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Better Understanding Entry to the City's Specialized High Schools


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Bronx High School of Science


A recent report by the city's Independent Budget Office claimed that the city's eight test-in specialized high schools – including my alma mater Brooklyn Tech, where I head the alumni foundation – have higher percentages of students from higher-income census tracts than the average in all city high schools. Some politicians, activists and academics who are hostile to the use of a pure merit system for selecting students for these schools have attempted to argue that this report somehow shows that the test-in schools are for the wealthy among us. That is misleading to say the least.

The facts are that the specialized high schools are the most economically diverse of all high-performing public high schools in the city.

The IBO report did not point out that in the academic year ending last June, 52.4 percent of students in the eight specialized high schools (including two-thirds at Brooklyn Tech) qualified for free or reduced-cost lunch, the federally-established measure of poverty used by the school system. By comparison, just 37.6 percent of students at the eight highest-performing selective high schools (based on SAT scores) that use the more subjective multiple criteria wanted by critics of the test qualified for the lunch program.

It should come as no surprise that specialized high schools, which draw students from across the city, would have more students from higher-income brackets than neighborhood-based schools where the student bodies reflect the socioeconomic standing in those communities. The IBO report reflects that higher-income neighborhoods have better performing schools because they are given better resources. But an apples-to-apples comparison shows that the specialized high schools continue to draw far more economically-diverse student bodies than schools using subjective criteria to decide admissions. In other words, use of the test, the SHSAT, prevents parents of less academically-prepared children from wealthy families from using non-pedagogical influence to gain admittance.

New York's test-in high schools like Brooklyn Tech, Stuyvesant and Bronx Science provide an incredibly challenging college-level curriculum to the children of New York City's working class, immigrant and poor families. For 90 years their students have received an unmatched public school education enabling them to go to the nation's best colleges and have a real opportunity to escape the poverty they were born into.

In many instances these graduates have gone on to do great things benefiting our society. Diseases have been cured, wars won, and marvelous inventions have been created which improved the lives of millions. Fourteen graduates have received the Nobel Prize, more than most nations can claim.

The State Senate Education Committee will vote Tuesday on a bill to end the reliance on the Specialized High School Admissions Test without having heard five minutes of testimony from either side of the issue. Senators could have listened to representatives from the NYU Research Alliance for New York City Schools, which recently released a report showing many of the proposed changes – such as using state assessment test scores, grades and attendance – either would result in little change in specialized school admission rates for underrepresented minorities or could actually result in fewer black and more white students being offered admission.

There are over 1,900 African-American and Latino students currently attending the specialized high schools. There should be more. What is missing from the bill and from the IBO report is a true understanding of what must be done to improve the racial and ethnic diversity of students attending these schools.

Instead of eliminating the test-in system which guarantees all applicants a fair and objective standard for admission, the city should work far harder to give students from underrepresented communities the same educational opportunities in elementary and middle school grades currently being afforded students in higher-income neighborhoods. It is discouraging to see recent reports that the city is not offering Gifted and Talented Programs in so many communities that are later underrepresented in the specialized high schools.

Similarly, too few students from underrepresented communities sign up to take the SHSAT, perpetuating a cycle of disenfranchisement that requires a commitment and investment of resources to change. The school system should identify high-performing students, nurture them through enhanced academic programming and test preparation to ready them for the rigors of the exam and the schools' curriculum.

It can be done. The Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation, working with the school and a grant from National Grid (which is led by a Tech graduate), just saw the fruits of a pilot "pipeline" program it established to focus on students from underrepresented middle schools across Brooklyn. Of 30 students who went through the program – which included tutoring, enhanced academics and test preparation – 26 received an offer of admission to either Brooklyn Tech or Stuyvesant. Half of the students offered admission to Tech were African-American or Latino. More importantly, because of an even broader effort by the school to reach out to underrepresented middle schools, over 300 African-American and Latino students were offered admission this year to Brooklyn Tech, reversing a downward trend of many years.

I am a labor lawyer and have spent my entire 30-year career fighting for the rights of poor and working people. I believe in diversity, fairness, merit and providing excellent educational opportunities for the children of working families. If we are to reduce the huge income inequality in our city we must reduce the huge educational inequality of our elementary and middle schools. And, we must preserve the specialized high schools which truly have been – and remain – the engines of social advancement for the children of New York's poor, immigrant and working class families.

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Larry Cary is the President of the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation.

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Keeping the Water On: New York Must Address Infrastructure, Costs


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A water main break (photo: Ben Max)


In the coming weeks, the New York City Water board will consider a 3.2 percent increase in the city's water rates. Understandably, many New Yorkers are opposed. Water bills rose by a whopping 166 percent during the Bloomberg administration; an increase that was painfully felt by so many low- and middle-income families. Yet Mayor de Blasio deserves credit for addressing affordability concerns while still ensuring a steady revenue source for the city's aging water infrastructure.

