Council Speaker Mark-Viverito (photo: William Alatriste)
As a committee called by Mayor de Blasio, as required by law, considers recommendations for raising the pay of New York City elected officials, the City Council has made its public testimony. A document was submitted by City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito to the Quadrennial Advisory Commission for the Review of Compensation Levels of Elected Officials, which is chaired by Frederick Schwarz, and posted online at the commission's website earlier this evening.
In it, Mark-Viverito writes "on behalf of the Council," and does not suggest a specific salary for City Council members - they currently make $112,500 each per year, plus bonuses for filling leadership positions and chairing committees - but does include a more general pitch for a raise. "As you are aware, the compensation level for Council Members has not changed in close to a decade," Mark-Viverito writes, "[D]uring the past ten years the Council has become more productive and its work and processes far more complex. At the same time the cost of living in the City has risen significantly and Member salaries are not on par with other private and public sector jobs with comparable duties and obligations."
Mark-Viverito goes on to say that compensation for Council members must take into account "the nature of their service" and "the economic realities" of living in New York, in part so that the Council can attract top-level individuals. "I therefore believe it is clear that Council Member salaries should be increased," she writes, referring the commission to further information enclosed detailing the Council's efforts in drafting legislation, holding oversight hearings, crafting the city budget, working in their individual districts, and more. At one point, Mark-Viverito writes that "The time commitment for Council Members is considerable and most describe their jobs as '24/7.'"
Mark-Viverito also provides data showing that the Council has been especially productive under her leadership, writing that "the current Council has been even more active than in prior sessions. Council Members have already made 105% more bill and resolution drafting requests, introduced 41% more bills and enacted 32% more Local Laws than through the same time period in the immediately preceding session." This Council is indeed a far different one than its immediate predecessor, with more than 20 new members (of 51 seats) through the 2013 election cycle, and a new speaker. It has also had an often like-minded mayor to work with in de Blasio.
In her letter to the commission, Mark-Viverito also highlights Council rules reform of the past decades, including those made under her leadership in 2014, which have made the Council more transparent and democratic - "more vibrant, effective, efficient and ethically sound," she writes. There is no mention of reforming committee chair compensation, known as "lulus," which often net Council members $10-15,000 in addition to their salaries and have been the source of scorn from good government watchdogs. Citizens Union, for example, told the commission that it should recommend doing away with lulus while raising base salaries to account for cost-of-living increases and to attract strong candidates for office.
Mark-Viverito concludes her letter saying that the Council's role in city governance "is a vital one and if it is to live up to the promise of the 1989 Charter, its Members must be compensated fairly and for the responsibilities they bear and the sevice they perform." Along with not specifying a new salary, the speaker also did not write whether the Council believes that the desired pay increase should be made immediate or for the next class of elected officials - the latter would mean raises would go into effect in January of 2018. Mayor de Blasio has already said that he will not accept a pay increase during this term, meaning that if the commission were to recommend immediate increases, de Blasio would likely alter that provision before sending the recommendations to the Council.
Public comment - from elected officials, good government advocates, and others - is open until 5 p.m. Friday. The commission also held two sparsely-attended public hearings. Along with Schwarz, the other two commissioners named to the panel by de Blasio are Jill Bright and Paul Quintero. The commission is considering the compensation of the mayor, public advocate, comptroller, 51 City Council members, five borough presidents, and five district attorneys. Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer has submitted testimony, as have a group of district attorneys.
The commission is due to submit its recommendations to the mayor, who will then submit the report with his changes to the City Council for "approval, disapproval, or modifications," according to the commission website.
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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
@TweetBenMax
Note: this article has been updated
(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
New York City is now utterly dominating job growth in the State of New York. In the past two-and-a-half years, 79% of all new jobs in the state have been created in New York City.
New York State Labor Department seasonally-adjusted data show that 230,000 of the nearly 293,000 jobs created in the state from December 2016 to June 2019 were in the city. The growth rate in the city for the two-and-a-half year period was 2.1% per year; for the rest of the state separate from the city, the growth rate was about one-half of one percent per year*.
