Members of the City Council can say goodbye to their "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Hanukkah" holiday greetings in local media. Under new rules approved by the City Council at its stated meeting on Thursday, members will no longer be able to give well wishes in the local media at the taxpayer's expense, which some groups contend only boosts a member's visibility and serves no public purpose.
The council also approved a resolution that opposes new regulations by the Bush administration that place income restrictions on a children's health insurance program. It also approved an extension of a housing rehabilitation program.
The new advertising restrictions are in response to a report by Citizens Union, a good government group and sister organization to Gotham Gazette's publisher - the Citizens Union Foundation. The report, released last month, revealed members of the City Council spent more than $780,000 on advertisements from 2002 to 2006.
The group took issue with the ads because they are paid for with taxpayer dollars and are primarily congratulatory and political in nature. Some said the ads could boost members' political prospects, upping their chances for a re-election bid or for higher office by enhancing their visibility.
The day the report was released, Council Speaker Christine Quinn said she would propose changes to prevent the use of taxpayer funds to purchase ads that served no public purpose.
The revised rules (Reso. 1168) prohibit members from buying ads in local media that merely wish constituents a happy holiday or are entirely congratulatory - which comprised the bulk of advertisements examined in the Citizens Union report. The new rules also ban advertisements in organizational newsletters, journals or bulletins, which some contend could persuade that group or constituency to support a certain council member.
The only advertisements council members will be allowed to take out will be announcements for town hall meetings or for government-sponsored events. Quinn said she expected all members to comply with the new regulations, adding that a copy of the ad or a detailed description along with its invoice would be needed to receive public funding.
"The issue that was raised was not that the council members were not following the rules," said Quinn. "The issue was there were no rules."
Prior to the rule chance, council members had paid for the advertisements out of their individual budgets, which top approximately $300,000 annually. The council approved the change by a vote of 48 to 1, with Councilmember Helen Foster dissenting. According to the Citizens Union report, however, Foster did not spend any money on ads.
Foster said she did not support the proposal, because she believes the council should proactively legislate, not reactively. Even if she did decide to place an ad, Foster said she did not want it subject to approval from the speaker's office.
"I was elected by a community and the part of the legislation that it requires approval by the speakers designee has me as an elected answering to a (employee) of the speaker," said Foster.
The council also approved extending an affordable housing program that provides tax breaks for property owners in exchange for building improvements. The program was set to expire this year and has now been extended to 2011.
The bills (Intro 525) and (Intro 526), were approved by a vote of 48 to 0, with Councilmember Gale Brewer abstaining.
Brewer said she abstained because the program, though improved, still harbored several loopholes. Among them, she said, some residents could lose their rent stabilization if the affordable housing program was not renewed at their building. Some of these loopholes, Brewer added, need to be closed in Albany.
Landlords can receive the tax benefit if they make improvements such as the installation or replacement of heating, plumbing or roofing systems, wiring, windows and elevators.
When the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decided to turn down New York State's application to expand a popular child health insurance program, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, along with the leaders of Maryland, Illinois and Washington, decided to file a lawsuit.
Thanks to new restrictions by the federal government, states cannot expand children's insurance programs, known here as Child Health Plus, unless they can enroll 95 percent of children below 200 percent of the poverty line. That high level, officials in New York say, is nearly impossible to achieve.
The state was attempting to expand its program eligibility to children 400 percent of the poverty line or below. For a family of four, that is an annual income of $83,000.
In order for Quinn to file an amicus brief in support of the state's actions, the City Council must approve a resolution. The council unanimously approved the resolution, (Reso. 1151) by a vote of 49 to 0.
The council also approved the inclusion of a Long Island City business within a state Empire Zone - an area that can receive tax breaks and incentives -that is two miles away. The bill (Intro 626) was approved 49 to 0.
The business, Bimmy's LLC, is an airport food supply company, and it will be required to create jobs to receive state approval.
The council voted 49 to 0 to consolidate the offices of Tax Appeals Tribunal and the Tax Commission, creating the Office of Administrative Tax Appeals.
The bill (Intro 597-A) will better reflect the body's independence from the Department of Finance, city officials said.
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With every powerful rainfall, gallons of sewage can overflow into the city's waterways, threatening its ecological balance. Councilmember James Gennaro, chairman of the City Council's Environmental Protection Committee, would like to change that.
Last month, the councilmember introduced three bills that strive to naturally prevent pollutants from entering the city's waterways.
When more than one-tenth of an inch of rain falls in the city, the stormwater system, 60 percent of which is connected to the sewer system, can overflow. As a result, sewage spills into the New York harbor, contaminating waterways and making surrounding areas unsafe for recreational activities.
Some estimates contend as much as 27 billion gallons of raw sewage and polluted stormwater discharge into the New York harbor every year.
Advocates, like the coalition group Storm Water Infrastructure Matters, have long called for a sewer system overhaul to protect and preserve the city's waterways. Cost estimates for such an expansive project, such as increasing the number of the city's underground sewage storage tanks, are significant and a complete renovation is not currently on the city's agenda. Though the city's Department of Environmental Protection is enhancing its natural stormwater collection system on Staten Island.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030 also addresses stormwater management and water quality by aiming to keep stormwater out of the city's already strained system naturally.
Gennaro, though, has introduced legislation (Intro 630) calling for the city to develop and implement a detailed sustainable stormwater management plan, which would include environmentally friendly development practices specific to every waterway.
"We have to continue with common sense solutions, and we can't ignore the role Mother Nature would play," said Gennaro at a press conference on the City Hall steps. "It is critical to create legislation that will succeed the Bloomberg administration and my tenure as chairman of the (Environmental Protection) Committee."
Over the last century, Gennaro said the city has lost 86 percent of its wetlands throughout the New York harbor area from pollution, in part due to the combined sewer system.
Under the legislation, development in the city would use green technology, including green roofs, permeable pavement, rain gardens and swales, to keep stormwater from entering the system. The plan would look at all of the city's waterways and address specific solutions for each. If the legislation were approved, the city would have to draft a plan and submit it to the City Council by next spring.
Gennaro has also proposed legislation (Intro 629) that would require any capital projects done by the city to minimize its impact on the city's stormwater infrastructure by incorporating green technologies.
