The 2014 Democratic ticket (Richard Drew/AP)

Last week's State Democratic Convention was supposed to highlight Democratic unity, but instead it spotlighted a growing sense of unease and dissatisfaction the party's base feels for its leader. For an increasing number of liberal Democratic elected officials and party members, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is simultaneously the most powerful and most questioned New York Democrat.

A number of prominent Democrats aren't trying to hide their gubernatorial disillusionment anymore - they walk out of rooms when he is speaking, they laugh sad laughs and hold their heads when asked about his support, and they gleefully imagine scenarios by which he might be dealt some form of comeuppance.

Others keep the signed "grand slam" baseball the Cuomo administration sent every legislator as a budget memento on their desks - not as a reminder of what a success the 2014 budget was but instead to remind them about the issues they valued that weren't included in the budget: no DREAM Act, no meaningful campaign finance reform, no tax on the wealthy to fund universal prekindergarten, no Women's Equality Act. Some still harbor great resentment over Cuomo's broken 2012 promise to back independent redistricting. And then there's what many call Cuomo's premature disbanding of his Moreland Commission on Public Corruption.

But, for Cuomo the election this fall is a question of margins and projections: How big will he win in upstate New York? Will he run up the numbers downstate? Can he avoid losing Western New York? How well will his victory play with national pundits and politicos?

Beside the possible annoyance of The Working Families Party (WFP) running a candidate to his left that cuts into his lead, the governor's reelection seems all but a foregone conclusion. Cuomo even made his choice for a new running mate less to appease the liberal wing of the party and more with a big victory margin in mind. With Kathy Hochul as his likely next lieutenant governor, Cuomo chose someone who has differed from more progressive Democrats on immigrants' rights and gun control.

And yet when Democrats met this past week in Long Island to nominate Cuomo for his second run it was clear that Cuomo's party is in much worse shape than he is. Thanks to Cuomo's predilection for politically kneecapping all potential Democratic rivals, his embrace of conservative economics, his willingness to accept breakaway Democrats, and his disinterest in supporting other party-mates, Cuomo is the lead candidate of a state party that exists almost exclusively to boost him and finds itself in a not insignificant amount of disarray.

Multiple interviews with legislators, delegates, staffers and advocates paint a picture of a Democratic party divided by its leadership, with an uncertain agenda, and concerned for the reelection of the comptroller and attorney general despite a major registration advantage.

"The reality is that this is Cuomo's party," said Doug Muzzio, professor of political science at Baruch College. "Everything out of second floor is set at maximizing his win. So I could see where others are concerned this is a one man show. But these guys also have to consider if he wins big it may help you even if there is no kumbaya moment."

This past week at the party convention in Melville, some expected Cuomo to make amends with the party by paying lip service to recapturing a majority in the State Senate while focusing on issues important to the party faithful like the DREAM Act, campaign finance reform and The Women's Equality Agenda.

That isn't what they got. Instead Cuomo's hand picked new party chair, former Gov. David Paterson told reporters at the convention that recapturing the Senate isn't exactly a priority.

The Fractured Senate
While Sen. Mike Gianaris, head of the Senate Democrats campaign committee, has been saying 2014 is the year Democrats recapture the Senate, Paterson was clearly hedging, saying that with limited resources "you have to have a plan that is more pragmatic than hopeful." Cuomo did not back fellow Democrats in attempts to win the majority in 2010 and 2012, he only endorsed a few single candidates.

Meanwhile, a convention resolution calling on the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) to return to the mainstream fold was tabled by delegates, despite the fact that the room was full of enough anti-IDC sentiment that its mention by conference speakers brought boos from the crowd.

A great number of legislators and delegates see the IDC as standing in the way of The Dream Act, a larger minimum wage increase, and the full Women's Equality Act.

Dan Cohen, a state committee member from Manhattan who sponsored the resolution calling on the IDC to return to the fold, was chided by other members for causing "dissension." Cohen told his colleagues that he had tried less-public means to get his message across but was brushed off. A reporter asked Cohen for his take on Cuomo. "I believe Governor Cuomo is doing an excellent job as governor, but can do a better job as a Democrat," he said.

More progressive members of the Senate Democrats express great angst at the idea that Cuomo hasn't pushed the IDC to return to the mainstream. Insiders say that the IDC is simply something they have to get used to. "If this arrangement wasn't working for Andrew it simply wouldn't exist," said one Democratic insider.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told reporters at the convention that he felt Democratic control of the Senate is vital to Democratic issues.

The battle between the IDC and the mainline Senate Democrats is going to cost Democrats as a whole. Instead of focusing on a unified agenda, Democrats are primarying each other, with challenges mounted to IDC members Sens. Jeff Klein and Tony Avella. On the flipside, Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins is facing a challenge from the IDC and progressive Democratic Sen. Gustavo Rivera is being primaried from his right.

"Both sides could be spending cash to elect one unified Democratic conference. Instead you've got Democratic candidates spending cash against Democratic candidates. Does that sound like party unity to you? The Republicans love this!" said one insider who asked to remain anonymous for fear of jeopardizing relationships.

Muzzio said that these kind of primaries are to be expected and so is Cuomo's lack of interest in winning the Senate back for Democrats. "This has been his modus operandi from the beginning. He clearly feels real comfortable with having Republicans running the State Senate."

Another potential convention resolution running counter to Cuomo's messaging was tabled by a vote of 21-20. Former party chair Jay Jacobs introduced a resolution that called on Cuomo to reject the nomination of the Independence Party. Jacobs labeled the Independence Party as one built on fraud that exists to keep Senate Republicans in power.

At the convention, the Cuomo camp kept up the message that the governor had yet to decide what to do about the Independence Party line. Cuomo repeated that talking point to reporters after his appearance with President Barack Obama in Cooperstown on Thursday. The next day the Independence Party unveiled its ballot line and Cuomo was on it. Cuomo had signed the paperwork on the same day he had told reporters "This is a decision we will be making down the road."

Comptroller and AG Face Tougher Roads
Another sign that the Democratic Party isn't quite unified is that its attorney general and comptroller are both struggling with name recognition while heading into election season. Both Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman lead in the polls but Republicans and some Democratic insiders think 2014 presents the best chance since 2002 for Republicans to reclaim one of the two seats.

Cuomo's relationship with both men has been testy. In 2010, during Cuomo's first run, he was investigating the comptroller's office for suspicious investments. During the campaign Republican Harry Wilson insisted DiNapoli himself was being investigated by Cuomo, attorney general at the time. Cuomo's office didn't do anything to rebuff those assertions until early October.

Earlier that year it appeared that Cuomo backed Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice in the Democratic primary for attorney general. Since their election Cuomo and Schneiderman have had a tense relationship with Cuomo looking to weaken the AG's office, in part by increasing the governor's role as Wall Street watchdog - the two battled over JP Morgan settlement funds initially won by Schneiderman. It looked like a deal had been reached to split the funds but Cuomo convinced the Legislature to give him complete control over such monies in this year's budget agreement.

Insiders also note that Cuomo's fundraiser, Blaney & Associates, is now working for Schneiderman's Republican challenger John Cahill.

"Cuomo isn't going to lose," said Muzzio. "So if someone is going to lose it is DiNapoli or Schneiderman. But the question is, 'Can Republicans run real campaigns, with real messaging and real issues? You can't beat somebody with nobody."

All these cracks in Democratic party unity are music to Republicans' ears even though their house isn't exactly in order. In 2010, the State Republican Party was in civil war during Cuomo's first run. Rick Lazio, the establishment-backed Republican candidate, lost a nasty primary to Tea Party member and Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino. Cuomo thrashed Paladino in the general election and some strategists believe Paladino's run boosted other Democrats around the state because he was so conservative.