Water bills finance the city's most fundamental services: the delivery of clean water and the safe disposal of sewage and rainwater. Managing and maintaining this infrastructure is not cheap. Recent work on the Croton Filtration Plant, Catskill Disinfection Plant, and the Newton Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant Upgrade cost nearly $10 billion. As a result, the city's water and sewage debt rose from $11 billion in 2002 to $29 billion in 2013.

With the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) devoting billions of dollars to filtering the city's water and cleaning its harbor, insufficient funding was left for maintaining and modernizing the city's water and sewage pipes. From 2001 to 2007, nearly 300 miles of sewers were constructed or reconstructed. From 2008 to 2014, a paltry 118 miles saw work. In his 2007 PlaNYC report, Mayor Bloomberg pledged to build or replace 80 miles of water mains annually. Since then, the DEP has installed only 28 miles per year.

The consequences of this neglect are troubling. In 2014, there were 513 water main breaks across the five boroughs, a 39 percent increase from 2012. The city has suffered at least 400 water main breaks in all but one year since 1998. As a result of these breaks and leaks, a staggering 21 percent of water that enters distribution mains never reaches customers in the city, double the 10-to-15 percent industry standard. To manage these leaks and breaks, repair the city's aging infrastructure and finance its ballooning debt, the DEP must increase its revenue. Mayor de Blasio's 3.2% water rate increase—which is far lower than the 8 percent average increase during the Bloomberg years—is a necessary, if perhaps insufficient, part of that equation.

While increased water rates are certainly a burden—particularly for low- and middle-income New Yorkers—these charges are still below the national average and only half that of residents in Seattle or Atlanta. The water bill for a typical single-family homeowner in New York comes to $88/month, a considerable amount but significantly less than most New Yorkers pay each month for their smart phones.

Fortunately, increased water rates are not the only method for financing and restoring the DEP's essential infrastructure. In 1985, the NYC Water Authority and Water Board were created so that utility payments would go directly and exclusively to the water and sewer system. As part of this agreement, the city charged the Water Board a "rental payment" to cover pre-1985 debt associated with the system. In 2005, as this old debt began to expire, the arrangement was altered. For the first time, the city charged rental payments that exceeded debt service. As a result, Water Board payments have climbed—from $117 million to $204 million over the last decade.

Though the administration insists that these payments are critical to funding the city's operating budget, this misses the point. Dedicated revenue should remain dedicated; not diverted to other programs.

Finally, in addition to a rate increase and the phasing out of rental payments, DEP must get more creative. While past commissioners have grumbled about the heavy burden of federal and state mandates, these are rarely as rigid as portrayed. In 2012, the city amended an agreement with New York State, allowing the DEP to reduce the city's 27 billion gallons of rain and sewage overflow with "green" infrastructure (such as green roofs and porous pavements) rather than exclusively with gray infrastructure (such as retention tanks and upgraded waste water treatment plants). Philadelphia avoided a similar Clean Water Act mandate by introducing a stormwater management fee in lieu of expanded treatment capacity. What would have been a multi-billion dollar expense was converted into a new revenue source.

New York City should follow Philadelphia, and 500 other cities, by replacing its sewer charges, currently assessed at 159 percent of the water rate, with a more nuanced stormwater management fee. Property owners would be charged based according to the percentage of rainwater captured on their lot (before it enters the city's overburdened sewer system). This would incentivize increased water retention on private property, with customers paying a lower fee as they introduce new green elements —trees, swales, porous pavement, and green roofs. This could be coupled with a credit program, repaid via the utility or property bill, to help customers finance the installation of green elements.

Repairing the city's water infrastructure and improving its stormwater management is critical to New York's economic competitiveness and environmental resiliency. Mayor de Blasio should hold firm on increasing water rates this year, eliminate rental payments, and introduce a stormwater management fee. 

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Adam Forman is research and communications associate at the Center for an Urban Future, a New York City based think tank. He is the author of "Caution Ahead," a report published by the Center documenting New York's infrastructure vulnerabilities.
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Access to Condoms: Partial Win in 2015 Budget


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A rally to promote access to condoms


At the conclusion of a highly-contested budget season few advocates are claiming victories. Fair wage activists, ethics watchdogs and DREAMers, among others, are gearing up for a fight to have their issues addressed during the post-budget legislative session. But, on at least one issue, there is reason for progressives to be hopeful: expanding access to condoms.

As part of this year's budget deal, Albany lawmakers and Governor Cuomo passed a limited ban on the use of condoms as evidence. This is important because all too often when transgender New Yorkers, sex workers, trafficking victims, and others are profiled by police, officers use the fact that some have condoms in their possession as evidence of crimes. This undermines our state's commitment to providing access to contraception and preventing the spread of sexually-transmitted infections.

The limited ban on condoms as evidence originally proposed in the governor's budget and eventually adopted in the final budget deal is important recognition from policy-makers of what many of us have known for years: we need comprehensive legislation to ensure that condoms are not criminalized for sex workers, trafficking victims, youth in the sex trade, and anyone profiled as such by law enforcement.

