By City Hall
August 11th, 2008
The new MTA budget shortfall likely to cause consecutive fare hikes is abhorrent, but unsurprising. The authority’s financing is, after all, supposed to include much heavier subsidies from the state and city. Public financing is always part of the deal on public transportation—no system in the world is self-sustaining, and the subsidies public transit requires are ...
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Mayor Bloomberg has bucked the trend. While localities across the nation are recoiling at the challenges posed by changing demographics, New York City’s mayor has addressed them head-on with a newly announced executive order that will make all agencies in New York City accessible to the 1.8 million New Yorkers who have not yet had the chance to become conversant in ...
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You can’t power a 21st century city by using 19th century technology. Yet, Con Ed is doing just that by using outdated infrastructure as the city moves into the second decade of the 21st century. New York is facing steep competition from London and other cities to be the global financial capital, and Con Ed needs to take immediate steps to upgrade its technology. Relief ...
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To say that America’s economy is struggling would be an understatement. In the face of a crumbling housing market and spiraling energy prices, we are now mired in what can only be described as a crippling recession. As we learned last month, the recent stimulus package provided a needed financial lift, boosting the GDP by 1.9 percent. This is a modest, though encouraging ...
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The barrage of bleak economic news barreling down on us these days can be hard to digest. In June, the economy shed more than 60,000 jobs, and in May, our unemployment rate surged to 5.5 percent-the biggest one-month jump in 22 years. In many towns across America, people are shelling out $4 for both a gallon of gas and a gallon of milk. Times are tough, and more and more ...
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Connecting Poverty Reduction to Economic Development by Albert Vann
I'm convinced that we have the ability and the moral obligation to significantly reduce the number of New Yorkers who live in poverty. Int. 801, the Community Impact Report bill that was introduced at the Council's June 29 stated meeting, began as part of an earnest effort to figure out how we could translate economic development policies into poverty reduction strategies.All ...
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The case of Marty Tankleff should convince even the most hard-hearted conservatives of the need for fundamental reform in our criminal justice system. In 1988, then-17-year-old Marty was convicted of murdering his parents and sentenced to fifty years in prison. His conviction was based almost entirely on a "confession" that was obtained after hours of hostile interrogation in ...
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By City Hall
July 14th, 2008
Taking advantage of the Senate Republicans' willingness to compromise on ideology in their pursuit of remaining in power, Mayor Michael Bloomberg often successfully bent the conference to his will by sprinkling some of his ample fortune and purportedly non-partisan praise. And, sure enough, with the support of the all-powerful majority, he picked up a fair amount of victories ...
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How We Can Minimize Excessive Police Force
In the aftermath of the 2006 shooting death of an unarmed Queens youth, Sean Bell, and his two friends who were seriously injured in a hail of 50 police bullets, a group of elected officials formed the New York State Tri-Level Legislative Task Force and set out to find answers as to why incidents of excessive force at the hands of police continue to occur.Facing public outcry ...
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Protecting Prime Victims in Sub-Prime Crisis
The sub-prime mortgage crisis has left many homes empty and has given the economy a bad limp. The debacle has awoken America to the potential for various scams and complications in the mortgage process, illustrating the consequences when greed trumps sound economic policy and oversight.But this crisis has drawn attention primarily to problems associated with shady lenders or ...
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By City Hall
June 13th, 2008
Michael Bloomberg has proven adept at a lot of things as mayor, but getting his legacy projects approved has not been one of them. Sometimes that has been for the best. Sometimes not. Though his administration has unquestionably been a revolution in the performance of city government, his grand vision has produced remarkably few, if any, grand results. Shepherding the city ...
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Every year on Mother's Day I encourage sons and daughters to do something nice for their moms, like making them breakfast in bed or helping out with the household chores. But this year, I say we give moms, and all caregivers, something more lasting: peace of mind, job security and the financial stability to care for loved ones all year round. Caregivers need all the support we ...