With every new project or development, open space and naturally permeable surfaces disappear. Incorporating green technology into the project now could offset the environmental impact later. Under the legislation, the city's Department of Environmental Protection would set the requirements, which could include green roofs and rain gardens.
In the meantime, Gennaro has also proposed a bill (Intro 628) to require tree plantings be done to best address stormwater absorption. A million trees are slated for plating throughout the city, according to Bloomberg's PlaNYC. With that amount, the councilmember said, a significant amount of stormwater could be kept out of the system.
"Currently there are 460 outfalls, by some estimates, in all five boroughs that discharge raw sewage and rain," said Larry Levine of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "About a third of all of the public access points to the waterfront around the city are within three city blocks (of the outfalls). This is problem that affects all of us here in New York."
Advocates claim as the city continues to develop its waterfronts, keeping a clean environment there is increasingly important.Â
When NARAL Pro-Choice America applied to Verizon Wireless for a code so it could send text messages to Verizon subscribers who wanted to receive them, the organization never expected that the wireless provider would deny its request. AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, which share almost the entire U.S. market with Verizon, had shown no hesitation signing NARAL up for the five-digit "short code."
Unexpectedly, though, Verizon rejected NARAL's application. In its response, the company said its decision was in accordance with its policy to refuse messages it deemed "controversial or unsavory to any of our users."
Following a New York Times article and a public outcry, Verizon rescinded its rejection. But the fact that Verizon can reject or block politically controversial messages, whether or not it does, left many people feeling outraged.
On October 17, New York State Assemblymember Richard Brodsky convened a hearing to get the facts from NARAL and Verizon and to consider the issue of net neutrality, which would prevent Verizon and other service providers from withholding service based on the content of messages.
Net neutrality is the principle of non-discrimination on communications networks, especially the Internet, but also phone or mobile wireless networks. Proponents of net neutrality say the networks, no matter who owns them, should carry our messages regardless of their content or who is providing that content. Current law permits Internet and mobile wireless service providers to decide what content they carry, the way a cable television provider chooses which channels it can offer. This applies not only to the kind of short message code for which NARAL applied, but also to Web sites and even e-mails.
Phone companies like Verizon want the law to stay this way so they can charge a toll for some Web sites or messages to get through first -- or to get through at all. The current situation also grants them the power to censor political messages or to block content provided by their competitors: Because it is a private network, constitutional protections like free speech do not apply. This is why net neutrality is sometimes called the first amendment of the Internet.
Brodsky has introduced a bill, the Omnibus Telecommunications Reform Act of 2007, that would completely overhaul the way the state's telecommunications systems are regulated, promote the development of more high-speed Internet infrastructure and foster net neutrality. The hearing of the Assembly's Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, held in a pleasant but windowless hearing room at 250 Broadway, was an opportunity to consider additional strategies for net neutrality and to hold Verizon to account for its censorship of NARAL.
"Those of us at NARAL were stunned, frightened and appalled to discover that current law would permit such an offensive and ominous incident to happen," Kelli Conlin, president of NARAL Pro-Choice New York, told the State Assembly.
Verizon's defense was that it had made a mistake. Since then, the company says it has updated its policy to be "content neutral" so that something similar will not happen again. Representatives promised that the company does not block content.
But the committee members were skeptical.
Brodsky pointed to language in Verizon's own Acceptable Use Policy for Internet service, in which the company reserves the right to terminate service if a person's use of it is "objectionable for any reason." Verizon also puts restrictions on speech that it deems indecent or racist -- speech that in other settings would be constitutionally protected.
Assemblymember Daniel O'Donnell wondered who at Verizon made the decision to censor NARAL. Company representatives deflected the question, but O'Donnell persisted, making clear that without net neutrality or some application of the first amendment to the company's networks, an anonymous person at Verizon becomes the arbiter of free speech.
Verizon representatives conceded they would continue to put limits on communication. Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh wondered what the company would do if another applicant for a short code was so unpopular with Verizon customers that granting it access would hurt the bottom line. In that situation, Monica Azare, a Verizon New York senior vice president, said, "We have an obligation to do what is most prudent and in the best interest of all of the shareholders. And we do have an obligation to be a good corporate citizen as well, but we do not have to be the moral compass of the world in making a decision like that."
Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal asked the Verizon representatives what they would do if she used her Verizon phone to urge people to boycott Verizon. "I think the suits would go into a room again and huddle," Azare said.
Ultimately, Verizon attorney Keith Clemens assured Rosenthal they would not block her messages. "That is your right to free speech," he said.
The point of the hearing, however, was that constitutional protections on speech do not extend to communication over privately owned networks. What's more, Verizon's use policy specifically says, "You may NOT use the Service... to damage the name or reputation of Verizon, its parent, affiliates and subsidiaries, or any third parties." (Verizon has reportedly followed AT&T in cutting this type of language from its policy, but it was still there one week after the hearing.)
I was at the hearing to testify along with representatives of Free Press and Consumers Union. We argued that vital communication services such as e-mail, Web sites and text messaging are the platform for political speech today and that free speech is too important to leave to the discretion of private corporations.
Telecommunications companies have a huge amount of political influence. Verizon spent nearly $10 million on lobbying in 2006. AT&T spent nearly $20 million -- well over that amount if you add in BellSouth, with which it merged in that year. The US Telecom Association, of which AT&T and Verizon are both members, spent another $20 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And that does not include the tax-free money spent on industry-funded nonprofits posing as grassroots organizations.
Given that kind of lobbying, it is surprising to see any legislators, let alone a whole dais of them, take on the phone companies. They gave Howard Simons, the representative from the Cable Telecommunications Association of New York, a similar treatment. Still, it's hard to move big bills like Brodsky's through Albany when the governor and the leader of the State Senate are not on speaking terms.
The Committee on Corporations is pondering more incremental legislation to enforce or encourage net neutrality. It is a complicated task: Because the networks cross state lines, regulating them is generally a federal issue. However, Congress has stalled in its consideration of net neutrality measures, putting pressure on state and local governments to act.
Maine recently became the first state to pass a resolution endorsing net neutrality. New York City Council Member Gale Brewer, who testified to the State Assembly, has introduced a hearing similar resolution in the New York City Council. She told the Assembly she would consider a separate resolution urging the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications to include net neutrality provisions in its negotiations with Verizon, Cablevision and Time Warner for franchises to provide cable television service to New York City.