While there is seldom disagreement on the importance of condom access, many are simply unaware of the current practice where law enforcement confiscates condoms as evidence of prostitution-related offenses. A recent PROS Network report found nearly 50% of respondents involved in the sex trade were victims of police confiscating, damaging, or destroying their condoms, and nearly 46% did not carry condoms at some point out of fear of the police.Condoms are taken out of the hands of those for whom they serve as a vital personal and public health tool and left to rot in evidence lockers, since they are rarely actually introduced at trial.

Still, the evidence ban is limited, and there remains much work to be done to ensure access to condoms for all.

With Governor Cuomo's monumental commitment to end AIDS in New York State by 2020, we expected decisive action to address HIV prevalence in communities impacted by the epidemic. What we saw instead was rhetoric without substance. The provision put forth by the governor is a partial ban that covers only two of almost twenty prostitution- and trafficking-related offenses. There is thus only a slim chance that this will have a significant impact on how the practice is executed on the ground. Law enforcement will continue to confiscate condoms, claiming them as evidence of one or more of the many offenses that are left out of the ban. Fear and confusion about whether and how condoms can be used against those carrying them will continue.

Possibly the most concerning aspect of this limited ban is that victims of sex trafficking remain excluded.

The exclusion of trafficking-related offenses creates a perverse incentive for traffickers to withhold condoms from the people they exploit to avoid prosecution, compromising the safety and dignity of the people they victimize. As recently stated by Florrie Burke, recipient of the inaugural Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Sex Trafficking in Persons, "Policymakers shouldn't leave trafficking victims out of the solution. Their lives depend on it."

The good news is that there is widespread support for prioritizing the crisis of sex trafficking and the end of AIDS in New York State, both across party lines and at all levels of governance. Momentum is on our side and the solution is clear: the governor and the Legislature should get back to work on this issue and pass a bill (A.4463A/S.1018) to end the criminalization of condoms in New York State. The lives of some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers depend on it.

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by Anna Saini and Bianey Garcia

Saini is the Statewide Community Organizer with Voices of Community Activists and Leaders – New York (VOCAL-NY).

García is an LGBTQ Justice Project Organizer at Make the Road New York. Both are members of the Access to Condoms Coalition, which is composed of over 100 organizations, including organizations that together serve the majority of New York's trafficking victims.

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Time for City to Overhaul Drug Strategy


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Council Member Corey Johnson (photo: William Alatriste)


On Thursday, April 16, City Council Member Corey Johnson introduced legislation to create an Office of Drug Strategy to oversee New York City's myriad and sometimes contradictory approaches to the problems associated with drug use. This new office could play an important role in coordinating dozens of agencies that deal with relevant issues. Moreover, it could move the city away from a primarily punitive approach to drugs and toward one based on research and best practices - increasing the health and safety of individuals and communities while saving the city money.

Despite decades of a relentless War on Drugs, drugs are cheaper, of higher quality, and more easily available than ever. While concerted police action has helped remove much of the most visible drug dealing, drugs are widely available to anyone who wants them. Surveys indicate that high school students have almost universal access to drugs – though most choose not to use them. And relying on police and prisons to try to stomp out drug use has been a failure for people who use drugs and their families.

In recent years deaths from heroin overdoses have increased by 100%, killing more people than homicides. Too often people experiencing drug use problems are given few options. Existing voluntary drug treatment programs are overwhelmed by demand. Even those with good insurance have difficulty accessing high quality care. And stigma is widespread, in part because we continue to criminalize people who use drugs

The criminalization of drug users and dealers has fallen primarily on communities of color. In New York State 90 percent of those incarcerated on drug charges are black and Latino; similarly, about 85 percent of those arrested or ticketed for marijuana in New York City are people of color—despite the fact the drug use rates are similar across racial groups. This suggests that drug enforcement looks different in white communities than it does in communities of color. Police claim that this is because it is low-income communities of color that request their help. But this ignores the fact that for decades these communities have also pleaded without success for the jobs and health care services that would be more effective in reducing the illegal drug trade in their neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, large-scale drug trafficking continues without interruption because almost all of the law enforcement focus is on low level street dealing. Even when a higher level dealer is arrested, it merely results in a shifting of the players with no measurable effect on the basic functioning of the illegal drug trade.

New York City has already taken important steps to change course. Stop-and-frisk policing has been curtailed. Radically fewer people are being arrested for low-level marijuana offenses after a new policy adopted by the de Blasio administration last fall (though, troublingly, people of color remain the overwhelming targets of the thousands of arrests that still happen). And the city is developing new behavioral and mental health initiatives that prioritize health and social assistance instead of incarceration for people struggling with substance use or mental illness.

