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


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.

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