Beyond symbolic resolutions, state or local governments can place restrictions on procurement, purchasing telecommunications services only from providers that agree to net neutrality.
State governments also have consumer protection authority, so they could require service providers to display more prominently the parts of their terms of service where they reserve the right to block content or cancel service to a customer who says something they don't like.
The hearing made clear that, as we move more and more of our political speech and civic engagement onto the Internet and other telecommunications networks, there is a pressing need to extend first amendment protections to those arenas. Otherwise, free speech could be nothing more than a premium feature on your Verizon Wireless calling plan.
Joshua Breitbart is policy director for People's Production House.
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Council Speaker Christine Quinn called an unannounced City Council meeting Tuesday morning, rushing council members into the chamber to give the state Legislature the go-ahead to approve a tax credit for small business owners.
But in so-called typical Albany fashion, the Legislature never moved to vote on the measure despite the unanimous approval of a home-rule message by the City Council. The small-business tax credit bill is just one of many pieces of legislation important to the city that has stalled upstate.
About 75 percent of firms in the city have fewer than 20 employees, and they are subject to double taxation, according to city officials. Owners of S-Corporation businesses, which have fewer than 75 stockholders and are owned by individuals who live in the United States, are taxed on their business's profits and again on their personal income.
For this reason, both the federal government and 39 state governments, including New York, offer full or partial exemptions from corporate taxes for these businesses. The city has offered a partial tax break since 1997, which the council was hoping to expand.
First proposed by Quinn in her 2006 budget response and again in the 2007 budget response, the legislation would cut $35 million from the personal income taxes of S-corporation shareholders in its first year and save shareholders an additional $18 million in fiscal year 2008, according to city officials. By 2010, taxpayers would have saved approximately $110 million.
If the legislature had approved the measure, 100,000 business owners would have been affected.
In a prepared statement, Quinn said: "These hard working people are suffering because of an unfair tax burden. Establishing the new S-Corporation tax credit will allow small businesses to grow and prosper.”
The home rule message, which enables the Legislature to move forward with issues affecting only New York City, was approved by a vote of 49 to 0. The council reportedly rushed into a meeting after it received word that the Legislature would move on the accompanying legislation.
Last week the Senate and the Assembly met for the first time since a special legislative session to address congestion pricing adjourned in July. After a quick session meant to address a number outstanding issues, like pay increases for legislators, the S-Corporation legislation remained in limbo – as did most other reforms.
In response, Quinn spokesperson Maria Alvarado said in an e-mailed statement, "The Council is pleased that the S-Corp legislation passed through the Assembly's Ways and Means Committee, and we thank Chairman (Herman) Farrell and Speaker (Sheldon) Silver for their work on the issue. We are hopeful that with the support of Senator (Frank) Padavan and Senate Majority Leader (Joe) Bruno, Albany will vote to approve this legislation before the end of the year."
The home rule message is good until the end of the year, and city officials hope the issue will reemerge in Albany, most likely in December. A spokesman for Speaker Sheldon Silver said the Assembly would take up the legislation before the end of the year.
For now, S-Corporation tax breaks will mimic myriad other measures in Albany: It will remain unresolved.
The legislature failed to pass, in addition to small business tax breaks, a number of the city's legislative priorities last week. Besides several local initiatives and several of Governor Eliot Spitzer's appointments, the legislature made little movement on any significant reform.
First, several Manhattan Assembly members have been blocking an amendment to the Hudson River Park Act that would allow the city to finalize and construct the last remaining piece of its Solid Waste Management Plan. The city needs approval to construct the recycling center on the Gansevoort peninsula near 14th Street. Building the facility, the Bloomberg administration has said, would disperse the city's garbage evenly throughout the boroughs. That measure never made it to the floor.
Reform of the Wicks Law – a state statute that requires the city to award contracts piecemeal instead of to one business – was also sidestepped last week. The law, critics say, increases cost for the city's construction contracts, because it cannot award projects in bulk.
Another issue left unresolved is the city's 421a program – a program that encourages the construction of apartments, especially affordable ones, by offering tax exemptions to developers.
According to Assemblyman Vito Lopez's office, the final amendment to the 421a legislation, which was approved in a larger legislative package earlier this year, will be taken up most likely in December. Though the legislation does not take effect until next year, the final piece outlining an agreement with the city has yet to be agreed upon. Earlier this year, residents and city officials were outraged when a large tax break was created for developer Forest City Ratner and its Atlantic Yards project.
Many attribute the lack of legislative movement in Albany to an ongoing feud between Spitzer and Senate Majority Leader Bruno. Although state and city leaders predict the Legislature will reconvene later this year, whether any of the city's priorities will be approved, or even voted on, is anyone's guess. Â
With little fanfare, Mayor Michael Bloomberg last month released the 2007 Mayor’s Management Report, or MMR. This twice-a-year, City Charter-mandated report, according to the mayor, serves “the goals of transparency and accountability, which are the hallmarks of this administration.” A review of indicators for two high-priority agencies suggests, however, that there is a disconnect between transparency and true accountability in the MMR.
A reader can learn a lot about the city and city government in the report’s 202 pages of mayoral goals, objectives and performance statistics. Take the first statistic: Fewer New Yorkers smoked in 2006 -- 17.5 percent, four percentage points lower than in 2002. Or take the last one: Only 42.9 percent of instructional hours in City University of New York senior colleges were taught by full-time faculty in 2007, compared to 48.7 percent in 2003.
Interesting, but what happened over those four years in each case? Who is accountable? Who gets credit for less smoking? Who gets credit (blame?) for dramatically increasing the use of part-time faculty at CUNY? The report raises hundreds of such provocative questions, but provides few answers.
The 2007 MMR prefers hundreds of statistics to any real analyses of management issues, such as organizational initiatives, customer relations, cost/benefit analyses, unintended consequences and shifting social/economic conditions.
The news release accompanying the MMR points to “continued success in the amount, timeliness and quality of services provided to citizens during the most recent year and over a five-year period.” The release then jumps to five pages of 64 dense statistical bullets, under six very broad headings (Public Safety to Economy and Business Affairs). This barrage of numbers may explain why the press has increasingly ignored the report or simply echoed the press release on it.
A look at how the MMR deals with education and homelessness illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of the report as currently designed. In education, Bloomberg has made dramatic changes in the city schools. He took control of the management of schools from the independent Board of Education, which oversaw a partially decentralized system, and essentially eliminated the function of 32 community school boards.