The city's share of growth has picked up even more since the end of 2017; 138,000 of the 169,000 jobs created statewide from December 2017 to June 2019 were created in the city -- nearly 82%. The city's share of total state employment was 46.5% at the end of 2016; as of June 2019 its share was 47.5%.
In October 2018 I wrote about the increasing contribution of the New York City economy to the state's tax revenue, much of it due to its share of employment growth. The increasing share of jobs will only accelerate this trend. While the city economy has become the engine of the state's economic growth, the Cuomo administration has focused much of its attention to rescuing the Upstate New York economy, which faltered in the two recessions that occurred after 2000.
NEW YORK EMPLOYMENT (000) |
||||||
Dec.2010 |
Dec.2016 |
June.2019 |
||||
New York State |
8587.4 |
9493.6 |
9786.2 |
|||
New York City |
3781.1 |
4413.6 |
4643.9 |
|||
Source: NY State Labor Department Seasonally Adjusted Employment |
Job growth rates for both New York City and the rest of the state have slowed compared to the period between December 2010 and December 2016. The city gained 633,000 jobs in that six-year period and its growth rate was 2.8% per year, compared to 2.1% per year since December 2016. The rest of the state gained 274,000 jobs in those six years, a growth rate of just under 1% per year. The city was 70% of the state's job growth in those six years, quite dominant then, but its share of growth just keeps expanding. Comparable national job growth rates for December 2010 to December 2016 was 1.9% per year, and 1.6% from December 2016 to June 2019.
One reason for slower growth outside the city is that job growth rates in the New York City suburbs have fallen to about the same rates of growth as Upstate. Upstate New York is a big area and one should not generalize too much about it. The growth rates in Upstate New York vary greatly by metropolitan area; some areas are achieving modest growth, others hardly any growth at all nine years after the Great Recession ended.
Long Island gained about 100,000 jobs from December 2010 to December 2016, but just 19,000 jobs in the past two-and-a-half years. The Orange-Rockland-Westchester metropolitan area gained 50,000 jobs in the 2010-2016 period, but just 7,000 from the end of 2016 to this June. These two New York City suburban areas had their growth rates slow from 1.3-1.4% per year from 2010-2016, to under six-tenths of one percent per year in the past two-and-a-half years.
One of their possible challenges may be the competition from New York City itself, since the city has become such a powerful economic and social magnet and these suburban areas are right nearby.
SUBURBAN EMPLOYMENT(000) |
|||||
Dec.2010 |
Dec.2016 |
June.2019 |
|||
Nassau-Suffolk |
1237.6 |
1338 |
1356.9 |
||
Orange-Rockland-Westchester |
663.7 |
713.9 |
724.3 |
The four larger Upstate metropolitan areas are growing. The Syracuse metropolitan area has gained more than 9,000 jobs in the past two-and-a-half years, growing at a rate of 1.2% per year. The Buffalo-Niagara Falls area has gained 10,500 jobs since December 2016, for a growth rate of three-fourths of one percent per year. From 2010 to 2016, it gained 20,000 jobs, for a growth rate of six-tenths of one percent per year.
The Rochester area gained 7,300 jobs in the past two-and-a-half years, a growth rate of .55 of one percent per year. From 2010 to 2016, it had gained about 23,000 jobs and had a growth rate of .8 of one percent a year. The Albany-Schenectady-Troy area gained 7,700 jobs since the end of 2016, for a growth rate of .7 of one percent a year. It had done better in the 2010-2016 period, gaining nearly 34,000 jobs in those six years for a growth rate of 1.3% per year.
UPSTATE LARGE METRO AREAS (000) |
|||||
Dec.2010 |
Dec.2016 |
June.2019 |
|||
Buffalo-Niagara Falls |
537.9 |
558 |
568.5 |
||
Rochester |
509.9 |
533.1 |
540.4 |
||
Albany-Schenectady-Troy |
432.7 |
466.5 |
474.2 |
||
Syracuse |
308.9 |
316.8 |
326.1 |
Several other Upstate metropolitan areas are growing at more than 1 percent a year. The Ithaca metro area had the best sustained growth since 2010 in Upstate New York, gaining more than 7,000 jobs, including 2,600 since the end of 2016, for a sustained growth rate for the eight-and-a-half years of about 1.5% per year. Two Hudson Valley areas, Dutchess-Putnam and Kingston, have gained about 5,700 jobs over the past two-and-a-half years for a growth rate of 1.1% per year. They have gained 13,000 jobs since December 2010.