This time around Paladino looked to get involved in picking the Republican nominee - he trashed the current GOP candidate, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, and tried to draft Donald Trump to run on the GOP line. Paladino has since come around to Astorino, but tensions remain elsewhere in the party. Conservative Republicans are upset that Senate Republicans led by Sen. Dean Skelos have allied themselves so closely with Cuomo and helped him pass marriage equality and SAFE Act gun-control legislation.

Cuomo's World
Democratic legislators acknowledge they are simply part of Cuomo's world at this point and have no choice but to go along for the ride. Many just hope to gain from Cuomo's victories and not be destroyed or diminished by him along the way.

They point to the convention and Cuomo's introduction by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. "The Cuomo camp is just masterful," said Muzzio, "he has one of the most liberal figures statewide and nationally in de Blasio introduce him and then the female, Latina, progressive head of the City Council introduce his running mate. He puts on his liberal face and then he followed it up with his centrist, Republican messaging."

Muzzio notes that de Blasio's introduction followed months of Cuomo roughing the mayor up publically on policy issues. "He nominates him after he gives him a beating on pre-k, after giving him a beating on charters," said Muzzio. "He is sending the message 'I'm the top dog and de Blasio is doing my bidding.'"

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by David King, Albany editor, Gotham Gazette
@DavidHowardKing

Thomas Jefferson Park (Katrina Shakarian)

"I'd like to just make a plea on behalf of our neighborhood, to help restore [Thomas] Jefferson Park to its previous glory," said Laura, an East Harlem resident who called into a recent segment about New York City parks on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show. During the May 13 segment, Lehrer interviewed City Council parks and recreation committee chair, Council Member Mark Levine, about a new hot topic in New York City: park equity. Park equity refers to the notion that all city parks should be well kept and adequately funded. It's a reality difficult to attain as parks funding languishes at a historically low percentage of the city budget, while a select group of parks benefit from private funding streams.

With the new mayoral administration and City Council touting progressive values, including greater equity on a number of fronts, the issue of park equity is gaining traction. Three aspects are primarily at play: the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) fiscal year 2015 budget; the future of private funding within the parks system; and transparency around levels of public and private funds and resources being channeled into individual parks.

As Levine and others note, the disparities among city parks are vast. Thomas Jefferson Park of Laura's call is a leafy stretch of green sandwiched between 1st avenue and the FDR Drive in East Harlem. It packs a plethora of facilities into just a few blocks: a running track, swimming pool, and playground, a field for soccer and football, and even a recreation center stocked with fitness equipment. In the densely packed neighborhood of about 108,000 people, approximately 40% of whom are 24 and under, Jefferson Park is indispensable.

Despite it's importance to the community, "it sort of feels like the annual upkeep just isn't happening," Laura said. "The grass just slowly, slowly is receding and not coming back because there's such high volume use there....We have a lot of neighborhood networks to help maintain the park, but there's just not quite enough people on the ground to manage trash and just the insane volume of use that happens, particularly in the summer."

Laura's plea for Jefferson Park echoes those made for other green spaces across the city that have popped up sporadically in the news. In his 2013 New York Times op-ed, "Can a Tree Grow in the Bronx?" state Senator Daniel Squadron lamented conditions at St. Mary's Park in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, "where the baseball bleachers don't have seats and the cracked tennis court has no net."

A year later, St. Mary's Park remains neglected. New Yorkers for Parks, a parks department watchdog and parks advocacy organization, reports that in "the once-grand St. Mary's Park, bathrooms flood, bleachers have been ripped out and pathways are deteriorating. The 35-acre park should be a gem for the neighborhood, which is in the poorest community board district in the city and poorest congressional district in the country." The group's description of St. Mary's is part of its larger report assessing open space in Mott Haven.

After years of neglect, parks like Thomas Jefferson and St. Mary's are finally entering mainstream conversations among legislators, advocates and the media. The concept of park equity, specifically, has emerged from the realities of a parks department budget that advocates consider meager and uneven streams of private funding that determine the quality of care among parks.

On April 23rd, much of the recent buzz came to a head at a city council committee hearing, "Equity in Parks: Do Disparities Exist in the Care of the City's Open Space?"

Those who testified discussed the decades-long trajectory that has shaped the current city park system and outlined steps to facilitate fairer parks spending and maintenance across all five boroughs. The hearing took place on the coattails of Mayor de Blasio's recent appointment of Mitchell Silver as the new Commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation.

As the City Council and mayor's office prepare to finalize the city's fiscal year 2015 budget by July 1, issues of parks funding take on particular significance. According to the mayor's executive budget, released May 8th, DPR is expected to keep its $80 million capital allotment from the previous budget. The City Council and its parks committee, however, are requesting at least $27 million more in DPR operating funds and will be going through a final round of public budget deliberations at its May 28th executive budget hearing - at which Commissioner Silver is expected to testify.

A City Parks System
To best examine the current debate around parks, it's crucial to understand the New York City park system's unique history. The city's park system is 300 years old, growing substantially since the establishment of its first official park, Bowling Green, in lower Manhattan in 1733, to what now includes nearly 2,000 parks and playgrounds and about 29,000 acres of parkland across the five boroughs.

The City of New York's Department of Parks and Recreation manages one of the largest urban park systems in the United States. According to a statement by First Deputy Commissioner Liam Kavanaugh, it includes roughly 1,941 parks and playgrounds, 1,800 basketball courts, 67 pools and 14 miles of beaches.

Most of these green spaces and facilities are products of a mid-twentieth century burst in public works projects, enabled by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and city planner Robert Moses's vision for New York City. "For much of the twentieth century, the city's public parks represented a robust vision of egalitarian, governmental support for public welfare," wrote George Mason University Fellow Benjamin Soskis in The New Yorker. In the 1960s, for example, the City allotted "a healthy" one-and-a half percent of its budget to DPR, said Council Member Levine in his opening statement at the Council's park equity hearing last month.

Only a few years later, a century's worth of investment would unravel when the financial crisis of the 1970s resulted in dramatic budget cuts across all city agencies. The parks department suffered greatly, and even in 2014, has yet to recover. According to Levine, "by 1986 Parks had fallen to just 0.86% of the budget....By 1990 Parks spending had fallen further to 0.65% of the total budget, and by 2000 it had reached just 0.52%."
Without adequate maintenance and staffing, public parks deteriorated. They transformed from urban oases to neglected outposts. In 1990, a New York Times article described just how far the city's parks had fallen: "Newspapers blow across the dusty, threadbare Great Lawn of Central Park. Abandoned cars block a running path in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx...parks like Tompkins Square, Washington Square and Marcus Garvey Park are notorious sites for drug-related crimes. A recent count found 1,600 homeless people live in Manhattan parks."

Today, a glimpse of New York's most prominent parks, such as Central Park, Prospect Park or Bryant Park, make the dark days of the crisis seem distant and even far-fetched. Not only have these parks rebounded in spectacular fashion, but 871 acres of city parkland were added throughout Bloomberg's three terms. That additional acreage includes new parks such as the High Line, Hudson River Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park and Governor's Island.

Yet despite these sparkling highlights, DPR funds continue to languish at a historically low percentage of the city budget. In its April 23rd hearing report, the City Council's parks and recreation committee reported that DPR's 2013-14 expense budget "only represents 0.5 percent of the City budget." So, how then have the crown jewels of the NYC park system managed to make a comeback?

A Tale of Two Park Systems: The Conservancy Model
The financial crisis of the seventies ushered in a new era of private participation in the maintenance and management of public goods. According to the Council's park equity brief, DPR responded to massive budget cuts of that decade by initiating "agreements with not-for-profit organizations to take on the responsibilities of maintaining certain parks." These public-private partnerships, intended to compensate for a temporary lack of public funds, were never phased out. On the contrary, they've become the status quo in park financing, thereby cementing the decrease in public investment.

