Looking to save millions — albeit years from now — the City Council approved legislation on Wednesday that revises the city’s industrial and commercial development incentive program to further limit what type of projects can receive a tax break.
The new program is expected to save the city millions in future years.
The council also approved a street renaming bill and designated nonprofit recipients for several discretionary, citywide initiatives, which had not been solidified at the time of the city budget’s passage in June.
Following the state legislature’s lead, the council approved the Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program ( Intro 822-A) – formerly the Industrial and Commercial Incentive Program – by a vote of 49 to 1. Councilmember Vincent Ignizio cast the lone opposition vote.
City officials had long criticized the older incentive program as being expensive and not cost effective. In 2007, according to a report from the Independent Budget Office, the program cost the city $500 million in tax revenue.
While the city would like to continue to encourage commercial and industrial development, officials believe the program had to be revised and pared down. At the behest of the Bloomberg administration, the state approved a revised program in June, and the council followed last week.
The newer program will change how tax breaks are disseminated to commercial or industrial developers. Under the old program, tax breaks were based on a project’s assessed value – like a standard deduction on income taxes. Under the new program, a break will be based on a property tax bill and act as a tax credit. It will also be set by the property tax rate when a building permit was first issued, unlike the old program which fluctuated with each year’s tax rate.
The program will also limit what kind of retail establishments are covered and no longer cover utility companies. While utility companies account for 1 percent of exemptions, according to the Independent Budget Office’s report, their breaks comprise 19 percent of the cost of the program.
The disqualification of utility companies sparked this reaction from Con Edison:
“The council’s action (last week) merely reflects a bill passed by the state legislature in June,” said Joe Petta, a spokesman for Con Edison. “We believe that bill could have a negative impact on our ratepayers, but we haven’t yet determined to what extent.”
The new program decreases, from 12 to 10 years, the amount of time a development located in between Murray Street and 59th Street in Manhattan could qualify for the tax break, under the presumption that area is already a desirable place to develop.
The program is concentrated in the outer boroughs. Any industrial or commercial building that is rehabilitated, modernized, constructed or renovated is eligible. For more on the program, go here .
The City Council approved several budget modifications last week, which formally earmarked discretionary funding to scores of nonprofit groups for initiatives, such as domestic violence, empowering women and afterschool programs.
The modification also rescinds funding for seven groups that originally had been slated to receive discretionary funds. Groups that lost funding are: Alliance for Community Services, City College of New York Center for the Study of Harlem, Queens Community Board 3, Bergin Basin Community Development Corporation, Council of Jewish Organizations of Flatbush and the HOPE Program.
Most of the modifications, according to a council spokesperson, were misappropriated initially or were done at the request of the sponsoring member. The allocation for the Alliance for Community Services, which was sponsored by Councilmember Maria Baez, was rejected by the Mayor's Office of Contract Services.
These appropriations have been under greater scrutiny lately, because of the council’s slush fund scandal.
The council appropriated nearly $4 million for an afterschool cultural program, as well as programs on financial literacy and healthy aging.
Twice annually, the council approves memorial designations for the city’s streets, often eulogizing fallen heroes. While the street naming process has been controversial – once councilmember unsuccessfully tried to rename a street after the controversial figure Sonny Carson – last week’s bill sailed through smoothly.
The bill was approved by a vote of 49 to 0, with one abstention by Councilmember Jessica Lappin.
The bill (Intro 825 ) names a corner in Brookyln after fallen firefighter Joseph Graffagnino, who died in the Deutsche Bank blaze last year, and 145th Street in Harlem after the late A. Phillip Randolph, a civil rights and labor leader. Other advocates and community leaders received the honor throughout the city. A full list is available here.
The City Council also approved a resolution (Reso 1583-A) calling for the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the biases of Arbitron’s radio data collection system.
Arbitron, which collects ratings data for radio stations, has been a target of the City Council’s ire. Its people meters – which are worn by surveyors and pick up local radio stations -- are biased and disproportionately benefit top 40 stations, according to Speaker Christine Quinn.
The council also approved a resolution (Reso 1612) giving Quinn the go-ahead to file an amicus brief in favor of plaintiffs suing the city’s Rent Guidelines Board. The council alleges the board overstepped its power by applying an extra increase on certain renters who have lived in their residences for more than six years, which, they argue, effectively creates a new class of renters.
Only the council can approve new classes, it argues.