Five smaller Upstate metro areas are struggling. Binghamton, Utica-Rome, and Elmira have gained 2,200 jobs among them since the end of 2016, for a combined growth rate of just three-tenths of one percent a year. Glens Falls metro has lost jobs since the end of 2016 and Watertown-Fort Drum has only gained 100 jobs in the past two-and-a-half years. The combined employment base of these five metropolitan areas is about 368,000, making them combined just barely larger than the Syracuse metro area and smaller than each of the four larger Upstate metro areas.
OTHER UPSTATE METRO AREAS(000) |
|||||
Dec.2010 |
Dec.2016 |
June.2019 |
|||
Dutchess-Putnam |
141.4 |
146.6 |
149.9 |
||
Utica-Rome |
129 |
127.6 |
128.6 |
||
Binghamton |
107.8 |
103.2 |
104.2 |
||
Ithaca |
59.1 |
63.9 |
66.5 |
||
Kingston |
59.8 |
61.9 |
64.4 |
||
Glens Falls |
54.5 |
56.2 |
55.5 |
||
Watertown-Ft.Drum |
42.9 |
42 |
42.1 |
||
Elmira |
39.5 |
36.8 |
37.2 |
The Labor Department's estimates for the 12 Upstate metropolitan areas show job gains of 45,000 since the end of 2016 to June 2019, with employment rising from 2.512 million to 2.557 million, or a growth rate of seven-tenths of one percent a year. The metropolitan areas of Upstate New York include about five-sixths of total employment in Upstate New York.
State Labor Department estimates for the non-metro areas of Upstate New York from 2016-2018 show job gains of a little over 4,000, for a growth rate of about four-tenths of one percent per year. The non-metro areas of Upstate New York have a little more than 500,000 jobs. They are one-sixth of Upstate New York employment and about 5% of total New York State employment.
The loss of population continues to be a challenge for sustaining economic growth in Upstate New York.
Below is a population growth table taken from the New York State Assembly's annual Economic and Revenue report from early 2019. It shows that New York City was 95% of the state's population growth between 2010 and 2017. The Hudson Valley, the Capital Region, and Long Island had small but positive population growth, but the rest of the Upstate New York regions lost population. Clearly these regions would benefit from new immigrants and increases in the allowable number of refugees into the United States.
And what of the Cuomo administration's efforts to help Upstate New York? The administration's main initiatives have included the Buffalo Billion, the $1.5 billion Upstate Revitalization Initiative, the Downtown Revitalization Initiative (some projects are in the Downstate area), the Albany Nanotechnology Initiative (begun during the Pataki administration), infrastructure spending in transportation and water and sewer upgrades, Tax-Free New York, cheap hydropower allocations from the State Power Authority, new investments in renewable technologies, especially windpower in the Lake Ontario area.
Surely these initiatives, and there are many, have had a positive impact, and are ongoing efforts that are budgeted for several years of future investment. But for them, the Upstate New York economy would likely be in even weaker condition.
Since the end of 2010, the aggregate numbers for Upstate show a net gain of 156,000 jobs. The state had a $10 billion deficit in 2011, the first year of the Cuomo administration, and there were spending cuts that affected state and local government employment, especially local schools.
Upstate New York lost 37,000 government jobs between 2010 and 2016, with those jobs stabilizing around 2013. Government jobs have remained relatively flat since that time in Upstate New York, so private sector employment is higher than the 156,000 net gain, probably about a 190,000 increase. It should also be noted that the State Labor Department's separate regional metro data show somewhat higher job growth numbers*.
The most recent year-over-year growth rates by state, from 2017 to 2018, showed 16 states had growth rates of seven-tenths of one percent per year, the Upstate New York growth rate, or less. Twenty-three states had growth rates of less than one percent. Upstate New York is not at the bottom of the nation in growth - it is slowly growing.