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A new Manhattan Institute report on energy revealing that New Yorkers pay a whopping 66 percent more for electricity than the national average is a wake-up call for the city to start seriously moving toward alternative and renewable energy sources. Staten Island is answering the call with a proposal for a wind farm at the former Fresh Kills landfill. We’re ready to put a ...
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Calling on Bush to Continue His Father’s Commitment to NYPD by Daniel Donovan
On the morning of February 26, 1988, I was a law student in the night program at Fordham University working towards my dream of becoming a prosecutor. Like millions of other law-abiding New Yorkers, I awoke horrified by the news that Edward Byrne, a 22-year-old rookie police officer, was assassinated at point-blank range with five gun-shots to the head while sitting in a ...
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A month has passed since congestion pricing died in Albany, slowly suffocated by those who believed the plan would come down too hard on the outer boroughs and suburbs. There will be no $8 fee for driving into midtown Manhattan, no cameras on the streets to record license plates, no new authority to collect the money and redirect it into the deeply troubled MTA.The opponents ...
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By City Hall
April 14th, 2008
So the Council has had one of the most contentious votes in its history. The final count on the congestion pricing home rule message, 30-20, was not, strictly speaking, a close one. After all, most candidates would be thrilled to get 60 percent of the vote in an election. But by the standards of the New York City Council, with its 51 supposedly diverse and diversely minded ...
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By City Hall
April 14th, 2008
Enough is enough. The State Legislature should force the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to hand over its financial books to an outside agency for review. And city officials should take the lead in intensively lobbying Albany to make this change. Enlisting a private firm with a solid track record should be an idea given serious consideration. New Yorkers have been ...
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In the wake of the Council’s historic vote on congestion pricing, I heard Mayor Mike Bloomberg proclaim that the vote proved that “New Yorkers are overwhelmingly in support of congestion pricing.” And he said that with a straight face!The die has been cast. But there are a few things that need to be said about the Council vote—which was in fact ...
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Earlier this month, Congress, for the first time ever, examined the issue of compensation for those individuals whose health was adversely impacted by the effects of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. At a hearing I chaired along with Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-California), we looked at the economic losses of those individuals. Many people incurred such economic losses ...
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By City Hall
March 10th, 2008
By City Council Member Jessica Lappin Finding safe, dependable and affordable child care in New York City is a difficult and often heart-wrenching task. Far too many working families are forced to struggle with this issue each and every day because there simply are not enough day care slots to go around. In 2006, over 39,000 children were on Administration for Children’s ...
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By City Hall
March 10th, 2008
By Ernest LoganAcross the city, individual school budgets have been cut an average of $70,000 because of an aggressive and ill-timed $100 million cut by the Department of Education (DoE). Principals literally walked in to their offices halfway through the school year to find the DoE had pulled thousands of dollars from their school accounts. As a result, dozens of advocacy ...
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By City Hall
March 10th, 2008
By Assembly Member Lou TobaccoDisturbingly, the average starting age of individuals who become daily smokers is 14.5 years and 90 percent of smokers begin this deadly habit before the age of 18. Due to these frightful statistics, nicotine addiction must be considered a pediatric disease, a fact of which tobacco companies are well aware. That is why it is so important to ...
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By City Hall
March 10th, 2008
In December 2006, back when the ‘08 presidential candidates were all potential, City Hall editorialized in favor of having a New Yorker or two in the presidential race. Like so many others, we expected that Rudolph Giuliani and Hillary Clinton would at this point be in better shape for the nominations of their respective parties. We thought the path to an independent run ...
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By Ted Kheel
February 12th, 2008
The congestion pricing commission
endorsed Mayor Bloomberg’s plan featuring an $8 toll to drive into Manhattan. Despite the
lopsided vote, the plan still faces an uphill battle. Why? Because drivers from
outside Manhattan will pay to ease
traffic in Manhattan. Terrific — if
you live in Gramercy Park.