Due to an error in documents distributed by the City Council, when this article was first published it said a corner in Queens would be named for Joseph Graffagnino. The corner is actually in Brooklyn. Â
Six months ago, Prison Health Services -- the private, for profit company that manages health care in 10 of the city's 11 jails -- got a raise.
The Tennessee-based corporation, which has a virtual monopoly on health care in prisons nationwide, saw its payments increase by more than 10 percent -- a figure that has been adjusted for inflation -- since its previous agreement with the city in 2005.
That boost, which city officials attribute to cost of living increases, came despite the company's failure to meet at least 15 percent of its performance standards set by the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene between 2006 and 2008. On several occasions, the company did not meet a quarter of its performance indicators, which include completing intake histories and conducting physical exams, according to quarterly review reports from the department.
Because of this poor performance, the city has fined Prison Health Services for the past three years in a row.
While many advocates agree that care on Rikers Island has improved since it was run by a private hospital a decade ago, others say the city's jails still do not provide quality health care. Whether it's a lack of leadership or the challenges of dealing with a transient, often mentally ill, population, quality health care is as isolated from Rikers' inmates as the island itself.
Prison Health Services just kicked off its third, three-year contract with the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The price tag: $366 million.
As part of that contract, the health department issues quarterly performance review reports, evaluating whether the corporation has substantially met or failed to meet certain health care criteria. The reviews measure the quality of women's health, asthma care, confidentiality, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and more.
The measurements are gleaned from a review of 9,000 records per quarter, said Louise Cohen, deputy commissioner for health care access and improvement at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. These records assess Prison Health's performance through 40 indicators, some of which are analyzed by a random sample.
In its last two years of service to the city, the time leading up to the contract renewal, Prison Health Services has continuously failed to meet a handful of city standards -- some more than others. In six of the eight quarters from January 2006 through December 2007, Prison Health Services did not properly follow up on certain HIV treatment testing. Some inmates, Cohen said, received follow-up tests several days late.
For five consecutive quarters, until mid-2007, the corporation did not meet standards for taking inmates' histories when they arrive at Rikers, skipping over parts of the mandatory paperwork, said Cohen. On average, Prison Health complied with the department's intake standards about 61 percent of the time during that period.
Now that the department is rolling out an electronic intake system, Cohen said, that process should run more smoothly. The Bloomberg administration requires that every inmate receive an intake physical within 24 hours of arrival on the island . According to the Mayor's Management Report, more than 89,000 intake exams were given in fiscal year 2007 -- that out of approximately 100,000 annual admissions.
For three out of four quarters in 2007, Prison Health also did not meet standards for follow-up care for inmates in segregated housing. Cohen said this was due to security concerns in one facility that may have skewed the entire performance results.
Due to all of the unmet criteria in 2007, Prison Health was fined $244,000. In 2006, the corporation was fined $299,500 and $249,500 in 2005.
While some areas of care are problematic, the company has met criteria in others. For instance, women's care has received nearly a 100 percent compliance rate over the entire two-year period. This care includes cancer screenings, prenatal care and sonograms.
Prison Health has also consistently tested for sexually transmitted diseases during an inmate's admission to Rikers.
"We're more concerned than anyone in making sure that we have the right quality of care," said Cohen. "We are actually meeting the community standard in many cases and exceeding it in a number of others."
A spokesperson for Prison Health Services refused to comment for this story and referred any comment to the city's health department.
For all of 2007, according to city health records, Prison Health Services met the standards for documenting suicide watches approximately 95 percent of the time.
But, that doesn't mean there were no suicides on Rikers Island. There were three, according to the mayor's management report.
This is one indication of how performance standards can miss measuring actually quality of care. Prison Health may receive a mark of 100 percent in some areas where advocates continue to receive complaints about poor health care.
Dale Wilker, a staff attorney at the Prisoners' Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society, said by far the most serious complaint from prisoners who have serious ailments, from HIV to heart conditions or asthma, is failing to have continuous access to needed medication.
"The biggest complaints I have heard, not in terms of volume but in terms of seriousness, was medicine people are taking and are required to take are interrupted and not started for a period of time," said Wilker. "Since the city got away from using teaching hospitals and went to providers that are in some way to make money and to serve their stockholders, complaints have become much more frequent and much more serious."
According to city records, Prison Health Services has met criteria outlined by the health department for several standards that deal with medication or prescription delivery, including long-term medication for asthmatics, the availability of medication within 24 hours after it is prescribed and the timeliness of medication orders for mental health patients.
