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


Week of 20 August 2001:

Amnesty
Public housing tenants who are under-reporting their income to reduce the rent they pay have 90 days to come clean, reports the Daily News. The New York City Housing Authority has declared a one-time amnesty - from Sept. 1 to Nov. 30 - for government-assisted renters to pay what they owe without the threat of eviction or criminal prosecution, officials said. Since 1995, 205 public housing residents in the city have been arrested - 69 of them government employees - on charges of stealing more than $3.5 million in subsidies by hiding their actual income.

About 175,000 families live in the city's 346 public housing developments, and the rent of an additional 75,000 families in private apartments is subsidized. There is a waiting list of nearly 141,000 for public housing.

Race And The Race
Two of the major mayoral candidates offered competing solutions to the problem of "racial profiling," when police officers stop civilians for no other reason than their ethnicity. Prodded by City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, the City Council passed a bill that requires the New York Police Department to issue a quarterly report detailing statistics on, among other things, stop-and-frisks, broken down by race and gender. A group of council members who do not think that this law goes far enough have introduced a bill explicitly to define and ban racial profiling, at the request of Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer.

19 More Days
With less than three weeks before the September 11 primary, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani injected himself into the campaign for mayor yesterday by calling for an investigation of Alan Hevesi for having arranged a meeting about a contract between a major campaign contributor and a private company. The event is already the subject of an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney. "It seems to me that the circumstances suggest inappropriate use of influence," Giuliani told reporters. Hevesi replied "It's perfectly appropriate to help businesses in the city," and that Giuliani's comments were just another of many attempts to "get revenge on someone he can't control."

Open For Now
Yesterday, a Manhattan Supreme Court Justice blocked Transit Authority plans to shut 35 part-time booths and reduce the hours on 18 others starting Sunday, saying she would consider if public hearings are needed, according to the Daily News. Opponents say the public should have a chance to voice their opinions about the closing. The Transit Authority says hearings are only required for the end of train service, not the closing of token booths.

Open For Debate
The four Democratic mayoral candidates held their first televised debate last night. The post-debate evaluation depends largely on which newspaper headlines one reads. The New York Times called it a "Harmonious Gathering With A Touch of Discord" and said that the candidates "Struggled to Define Themselves." The Daily News called it a "Vallone-Hevesi Slugfest" and the Post declared "Hevesi and Vallone Duke It Out." Newsday focused on the countdown with the headline "20 Days Until the Primary." And the various columnists declared different candidates and even Giuliani the "winner." Read an excerpted transcript of the debate from the New York Times.

Race and the City
A decade after the Crown Heights riots, the father of Gavin Cato, the 7-year-old black boy who died in the car accident that sparked the rioting, met with the brother of Yankel Rosenbaum, the Jewish scholar who was killed in the violence, in a ceremony in City Hall.

Meanwhile, several civil rights activists and two members of the City Council met outside City Hall to protest a proposed bill the City Council is expected to approve tomorrow ordering the police department to issue monthly reports on its stop-and-frisk activities. The critics believe the bill does not go far enough, that rather than just monthly summaries, a look at the raw data would be the only way to assess whether the police are engaging in racial profiling.

Queens Debate Marathon
Queens is the only borough where all the members of the City Council must leave office this year because of the term limits law. The result is the largest and most diverse crowd of candidates in New York City history - even after the Queens Democratic organization was successful in kicking a third of them off the ballot.

New Yorkers are having an opportunity this week to see all these candidates almost literally all at once, in three days of forums, entitled "Community Conversations," sponsored in part by Citizens Union Foundation. Yesterday the candidates running for districts 31 and 32 in The Rockaways met at Beach Channel High School. Tonight at 7 p.m. the candidates for up to ten Queens council districts are all meeting at the Kew Gardens Community Center. Tomorrow, the candidates for the remaining districts (at least districts 27 and 28), as well as those running for comptroller and Queens borough president, meet at York College.

Pollution Problem
A decision that may be forthcoming from the Bush administration to withdraw from air pollution lawsuits against power plants in the Midwest and South could jeopardize settlements already made (but not yet final) with out-of-state plants that are polluting New York, according to the New York Times. "We will pursue these cases no matter what happens in Washington," said Eliot L. Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, "but losing out on the participation and resources of Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department would be a substantial loss and would make our job much harder, no question." Air pollution in New York has gotten worse over the past two summers after two decades of improvement, thanks in part to the prevailing winds from these out-of-state, out-of-date power plants.

The Citizen
How many Bangladeshi cab drivers are there, and how many of them own their own cab? The answer is in the Weekly Thikana. What will happen in Jamaica now that the Board of Education is recruiting so many Jamaican teachers for New York? The answer is in the Jamaica Gleaner. What do immigrant communities want to hear from political candidates? American Oggi offers some answers in an article on the activities of a group called the Multicultural American Coalition. There are some 200 publications published in New York, in dozens of languages, for the city's immigrant and ethnic readers. This week, Gotham Gazette offers The Citizen (because the readers of these publications are citizens of New York City), with a glimpse into the many stories not available in the mainstream English-language press - until now.

The Debates
Though the four major Democratic mayoral candidates have appeared together in "forums" dozens of times, tomorrow they will appear in their first official debate, which will be broadcast at 7 p.m. on NY1. This is just the first of at least three debates before the September 11 primary. The other two, which will take place August 28 and September 9, are part of the Campaign Finance Board's mandatory debate program for those candidates who have received public funds. There will be at least one more mayoral debate before the general election. There will also be several debates among the candidates for the other two citywide offices, public advocate and comptroller. The full schedule for the Campaign Finance Board's "Debates 2001" is available online.

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