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.
Last week's stories...
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