Increasingly, police officials themselves are speaking out. Houston Police Chief Charles McLelland has called the War on Drugs a "miserable failure." Recent books by former Baltimore police officer turned John Jay College professor Peter Moskos and former Seattle Chief of Police Norm Stamper have outlined in detail the utter futility of controlling drugs through traditional policing.

The new New York City Office of Drug Strategy would be tasked with bringing together numerous local agencies – from the health department to the police, homeless services, welfare, and more – to assess existing approaches and develop new ones based on systematic evaluation of what works to make individuals and communities healthier and safer. The office would produce annual progress reports and work closely with an advisory board made up of public officials, academic experts, service providers, and people with personal experience of drug use.

Council Member Johnson's bill makes clear that this new office would adopt a harm reduction approach to protecting health and public safety with the goal of reducing the morbidity, mortality, and crime, as well as inequities, stemming from past or current policies. This means that part of the office's work will be to overcome the negative effects of criminalization in poor communities of color, which too often drive people away from education and opportunity and toward violence, criminality, and prison.

Individuals, families, and communities need help dealing with very real problems stemming from drug use. It's time that the city takes seriously the need for a broad range of strategies based on research and experience. We know that these harms can be addressed if we have the political will and resources. A new Office of Drug Strategy could go a long way toward generating both.

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Alex S. Vitale is Associate Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College and author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics.

Matt Curtis is Policy Director at VOCAL New York.

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New York City's Recovery Finally Starts Generating Wage Gains


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Comptroller Scott Stringer pushes a $15 minimum wage (photo: @scottmstringer)


After years of wage and family income declines since the 2008-09 recession, several signs are emerging of real wage growth in New York City, according to a new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute. The three major government economic data sets all point to fairly widespread and firmly-established wage growth beginning in 2014.

-Average private hourly earnings increased 3.3% for the six months to February 2015 vs. the same period a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is twice the annual average 1.6% gain from 2009 to 2013.

-Average private wages increased 3.4% in 2014, according to New York Labor Department wage data, compared to a 2.3% gain 2009-13. Average government wages rebounded even more, up 3.7% in 2014 compared a 1.5% annual gain 2009-13.

-While wage gains were greater for high-wage workers in 2014, low- and moderate-wage workers also saw improved wages in 2014 compared to the 2009-2013 period.

The wage trend is clearly up over the past year, but average wages for the typical New York City worker are still below where they were before the recession. Inflation-adjusted average annual wages were 2.1 percent lower in 2014 than in 2007 for private non-financial workers.

Still, the recent wage trend is decidedly moving upward. Why is this recovery finally starting to generate wage gains after so many years of stagnant or declining wages and incomes? Rising labor demand and falling unemployment are key factors.

-The city's job growth continued strong in 2014 for a fifth consecutive year with a greater share of job growth in middle- and high-wage jobs than earlier in the recovery; and

-Unemployment fell more sharply in 2014 than in prior years.

Employers responded by raising wages in many sectors of the local economy. In addition, policy choices played an important role.

-Two state minimum wage increases have lifted the wage floor by 20 percent since 2013;

-2014 saw a flurry of union contract settlements raising wages for over 300,000 workers who had labored for several years under expired contracts. Also, 70,000 1199 SEIU members working at private hospitals received 3 percent wage increases, as did 30,000 32BJ SEIU building service workers in residential buildings.

As long as the economy continues its moderate growth pace, average wages should continue to rise 2 to 4 percent a year over the next few years. Most of the settled City labor contracts will provide annual increases through 2017 or 2018.

It is very welcome that the recovery is finally generating real wage gains in New York City. Strong job growth and lower unemployment should create tight enough labor market conditions so that employers need to offer workers better pay. These long overdue wage gains will help hundreds of thousands of families cope with the city's high living costs and will contribute to the sustainability of the recovery by pumping additional consumer spending into neighborhoods across the city. This will help extend the current expansion which is the first one in New York City since the 1960s that has not relied heavily on Wall Street.

Yet, further changes are needed so that prosperity is more broadly shared. Wage gains have been greatest for those who are already better-compensated. Public and private policies need to ensure better results for those lower down the wage spectrum.

Forty-two percent of families, encompassing 2.7 million New Yorkers, have incomes below the level necessary to provide for basic family needs.* Eighty-three percent of the families below the self-sufficiency standard have one or more workers. Clearly, many workers just are not making wages adequate to sustain their families without having to turn to government for assistance. Government assistance is essential and should be available to aid families in need. But, wages for hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers continue to fall short in allowing them to provide for their families.

Additional policy actions will be needed to make sure that lower-wage workers see meaningful wage gains. For example, the sector that pays the lowest average wages is Social Assistance, largely comprised of nonprofit organizations providing social services under contract to government. City government has a responsibility to fund wage increases in the Social Assistance sector where half of the workforce that is predominantly women of color earn less than $15 an hour.

