Week of 25 June 2001:
Corruption Watch
1.The Schools
Edward F. Stancik, the special commissioner for investigation for the New
York City schools, is in the last stages of an investigation of Irving S.
Hamer Jr. The Board of Education member who is leading its effort to
integrate the Internet into the classroom, Hamer is accused of using his
position last year to promote a Web-based test-preparation company where he
was a vice chairman, according to
the Times.
2.The Police
In response to a lawsuit by detective Jimmy Alvarez accusing the police
department's Internal Affairs Bureau (the division that investigates police
corruption) of itself being corrupt -- or of failing to take action against
corruption -- the District Attorneys of Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn have
launched their own investigations. Mayor Rudy Giuliani also has ordered
senior police officials to conduct an inquiry.
Gracie
Mayor Giuliani has been sleeping over at friends' homes instead of at Gracie
Mansion, and may move out altogether.
Long Dark Summer?
With the year's first real blast of haze, heat and humidity, attention
focused on whether the city has enough power to get through a sticky summer
without blackouts or brownouts. To fuel the concerns, 10,000 households in
Brooklyn lost power yesterday, though the problems were not believed to be
related to the weather. The agency that operates the city's power grid
anticipates no power failures for the remainder of the heat wave, which is
expected to continue until late this week.
As temperatures reached the 90s, a group of businesses and building owners
and managers who together control about 75 percent of the city's major
office space announced a voluntary energy conservation plan described by one
of its architects as the
largest in New York history.
The plan calls for raising thermostats to reduce air conditioner use,
turning off unneeded lights, adopting energy-saving measures for computers
and, in an energy emergency, shutting down some escalators and elevators.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the New York Power Authority says that seven of
the 10 power turbines designed to relieve a potential summer energy crunch
are operating and that two others will
fire up within days. By skipping
normal environmental review and public comment requirements, the authority
was able to complete the generators in less than a year. That fast-track
process is the subject of three lawsuits, two of which will be heard
tomorrow. The generators could come to a halt if the appellate court rules
that the power authority violated state law.
Final Bell
On the last day of school, teachers are promising to put up an informational
picket line at every city school to rally support for a new contract.
Negotiations between the United Federation of Teachers and the mayor broke
down again recently over the teacher's request for a 20 percent raise over
the next two years. "Working a few extra hours might have been more
impressive than protesting," said Mayor Giuliani in response to the planned
demonstrations. According to the teachers union, over 100 teachers are
filing for retirement each day and the city will soon suffer a critical
teacher shortage.
Across the river, Jersey City mayor Brent Schundler defeated former
Representative Bob Franks in the Republican primary for New Jersey Governor.
Schundler will face Woodbridge mayor and Democratic candidate Jim McGreevey
in November.
School Budget Shortfall
How did public school officials manage to go as much as $1.9 billion over
budget in just the second year of its five-year $ 7 billion school
construction plan?
That is the question that everybody is asking - all the newspapers, the
mayor, and the City Council, which announced it would be holding a public
hearing on the question July 10 at P.S. 19 in Queens.
The cost overruns could mean a delay in the construction of six new school
buildings in Queens, the borough with the most overcrowded schools, and
postponement of most major renovation projects across the city.
Among the explanations: the Board of Education promised more than it could
deliver in order to get political support; the building boom in the city has
resulted in a shortage of contractors and skilled workers, and construction
bids coming in far over estimates; neighborhood groups fight the location
of new schools, which increase costs in planning and design.
Hate Crime Rise
Reported incidents of bias rose 20 percent last year, to 468 cases from 390
cases in 1999, the Daily News reports. Acts of anti-Semitic vandalism and
property damage are the most frequent complaints received by the Police
Department's new Hate Crimes Task Force, followed by attacks on gays,
lesbians and transgender people. The head of the task force, Inspector
Barbara Sicilia, told a City Council committee hearing that the reporting of
incidents has increased, rather than the incidents themselves. She
attributed this I part to the New York State Legislature's passage last year
of a Hate Crimes law, as well as a 24-hour hotline - (888) 440-HATE - to
field complaints.
Dime
Dime Bancorp, with about 123 branches in New York City, has been bought by
Seattle-based Washington Mutual, for about $5.2 billion, the Wall Street
Journal reports. WaMu, as Washington Mutual is unfortunately known, would
thus enter New York's competitive consumer banking market, one of several
new potentially players, which might eventually result in better overall
service to banking customers in the city.
Welfare
Some 38,800 New York City families face a cutoff of their welfare benefits
in December. In about a third of the family, at least one parent has a job;
in about a fifth of the cases, the recipients are classified as
noncooperative. "The rest are divided among those doing workfare in exchange
for their benefits, those in job training, those deemed by the city to be
temporarily ill, disabled or elderly, and those still being assessed," Nina
Bernstein writes in her
New York Times article, which looks at some
specific families.
Last week's stories...
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