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


Week of 30 July 2001:

Bare Bones Budget
Over 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:
The recent decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to dredge the Hudson River was the first step. Now lawyers, environmentalists, and politicians will fight a series of battles that may prove even more difficult to settle. Contentious debate is expect over where to build a plant to remove the water from the dredged soil, which dredging technologies are best, and how the public will participate. Dredging is not expected to begin before 2004. General Electric, which will pay $ 460 million to clean up the contaminants in the river, has yet to comment on the details of the plan.

Now The Tough Part II:
On Tuesday, a new report showed that the number of families in city shelters is at an all time high. Now advocates and officials are looking at why the problem has grown so severe, and how it can be remedied. Mayor Giuliani defended his record on handling the homeless yesterday saying that new housing construction was held up by advocates for community gardens and that some landlords have resisted accepting Section 8 vouchers. Advocates for the homeless responded saying the administration had failed to provide the low-cost housing and rental subsidies and that the latest efforts were too little, too late.

Crowded Shelters
More homeless families are staying in city shelters than ever before, and the number could climb even higher this winter, according to a report in today's Times. In July, there were 20,655 members of homeless families in the shelter system, an increase of 1,000 families since July 2000 and surpassing the previous peaks of the late 1980s and mid-1990s.

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
Former President Bill Clinton moved into his Harlem office yesterday, greeted by a welcoming rally that was a virtual party, and by protesters who said he would drive up prices and drive out businesses. Clinton said he would press for programs to aid small stores, part of a post-presidency public service agenda that he says will include helping in the fight against AIDS. "I want to make sure I'm a good neighbor in Harlem," he told the crowd. "I'm glad property values are going up, but I don't want the small businesses run out because I'm coming in." Though many public officials were in attendance, Mayor Rudy Giuliani was not one of them.

Another Campaign
With six weeks to go until the primary, campaigns are heating up in sometimes alarming ways, such as the fisticuffs in district 45, and the suspected arson in a campaign headquarters in district 28. (See Searchlight's Campaign Trail for 7/28 and 7/24).

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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