Groups like the Central Park Conservancy, established in 1980, attract private funds and management into previously-neglected marquis parks. Today, there are about 20 such conservancies or alliances that partner with DPR to finance and maintain certain parks through a range of public-private agreements. Along with the Central Park Conservancy, the most prominent of these entities are:

• Prospect Park Alliance
• Bryant Park Corporation
• Friends of the High Line
• Bronx River Alliance
• Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy
• Randalls Island Parks Alliance
• Madison Square Park Restoration Project
• New York Restoration Project

A stroll through any conservancy-backed park affirms that these public-private partnerships have been successful. In the case of Central Park, the conservancy has channeled an excess of $250 million into the park's revitalization since the group's inception, according to the council committee report.

Since the dark days of the seventies, the city has rebounded economically and so has its capacity to revive the parks budget, although consecutive mayoral administrations and city councils have not championed the cause. Some argue that the influx of private funds into signature parks has silenced political will to restore the parks budget to an independently-operable level. Although advocates of the conservancy model, like former DPR commissioner Veronica White, claim that private partners "do not replace city services or authority," opponents worry about private interests encroaching on public space. Private funds, critics argue, have replaced rather than just supplemented DPR's budget, as originally intended.

In 2013, Steve Hindy, president and co-founder of Brooklyn Brewery and a board member on the Prospect Park Alliance, spoke with The New York Times. "About 10 years ago, the city contributed about 60 percent of the park budget and we raised the rest," he said of Prospect Park. However, "fast forward a decade," The Times wrote, and "the city contributes perhaps 40 percent of the budget for this grandly diverse park. The Alliance scrapes up the rest from corporations and foundations and by insistently shaking a tin cup before city and state legislators."

A result of the rise in private funding, many say, is a "two tier" system, through which signature parks, mostly in affluent communities, are gifted hefty donations that finance staff, upkeep and amenities, while the average neighborhood park, particularly in low-income and outer-borough communities, is left to deteriorate on meager budget allotments. In 2012, for example, $100 million was donated to Central Park in one gift alone and $20 million given to the High Line, while Flushing Meadows Park attracted only $5,000 the entire year in donations, wrote Times parks, recreation and wildlife reporter Lisa Foderaro in "New York Parks in Less Affluent Areas Lack Big Gifts."

Naturally, more affluent communities have better funded conservancies that propagate their parks in ways the City cannot, similar to how PTAs in the wealthiest neighborhoods supplement school budgets. However, legislators and advocates assert that this reality does not excuse the City from providing a dignified minimum of care to all its parks.

In testimony he delivered at the April 23rd hearing, Sen. Squadron said, "In a city as wealthy as New York, it is absurd that parks are allowed to deteriorate in neighborhoods because those neighborhoods cannot afford to pay more for their upkeep. It is a tragedy of the commons when our public spaces are allowed to fall into disrepair, not because the park is not valued or needed, but because it is used to its fullest capacity and the system fails to give it the required attention." Squadron has proposed legislation that would require the wealthiest conservancies to distribute a percentage of their funds to parks in less affluent communities.

Addressing Park Inequity
While DPR's dilemma is clear, action for a more equitable funding system is gaining momentum amongst stakeholders. Thus far, propositions for improvement fall into 3 categories: increasing DPR's budget; capitalizing on private sector solutions; and passing legislation that increases transparency and efficiency within DPR.

Increasing the DPR Budget:
Tupper Thomas, Executive Director of New Yorkers for Parks (NYP), which issues park condition reports, asserted in both testimony at the April 23rd hearing and a recent op-ed for Gotham Gazette, that park equity reform must begin with the city budget.

In its white paper, NYP proposes an increase in DPR's budget that is two-fold: First, it calls for increasing the agency's expense budget to accommodate full-time staffing needs for maintenance and security on the ground. Currently, "75% of the maintenance staff is made up of Job Training Participants (JTP), who are hired on a temporary seasonal basis and rarely given the opportunity for full-time employment," according to a report compiled by the City Council Committee on Parks and Recreation.

Second, NYP recommends increasing DPR's capital budget for construction and physical improvements in order to supplant the "piecemeal discretionary allocations from council members and borough presidents" that currently characterizes the process of funding capital projects.

Mayor de Blasio's 2015 executive budget retains the previous administration's capital budget figure but does not include additional money for maintenance and operations. The City Council's plea for $27 million to cover additional maintenance, security and staffing was ignored. According to a press release from Levine's office, the request would fund ten full-time workers and five full-time gardeners per borough, an additional 150 Park Enforcement Patrol (PEP) officers and 55 new staff to facilitate capital projects. The City Council is scheduled to deliberate the executive budget's DPR allotment at a final hearing on Wednesday, May 28.

Capitalizing on Private Sector Solutions
Although most stakeholders agree that increasing the public budget is the most important part of the equation, the role of private funding is unlikely to diminish no matter what the public budget looks like. Consequently, advocates like Squadron propose capitalizing on the conservancy model by "leveraging philanthropic donations for the system as a whole." In 2013, Squadron and Assembly Member Brian Kavanaugh introduced legislation, the Neighborhood Parks Alliance Act, that would require well-off, private conservancies to share portions of their funds with parks in underfunded communities.

According to Benjamin Soskis, if Squadron's bill passes, conservancies "with operating budgets greater than 5 million dollars, [including] the Central Park Conservancy (58 million dollars) and the Prospect Park Alliance (9 million dollars)...would be required to donate 20% of their budgets to a Neighborhood Parks Alliance, which would redistribute the money to the city's underfunded parks." Soskis examines the relationship between philanthropy and the perpetuation of inequality, or in this case, what many posit as the "general hazards of privatization," like "[sanctioning] the erosion of public stewardship" of public spaces.

Squadron's proposal has attracted mixed reviews. Some argue that diverting private donations to recipients other than those intended by the donors is inappropriate and starts down a slippery slope. In direct opposition to the premise of Squadron's bill in Forbes, an opponent asserts that government involvement in directing private donations "would threaten the future of charitable giving." Philanthropists will be less inclined to contribute to public works projects if their decision-making power is compromised, the argument goes.

Legislation to Increase Transparency and Efficiency
Although most park equity discussions center around achieving adequate and consistent funding for neighborhood parks, there are certain agency-wide shortcomings that politicians would like to address with legislation.The first issue is park safety.

For example, the Bronx has 7,000 acres of parkland but only 26 PEP officers on assignment. On the other hand, Battery Park City has about the same number of officers for just 26 acres, as noted by Council Member Levine during his May 13 appearance on The Brian Lehrer Show. A few weeks earlier, in his park equity hearing statement, Levine mentioned the importance of having precise and comprehensive per park data in order to assess the effects of uneven funding and PEP officer assignments on park safety.

In February 2014, the City Council overrode a Bloomberg veto of Local Law 2. The law requires "the police department to submit to the Council reports of crime in all parks and playgrounds within the City that are greater than one acre in size."

Surprisingly, until 2005, crime in parks was not tracked as occurring in parks at all. Instead, the NYPD recorded incidents as taking place at the nearest street address. This year's Local Law 2 builds on Local Law 114 of 2005, which intended to phase in the tracking of crime in all parks from a small pilot of the 20 largest (to have included all parks by today as originally intended).

In 2012, however, when de Blasio's Office of Public Advocate appealed to the Bloomberg administration for more comprehensive crime reporting in parks, the City was only reporting statistics for 31 spaces and facilities. The data from remaining parks, wrote the public advocate, "is aggregated with general precinct-level statistics, making it impossible to identify crime spikes in a specific park," thereby violating the intent of Local Law 114.

Not only is there not clear, comprehensive data on park crime, there is no record of individual park spending available to the public. DPR does not release its spending and resource distribution on an individual park basis and conservancy budgets are hardly transparent either. Hence, it's "difficult to get a picture of the combined public and private spending given to any park," Levine said.

