Internet access to be their only reliable form of communication. The city's well-developed e-government portal allowed emergency information to be posted and updated regularly during the crisis.
According to Cathilea Robinett, executive director of the Center for Digital Government, "New York City has an extremely robust site. It is one of the few local government sites with a citizen customization component. It is easy to navigate and the section titled, 'I want to' is perfect for intuitive citizen use."
The current success of NYC.gov is partly a result of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's strong support of e-government initiatives. According to Stephen Ronaghan, project manager for the United Nations Global Survey on E-government, "New York City's e-government program is one of the most complete that I've seen from any level of government. The websites are user-friendly, content is well organized and they offer online capacity for nearly every city-service that can be offered over the Web."
Clearly, New York has made it to the most advanced stage in the development of e-government. Now the challenge is making sure that people are using it. According to U.S. News and World Report, less than one percent of all citizen-to-government transactions are handled online. In order to justify the investment in e-government, this figure needs to increase dramatically.
However, currently, awareness of the ability to conduct government services online is low and access to computers among some segments of the population is lacking. In recent years, we have seen a number of e-government companies emerge and sometimes disappear, such as GovWorks, which was profiled in the movie Startup.com. Their demise points partly to this lack of awareness among citizens. This has prevented NYC.gov from being used extensively by citizens to conduct transactions rather than to obtain information only.
We all know that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is tech-savvy. His success as the leader of a financial information company with cutting edge technology and his transformation of City Hall into an open office equipped with 35 high-tech terminals donated by his company proves it. However, the mayor's official e-government policy has not yet been announced and it remains to be seen whether e-government will suffer a 20 percent cut along with the rest of city government.
The city is facing a potential $4 billion deficit and enhanced e-government services offer the possibility to help shrink this number in the long run. As we have seen in the private sector, online transactions are fast and efficient. While initial investment in technology is necessary, typically, e-government programs are run with a relatively small number of employees. This is true both for NYC.gov and FirstGov, the United States' e-government portal.
The challenge for Mayor Bloomberg is to make sure that New Yorkers know about NYC.gov's extensive offerings so that the maximum number of transactions are conducted online. In addition, greater coordination is needed between NYC.gov and the web sites of city agencies. While it is fine for agencies to maintain their own autonomy online, there should be consistency between the web sites of different agencies. Some agencies have yet to update their sites to reflect their relationship with NYC.gov.
So, stop by NYC.gov and take the tour. You too can help decrease the city's deficit.
Laura Forlano is a doctoral student studying communication technology policy at Columbia University.