In addition, Albany should follow the lead of a growing number of other states that are raising minimum wages above $10 an hour. A target of $15 an hour may seem like a lot compared to current minimum wage levels ($7.25 federal, $8.75 New York State). On an annual basis $15 an hour comes to about $31,000—roughly the supplemental poverty measure for a 4-person family as estimated by the City's poverty research office, the Center for Economic Opportunity.

For wage gains to continue, it is important that the Federal Reserve keep interest rates low enough to not choke off economic growth, and with it, the long-delayed promise of rising living standards for millions of New Yorkers.

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by James Parrott, Fiscal Policy Institute, Deputy Director and Chief Economist

*Diana M. Pearce, Overlooked and Undercounted, The Struggle to Make Ends Meet in New York City, Prepared for the Women's Center for Education and Career Advancement with support from The United Way of New York City, The New York Community Trust, and City Harvest, December 2014. Seventy-eight percent of households with inadequate incomes are headed by a person of color.

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Fight for 15: Raising the Minimum Wage Would Drastically Reduce Poverty


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The author amid a sea of fellow ralliers


 

 

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Michelle Jackson is the Associate Director & General Counsel for the Human Services Council

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Brooklyn Box Browns


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Civil War commemoration in Brooklyn (photo: The Fourteenth Brooklyn Society)


Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Confederacy's final, April 9, 1865 surrender at Appomattox—an occasstion that will be celebrated widely. It also provides a reminder of some of the darkest days in New York City's history, where at the time of that surrenden, the scars had not yet healed from the bloodshed of two years prior.

The Draft Riots of July 1863 indeed remain one of the most frightening episodes in the city's history. The Brooklyn Daily Times called the first night a "demoniac Carnival of Riot, Murder and Conflagration." And three more days of terror were yet to come.

Those of us who teach and study the era typically see it as the low point in the city's Irish-black relations. Yet the narrative becomes slightly more upbeat when viewed from across the East River, in Brooklyn.

The basic storyline of the riots remains that struggling immigrants from the Emerald Isle had every right to be angry that rich New Yorkers, many of whom profited handsomely from the war, could buy their way out of the draft (for $300). But when the mobs burned down the Colored Orphanage Asylum in Midtown, the deranged contempt many Irish held toward black people was plainly evident.

Yet while madness prevailed in Manhattan, the city of Brooklyn was comparatively a citadel of order. A mix of federal troops, police (many of them Irish), and armed militias guarded armories in Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights. And while Greenpoint police placed a cannon in front of the ferry terminal, German immigrants made Turner Hall in Williamsburg a safe haven for all blacks seeking refuge from violence.

Both of Brooklyn's daily papers, the Daily Eagle and the Daily Times, provided a steady stream of reports about how the conflict played out on both sides of the river. But as seen in the description quoted above, the Times was the far more passionate observer.

That difference stemmed from the allegiances of the two papers. The Eagle was an organ of the Copperhead (or Peace) Democrats, which supported the Confederacy; the Times was aligned with the War Democrats, who advocated defeat of the Confederate insurrection but did not oppose slavery.
Brooklyn, though a haven for abolitionists led by Henry Ward Beecher, was run by a War Democrat, Mayor Martin Kalbfleisch, a chemical magnate from Bushwick. As mayor during the Riots, Kalbfleisch sought to organize Brooklyn's defenses; as congressman representing the area two years later, he voted against the 13th Amendment. Just like Manhattan, Brooklyn's economic ties to the South shaped its politics.

As the Riots broke out, the Eagle squarely blamed Lincoln and the draft law, while the Times put the onus on the "rebel-sympathizing element" in the city, which whipped the city's working class into a frenzy of "domestic revolution." Copperhead politicians and newspapers, the Times insisted, were responsible for igniting the fire in Manhattan.

For good reason, Brooklyn's black population also felt threatened. There were accounts of three black men being thrown into the East River in Greenpoint, by culprits "wild with enthusiasm." It's not clear whether the assailants were Irish, but we can tell that some were working-class (wearing "red flannel shirts and overalls") while others a notch above ("dressed in full suits"). Wherever black people lived, whether on Warren Street in Gowanus or in Weeksville, rumors of potential mob violence abounded.
Amidst the hysteria, many took bold action—and the Times' accounts show that even during this most senseless outbreak of racial conflagration, some members of the city's Irish community stood tall.

In a short entry headlined as a "Praiseworthy Case," the paper reported that an "Irishman" in Greenpoint came upon a group of "wicked and malicious boys" beating and stoning a black teenager. The Irishman rescued the young man, carrying him away to safety "while the boys hooted at (the Irishman) and yelled after him that he would suffer" for his actions.

Even more dramatic is the entry dubbed "More Box Browns." In his new book, Gateway to Freedom: A Hidden History of the Underground Railroad, Eric Foner tells the story of Henry "Box" Brown, who traveled in a wooden crate from Virginia to Philadelphia in 1849.