As a result, Council Members Levine and Brad Lander have sponsored Intro 154, a bill to mandate DPR release its spending per park. And, Levine previewed an upcoming bill, not yet introduced, "which would mandate more complete reporting from conservancies on a timeline consistent with the City's budgeting process," the council member said in his opening statement at April's park equity hearing.

As the council parks committee chair, Levine will be looked to as a leader on parks and park equity for at least the next several years. For him and others, the pleas for Thomas Jefferson in East Harlem, St. Mary's in the Bronx, and other neighborhood parks across the boroughs, are not just pleas for grass, bleachers and basic maintenance, but for healthier communities.

Levine summed up the importance of parks in his May 13 interview, saying, "Parks are about so much more than just aesthetics and beauty, as important as that is. Parks are about healthy neighborhoods; they're intimately tied to the health of their neighborhoods; they promote community building, social capital, [and] even in ways we're only just beginning to understand, our physical health."

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by Katrina Shakarian, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette

Guards at Rikers Island (Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)

Ismael Nazario remembers when solitary confinement broke him. "I just talked to myself, answering myself, pacing back and forth," recalled Nazario to Gotham Gazette last year. He had been in "the box" for 3 days - his longest stretch in the tiny room with cot and toilet lasted 4 months. Nazario was 16, at Rikers Island awaiting trial for a robbery when he was sent to solitary for pushing an officer while being caught with contraband.

It's typical for solitary confinement to break a person - to make them hallucinate, talk to themselves, lose control, fling feces and urine around their cell - solitary, after all, is designed as severe punishment. And the number of prisoners in solitary confinement at any one moment may surprise you. More than 5,000 prisoners are in solitary confinement in New York state prisons and city jails at any one time. But a growing number of legislators and activist organizations in the state say the practice does permanent damage to inmates, leaving them haunted by their experiences in the box, and thus makes it harder to rehabilitate them. A 2013 study by the New York Civil Liberties Union found that extended solitary confinement does permanent mental damage to youthful inmates.

These advocates are seeking significant changes to the use of solitary.

One major piece of legislation pending in Albany, called the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act (HALT), would set major restrictions on how solitary confinement can be used. The bill stipulates that no prisoner could be in solitary for more than a 15-day stretch, or for 20 days in a 60-day period. Prisoners who would be placed in solitary for more than 15 days would instead have to be sent to a separate residential rehabilitation unit with therapy and out-of-cell programming.

The bill would ban the use of solitary confinement on prisoners under the age of 22 or above the age of 55, prisoners who are pregnant, who have a mental or physical disability or who are "perceived" to be LGBTQ.

Meanwhile, the Corrections Officer Benevolent Association (COBA) insists that solitary is an integral tool to maintaining the safety of both officers and prisoners. Prisoners are sent to solitary for being involved in gang violence or drug sales, or for attacking officers or fellow inmates.

COBA president Norman Seabrook told the Center For Investigative Reporting in March that he felt solitary confinement isn't used enough. 

In February, the State reached a deal with the New York Civil Liberties Union to settle a suit arguing that the State's use of solitary violated the U.S. Constitution. As a result the State agreed to several changes: limiting the time inmates ages 16 and 17 are in solitary to 19 hours a day while providing them with the opportunity to exercise outdoors five days a week; stopping placement of pregnant inmates in solitary other than in exceptional circumstances; and limiting the time developmentally-disabled inmates can spend in solitary to 30 days.

Incremental Change
Activists say the agreement isn't good enough and laws need to be changed. But legislators admit that it is unlikely a sweeping change to the state's solitary confinement system will be enacted this year because of the gubernatorial election. Changing the solitary confinement system could be seen as being soft on crime and the correctional officers unions remain steadfastly opposed to easing the rules.

Assembly Member Jeffrey Aubry, sponsor of the HALT legislation in the Assembly, called getting the bill passed this year "an uphill battle" during a rally against prison injustice in Albany on May 5th. Both the Senate and Assembly versions of the HALT legislation await action in corrections committee.

Assembly Member Daniel O'Donnell of Manhattan, who backs legislation that would ban solitary confinement for youth under the age of 21, said that he feels incremental change to solitary is more likely. "We aren't going to ban solitary confinement overall," O'Donnell said in an interview this week. "I don't think it is in the political wheelhouse in a gubernatorial election year. But I think we can take certain groups and populations and say we're not going to allow you to be held like that."

On May 13, the Assembly's corrections committee passed both O'Donnell's bill and Assembly Member Nily Rozic's that would ban solitary for pregnant prisoners. Neither bill has a corresponding piece of legislation in the Senate though.

O'Donnell says that while he thinks the State's recent settlement is a step forward, it does not impact the use of solitary on Rikers, as any of the pending legislation would. "The settlement does not impact local jails," he said. "Solitary is used on Rikers as a punishment. The idea that young people need to be treated differently seems to be accepted everywhere else in society: they can't vote until they are 18, they can't smoke, they can't join the military so I'm not sure why people think it is safe to punish them when they are young and still developing. Just to make this law and extend it to Rikers Island would be a big thing."

"Giving these young people a pass because they're 17 years old, I'm not impressed with that," Seabrook told the Center For Investigative Reporting in March. "I have a brother doing 25 years to life. We had the same mom. He chose one way of life, I chose another, but he doesn't get a pass from me, either."

Megan Crowe-Rothstein, of the Campaign to Alternatives to Isolated Confinement, said that HALT is their priority but that they support any bill that would "reduce prisoners' contact with solitary confinement."

"We don't want to lose sight of the big picture here," said Crowe-Rothstein, noting that she understands the legislature may not be able to deal with the entire solitary confinement issue at once. "This is about reforming a system that has been compared to torture and ensuring civil rights," she said.

Crowe-Rothstein says that families across the state are concerned about the way their relatives have been treated in county jails like Rikers. The New York City jail generally has more young people in solitary confinement at one time than any other jail in the state.

The New York City Council has also taken up the issue of solitary on Rikers. Council Member Daniel Dromm has introduced legislation that would require the department of corrections to publically post a detailed accounting of its use of solitary confinement. COBA is strongly opposed.

The Odds
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made reforming the state's juvenile justice system and prison system a major focus of his first term. Cuomo has closed underutilized prisons across the state and even declared that "An incarceration program is not an employment program" during his 2011 State of the State Address. "If people need jobs, let's get people jobs," the governor said in the address. "Don't put other people in prison to give some people jobs. Don't put other people in juvenile justice facilities to give some people jobs. That's not what this state is all about. And that has to end this session..."

The 2011 statement was seen as a direct assault on upstate legislators who desperately protect their prisons because they are the major source of employment for their communities. This year Cuomo kept up his prison reform efforts by proposing funding college classes for inmates. That proposal was savaged in the press and by legislators who saw it as weak on crime and insulting to families that can't afford to send their children to college. While Cuomo feels major pressure from black and Latino legislators to deliver on prison reform it seems unlikely he will take this issue up heading into a heated election. It also seems unlikely that the Senate Republicans would allow any of the solitary bills their support.

O'Donnell notes, however, that June is the month when legislative deals come together quickly: "Everything is available for trade in those last-minute discussions. But those discussions are above my pay grade."

And public pressure is mounting. Advocates point to the fact that violence in Rikers is increasing despite a decreasing inmate population and the stories of terror and mayhem suffered by inmates appears to be hitting critical mass with families complaining to the media and elected officials.

The medical community is also focusing on a study published in February in The American Journal of Public Health that found that inmates held in solitary in New York City jails are nearly 7 times more likely to harm themselves than other inmates.

Nazario told Gotham Gazette that he continues to carry his experiences in solitary with him. But, he has not been completely crippled - the 25-year-old now works as a case manager for at-risk youth at the Center For Community Alternatives in Brooklyn.