Bloomberg and schools Chancellor Joel Klein centralized management and set up a new regional district plan in 2003. In 2007 they made another substantial change. Central management has shifted from regional controls to making individual principals much more accountable for education management.
Such management shifts cry out for discussion, but all the Mayor’s Management Report provides are statistics. Interestingly, in light of the new emphasis on principal accountability, the one principal indicator in the report shows that only 53.5 percent of principals in 2007 have more than three years of experience, down from 62.5 percent in 2003.
The “performance statistics” are meant to measure how well the new education department, to quote its one-sentence mission statement, “prepares students to meet grade level standards in reading, writing and math, and prepares high school students to pass Regents exams and to meet graduation requirements.”
This rather narrow definition of education success is accompanied by 97 indicators. But, oddly enough, there are no grade level standards for reading, writing and math. There are a few aggregate statistics for grades three to eight in “English Language Arts” and math (scores are up and down over the past two years, but positive over the past year) but no results for individual grade. (A note at the end of the education section says grade level results are “subject to a reporting lag” and will be registered in later reports.)
Similarly, there are no results for Regents exams in the 2006-2007 school year. There are, however, results in two general categories for the Regents exams in school years 2002-2003 through 2005-2006: The percentage of students in graduating classes with a 65 to 100 passing score in English in the 2005-2006 school year was 62.9 percent, much lower than the 69.2 percent passing score in the 2003-2004 year. In math, 62.3 percent of the students passed score in 2005-2006, better than the 56.4 percent in 2003-2004, but lower than the 65.7 percent in 2004-2005.
In other Regents exams -– U.S. history and government, global history and science (the report apparently treats all the Regents in the various sciences together) -- results in 2005-2006 were lower than in the 2003-2004 school year. In a second category – the percentage of students in graduating classes with a 55 to 100 passing score on the same exams scores – about 80 percent of the students met the standard, more than in the 2002-2003 school year. The number of students in the 55 to 100 score category in math and English also increased over the four years.
The news is better with graduation rates. The four-year graduation rate for general education students rose from 53.4 percent in the 2002-2003 school year to 59.7 percent in 2005-2006. The percentage of students who graduated within seven years rose slightly, from 68.6 percent to 69.5 percent.
Those few indicators – by themselves -- don’t permit much of a judgment about the success of the Department of Education’s mission. And, there’s not much else of use among the 97 indicators. The role of parents, for instance, is poorly documented: Five indicators address “parent involvement,” but there are no measurements of parent satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with the schools.
The fact that parent coordinators in the schools – a Klein initiative
--fielded some 1.35 million phone calls is interesting. (There were over 14 million calls to the city’s non-emergency 311 hotline in 2007!) But were the parent calls complaints, requests for information or to ask for appointments? What do coordinators do with the calls? On another measure, what does it mean that the number of parent-teacher conferences has decreased?
The Department of Homeless Services raises different questions about management, since the bulk of its services are privately provided. Some $536 million of the department’s $735 million budget in 2007 was contracted out to 205 privately run shelter facilities for single adults and families. (Only 11 facilities are run by the city.)
According to the Mayor’s Management Report, the department “prevents homelessness and provides temporary emergency shelter for homeless people in a safe, supportive environment.” The link between mission and performance indicators is easier to document than in education.
And the statistics on prevention are sobering: In 2007, 10,165 homeless families entered the city’s shelter system, up 13 percent from 2003. The largest increase occurred in the past two years. The number of single adults entering the system in 2007 was 21,897, an increase of nearly 5 percent from 2003.
Further, the report acknowledges that the influx of new homeless families has hampered the city’s plan to place them in shelters according to their youngest child’s school address – the number of such placements actually dropped from 2006 to 2007.
The increase in homeless families has been matched in part by a rise in the number of families placed into permanent housing -- 5,654 in 2007 compared with 5,083 in 2003. But because the supply of suitable housing lags the need, the average length of stay for families in shelters increased from 303 days in 2003 to 325 days in 2007.
The performance results here clearly show that things have gotten worse. Despite that, the report offers no discussion of how earlier management initiatives did or did not affect these results. As with education, on homelessness, the administration already is on to its next initiative, in this case, “Advantage New York,” described very briefly as a “multi-faceted program, not only helping families to secure permanent housing, but also offering financial and legal counseling, savings incentives and aftercare services.”
The graduation rates and homeless shelter statistics in the Mayor’s Management Report are excellent indicators of social needs. Such information, especially with the five-year data introduced by the mayor, provides a good basis to measure performance.
But New Yorkers we cannot measure management accountability without a better connection in the MMR between strategies and outcomes, between dollars spent and results produced. The technical introduction to the 2007 MMR claims that about 25 percent of the nearly 1,000 agency performance measures “reflect final outcomes,” while “40 percent relate to timeliness, quality or efficiency.”
That might be true. But there has to be more explanation. To take one more example from the report -- the cost per day for each family in a city-funded shelter is $95, up from $84 a day in 2003. Is that an “outcome” or a measure of “quality or efficiency”? Is it a positive result?
The Independent Budget Office in its fiscal year 2006 and 2007 programmatic analyses of city budget documents showed the usefulness of matching specific program information and specific program dollars with a greater variety of performance indicators. The MMR, useful as it is in some ways, continues the disconnect between dollars and management on one hand and performance results on the other.Â
With little fanfare, Mayor Michael Bloomberg last month released the 2007 Mayor’s Management Report, or MMR. This twice-a-year, City Charter-mandated report, according to the mayor, serves “the goals of transparency and accountability, which are the hallmarks of this administration.” A review of indicators for two high-priority agencies suggests, however, that there is a disconnect between transparency and true accountability in the MMR.
A reader can learn a lot about the city and city government in the report’s 202 pages of mayoral goals, objectives and performance statistics. Take the first statistic: Fewer New Yorkers smoked in 2006 -- 17.5 percent, four percentage points lower than in 2002. Or take the last one: Only 42.9 percent of instructional hours in City University of New York senior colleges were taught by full-time faculty in 2007, compared to 48.7 percent in 2003.
Interesting, but what happened over those four years in each case? Who is accountable? Who gets credit for less smoking? Who gets credit (blame?) for dramatically increasing the use of part-time faculty at CUNY? The report raises hundreds of such provocative questions, but provides few answers.