On July 17, 1863, recapping the third day of the Draft Riots, the Daily Times reported a story about the original Brown's local successors:

We understand that two inoffensive colored men were yesterday enabled by the following stratagem to flee from the inhospitable streets of New York and arrive safely in Williamsburgh: One was stowed in a molasses hogshead and the other in a large box—both marked 'this side up with care'—in which manner they were carefully and promptly forwarded by express. We further learn that these two men are indebted to the connivance of two young Irish women, fellow servants, for originating and consummating this clever trick. This ruse has before this been successfully adopted by the victims of slavery, but who would have supposed that innocent and unoffending creatures would be forced to thus flee from a great metropolis, in which perhaps they were born, to avoid death at the hands of mob? After all, does the world move?

A pair of anecdotes about valor amidst savagery by no means rewrites the story of the Irish role in the Draft Riots, nor does it alter the fact that both Manhattan and Brooklyn were dangerous places for African Americans during the Civil War era. Indeed, as we commemorate the end of the Confederacy, Foner's book reminds us that there was plenty of pro-South sentiment here in the North's leading city.

But these tales of courage and sacrifice on the part of everyday Irish men and women nonetheless serve as a reminder that even during the worst moments of senseless racial antagonism, humanity does survive.

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Theodore Hamm (@HammerDaily) is chair of journalism and new media studies at St. Joseph's College in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

Higher Marks for Scandal-ridden Legislature Decoded


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The New York State Senate (photo via nysenate.gov)


Here's a fact for Ripley's Believe It Or Not: we New Yorkers seem to be feeling a lot better about our state legislature lately. Responding to a Mid-march Sienna survey, 41% of those polled expressed a "favorable opinion" of the Assembly, while 46% were unfavorable. A slightly larger proportion, 44%, expressed a favorable view the Senate, with 46% unfavorable. The gap between those favorable and those not (with those undecided excluded) was within the +/- 3.5% range of error for the poll. Startlingly, this means that a plurality of the state's registered voters may actually hold a positive view of our legislature.

One comparison brings the point home. Public approval of the way the U.S. Congress is doing its job over the past five years as measured by the Gallup poll has ranged between a low of 9% (March, 2013) and a high of 24% (May, 2011). Though the recent trend has been generally upward from the 2013 low point, the March, 2015 level of public approval of Congress's performance was 18%, less than half that for either of New York's legislative houses in the same month.

The highest recent levels of public approval of Congress, which of course has had its own massive troubles with non-performance and corruption, are below the lowest for the New York State Assembly (25%, recorded in August of 2010). The lowest recent approval for the New York Senate (20%) was recorded in August of 2009. Remember 2009? It was the chaotic year in which the Democrats, newly elected to the Senate majority, failed miserably when offered an opportunity to govern. The party's organization of the Senate was blocked by the notorious "Gang of Four" dissident Democrat members, three of whom later went to jail.

It is a massive understatement to note that corruption and ethical lapses in the legislature have not ceased being problems in New York over the past half-decade, the time during which approval of the state legislature has increased. According to Citizens Union's "Corruption Tracker," four legislators left office for criminal or ethical reasons in the 2009-2010 legislative session, three during 2011–2012, and eight during 2013-2014. Currently, four more are facing criminal charges: Republican Senate Deputy Majority Leader Tom Libous, former Democratic Senate Leader John Sampson, Democratic Assemblymember William Scarborough and, most recently and dramatically, former Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

Increased approval for the legislature side-by-side with persistent corruption: What's going on here? One possible (sad) answer is that corruption is accepted by most New Yorkers as part of our state's political DNA. Preeminent federalism scholar Dan Elazar argued that the Empire State is among those with an "individualistic political culture." Like our neighbors in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, he thought that we in New York routinely expect our elected officials and others with a foothold in the system to advance their own interests, not some broader public interest. With politics already seen to be about personal gain, it is only a short step to tolerating corruption as a routine part of the game.

New York's feared ungovernability was a framing theme of the 2010 race for governor. Years of failing to meet the April 1 adoption deadline made late budgets a metaphor for state government dysfunction. Governor Andrew Cuomo highlighted the passage of on-time budgets in every year of his first term as evidence of bi-partisan executive-legislative collaboration that had, he said, moved the state from "dysfunction and chaos" to "government that is working."

Because the Assembly missed the mark by about three hours, there has been some caviling about whether the state budget was passed timely again this year. The man in the street would certainly say 'yes, it was.' A second explanation of the legislature's recently healthier poll scores may therefore be that they reflect New Yorkers' reasonable view that the institution lately has actually been performing better. The governor takes the credit but, as John Kennedy once said, "A rising tide lifts all boats."

Earlier this year, stung by the Silver indictment just a day after he had barely mentioned political reform in his State of the State address, Governor Cuomo built an ethics package into his budget, and pledged to give its adoption priority even over achieving timely passage for a fifth year in a row. In reaction, when surveyed by Sienna in February of 2015, New Yorkers said that corruption remained a serious problem, but gave priority to passing an on-time budget over ethics reforms. This highlights a third point. Citizens are making a distinction between good institutional performance and bad individual behavior, and saying that, on balance, achieving the former trumps punishing the later.