***
by David King, Albany editor, Gotham Gazette
@DavidHowardKing

Assemblymember Francisco Moya (assembly.state.ny.us)

Liz Courtney and her husband started a hot dog catering business in Red Hook in 2011. It seemed like a safe thing to do as Courtney had been gainfully employed at the same marketing job for 7 years and the hot dog business could bring in the extra income they needed to make ends meet. They hired six employees to help and they were gradually working their way out of the debt they incurred opening the business.

Then, in 2012, Courtney was let go from her main job - the one that was paying the bills. Courtney applied for unemployment. She quickly discovered that working as the unpaid CEO of Snap Hot Dogs was a major impediment to qualifying for full unemployment benefits.

New York State rules for collecting unemployment differ from those of most states in that they punish applicants for doing any part-time work. "According to the rules if I spend 15 minutes updating my business' Twitter account I have to claim a whole day of working," said Courtney. "Even if I'm not making any money."

New York unemployment laws don't base partial unemployment benefits on how much money a worker made in a week as most other states' do; instead benefits are based on number of days worked. On top of that, as Courtney explains, someone is considered to have worked a day even if they only worked for a short amount of time.

If someone collecting unemployment claims to work an hour long shift for one day, that amount of work counts against them as an entire day's work and their benefit is decreased by 25 percent. A worker receives no benefits if they claim to have worked four days in a week even if they worked a total of just four hours.

Courtney eventually had a hearing before a judge and presented her records that showed she was not paying herself as CEO of Snap Hot Dogs. She qualified for unemployment but found the reporting guidelines to be restrictive and absurd - if she reported some small amount of work on one day she would lose a significant amount of the benefit she would have otherwise qualified for. If she actually went out and found part-time work it would basically negate her benefit completely. "It was like they were trying to punish me for being honest," Courtney said. "I did everything by the book but it made things a lot harder."

Assemblyman Francisco Moya has introduced legislation that would change the guidelines so that New Yorkers are encouraged to find part time work while collecting unemployment. "We are one of the only states that calculates partial unemployment this way," said Moya, who noted his Queens constituents who work retail are greatly impacted by the current system. Moya argues that by changing the system to allow more flexibility for part-time work New Yorkers will have more incentive to reenter the job market.

Make Work Pay NY, a coalition dedicated to changing New York law so that it mirrors the more flexible laws of neighboring states like New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, asserts that the current unemployment laws makes it harder for economic recovery to take hold because the people who are most likely to spend unemployment benefits and boost the local economy are being penalized for trying to get back into the job market.

Moya said that New York's unemployment system needs to recognize that in the post-recession economy the jobs that return first are part time. According to Make Work Pay NY, in the second-half of 2013 approximately 400,000 New Yorkers were employed part-time despite wanting full-time work. The number of these underemployed workers was up from 270,000 in the same timeframe in 2008, before the recession took hold.

Moya's bill would update New York's unemployment program to reflect programs in most other states by linking eligibility to part-time earnings rather than days worked. The bill would define partial unemployment as a week of part-time work paying less than 1.5 times the full benefit amount. The bill would require the use of a formula that disregards a portion of part-time income worth 50 percent of what a person could expect their full unemployment benefit to be.

Claimants who earn more than the 50 percent of their disregarded income would take home their wages and the difference between their full benefit and any wages over the credit. Those whose earnings are less than the credit would see no reduction in their unemployment benefit. The bill would also increase partial benefits for low-wage workers.

Moya's bill is awaiting a vote in the Assembly and the companion Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Diane Savino was sent to her labor committee in February but has yet to have a committee hearing. The bills do not enjoy many cosponsors in their respective houses, but supporters note the chair of each house's labor committee has signed on. The bill could come into play in June as both houses barter legislation in end-of-session deals. Moya, also the Assembly sponsor of The DREAM Act, said he hopes Gov. Andrew Cuomo's new focus on progressive issues will mean his unemployment bill will have a better chance of passing this year.

Liz Courtney says that working in media also made her unemployment benefits ordeal difficult because if she took freelance work or "odd jobs" it didn't matter if they were low paying or only took minutes to complete, she was still risking impacting her unemployment benefit if she reported them.

Courtney, who has since found a full-time marketing job and continues to manage Snap Hot Dogs, added, "I think the most frustrating thing for me about not being able to collect full benefits was that I had a lot of debt for starting this food business that was really difficult to run but that had a positive impact on the economy."

She continued, "I felt like I was being kicked while I was down - we had 6 people working for us part time when we were doing well and we paid into the system for unemployment benefits and now here I was being told the system wouldn't help me."

***
by David King, Albany editor, Gotham Gazette
@DavidHowardKing

New York City Hall

What to look for this week, via the City and Albany:

The week kicks off with Mayor Bill de Blasio giving the keynote to start this year's Internet Week New York. Internet Week is filled with events, including speakers and workshops. De Blasio is expected to "present his vision for the role of the technology industry in New York City, address the unique nature of New York City's technology community, and outline the administration's plans to support and grow the city's innovation economy," according to a March 27 press release from the mayor's office.

Along with many representatives from the private sector, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen will also speak during Internet Week, and, NYC Digital, led by de Blasio's digital director, Jessica Singleton, will host a series of discussions and workshops with the tech community in hopes of continuing to build relationships with the blossoming industry. Of interest to some may be the administration's rollout of .nyc domain names, the process for which has just begun.

On Monday the mayor will also deliver remarks and sign into law several lower-profile bills recently passed by the City Council.

This week is also full of city council executive budget hearings and will see a variety of interesting one-off events, including the return of President Barack Obama to the state just a week after having been in New York to talk infrastructure near the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Here's the run of the week in more detail:

New York City

Monday
Along with the start of Internet Week New York, Monday sees City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito being honored alongside Cynthia Nixon, an early supporter of Mayor Bill de Blasio, at the Eleanor's Legacy spring breakfast at the Yale Club. In the evening, Mark-Viverito attends New York League of Conservation Voters 25th anniversary spring gala at Chelsea Piers. And yes, that's "conservation," not "conservative."

The City Council's exectuive budget hearings will continue on Monday with a joint hearing of the committees on general welfare, women's issues and finance.

On Monday evening, Sandra Fluke, who is running for State Senate in California, will be in New York City. 'Stand With Sandra' is hosting a fundraiser at 6 p.m. in Manhattan. Fluke gained national attention in February 2012 when Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee refused to allow her to testify regarding the importance of birth control being covered by health insurance.

Also on Monday evening, the Historic Horse-Drawn Carriages of Central Park, LLC.is hosting "the world premiere of a new short documentary by Mary Haverstick, of Haverstick Films, narrated by Liam Neeson" called Save NYC Horse Carriages. The film will be screened for select guests at the Kraine Theater in Manhattan. No word as of 8:30 Sunday evening if anti-horse carriage activists will have a presence at or near the screening.

According to his public schedule, the mayor will attend "the Asian Pacific American Heritage Reception at Gracie Mansion" on Monday night, and then, "the Mayor will receive the Ally Award at the Marriage Equality USA National Gala."

Tuesday
The 20th Annual Citywide Seminar on Ethics in City Government is Tuesday, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is put on by the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board and the Center for New York City Law at New York Law School. According to a release, "discussion topics include the newest proposal for state ethics reform, ethical issues in lobbying, government initiatives in anti-corruption, recent developments in the conflicts of interest law and "Keeping Gotham Honest: How the City Polices Itself."" The event will culminate with "a "pub trivia"-type competition" that will test participants' "knowledge of Chapter 68 of the City Charter which covers conflicts of interest, and history of City government."

Council executive budget hearings on Tuesday include a joint hearing of the committees on public safety and finance, among others (the finance committee participates in all executie budget hearings).