The 2007 MMR prefers hundreds of statistics to any real analyses of management issues, such as organizational initiatives, customer relations, cost/benefit analyses, unintended consequences and shifting social/economic conditions.
The news release accompanying the MMR points to “continued success in the amount, timeliness and quality of services provided to citizens during the most recent year and over a five-year period.” The release then jumps to five pages of 64 dense statistical bullets, under six very broad headings (Public Safety to Economy and Business Affairs). This barrage of numbers may explain why the press has increasingly ignored the report or simply echoed the press release on it.
A look at how the MMR deals with education and homelessness illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of the report as currently designed. In education, Bloomberg has made dramatic changes in the city schools. He took control of the management of schools from the independent Board of Education, which oversaw a partially decentralized system, and essentially eliminated the function of 32 community school boards.
Bloomberg and schools Chancellor Joel Klein centralized management and set up a new regional district plan in 2003. In 2007 they made another substantial change. Central management has shifted from regional controls to making individual principals much more accountable for education management.
Such management shifts cry out for discussion, but all the Mayor’s Management Report provides are statistics. Interestingly, in light of the new emphasis on principal accountability, the one principal indicator in the report shows that only 53.5 percent of principals in 2007 have more than three years of experience, down from 62.5 percent in 2003.
The “performance statistics” are meant to measure how well the new education department, to quote its one-sentence mission statement, “prepares students to meet grade level standards in reading, writing and math, and prepares high school students to pass Regents exams and to meet graduation requirements.”
This rather narrow definition of education success is accompanied by 97 indicators. But, oddly enough, there are no grade level standards for reading, writing and math. There are a few aggregate statistics for grades three to eight in “English Language Arts” and math (scores are up and down over the past two years, but positive over the past year) but no results for individual grade. (A note at the end of the education section says grade level results are “subject to a reporting lag” and will be registered in later reports.)
Similarly, there are no results for Regents exams in the 2006-2007 school year. There are, however, results in two general categories for the Regents exams in school years 2002-2003 through 2005-2006: The percentage of students in graduating classes with a 65 to 100 passing score in English in the 2005-2006 school year was 62.9 percent, much lower than the 69.2 percent passing score in the 2003-2004 year. In math, 62.3 percent of the students passed score in 2005-2006, better than the 56.4 percent in 2003-2004, but lower than the 65.7 percent in 2004-2005.
In other Regents exams -– U.S. history and government, global history and science (the report apparently treats all the Regents in the various sciences together) -- results in 2005-2006 were lower than in the 2003-2004 school year. In a second category – the percentage of students in graduating classes with a 55 to 100 passing score on the same exams scores – about 80 percent of the students met the standard, more than in the 2002-2003 school year. The number of students in the 55 to 100 score category in math and English also increased over the four years.
The news is better with graduation rates. The four-year graduation rate for general education students rose from 53.4 percent in the 2002-2003 school year to 59.7 percent in 2005-2006. The percentage of students who graduated within seven years rose slightly, from 68.6 percent to 69.5 percent.
Those few indicators – by themselves -- don’t permit much of a judgment about the success of the Department of Education’s mission. And, there’s not much else of use among the 97 indicators. The role of parents, for instance, is poorly documented: Five indicators address “parent involvement,” but there are no measurements of parent satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with the schools.
The fact that parent coordinators in the schools – a Klein initiative
--fielded some 1.35 million phone calls is interesting. (There were over 14 million calls to the city’s non-emergency 311 hotline in 2007!) But were the parent calls complaints, requests for information or to ask for appointments? What do coordinators do with the calls? On another measure, what does it mean that the number of parent-teacher conferences has decreased?
The Department of Homeless Services raises different questions about management, since the bulk of its services are privately provided. Some $536 million of the department’s $735 million budget in 2007 was contracted out to 205 privately run shelter facilities for single adults and families. (Only 11 facilities are run by the city.)
According to the Mayor’s Management Report, the department “prevents homelessness and provides temporary emergency shelter for homeless people in a safe, supportive environment.” The link between mission and performance indicators is easier to document than in education.
And the statistics on prevention are sobering: In 2007, 10,165 homeless families entered the city’s shelter system, up 13 percent from 2003. The largest increase occurred in the past two years. The number of single adults entering the system in 2007 was 21,897, an increase of nearly 5 percent from 2003.
Further, the report acknowledges that the influx of new homeless families has hampered the city’s plan to place them in shelters according to their youngest child’s school address – the number of such placements actually dropped from 2006 to 2007.
The increase in homeless families has been matched in part by a rise in the number of families placed into permanent housing -- 5,654 in 2007 compared with 5,083 in 2003. But because the supply of suitable housing lags the need, the average length of stay for families in shelters increased from 303 days in 2003 to 325 days in 2007.
The performance results here clearly show that things have gotten worse. Despite that, the report offers no discussion of how earlier management initiatives did or did not affect these results. As with education, on homelessness, the administration already is on to its next initiative, in this case, “Advantage New York,” described very briefly as a “multi-faceted program, not only helping families to secure permanent housing, but also offering financial and legal counseling, savings incentives and aftercare services.”
The graduation rates and homeless shelter statistics in the Mayor’s Management Report are excellent indicators of social needs. Such information, especially with the five-year data introduced by the mayor, provides a good basis to measure performance.
But New Yorkers we cannot measure management accountability without a better connection in the MMR between strategies and outcomes, between dollars spent and results produced. The technical introduction to the 2007 MMR claims that about 25 percent of the nearly 1,000 agency performance measures “reflect final outcomes,” while “40 percent relate to timeliness, quality or efficiency.”
That might be true. But there has to be more explanation. To take one more example from the report -- the cost per day for each family in a city-funded shelter is $95, up from $84 a day in 2003. Is that an “outcome” or a measure of “quality or efficiency”? Is it a positive result?
The Independent Budget Office in its fiscal year 2006 and 2007 programmatic analyses of city budget documents showed the usefulness of matching specific program information and specific program dollars with a greater variety of performance indicators. The MMR, useful as it is in some ways, continues the disconnect between dollars and management on one hand and performance results on the other. Glenn Pasanen, who teaches political science at Lehman College, has been in charge of Gotham Gazette's finance topic page since 2001.Â
Coming to you from your councilmember's office is a barrage of holiday greetings, congratulatory remarks and well wishes sprinkled throughout your local newspaper.