Contrary to his initial hard line, in the final budget negotiations Governor Cuomo accepted compromises on his ethics package while again achieving budget timeliness. In reaction, some argued critically that substance was more important than process. They said that the governor traded away too much this year on ethics and a number of other issues to achieve a budget by the April beginning of the fiscal year. This undervalues the long-term importance of demonstrating that government can work, and especially that legislatures can work, in a time of increased skepticism about the viability of representative democracy in New York and across the country.

Albert Einstein once famously defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." New York has been incrementally tightening regulations and increasing sanctions to reduce corruption in government for generations, to little apparent effect. Perhaps we should shift our focus to the front end of the process, to altering the expectations of the voters and reforming our deeply flawed electoral process (read: more competition, public financing of elections), and consequently the values and behavior of those we elect.

In our book Tales From the Sausage Factory, my co-author former Brooklyn Assemblymember Dan Feldman reports remembering thinking, when he first entered the historic chamber, "I knew that no one could take my job away from me for the next two years unless I committed a felony, and I knew I was not going to commit one." Electing 213 legislators to the Assembly and Senate with this predisposition would likely solve our corruption problem once and for all, while also assuring an even better functioning legislature.

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Gerald Benjamin is Director, Center for Research Regional Education and Outreach (CRREO) - SUNY New Paltz

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Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? E-mail editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Property Tax Reform Now!


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Assemblymember Quart (left), the author (photo: @DanQuartNY)


New York City's property tax system has been broken for years. It's byzantine at best, full of incomprehensible classifications and a mess of exemptions and abatements intended to correct earlier mistakes. The entire system is long overdue for reform.

The last major change to New York City's property tax system was the introduction of the Cooperative and Condominium Tax Abatement in 1996. Apartment buildings are assessed differently than single-family homes, subjecting homeowners in co-op and condo buildings to much higher tax burdens than those in single family homes. This tax break was designed to compensate for that inequity.

The abatement was intended to be a stopgap measure until the city created a comprehensive plan to solve inequities in the property tax system. In the intervening 18 years, the State Legislature has extended this abatement five times, each time tasking the Mayor's Office with devising a permanent solution to this problem. So far, no Mayor has done so.

This abatement is critical for many co-op and condo owners. Without it, their property taxes would increase substantially and immediately, leaving them suddenly unable to afford the apartments they have called home for many years.

What's more, this tax abatement preserves basic principles of fairness in our property tax system. There is simply no reason to tax homeowners who live in denser, more efficient, more environmentally sustainable apartment buildings at a higher rate than homeowners who live in detached houses.

While the entire property tax system still needs reform, it's time to stop pretending that this crucial tax abatement is a stopgap. After five renewals, it's clear that taxpayers and legislators alike believe in its importance. However, as long as the abatement remains temporary, it's a potential pawn in the inescapable political horsetrading in Albany. As long as it is temporary, co-op and condo owners are in peril.

It is time to permanently enshrine this abatement in our laws. Now that the budget is settled, I will be leading the charge to do just that, making this tax relief permanent and doing the right thing for co-op and condo owners across the city.

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East Side Assemblymember Dan Quart is the author of a white paper detailing inequities in the NYC property tax system.

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Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? E-mail editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Sunset Park Redevelopment Proposal Misses the Mark


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On a recent Sunday afternoon, an impressive array of leaders from Sunset Park's tenant advocacy, environmental justice, small business, and community-based institutions, and their citywide allies gathered to announce their participation in a coalition to monitor and raise concerns about Jamestown Properties' $1 billion dollar redevelopment and rezoning proposal for Industry City.

Of key concern is the incongruity of the Industry City proposal for a hotel, university facility, and retail in one of the city's few remaining industrial, working waterfront neighborhoods. In addition to an extensive industrial building stock, Sunset Park has an inter-modal infrastructure and is anchored by two massive city-owned facilities - South Brooklyn Marine Terminal and Brooklyn Army Terminal. As one of the speakers noted, the last time a New York City waterfront neighborhood faced a similar scaled development proposal was in 2005, when Greenpoint-Williamsburg was rezoned with devastating consequences for the area's Latino community.

Sunset Park is a vibrant, working class, immigrant Latino-Asian neighborhood with a much-lauded walk to work population. Recent media accounts, however, describe a derelict, moribund, and gritty industrial waterfront. This skewed representation is similar to the New York Times coverage of Queens's pan-Latino, immigrant Roosevelt Avenue as a "corridor of vice" in order to rationalize a controversial proposal for an expanded Business Improvement District. These characterizations help prime a neighborhood for transformative private sector interventions such as that proposed by Jamestown Properties and their partners.

