This Week's Stories
GG's quick takes on recent NYC news


Week of 26 March 2001:

The Decencies
The mayor has appointed his "decency" commission, as promised, and it will hold its first meeting next week, the Daily News reports. Among the members are the pop artist Peter Max. The mayor also asked the actor Danny Aiello, who has not yet accepted. Other members include Rabbi Shea Hecht of Brooklyn, Parks Commissioner Henry Stern, former Nixon White House lawyer Leonard Garment and freelance journalist and mayoral pal Martin Bergman. The mayor first came up with the idea for the group after reacting to an art photograph at the Brooklyn Museum he considered anti-Catholic. According to Deputy Mayor Anthony Coles, the group will "consider in what ways the standard for publicly funded art should be different from privately funded art."

ATM Fees
The fees for using automatic teller machines have nearly tripled over the past five years, to an average of $2.53 per transaction, according to a survey by the New York Public Interest Group. The group and City Council Speaker Peter Vallone called for a ban on the surcharges levied on non-customers.

Edison Unlikely
With just a day left for balloting, the turnout of parents is apparently too low for Edison Schools to win approval at any of the five failing public schools it had hoped to take over.

Met Move
The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, second largest insurer in the nation, is negotiating for tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks and other incentives to move about 1,200 employees from Manhattan to a one-time automobile factory in Long Island City. Begun in Manhattan 133 years ago, Met Life was once a central presence in the borough, responsible for the creation of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. Its looming presence is most evident at its two-towered headquarters at Madison Avenue and 24th Street, and in the office building over Grand Central Terminal, with the fat Met Life letters blaring out over Park Avenue South. But few of its employees actually work in the city anymore. Manhattan's loss would be Queens' gain, with the hopes that the move would spur the development of a new business district.

Carnegie Hall
Robert Harth, 44, head of Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado, has been selected to head Carnegie Hall, starting in September. The current director, Franz Xaver Ohnesorg, plans to step down Monday to take over the Berlin Philharmonic. Carnegie Hall Board treasurer Klaus Jacobs will serve as acting head until Harth arrives.

Student Union
The graduate students of Columbia University petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for permission to form a labor union. New York University was the first private university in the nation whose graduate students successfully won the right to unionize.

Police
The $8.6 million settlement that was expected to be ratified today in the case of Abner Louima, whom police tortured in 1997, has been stalled and may fall through.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani told a largely black audience in Crown Heights last night that a grand jury had found that Patrick M. Dorismond, the unarmed black man shot dead last year by the police, was responsible for his own death because of "the violent way in which he acted" during a fight outside a Manhattan bar, the Times reports. As the crowd booed, Giuliani said: "Well, that's the reality. Sometimes the truth is hard to deal with."

Iris Baez, whose son Anthony was choked to death by a police officer in a 1994 incident in the Bronx that also became a symbol of police brutality, is expected to be named a member of the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

Meanwhile, two of the 13 current members of that board criticized the way the Giuliani administration is going about the expansion of powers of the board to include prosecuting (rather than just investigating) errant officers, the Times reports. William F. Kuntz II, the board's longest serving member, and Charles Greinsky said that 1. it should be backed by legislation, to make it permanent (not at the whim of the Police Commissioner), and 2. there is no reason to rush it through to meet the mayor's May 7th deadline.

On the heels of the news of difficulties in recruiting new police officers comes a report in the Daily News that nearly 23 percent of the current Police Academy class is failing to make the minimum required grade in academics or gym.

Sex Shops
For three years, Mayor Giuliani has tried to use the zoning laws to close adult-oriented video stores and dance clubs, or restrict them to special zones (in Chelsea, in midtown, and in Sunset Park, Brooklyn), without much success. Most of the 136 sex-related establishments (as identified by the city) got around the law by making sure to stock at least 40 percent of their goods with non-sexual material. Yesterday, the mayor proposed a revision in the law that allows inspectors to take into account such factors as sales figures and the layout of the store to assess if it is truly 40 percent non-sexual. A lawyer for the stores says the new law will not withstand a court challenge.

Transportation: The George at 70
The George Washington Bridge, built in 1931, carried 108 million vehicles last year (86 million more than its designers ever imagined it would carry), making it the busiest bridge in the world. The four big bridges over the East River are requiring some $3.2 billion in repair work to keep them from falling down. Not The George; quite the opposite: It is kept in good repair and, rather than costing money, grossed $249 million in tolls last year.

Toll Hikes
Tolls went up yesterday on the bridges and tunnels into the city, from four dollars to six dollars, if you pay in cash. The fare for the PATH train went from a dollar to $1.50, putting it into line with the New York City subway system, although it is still cleaner and quieter. Officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey say the hike is necessary to raise nine billion dollars for repairs, upgrades and the purchase of new equipment.

Old and Overcrowded
The subways saw a record number of passengers last year, 1.38 billion, and they are more crowded than ever before, according to a report in the Daily News. The system has not grown much in more than half a century, reports the Post: "Since World War II, the subway system has grown by only four miles of new track - compared with more than 400 miles built during the first 40 years of the century."

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