No wonder city and state legislators from
the boroughs ...
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By City Hall
February 12th, 2008
One has to praise the tenacity of the City Campaign Finance Board, which on January 17, after six-and-a-half years, walloped City Council Member Miguel Martinez with a $44,780 fine and an order to repay $128,786 in matching funds for violations in his 2001 campaign. Of course, one also has to acknowledge that the six-and-a-half-years the Board took to get this decision out ...
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The City of New York prides itself on being one of the most progressive employers in the nation. Yet it refuses to end a discriminatory practice that for decades has denied registered nurses equal retirement benefits.The City Administrative Code includes a list of “physically taxing” occupations that require “heavy duty and extraordinary effort.” City ...
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While some are rejoicing at the City Council’s approval of the Columbia expansion with the Manhattanville rezoning applications, many others, including myself, are astonished by the failure of the land use approval process to protect the West Harlem neighborhood, and afford the community true input on the project.Despite seven hours of public testimony on this ...
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By City Hall
January 14th, 2008
Now we start a new year, full of optimism and hope and new beginnings. Unfortunately for the members of the City Council, they must make this fresh start in a chamber that is falling apart. Literally. Chunks of paint and plaster have already peeled. Newly dislodged bits hang ever lower at several points along the ceiling. This is more than just an image problem: there is also ...
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By City Hall
January 14th, 2008
By City Council Member Vincent GentileImagine a commute free of gridlock and unscheduled delays. Now imagine the sun on your back, flat screen televisions in front of you, and a clear view of Manhattan’s world famous skyline looming before you. That prospect makes going to work early in the morning a lot more bearable. Did I mention that this trip would take only 20 ...
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Teachers looking for respect from politicians need to run for office themselves
By City Hall
January 14th, 2008
By Frank McCourtAt what point in American history did politicians hijack public education? They think nothing of barging into classrooms across the country, shunting teachers aside and reading to children who wonder who they are in the first place, wonder who is this person boring us to death with his prose drone? We all remember former Vice President Dan Quayle’s foray ...
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By City Hall
January 14th, 2008
Voltaire said that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Voltaire wasn’t trying to select a secure system of voting machines. The integrity of our election results is a clear case where “good” just isn’t “good enough.”With regards to the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), we have seen the disastrous become the enemy of the ...
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It is common sense that the city should have a strong voice in the large-scale development that takes place across the five boroughs, even when it is not a city-funded project. After all, these projects—from Eastside Access and the Second Avenue Subway, to Atlantic Yards and the World Trade Center site—will have a profound effect on our infrastructure. Yet ...
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By City Hall
December 10th, 2007
As the Assembly sponsor of A5777, The Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVV), I strongly believe that the involuntary termination of a pregnancy through violence or other premeditated act must be treated as a violent felony. Under current state law, an unborn child is not considered a legal victim of a crime. In the case of homicide, New York literally allows criminals to get ...
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By City Hall
December 10th, 2007
The presidential candidates spent their 2007 summers issuing massive policy proposals for restructuring health care and addressing the mounting problems in Iraq. By next summer, since we all already know that they will be campaigning early for 2009, the would-be mayors, public advocates, comptrollers and borough presidents should follow their lead, issuing specific plans to ...
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By City Hall
December 10th, 2007
Stop Fare Hike and Get Rid of the Port AuthorityThe number of people who use New York City subways and buses annually is approximately 2.25 billion. Compare that to people who use the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) and Metro-North and these rail lines numbers dwarf in comparison. In 2006, 76.9 million people used Metro-North, while 32.16 million people used the LIRR for a total ...
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As a proud member of what I like to call the “maturer” set—which means I was able to join the very senior center I founded in Flatbush at age 26—I can personally attest to the vital need for our older population to have a voice in government. Yet all too often, seniors find they have no one to appeal to when they aren’t getting the services they ...