But would you have known that that thumbs up for your son's or daughter's high school diploma or that "Have a Happy and Healthy New Year" appeared at the taxpayer's expense?
According to a report released today by Citizens Union - the good government group and sister organization of Citizens Union Foundation, which is Gotham Gazette's publisher - members of the City Council spent more than $780,000 on paid advertisements in local media from July 2002 through June 2006. More than half of that was racked up by just 10 members, with Michael Nelson of Brooklyn leading the pack.
The advertisements, according to Citizens Union Executive Director Dick Dadey, raise serious ethical questions about the use of public funds especially during an election year. While the City Charter prohibits the use of taxpayer money for campaign advertisements on radio, television or in the print media during an election year, several exceptions seem to allow these advertisements to slip through the campaign finance cracks.
Although the ads are not prohibited, the report argues they give already advantaged incumbents greater leverage by increasing their visibility at the taxpayer's expense. Some members, though, contend the ads are merely part of City Council's commitment to constituent service, letting New Yorkers know they are there, willing and ready to help with any issue or problem. The council advertisements are paid for out of a member's discretionary budget, which is approximately $300,000 annually, according to the Citizens Union report.
The report, which is available here, has set off a debate in City Hall over whether colloquial messages of good will to constituents should be prohibited. As a result, Council Speaker Christine Quinn with the Rules Reform Working Group is recommending to strictly limit the use of public funds for council advertisements, including banning holiday and congratulatory ads.
The records compiled by Citizen Union are from a Freedom of Information Law request, which did not take into account the content of the advertisements. Thus one member may have purchased an ad to wish his constituents happy holidays, while another may want to notify residents of a job fair or a free mammography exam.
The report takes issue with the use of advertisements for promotional or congratulatory purposes. These notices, which increase visibility, seem to get little oversight from the speaker's office and might create a questionable relationship between council members and the local media in their districts.
"Given these ads are largely self promotional and congratulatory in nature, we feel like that taxpayers' dollars should not be spent for this purpose," said Dadey. "These ads are part of an incumbent protection effort that amount to campaigning. This is less about providing a public service and more about promoting the visibility of the elected official. Many of them are considering running for higher office."
While the City Charter prohibits the use of public funds for advertising from January of an election year until the day after voters go to the polls, several vague exemptions leave room for members to spend their independent budgets on advertising that could presumably boost their visibility. The charter allows "ordinary communications between elected officials and their constituents" and "communications necessary to safeguard public health and safety."
Citizens Union is calling for full disclosure on the nature of the ads, for the council to consider legislation that would ban ads that do not have a public service and for it to guarantee that elected officials adhere to the City Charter as many 2009 citywide campaigns quickly gain momentum.
In the two most recent city elections, council members spent nearly $180,000 from January through October in 2003 on advertising, while they spent almost $165,000 in the 10-month span before the 2005 citywide elections, according to the report.
Spending on ads did not increase, though, during the 10 months prior to an election. Over the four-year period analyzed with more scrutiny, spending hovered around $196,000 a year, regardless of whether any member was up for re-election.
Advertising purchases do spike, though, surrounding celebratory occasions. In September, December and June, which coincide with back to school and primary election season, graduations and ethnic parades as well as the holiday season, council advertisements flood local newspapers and journals.
Brooklyn-based Nelson said the advertisements provide a service to constituents, from applauding residents for a job well done to supporting nonprofits or charitable organizations in his district. For example, he said, an ad in the annual Lunar New Year banquet journal of Homecrest Community Services reminds his constituents where his office is.
"I get my name recognition of course with it," said Nelson. But, he added, "Whether you vote or you don't, you read this. If you got a problem with a city agency... come in."
Nelson's ads, though, have added up and are more than double what any other member has spent. Nelson said 90 percent of his ads were directed toward public service announcements in journals. From July 2002 through June 2006, Nelson spent $82,099.
The other top five spenders doled out far less cash for advertising than Nelson. During the same four-year span, Dominic Recchia spent $50,899, James Gennaro $49,130, Joseph Addabbo $41,222 and Leroy Comrie $40,552.
While some members, like Nelson, rely on the ads to keep so-called communication up with their constituents, several current council members, including John Liu and Helen Foster, spent nothing out of public funds, while several others spent very little.
Although he may not use his City Hall discretionary funds, which he said go to pay staff, Liu said he uses approximately $4,000 to $5,000 a year from his campaign fund for advertisements in the local media. Because the ads include a member's contact information, Liu said he could see how they would fall into a public service category. But, he added, he sees the ads as more "promotional related."
"To the extent that it's making the contact information more widely available, I think there is a legitimate public purpose," sad Liu. "I treat that advertising as promotional related."
Nelson said if he wanted to attract voters, he would have sent out mailings to his primary voting block instead of putting advertisements in local media. Others agreed that their ads were not political.
"Besides conveying greetings, the main purpose of the ad is to inform people and make people aware of our district office contact information, so we can be of assistance to our constituents and deal with any issues they might have," Gennaro said.
A Gennaro staffer said the ads the office takes out are for community outreach and advocacy and not political in nature. A spokesperson for David Weprin, who fell into Citizen Union's top 10 ad spenders at $39,799 from July 2002 through June 2006, said ads taken by the councilmember show constituents that his door is always open - that alone is a public service.
"It does provide a public service in terms of letting people know who their council members are in a given area," said spokesperson Pat Barrientos, who noted the majority of Weprin's ads are greetings. "I'm sure it will refresh people's memory… They happen to open the paper and boom that's him."
Other members also hesitated to say the ads had any influence in an election year.
"I think we're more visible given the nature of our job... whether we're there in person or we're there in a journal ad," said Addabbo. "We're not saying, "Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, by the way vote for us,'" he added.
Some members, like Comrie, said taking out ads in local papers and journals helps boost the community's economy by contributing to advertising revenues and by indirectly supporting area charities. Some charitable journals, members said, receive a portion of their funding from selling advertising and contributing can be a way to give back to the community.
According to the report, some council members allege they were contacted by local media advertising departments, and in certain cases reporters, and encouraged to purchase ads. Comrie said his council office receives phone calls from advertising representatives from local media on a weekly basis. But, he added, he enjoys supporting local publications, which can often provide community coverage that New York City's dailies do not.
