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This Week's Stories GG's quick takes on recent NYC news |
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Week of 30 July 2001:Bare Bones BudgetOver the objections of Governor George Pataki, the New York State Legislature passed a bare-bones budget Thursday -- four months late, as usual. (New York has not passed a budget on time in 17 years). The $ 79.6 billion budget is scarcely enough to keep the government functioning. It holds spending largely at last year's level, and denies funds, for example, for the acquisition of new parkland, for a program to provide day care to 71,000 single mothers, for grants to non-profit agencies contracted by the state to perform a slew of social services. The legislature's move is a bipartisan political maneuver to make it difficult for the governor to govern, thus forcing him finally to negotiate with them over a real budget, and consider funding various programs that he had resisted. The governor has threatened to challenge the budget in court. Now The Tough Part I: Now The Tough Part II: Crowded Shelters City officials and national experts attributed the rise in homelessness, which is being seen throughout the country, to higher housing costs, reductions in welfare, and a new reluctance by landlords to accept subsidized tenants. Advocates for the homeless in New York blamed some of the increase on a lack of low-cost housing initiatives by the city. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which had produced as many as 1,500 apartments a year for the homeless during the Koch administration, provided only 117 apartments in a nine-month period last year, city officials told the City Council recently. Clinton In Harlem Another Campaign But a new campaign was launched yesterday on the steps of City Hall, not by politicians but by a coalition of mostly immigrant groups, and not to get elected but to make sure that the candidates who DO get elected pay attention to the needs of their constituents. The Government Access and Accountability Campaign began with a survey of residents in several neighborhoods in Queens. A little more than half of them were citizens, and about as many had been living in their neighborhoods for more than five years. Yet only seven percent said they knew the name of their City Council member, and 63 percent said they would not even know how they could contact a member of the City Council. "There is a huge disconnect between community and government," said Bryan Pu-Folkes of New Immigrant Community Empowerment, coordinator of the Campaign. The Government Access and Accountability Campaign is holding the city's public officials responsible for getting New Yorkers more acquainted with local government. It is calling on all candidates to sign a pledge promising three things if they are elected: 1. They will each hold town hall meetings in their districts at least twice a year. 2. They will conduct an annual district needs survey, and issue a report. 3. They will each issue an "Annual Constituent Service Report," listing, for example, when they have office hours for constituents, what languages their staff members speak, how many town hall meetings they had during the year. Since none of this seems especially revolutionary or even expensive, a natural question might be how many of the 51 current members of the City Council already do it. Pu-Folkes couldn't say. "We phoned them, we sent several letters, we e-mailed them, but we only got a dozen responses." |
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