The state has also cut income, corporate, and property taxes, to the chagrin of progressives who would like to see stronger government spending. Governor Cuomo came into office in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and concern about whether New York taxes were undercutting business investment and encouraging out-migration affected early decision-making about how to grow the state's economy. More recently, recognition about the importance of infrastructure investment has replaced tax cuts as a priority, especially with the uncertain impact of federal tax reform on New York.
Since December 2010, the economy of the City of New York has essentially been carrying the state, with the city responsible for 863,000 of the 1.199 million jobs gained statewide.
(*The State Labor Department notes in its monthly employment press releases that the separate regional Metro area employment estimates do not match up (add up to the same numbers) as the aggregate employment numbers reported Statewide. The Statewide employment reports are estimated independently of the regional estimates. As a result there are discrepancies between subtracting New York City and its suburban areas from the statewide numbers to get the Upstate employment numbers, versus adding up each of the separate regional Upstate metro areas. Using aggregate numbers results in smaller employment growth totals for Upstate New York and the rest of the State outside New York City. The aggregate numbers show a growth rate of one-half of one percent a year; the regional numbers show .6-.7 tenths of one percent a year.)
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Jim Brennan was a member of the New York State Assembly for 32 years, where he chaired four committees. On Twitter @JimBrennanNY.
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Using unusually strong language, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court 2nd Department, described the actions of an arresting officer as "exceptionally serious misconduct of law enforcement personnel... . Such conduct poses a grave risk to the assurances of due process afforded to Juveniles by the Family Court Act, and it should not be countenanced."
In a unanimous decision released last week, in the Matter of Steven C, the Court reversed the Family Court findings, dismissed charges against a teenager and vacated his adjudication as a juvenile delinquent in the interests of justice.
In a unanimous decision released earlier this month, Justice Robert Miller and three other appellate judges sitting in Brooklyn, found that Steven (last name not used because of his age), a ninth grader at a Queens high school, returning to school after the lunch recess, was stopped, handcuffed and placed in a police car with another student. A third student was then arrested nearby. Documents filed with the Family Court alleged that the three youngsters had trespassed.
The police claimed that they had observed the three jump over a fence around a private backyard, and further submitted an affidavit from the owner of the private residence that she had not given any permission for anyone to be in her backyard at the time the three were allegedly there.
At a court hearing a year and a half later, two different officers testified that they had observed the three respondents (who, if they had been adults would be classified as 'defendants')
in the backyard, chased them and arrested the other two, but not Steven. In addition they stated under oath that they were the only police officers at the scene when the three were in the backyard, and that the actual arresting officer was not there.
Testifying at the hearing each of the respondents stated that they were never in the backyard. Steven specifically stated that he had run to school and was stopped by a police officer as he was entering the school building. Nevertheless a Family Court judge found that Steven had committed acts which, if committed by an adult, would have constituted the crime of criminal trespass in the third degree. Although 22 months had passed, the judge declared him a juvenile delinquent and placed him on probation for a year.
In dismissing in the interests of justice, the court also cites that the petition that activated the court proceeding was defective as it was based on hearsay, and was not true. The petition was defective as it was a sworn statement notarized under penalty of perjury by the arresting officer who stated that he had seen Steven jump the fence in question. If he had seen it, this would not be hearsay. But the officers at the hearing testified that the arresting officer had not, in fact, been present and had not actually witness the acts complained of.
Relying on the Family Court Act, the Appellate Division judges said that the law is 'Designed to ensure substantive due process protection to an alleged juvenile delinquent, who can be arrested and deprived of liberty based on the petition.' Calling the police actions 'troubling shortcomings,' the judges also noted that none of the three respondents had caused any harm to any person or property, and that the testifying officers had testified that they, 'Were merely standing the backyard... .' They make no mention of the Respondents' denials of ever being in the backyard.
In reaching a decision, the Family Court judge clearly believed the police officers and not the accused.
However, the judge's acceptance of the officers' testimony at trial which contradicted the original officers' sworn statements, meant that the first cops were untruthful.
Justice Miller's Opinion was joined by Justice William Mastro, Mark Dillon, and Sandra Sgroi. Steven C was represented by Larry Bachner of Jamaica, NY. The City of New York was represented by Corporation Counsel.
Emily Jane Goodman is a New York State Supreme Court Justice