Tuesday evening features an event being put on by the CUNY Institute for Education Policy at Roosevelt House in Manhattan. The event, "New Education Advocacy Organizations in the U.S. States: Their Current Influence and Potential Future Role in K-12 Policy Development" promises to explore how over "the past two decades, about five dozen new education advocacy organizations have emerged across the U.S." It is unclear how much of the discussion will focus on New York, but the topic certainly has quite a bit of relevance as New York has been home to some of the most active and contentious education advocacy work in the country.

Wednesday
On Wednesday morning, The Manhattan Institute hosts a breakfast policy forum featuring NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton. Bratton will be introduced by Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow and Bratton aide George Kelling. Questions on the agenda include: "How can the NYPD and community groups strengthen the fabric of their partnership in 2014? What are today's challenges in the subways and parks, and what will make these places truly the best they can be for generations to come? How will big data and advanced data analytics impact 21st Century policing?"

City Council budget hearings on Wednesday include the committees on housing and buildings; economic development; and small business - each in conjunction with the finance committee.

Thursday
City Council budget hearings on Thursday include the finance committee meeting jointly with the Committee on Aging and the Subcommittee on Senior Centers together; with the Committee on Land Use and the Committee on Technology together; with the Committee on Oversight and Investigation; and with the Committee on Standards and Ethics.

On Thursday at 6:30 p.m. there will be another in the series of Vision Zero town halls, this one at Lehman College in the Bronx.

Friday
On Friday, the City Council will have two committee meetings that are not executive budget hearings: the Committee on Public Housing tours District Council 9's training center and the Committee on Veterans meets to discuss a few topics, incuding the possibility of a ticker-tape parade to honor veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

And regarding Albany:
This will be another politically-charged week in Albany as the State Democratic convention takes place Wednesday and Thursday in Suffolk County, Long Island. Gov. Andrew Cuomo will officially be named his party's nominee for governor and Cuomo could also name a replacement for departing Lt. Governor Robert Duffy. But Cuomo won't be the most important Democrat in the state all week as President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Cooperstown - the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame - on Thursday to discuss tourism. Could there be some Cuomo-Obama synergy? It seems likely at this point as Obama returns just a week after having appeared alongside the governor near the Tappan Zee Bridge. And, Obama is scheduled to return to the state again on the 28th when he gives the commencement address at West Point. How much this synergy relates to 2016 is anybody's guess and could be the cause for some entertaining speculation.

The convention and Obama's visit could signal a lull for actual legislating in Albany - something already hard to come by as members eye the end of session and their re-election campaigns.

The Assembly will hold an awareness day for people with disabilities on Monday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the well of the Legislative Office Building. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb will address participants at 11:45 a.m. The Assembly will then vote on a number of bills that address issues for the disabled. 

***
by Kristen Meriwether and Ben Max in New York City and David King in Albany
@GothamGazette

 
Brian Lehrer (photo: Marco Antonio)

Brian Lehrer is a New York City institution. The iconic WNYC radio host, approaching his 25th anniversary at the station this fall, sat down with Gotham Gazette to discuss his career in journalism. The interview, which can be found in its entirety here, was filmed on the afternoon of Thursday, May 15, 2014 - that morning, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum held a private opening led by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, President Barack Obama, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Governor Andrew Cuomo, other current and former elected officials, and many more people who were directly impacted by the events of 9/11.

As with virtually every important New York City event of the past 25 years - tragic, joyful, or otherwise - Brian Lehrer was at the forefront as the city attempted to understand and cope with the events of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath.

We asked Mr. Lehrer about that day in 2001:

For Gotham Gazette's full video interview with Brian Lehrer, during which he discusses his start in journalism, his radio heroes, his favorite on-air moments, and much more as he approaches his 25th anniversary at WNYC, visit this page.

The Brian Lehrer Show airs weekdays on WNYC 93.9FM from 10 a.m. to noon.

***
@BrianLehrer
@GothamGazette
@TweetBenMax 

Video production generously donated to Gotham Gazette by GZIPUSA.HumanityCode.com

Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration is pushing ahead with the Bloomberg .nyc plan (photo: nyc.gov)

Everything after the dot is changing. A couple of years ago, only 22 generic top-level domains — including .com, .edu, .org and .net — were in use online. Last year, the governing body that oversees these generic top-level domains (gTLDs), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), opened the floodgates. The number of web suffixes will likely soar to well over 1,000 in the next couple of years.

Dozens of new gTLDs have been approved by ICANN recently, including domains like .singles, .blackfriday, .gop, .sexy, .diamonds, .wtf, .dating, .christmas, .ninja and .cool, some of which are already live. One of the newest to join that growing list was registered by the City of New York: .nyc.

Last week the City announced the official launch of .nyc. In a May 5 press release, Mayor Bill de Blasio trumpeted the start of a four-phase, five-month rollout of the city's domain, beginning with the 45-day sunrise period where trademark holders can claim their .nyc addresses, then a month for the government to scoop up the names it wants, followed by a "landrush" period where popular names will be auctioned off, and, finally, a first-come, first-serve public availability in October (the cost is between $15 and $30 for registration and a similar annual fee, though the exact price will be determined by the 31 registrars on the open market).

De Blasio touted the launch as "one of the most anticipated arrivals for the city and the Internet at large," and said, "There is no shortage of New Yorkers ready to claim their exclusive .nyc identities online, and this is their chance to reserve their piece of this city's valuable digital real estate," according to the press release.

The City is banking on .nyc replacing .com or .org for many businesses, individuals and organizations based in the five boroughs that want to tell the digital world where they call home. So instead of competing for that perfect, catchy .com or .org — which may have been claimed years ago — individuals and entities will have the chance to craft a virtual identity that is tied to a geographical location.

But some New Yorkers are concerned about the path the City is taking. How to acquire and fairly distribute .nyc web addresses is a wonky and for many, boring issue. It wasn't a hot topic during the mayoral campaign and aside from a couple of sparsely attended (and reported) public hearings on the topic dating back to 2008, there has been no major public debate over how the City of New York should go about controlling its very own top-level domain.

While the debate has largely existed behind closed doors or by a small vocal minority online, some of the strongest words ever spoken on the subject publicly came from the mayor himself, way back when he was a city council member.

De Blasio's Old Stance
At a technology committee hearing in 2008 organized by then-Council Member Gale Brewer, de Blasio spoke about his concerns for .nyc. During a discussion over whether a non-profit or private company should work on behalf of the City to distribute domain names, de Blasio said he thought it was a bad idea to have any third party involved and that government should handle it
altogether. The comments come during the fall of 2008, just after the market crashed:

"I think in this last month or two, we've been given, probably in my lifetime, the most profound lesson on why the government has to play a role, a mediating role in public life and in the economy and I'm sort of at a point personally very unapologetic now about saying I have no longer any doubt about government as the arbiter because I don't trust the private sector to do it and I think the stock market situation just kind of, to me, makes that point so clearly across the board," said de Blasio.

He spoke at length about why .nyc administration should be "directly overseen by a legislative body."

"I fear if it's outside the hands of government, it will get in some way derailed or sent into a track where it won't be effective," he said, according to the hearing transcript. "Why on earth shouldn't it be the appropriate role of government?"

De Blasio detailed the ineffectiveness of the open market when it comes to claiming web addresses, saying the system of people grabbing up names and selling them off to the highest bidder is rampant and unfair.

"You know, and that would be true obviously if you came up with .nyc, it would instantly have people running all over trying to grab all the good names and I think what it means is it kind of goes against, again, everything that Gale [Brewer] and this committee has been talking about is about equity and access. And so, if you keep repeating the pattern we've had up to now...it still seems to me that slowly but surely [it will] fall it into the worst habits of the private sector where it becomes about who has the most resources, who has the most lawyers, etc., etc."