This is not the only area where anecdotal accounts of care contradict measurements by the city. The most frequent complaint of inmates, according to some advocates, is waiting times to get into one of the island's many clinics.
Inmates have told the Gotham Gazette they have waited for hours before receiving care, regardless of their condition. On the other hand, the mayor's management report contends for the past three years inmates have waited about a half hour to receive care.
Some say the department's quality performance reviews, while worthwhile, are not an accurate reflection of the quality of care on Rikers nor do they measure what is most important in providing correctional health care.
It is difficult to determine whether the compliance record is a result of one box unchecked on an intake form, some say, or more serious failures by Prison Health Services.
"For our purposes, in terms of our role, they are not the best items to be using to assess (whether) the things that we care about are being met," said Hildy Simmons, the chair of the city's Board of Corrections, which oversees the city's correctional system.
Considering Prison Health Services' contract was just renewed, advocates contend the system must not be so atrocious that Rikers needs another provider -- as was true during the days of St. Barnabas in the early 1990s.
"That suggests to me that things weren't bad enough for the department of health to not want to contract with them at all, or maybe they couldn't find another provider," said Wilker, who would like to see the city contract with university-affiliated hospitals.
This is partially true. When the city requested contract bids for some of its independent borough facilities last year, no local, nonprofit hospital bid on it, said city health officials. Like any other city contract, Prison Health Services contract goes through a procurement procedure. This three-year contract was a renewal and was not put out to bid, said Cohen.
"We think PHS is performing adequately," said Cohen. "We would love to have a local, nonprofit partner. One just isn't stepping up to the plate."
The department does review all of its performance criteria on an annual basis to determine, which indicators to concentrate on. And, said Cohen, in any area the corporation fails, it is required to come up with a correction action plan, which the department continues to monitor.
Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Searchlight covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"If you walk through Sheepshead Bay it looks nothing like it did four years ago. This neighborhood has been ravaged by developers. This measure comes four years after we asked for it and three-and-a-half years too late." - Councilmember Lew Fidler on a regulations meant to protect single-family homes.
MEETING SUMMARY:
LAND USE
The New York City Council under the new leadership of Speaker Christine Quinn is just beginning to put together its legislative agenda, so at the meeting of February 15 the council passed no new bills, but it did pass 18 land use measures, several aimed at slowing overdevelopment in the outer boroughs.
For Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn the council passed a "downzoning" measure - which limits the height and density of new development - that will protect 309 single family homes from being torn down. Councilmember Lew Fidler, however, said it was "too little, too late."
"If you walk through Sheepshead Bay it looks nothing like it did four years ago," said Fidler who blamed the City Planning Department for its slow response. "This neighborhood has been ravaged by developers."
The council also approved downzonings in the Ferry Point and Woodlawn sections of the Bronx and in the Midwood section of Brooklyn.
Other measures were aimed at creating new housing. In Harlem, the council approved a measure that will create 50 new units of affordable housing. Councilmember Inez Dickens said that the new units would be overseen by the West Harlem Group, a local community organization, which purchases buildings and then sells them to existing tenants at low mortgage rates.
NEW LEGISLATION
The meeting was also an opportunity for council members to introduce new legislation, or to reintroduce bills that did not get passed in the previous session. Each bill will be sent to the appropriate committee for consideration.
As usual, the council's legislation ranged from enormous city-wide initiatives (approving a new plan to dispose of the city's garbage) to more local concerns (creating a database to track problem spots for graffiti) to the somewhat bizarre (prohibiting the resale of underwear that has been returned to a store).
Some other bills that the council will consider in the coming months include:
- Suspending alternate side of the street parking on the birthdays of Lord Krishna and Lord Buddha.
- Raising the legal age to buy tobacco to 19 years.
- Requiring two-way radios and tracking devices in school buses.
- Requiring new financial data from non-profit agencies that receive city contracts worth $100,000 or more.
- Allowing hybrid taxicabs to use bus lanes.
- Regulating horse-drawn carriages and bicycle pedicabs.
- And preventing the eviction of elderly tenants.
FORTHCOMING HEARINGS
The City Council also announced its schedule of hearings on the mayor's preliminary budget, which will run from March 6 to March 23. For a full calendar of hearings, visit the council's Web site.
The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, March 1, 2006.
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