There is no question that deindustrialization and private and public disinvestment have taken a heavy toll on Sunset Park, but some businesses – not just storage and warehousing – have long co-existed in a manufacturing-maritime ecosystem. These include garment cutters, sewing subcontractors, furniture makers, auto repair shops, construction material suppliers, moving companies, and food manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributers. They may not be part of Jamestown Properties' vision of an artisanal and hip innovation-maker economy but these small businesses are an important part of Sunset Park's local economy and immigrant employment base.

In 2010, I met with two Chinese garment contractors who relocated their factories from Manhattan Chinatown to 39th Street in Sunset Park due to rising rents and real estate instability. One produced evening gowns for a Midtown Garment Center manufacturer and he was optimistic about the future since he had secured an affordable space for his business. A short three years later, the building 353 Fashion Inc. occupied was sold to a real estate investment company that has recently obtained a Department of Buildings permit to demolish the 7 story building. According to my review of the NYS Department of Labor Apparel Industry Taskforce data, the number of garment contractors at Industry City was halved from 39 to 20 in the year, following Jamestown Properties' acquisition of a 49.9% ownership share.

This past August, I met with a few Bush Terminal tenants including the owner of a furniture and cabinet manufacturer, Dean & Silva, who were concerned about their tenancy amid a growing buzz about transformative waterfront redevelopment. Given the spectacular views of the Upper New York Bay and the drumbeat that NYC's manufacturing future is premised on an innovation economy, these businesses may not be deemed the "highest and best" uses for Sunset Park's waterfront.

The Industry City proposal claims to generate 20,000 jobs but there is little detail to substantiate this projection. So far, the proposal and design renderings focus on the proposed hotel, retail streetscape, and bicycle path. What we do know about job creation in the innovation economy is based on a 2013 Pratt study of the Brooklyn Navy Yard which found that 60% of Navy Yard tenants employ fewer than five employees. Given the realities of modern manufacturing that innovators typically require small spaces and hire few employees, this leads one to wonder whether most of the projected jobs for Sunset Park residents will be generated by the planned hotel and expanded retail.

On a recent tour of the Brooklyn Army Terminal, the guide lamented the threat posed by "residential creep" in industrial districts but the immediate concern for Sunset Park's waterfront may be more appropriately described as "retail creep." Several years ago, then Federal Building #2 designated developer, Times Equities Inc., was unabashed in naming their proposed project: Sunset Marketplace. While the 2008 financial crisis doomed this project, the current owner of Federal Building #2 (renamed Liberty View Industrial Plaza) just announced that a Bed Bath and Beyond will lease more than 100,000 square feet for four of its retail outlets.

The threat of displacement due to rising property values is real not only for industrial businesses but also for the sizable residential population in Sunset Park's manufacturing zoned area. Grandfathered by the 1961 Zoning Resolution, Sunset Park's waterfront bounded by 65th and 15th Streets, 3rd Avenue, and the Upper New York Bay represents four census tracts which according to the most recent 2013 American Community Survey includes about 10,000 residents. Living adjacent to the Gowanus Expressway and the industrial waterfront, this population has been on the frontline of neighborhood environmental justice struggles. Now, they face another type of threat. Among this population, 66% are Latino and a third have incomes below the poverty line. The educational attainment level for an overwhelming majority (63%) of the adults is completion of high school at most. These are families at imminent risk of displacement.

Community stakeholders are right to raise concerns about Williamsburg in part because the city largely dismissed the Greenpoint-Williamsburg 197a plan in its 2005 rezoning of the industrial waterfront. After a 13-year planning process, Sunset Park's 197a, which focuses on protecting the manufacturing and maritime waterfront, was adopted by the New York City Council in 2009. That same year, NYC EDC designated Sunset Park a "sustainable urban industrial district" in its Sunset Park Waterfront Vision Plan.

UPROSE also recently completed a NYS Brownfield Opportunity Areas planning process which engaged community residents, small business owners, and local non-profit organizations in developing a plan for the remediation and redevelopment of waterfront sites. All three plans emphasize shared goals to protect and grow industrial employment, promote green manufacturing and climate resiliency, and increase the efficient movement of goods.

Along with UPROSE, organizations represented at the recent press event include Neighbors Helping Neighbors, Trinity Lutheran Church, So.Biz, Working Families, Association of Neighborhood and Housing Developers, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, SEIU 32BJ, Teamsters Local 812, Pratt Center for Community Development, and ALIGN. It is a broad coalition with important demands.

Recent news that Mayor de Blasio is considering a ban on hotels as an "as of right" development in light manufacturing zones is a small but positive step towards protecting Sunset Park's industrial waterfront. We need all our elected officials to affirm Sunset Park as a working waterfront, to honor the years of hard work and good faith in community planning, and to advance developments that truly support a sustainable industrial district that is job intensive for local residents.

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Tarry Hum is a professor at The City University of New York (CUNY) and author of Making a Global Immigrant Neighborhood. On Twitter @TarryHum.

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Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? E-mail editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.



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