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Imagine this scenario: A gunman walks into a New York public school. What is the city’s plan of action? How do we alert students, faculty and parents as quickly as possible? What tools do we already have that will help us keep children safe?It’s not hard to imagine. We’ve seen gunmen walk into schools in Colorado. And in Virginia. And most recently, an armed ...
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By City Hall
November 13th, 2007
There are a lot of surprising things about City Council stated meetings. The crumbling ceiling overhead is odd. The rote recitation of agenda items to be coupled on the general order and referred to various committees certainly strike any newcomer as a strange way to spend 15 minutes of Speaker Christine Quinn’s and the Council’s time. And scheduling ceremonials so ...
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By Neal Tepel
October 15th, 2007
Numerous studies demonstrate that investing in quality early childhood education provides large benefits to children and communities. Those youngsters who participate in pre-school education are more likely to achieve success in life. Adults that have not had the opportunity to begin schooling at an early age are more likely to commit crimes later on. With funding for ...
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Despite all of the rhetoric coming from City Hall and Chancellor Joel Klein, they have made it clear that there are no plans in the immediate future to utilize any of the additional state funding to reduce class size. As of this writing, the city has still yet to come up with a plan on how to reduce class size. Did I mention that the contracts for excellence were ...
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By City Hall
October 15th, 2007
Part of being an elected official is being open and transparent. Part of being a responsible elected official is having a sense of what to talk about, and when. Sometimes Mayor Michael Bloomberg needs to be reminded about the value of transparency, as when he took off to France and England in September and initially declined to say whom he was leaving in charge of the city. ...
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By City Hall
September 17th, 2007
Oh well. It really was a decent idea. Back in April, Gov. Eliot Spitzer signed legislation which shifted the 2008 New York presidential primary from March 4 to Feb. 5. Spitzer argued that moving the date “will help secure New York’s large and diverse population an influential voice in selecting the 2008 presidential nominees.” There was sense in our leaders ...
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Any lingering doubts about the urgency of investing in the maintenance and modernization of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) aging system should have disappeared in August when a few inches of rain brought trains across the city to a halt. The MTA has proposed a 2008 fare increase to address the problem, but, with New York City Transit carrying roughly 90 ...
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As New Yorkers live to be older and many of us baby boomers continue to age, demographics in the next 30 years point to a significant increase in our senior citizen population. With September being Healthy Aging Month, it is appropriate that we highlight the importance that senior centers play in the health of our seniors and identify ways that center services can be ...
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By City Hall
August 14th, 2007
Why does anyone care about Viola Plummer? Her comments and
employment status certainly have provided ample grist for blogs and television
segments, press conferences and newspaper articles, as people struggle to
figure out whether and where to limit speech, who is empowered to fire staff
and how much to engage in a picked fight.
A lot of the credit or blame for this ...
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If a congestion pricing plan is implemented, thousands of
New Yorkers will be forced to suffer a head-on collision with a tax that could
cost them as much as $2,000 a year. The damage would be even worse for small
businesses that employ trucks to ship their products into Manhattan,
as the suggested fee for them would be set at over $5,000 a year. Regardless of
what argument ...
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The collapse of the World
Trade Center
towers took nearly 3,000 lives in an instant and released a massive cloud of
asbestos, pulverized concrete, and other poisons. These toxins have sickened
thousands and killed at least eight—but perhaps dozens more—Americans in the
years since 9/11.
The gray dust that billowed through Lower
Manhattan that day is said to have ...
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There is simply no doubt that victims of sex crimes suffer a great deal of physical and mental anguish and that there is a need for substantive counseling, treatment and information to help them get on with their lives.As an elected official, I have a duty to ensure that victims of sexual assault, and all crime victims for that matter, have access to the best information and ...
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Many miles and years from the political salon in my mother’s living room, but not very far at all
I grew up at 50 West 96th Street. My mother, Shirley (later Sarah), was a power on the West Side of Manhattan and my twin brother Lewis and I went to West Side schools. I distinctly remember the day we all got marched over from the old and degenerate P.S. 93—on 93rd Street, of course—to the brand new Emily Dickinson School (P.S. 75) on West End Avenue. Our friends ...