Liu said, "Publications can be aggressive in pursuing the business."
Several publishers said the ads from politicians are treated just like ads from any other individual or business and have become routine - one said it sends out annual reminders of the ads local legislators placed in the past. For a local politician, advertising can be a very effective way to reach out to constituents and less expensive than doing a district-wide mailing, representatives said.
Councilmember Tony Avella of Queens, who spent just over $2,000 from July 2002 through June 2006 on advertisements, introduced legislation last year that would prohibit the use of public funding on congratulatory advertisements - whether for Hanukah, Christmas or New Years. That legislation has yet to receive a hearing.
But since the members began digesting the Citizen's Union report, which was thrust into City Hall's rumor mill late last week, Quinn has proposed several rule changes. From July 2002 to June 2006, Quinn spent $12,655 on advertising.
Along with prohibiting holiday and congratulatory ads, Quinn is putting forth several internal rule changes, such as requiring ads to be informational or educational, prohibiting ads in fundraising journals and mandating a copy of an advertisement be accompanied by its invoice.
“The Citizens Union report has led to a discussion within the council on advertising spending,” said Quinn in a prepared statement. “Today, together with the Rules Reform Working Group, I am recommending several internal rules changes that will strictly limit council members use of taxpayer dollars to advertising which informs about a public service or event.”
Nelson, on the other hand, said he would not support any sort of policy change for council advertisements. If one did occur, he would follow the rules, but find another outlet, possibly his campaign fund, to continue putting his message out there.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions," said Nelson. "Here's an example I don't agree with the pejorative."
Some members, like Addabbo said, they would be happy to participate in a discussion on reforming the council's advertising rules, such as limiting the ads to staff openings and town hall meetings. But for now, he sees the ads as good will.
"It gives an opportunity for a council member to extend best wishes," said Addabbo, "because we are the City Council and we are the frontline of defense to address certain quality of life issues." By putting members' names, addresses and phone numbers in advertisements, constituents will be better informed on where to turn, members said.
"It's taxpayer dollars going right back to the taxpayer," Addabbo said.
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I had the honor of serving as the first executive director of New York City's Civilian Complaint Review Board, the city's official oversight agency for the police department, when it was set up in 1993. I have also served as director of the Advocate's Office of the New York City Police Department and as the executive director of the Philadelphia official police oversight agency.
In my experience of over two decades in the field of police-community relations, I have found that, for a civilian oversight agency to work effectively, it must be strongly and overtly independent. It must also have not only the passive cooperation of the police commissioner and mayor but their active commitment and involvement. The agency's leader and staff also must listen and learn from their critics, be they the police, the community, advocates or other stakeholders.
Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case today in New York City. New Yorkers want and need a police department that understands and accepts it is accountable to the public it serves. The Civilian Complaint Review Board must vigorously enforce that accountability. If the board cannot do that, maybe it should be dismantled.
A report recently released by the New York Civil Liberties Union, Mission Failure: Civilian Review of Policing in New York City, 1994 -- 2006, concludes that by these standards the board has failed. (See related story.) The report cites the Civilian Complaint Review Board for many specific failures ranging from failing "to establish an effective investigative operation" to "showing extreme deference to the police department."
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A quick reading of the CCRB's Status Report for 2006 reveals just how extensively its mission and operations have been either co-opted or suppressed by the police department. This annual status report by the board to the public almost always puts the police department in the best possible light while directing attention away from potentially serious issues like bias or racial profiling. However as complaints continue to rise -- 2006 saw a record 7,669 complaints, including a record number of 25,452 allegations filed -- the track record of the CCRB and Police Department become even more conspicuous and troublesome.
More than half of all complaints made to the board are dismissed without an investigation. The board substantiates only 5 percent of complaints, a figure well below the national average. Even in those cases where an officer is found to have acted properly, the penalty is light. In three quarters of the cases in 2006, the officer received the lightest penalty --- a marked increase from 2000 when less than 25 percent were punished that way. On the other hand, far fewer officers now face the stiffer penalties of suspensions or lost vacation days.
This is very disturbing. But what are even more outrageous are the defensive and dismissive responses to the report by the police department and board itself.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has made a real effort to show by his words and actions that he is serious about improving police-community relations as well as policing, especially with regard to communities of color. But he does himself and the city a major disservice by dismissing the record 89 percent increase in the number of complaints filed by the public with the CCRB since 2000 as merely a by-product of the city's 311 call-in system. The CCRB itself, in its 2006 Status Report: July to December, clearly states that the 311 system is not the sole cause of the increase. Similarly, the police commissioner contradicts his efforts and insults our intelligence by rejecting the NYCLU's report out-of-hand as nothing more than a left-wing, radical effort to smear the police.
In response to the report, the chairwoman of the Civilian Complaint Review Board told reporters that the agency has performed its mission "extraordinarily well." While not as strident as the police response, such defensive efforts by the board's less strident to deflect the Civil Liberties Union criticism are also a disservice to the Civilian Complaint Review Board and the city.
Hector W. Soto, Esq. is a senior fellow with the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP). He is currently working on a study of police-community relations in major American cities. He also teaches at the John Jay College on Criminal Justice.
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When Judge Margarita Lopez Torres launched her battle to get to the Supreme Court, it was the New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn that she was reaching for. Instead, her challenge to Brooklyn politics and to the way New York state judges are elected, wound up this week at the Supreme Court of the United States.
The challenge that she lost in local Democratic clubhouses but won in the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals was argued at the highest court in the nation, the court of last resort. The nine justices heard arguments as the state sought to overturn the lower court rulings. They will now determine whether New York's system of electing State Supreme Court candidates is unconstitutional.
Lopez Torres, currently a Kings County Surrogate Court judge, arrived at the Washington courthouse on October 3 with her husband and her impressive legal team. But just as she could never get a seat at the table of Brooklyn judicial politics, Lopez Torres also was not seated at counsel table at the U.S. Supreme Court. She sat in the general audience without anyone seeming to notice who she was or that she was the person who started the case.
More than 20 New York State judges, all of whom have been elected under the convention system, were in the audience along with legal luminaries, including Victor Kovner, president of the Fund for Modern Courts and Arthur Eisenberg of the NY Civil Liberties Union.