Not what de Blasio wanted
"I remember that hearing like it was yesterday. And one of [de Blasio's] big concerns then was that the city wasn't clear what the City of New York would get out of it," said Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer in a phone interview May 9. "He felt the City of New York was not playing a big enough role in the process. And I think that's what happened."

The City signed a typical Bloomberg-era contract with a private company, Neustar, Inc., which is administering .nyc.

The city is guaranteed $3.6 million over five years and if the amount the city earns each year ever falls below 40 percent of Neustar's gross revenue for .nyc, the company will kick in even more. So if .nyc is a wild success, the city — as well as Neustar — will make millions and if it's a failure, Neustar absorbs the cost and the city doesn't take the hit. Neustar even covered the $185,000 ICANN application fee.

The selection of Neustar — a publicly traded company that is in the business of administering top-level domains and already controls .biz and .us — is not without some controversy. In 2009, the City issued an RFP for a private vendor to administer the .nyc domain. Then, a three-year wait until just before an ICANN expansion deadline and the City awarded the contract to Neustar after a last-minute daytime public hearing on a Friday in March 2012. Five people testified at that hearing and many of New York's civic tech community were outraged at the lack of notice and lack of open debate on the issue.

One of the people upset about the lack of public debate was Thomas Lowenhaupt, a Jackson Heights resident and longtime member of Queens Community Board 3. Lowenhaupt currently sits on the mayor's .nyc advisory group, which he says the Bloomberg administration created and put him on after he tried to stop the City from going ahead with its Neustar plan by filing a formal objection with ICANN. Lowenhaupt is credited as the city's first advocate for a .nyc domain. In 2001, he spearheaded a CB 3 resolution calling on the City to acquire .nyc and in 2005 he created a non-profit called "Connecting.nyc" to continue his .nyc mission of creating a public portal where .nyc becomes a shared resource for all things New York instead of a corporate playground. He's not happy with how the City has proceeded and thinks the City is squandering an opportunity to use .nyc to help promote community and public interests in favor of money-making ones.

"The way we are going now is the Bloomberg way, still following that plan that these names, premium names will be set aside and auctioned off to highest bidders. That's the way things usually work but that's not exactly a progressive administration," Lowenhaupt said in a phone interview. He recently listed on his website progressive ways de Blasio can change the planned rollout.

In contrast to the mayor's 2008 thoughts, his administration now seems to be OK with a private company administering .nyc.

"Frankly I think that it makes sense for a contractor to be leading up the actual registry process here. What we're talking about here is a very technical process," said Jeff Merritt, a senior advisor in the mayor's office who is heading up .nyc for the de Blasio administration. "If the city were to manage this process it'd be creating this whole bureaucracy."

Since becoming mayor, de Blasio has done little to change the .nyc path started by the previous administration. Granted, his hands are tied to the existing contract, but critics argue he can still do more. One small change since he took over at City Hall is his quietly boosting the frequency of meetings for the .nyc advisory group so that it now meets every month. The goal of the group, which includes 11 New Yorkers from the civic tech community and representatives from various business improvement districts, is to provide input on how the City implements .nyc.

Though there are more meetings than there were under Bloomberg, the advisory group meetings are closed to the public, so the debate about the future of .nyc is still very much behind closed doors. Gotham Gazette was denied attending the May 12 meeting.

One thing is clear, the first of four phases has started and the others will follow, as the contract dictates, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions and concerns about how the next five months are going to play out.

Small businesses
For small businesses in the city that have had a tough time finding a simple, recognizable .com address, the launch of .nyc is a great opportunity to change that.

"We are in many ways trying to create a space in the chaotic world of the web that gives people comfort, that says this is New York City," said Merritt.

One rule for registering a .nyc is having a physical address in the five boroughs (not including a P.O. Box), so the competition is much smaller than it is for claiming a .com. However, businesses with an established .com address will likely have to claim the corresponding .nyc address in defense, to stop someone else from snatching it up.

"Imagine you own a patch of land and have made it valuable through careful farming practices – good seeds, irrigation, fertilizers, and bees to pollinate the crops. But now someone comes along and says, 'We will divide your land into smaller parcels and charge you to protect each of them,'" wrote Esther Dyson, who sits on the mayor's .nyc advisory board and is former chair of the ICANN board, after ICANN decided to start registering more TLDs.

The administration says .nyc is about opportunity and not making money.

"The goal here wasn't, 'Can we find a way to create more revenue for the city?' It was trying to find ways to create opportunities for New Yorkers," Merritt said.

Lowenhaupt disagrees. His idea, which has the support of Brewer, is to create a portal for New York City-based organizations and businesses to share a presence online. So rather than pizza.nyc being sold to the highest bidder, which he says could very well be Pizza Hut or Domino's, it could be a portal to list all the pizza shops in the city and give equal play to the mom and pop pizza shops. As it stands now, pizza.nyc, as well as many general product names will likely be auctioned to the highest bidder during the "landrush" phase in August.

During this "landrush," if more than one New Yorker puts in a claim for an address, then that name will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Lowenhaupt's idea is to create a number of these portals so people in New York City could avoid using search engines and find a list of hotels at hotels.nyc or restaurants at dining.nyc or museums at museums.nyc.

"The current plan is crazy and short-sighted. Infrastructure should be used to serve the needs of everyone, not just the highest bidder. And TLDs are surely a form of civic infrastructure that belongs to all of us," wrote David Bollier, an Amherst-based author and expert on "the commons," where cultural and natural resources are available to all members of a society.

Lowenhaupt says he's worried valuable names will be snatched up by people with money to toss around. "Rupert Murdoch can pull change out of his pocket to own news.nyc," he said.

When asked if she thought the City was doing enough to help small businesses, Brewer said she's not sure. "I'm a little apprehensive," she said. "This whole .nyc should be for small businesses: the coffee shop, the pizza shop, the hat shop, the manufacturer. That's what I envisioned."

Brewer added that she would have preferred the City have a "more strenuous conversation" about helping small businesses. She said she hopes the administration will listen to the concerns of the advisory group.

"We are going to watch it like a hawk and make sure that the highest levels of government are paying attention to what the advisory group is doing," she said.

The Department of Small Business Services has reached out to business improvement districts (BIDs) across the city and the city's Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications (DoITT) says it is planning a meeting in late May for BIDs to learn more about acquiring .nyc addresses.

Council Member Robert E. Cornegy, Jr., chair of the council's small business committee, wrote in an e-mail that he's thinks .nyc is "an incredible opportunity," but he has concerns.

"However, the benefit to small businesses will be determined in great part by how the domains are priced, how access is expanded following the sunrise period and whether this initiative is paired with programs that help our local businesses bridge the digital divide and establish an online presence," he wrote.

.Astoria, .Riverdale and .Greenpoint
Thousands of web addresses will not be available to the public ever. The City is blocking about 3,000 names that are related to city entities or landmarks, including names related to city agencies like the NYPD or FDNY. "If the City did not pull off those names, we'd be setting ourselves up for lots and lots of legal battles," said Merritt.

The City is also working on a way to reserve neighborhood names for non-profits that could be used as a tool for community building, something Merritt says was discussed last year but the current administration is making a reality. However, it is unclear what names the City has reserved and what non-profits will get preference for these addresses.

Neither list has been made publicly available, though at a December workshop hosted by DoITT, Jeff Neuman from Neustar said they would be at some point.

"All these lists will be publicly available so that everybody can see. Our goal with everything we do is to be as open and transparent as possible so if there's something you're not seeing, something you'd like access to, please let us know. Our goal is to run this in a responsible manner to make it a TLD that benefits all New Yorkers," Neuman said.

Cyber Squatting
One of the practices de Blasio railed against in 2008 was people grabbing up names and then re-selling them for a profit, something often referred to as cyber squatting.