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Back when he was a Republican, Mayor Michael Bloomberg used to argue that he helped his causes and the priorities he set for the city by dropping his own money into contributions for fellow members of the GOP.
So much for that logic.
By City Hall
July 16th, 2007
Nine days after he re-registered as unaffiliated, Bloomberg blasted the Senate Appropriations Committee for approving an amendment to restrict police and public access to gun trace data, an even more stringent version of an existing law known as the Tiahrt Amendment. Bloomberg called the Senate version “worse than anything we’ve ever seen” and accused the ...
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By City Hall
June 11th, 2007
Ask most ambitious political consultants, ask most optimistic politicians, and they will propound that the age of racial politics is over in New York. We are past it, they will say, we have moved on to something else. Ask them, then, to explain what happened in the Council chambers May 30 during the debate over amending an omnibus bill to name a stretch of Brooklyn after Sonny ...
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Spitzer seems set to outdo Pataki’s environmental legacy with Enck and Grannis leading the way
I’ve known Alexander “Pete” Grannis for many years. He has long been one of the bright lights of the New York State Assembly. Now he has been appointed to head the Department of Environmental Conservation by Eliot Spitzer, himself a tiger when it comes to protecting the environment. The two men, along with one of the best environmental advocates in the state, ...
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New York’s civil service system was designed to eliminate favoritism and patronage in hiring and promotions to city jobs. That time-honored system is broken when it comes to promoting and retaining career civil servants, and it must be fixed.Civil Service Law and the New York State Constitution require that appointments and promotions to city jobs be made based on merit ...
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Since the mayor proposed congestion pricing as part of his long-term sustainability plan, many have looked to discredit the proposal by calling it a backdoor commuter tax.
They are right: it is a commuter tax, and it should be.
Eight years after the Legislature fleeced the five boroughs in what is surely one of the most ridiculous triumphs of short-sighted politics over ...
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America’s ability to win—and not just compete—in the global economy depends in part on our having the world’s most efficient capital markets. Substantial reforms in this area will be required for America to continue to be the most successful economy in the world and the best source of high paying jobs with enough economic growth to sustain the Baby ...
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Though the three men may all support executions, a new law seems unlikely to pass
There are some things that the public responds to the way a bull reacts to a red cape. One of them is the death penalty, a political trap of the highest magnitude.
This is one of those rare issues that can give even the most confident politician a major case of agitation. New York City liberals do not like the death penalty for all the right reasons. It is administered ...
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When Irania Sanchez's marriage broke up, she was given sole custody of her two daughters, both of whom had a variety of bronchial problems and asthma. One of her daughters, Gabriela, had to be hooked up to a machine every six hours to clean her lungs. Irania, a hard-working immigrant, was simply overwhelmed by her daughters' health care costs. Fortunately, our state and local ...
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José Luis Melendez, Klever Ramiro Jara, Anthony Duncan, Jiango Shen. These are just a few of the 29 people who died on construction sites in New York City last year. Construction fatalities and accidents do not discriminate between union and non-union jobs. But when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration reports that 86 percent of the construction deaths in ...
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Should Washington get a taste of benign, rich guy government?
Were it not for term limits, Mike Bloomberg could, of course, keep on being mayor. But the city has term limits and the voters like them. After all, when there were rumors that Rudy Giuliani wanted to do away with term limits, there was a huge hue and cry against the move, despite the fact that the people like Rudy. In a way, it's a real shame. Bloomberg has proven himself to ...
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By City Hall
April 17th, 2007
New Yorkers still do not know exactly what they will be paying for, or how much they will be paying, in next year's budget. But if the members of the Assembly and State Senate had really wanted things to go differently this year, they had their chance. Many rank-and-file legislators complained about being shut out from the negotiations, then being handed bills still warm from ...
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