The most formal of all American institutions, the home of the third branch of government is not your local family or criminal court. Silence in the courtroom! No water, no electronics, no cameras. But in a nod to modernity, the restrooms, at least the women's, do have baby-changing tables. There are strict seating arrangements as to where members of the Bar, the press and the public each enter and sit. Decorum is closely monitored. Note taking is banned, except for journalists. Seat reservations are required, though some space is available for the general public.
As a Civil Court judge, and a former poverty lawyer, Lopez Torres tried for several years to rise from the lower city court to the trial level state Supreme Court. She failed for reasons she contended had nothing to do with her qualifications and everything to do with politics and her refusal to defer to Brooklyn politicians. New York's system of electing the justices, she argued, lets those politicians control the process. Rather than being chosen in a party primary, candidates for the state Supreme Court are selected by delegates to a judicial convention. Those candidates are then virtually assured of election.
Lopez Torres, along with nine co-plaintiffs who are neither judges nor candidates for judgeships, brought suit against state Board of Elections challenging the system. They have succeeded thus far in convincing a federal trial judge and a mid-level appeals court that the convention system denies would-be judges and voters equal protection under the Constitution and violates the first amendment. This is not, however, a discrimination case.
Lopez Torres is represented by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and Arnold & Porter. On the other side, the New York County Democratic Committee, the New York Republican State Committee, the Associations of New York State Supreme Court Justice and the New York attorney general appeared in the case. Amicus, supportive briefs were submitted by numerous bar associations and organizations. The Asian American Bar Association of New York and the Mid-Manhattan Branch of the NAACP filed for the Board of Elections and the American Civil Liberties
and the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund submitted briefs on Lopez Torres' side.
The arguments centered on whether the fact that a system "allows party leaders to defeat the aspirations" of a would-be candidate makes it unconstitutional. Early in the litigation, the state focused on defending against charges that the nominating process is "a fertile source of corruption ... that impedes the search for judicial excellence" and creates "a locked gate, to which those in control of the party machinery hold the key." Since then, the state has shifted from that to focusing on the rights of political organizations to control their procedures. These procedures, the state maintains, did not deny Lopez Torres access to the general electorate.
The question is whether candidates for state Supreme Court not favored by a political party's leadership have a First Amendment "associational" right to "a realistic opportunity to participate in the candidate selection process" and to free association with the voting public (and vice versa). While the current process may impose burdens on "insurgent candidates" or "disappointed office seekers," the state argues that that does not make the existing process invalid or unconstitutional.
Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, representing the state Board of Elections, argued that reasonable access to the general election process is all that is required. Under the state's current system, he said, it may be difficult, but it is not impossible for someone to get on the general election ballot without organized political support. The requirements only become unreasonable, Olson argued, if the "insurgent" simply cannot get on the ballot. But, he noted, Lopez-Torres did gain some support at one convention and could have run in a general election with another party's backing or independently.
Olson also argued that judicial hopefuls have "no constitutional entitlement to interject themselves into the decision of a political party" as to who will be their candidate in the November election. In fact, Olson, an appellate lawyer well known to the justices, submitted in a written brief that the federal courts that denounced the convention system in this case had reached a "revolutionary conclusion."
Arguing for the New York County Democratic Committee, Andrew Rossman, the most riveting of the three lawyers who addressed the court, said that voters elect delegates to the convention and vote again in the general election. There is, he maintained, no constitutional right to a primary system or even to a direct relationship between the candidate and voter.
"The availability of a contest is key," Rossman argued. The fact that voters may be apathetic about judicial elections is "not a constitutional problem." In fact, Rossman reasoned, it is the delegates who have educated themselves, and who have "knowledge and motivation that is superior to that of the general voting public.".
The New York County Democratic Committee and the New York Republican State Committee contend that Lopez Torres had the opportunity to participate but did not have a right to demand more. Addressing the argument that the Democratic Party controls the process, they pointed out in written submissions that the last two mayors of New York City were elected as Republicans.
Representing the Brennan Center and the Lopez Torres plaintiffs, Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr. stressed "the severe burdens placed on insurgents" makes it impossible for a candidate not in political favor to be elected. The fact that that has never happened, he said, leads to the inference that it cannot happen. Yet six judges had testified at the 2004 hearing that they had become candidates of the Democratic Party without the support of the leadership.
But just because a person cannot be elected does not mean the candidate did not have access to the process and the opportunity to participate or be considered, Justice David Souter interjected. He distinguished between "a right to success and a right to get a chance." Success versus access seemed to be the justice's test.
Still Schwarz described the present system as the "worst of all worlds." He relied on the opinion of the state chief judge, Judith M. Kaye (who is appointed and has never been elected), has said that the problems raised in this case are "systemic."
Olson, had the last word: "Party leaders acting like party leaders is expected. That doesn't make it unconstitutional."
The U.S. Supreme Court hears very few cases -- just 80 last year -- selecting only those it deems most important and far-reaching, or where lower court decisions have had contradictory results on an issue. Since New York's convention system for choosing Supreme Court justices is unique, observers were surprised that the case was placed on the docket. Some experts have speculated that the court might have accepted the case expressly so it could reverse the prior decision.
Unlike many cases coming before the court, this one does not have clear "liberal" or "conservative" positions. Nor are the justices' reputations or the questions they asked likely to provide any guide to how they view this case.
Some of the justices will give deference to the existing system because it was enacted by the state legislature. Douglas A. Kellner, a state election commissioner and a named defendant in this lawsuit, notes that some may liken the judicial convention delegates to delegates to presidential nominating conventions.
One New Yorker sits on the bench: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. A native of Brooklyn, she grew up just a few miles from where Judge Lopez Torres lives. She, however, was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington by President Jimmy Carter and to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton and so was never involved in the state judicial system. Knowledgeable predictions are that she will vote to affirm the finding of unconstitutionality.
At a reception following the argument Rossman, who argued in favor of the current system, was asked how he thought it went. "I thought it went very well for us," he said. "I don't know how the vote will go but I'll take any five," referring to the majority needed for either side to prevail.
Standing alone at an elevator in the courthouse, Margarita Lopez Torres did not want to make any prediction, but whatever happens, she had her day in court.
A decision could come down anytime before the summer. While no bets were being taken, this column fully expects a reversal from the Supreme Court of the United States and a finding that the present convention system is not unconstitutional.
Emily Jane Goodman is a New York State Supreme Court JusticeÂ
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