"There is really nothing within our power to be able to prevent any kind of secondary market from developing," Neuman said at the December workshop.

But because a requirement to own a .nyc address is to have a real presence in New York City, the secondhand market would be a local one.

When asked about local cybersquatting, Merritt said they are not sure what will happen.

"A lot of this remains to be seen. This is definitely a first in terms of the web. Our effort is to do as much public outreach as possible to small businesses and entities in New York to make them aware of this opportunity," he said.

Address Loophole?
The physical address requirement seems like it'd be easy to find a way around. There are companies online that charge a monthly fee to take in your mail, answer your phone and accept your faxes — all with a real local address and telephone number in Manhattan.

"I can get a prestigious 5th Avenue address for $25 online. They will take in my mail ... they will fax it to me or e-mail it to me. You don't ever have to step foot in the city to have a New York City address, so just the P.O. box [rule] is not adequate," said Lowenhaupt.

Neustar will establish a process where someone can file a complaint against an entity they believe is not actually in New York City.

Lowenhaupt advocates for a more rigorous application process like London has instituted for .london, designed to give priority to London-based individuals, businesses and entities and that allows applicants to submit evidence to prove they deserve the name over others.

'Heart and Soul'
New York City is the first U.S. city to acquire its own TLD, so how the next five months play out here will likely affect how other cities proceed. The glut of new TLDs into the web will surely cause some confusion and nobody knows whether these new TLDs are going to work out the way their buyers want them to. Since prices are going to be determined by demand, it's unclear just how much a .nyc address may cost to renew in years to come.

Though the first phase has begun, the de Blasio administration has until the August landrush to try to make changes to the City's plan.

Lowenhaupt said he wants to see .nyc become a trusted domain, but that as it stands now that will not be the case.

"I think this thing should be thought out. Selling names for .nyc willy nilly just to make some money is not the public interest approach," he said. "It is our heart and soul and everything we do in this digital age is going to be under that name."

***
by Adam Wisnieski for Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette

Costly East Side Access construction continues (MTA)

The terms "capital project" and "over budget" go together like peanut butter and jelly. Ask city agencies in charge of these projects why they consistently cost more than expected and the laundry list of excuses begins: we didn't anticipate this, we didn't expect that. The excuses are likely the reality, but they don't address the broader issue: telling the truth from the beginning is much harder than making excuses after the fact.

"Historically, in transportation, in the planning process, there has been a fear of putting real numbers out there, because if you put real numbers out there, the project will never get built," Joan McDonald, commissioner of the New York State Department of Transportation (DOT) said at a City and State NY transportation forum on Thursday, May 15.

"When you start looking at [projects like] East Side Access, a Kosciuszko Bridge, there is an initial fear that if we put a project out that is going to cost $10 billion, that it will never happen."

So government agencies across the country, including the MTA and the New York State DOT, have historically projected smaller numbers publicly and asked for forgiveness later because, as McDonald points out, there is virtually nothing anyone can do about it once the project starts.

"Once you start a project, you don't stop it," McDonald said. "So there has never been any real negative for cost overruns, because you are going to build the project."

No one wants to see billions invested in a project that only gets half built. The incomplete project would be unusable, leaving the initial investment wasted. Once initial budget projections are hit, the only option becomes to continue to dump more money in, regardless of how upsetting it is to the public or how much debt is incurred.

One person familiar with this process is Tom Prendergast, chairman and CEO of the MTA. His agency is responsible for two over-budget and late projects. The East Side Access project, which will connect the Long Island Railroad to a new East Side station and incorporate Grand Central Station, was scheduled to be complete in 2009 at a cost of $4.3 billion. It is now estimated to be complete in 2021 and will cost roughly $10 billion. It is currently the largest infrastructure project in the country.

The Fulton Street Center, which will connect 11 subway lines at Fulton Street and Broadway in Lower Manhattan, is currently five years behind schedule (though slated to open June 26) and millions over budget.

"Fulton and East Side Access are projects over $1B," Prendergast said at the City and State forum on Thursday. "[Managing those] is not a core competency of the MTA and its capacity. It has gotten better at it."

Prendergast was the president of the Long Island Railroad at the time the project was originally approved, but as head of the MTA now, he is having to deal with the headache of the cost overruns.

For the East Side Access project, Prendergast blamed the tunneling for the excess time and money.

"I think we underestimated the amount of tunneling and mining that was done," Prendergast said. "If you actually go down to the caverns and see how much earth that has been moved, we totally underestimated that. Yet, we have to finish that project."

For the Fulton Center project, which is in at just over $1 billion, Prendergast was less detailed: "I think in some ways, the eyes were bigger than the stomach."

As federal funding has become more scarce in recent years, there has been a greater focus on front-end planning to prevent going over budget. McDonald said the State has recently instituted accountability measures into all State DOT projects. If the estimates tip to 5 percent over budget, a corrective plan must be issued.

McDonald cited the Alexander Hamilton Bridge as an example. The $400 million project, which began in the spring of 2009, is slated to be complete under budget and on time, according to McDonald.

Better managing the front end of a $400 million project is far easier than a multi-billion project, however, and Prendergast acknowledged the MTA will have to do better.

"We need to manage those projects better," Prendergast said. "We can't afford to waste billions of dollars."

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by Kristen Meriwether, Gotham Gazette
@MeriwetherK

Council members before their May 14 Stated Meeting (William Alatriste)

NEW YORK—On May 14 the New York City Council unanimously passed a rules reform package that will change the internal operation of the 51-member legislative body. While member item reform has received much of the press, the Council is also committing to making its actions much more transparent by altering how some data will be presented on its website.

The City Council website is a wealth of information. Visitors can find all currently proposed bills, member voting on particular bills, legislation sponsorship information, and proposed and/or passed legislation dating back to 1998. You can even watch hearings online if you couldn't make it to City Hall.

Unfortunately, even for frequent users of the site, finding some of that information can be a cumbersome task. If you know your way around you can, for example, find how each council member voted on a bill. But, you can't find a complete voting record for each council member. You can find out if a member was present at a hearing, but you can't find their total attendance record for the session.

Some information, like what bills a council member has sponsored and whether those bills have passed, are available through the searchable database and can even be exported into an Excel spreadsheet. Having data in a spreadsheet is better than in a PDF to search and manipulate the information, but it is by no means easy to compare multiple members this way. It is also not effective for compiling all laws already on the books or proposed on a particular topic (all bike laws for example).

The new rules will not fix the site's problems entirely, but are a huge first step. The legislative tracking rule (rule 5.110) will require the Council to publish all proposed laws and resolutions and "any information associated with each proposed local law or resolution" in a machine-readable format "as soon as practical." This includes committee reports, agendas, calendars, hearing testimony, transcripts, committee assignments, and voting records, according to the language in the bill.

"We are taking dramatic steps towards more transparency so members of the press and public can see how our legislative process works," Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said at City Hall on May 14.

Most of the data on the council site is currently available in Word document or PDF form. The new rule will require the Council to publish in a format, machine readable, that third party developers can utilize. Developers will be able to use the raw data to create endless user-friendly applications such as a council member vote tracker application, an attendance tracker application, or an app that shows all legislation being proposed related to a specific topic.

The MTA is a great example of this system already at work. It began releasing bulk data on everything from train schedules to lost and found items and for several years now, developers have been creating mobile apps using the data. Several of these apps are used by New Yorkers every day to find what transportation lines are delayed or how long a trip will take. The MTA created a yearly contest to create official MTA apps like MTA Subway Time, but there are popular third party-hosted apps like iTransNYC.

"In so many areas of our lives, access to data has helped transform how people understand what is going on in the world," Council Member Brad Lander said at City Hall on May 14. "This will help people understand better what the Council is doing and evaluate what the Council is doing."

Timeline for Change
How and when these changes to the city council website will take place is still up in the air. Lander said he hoped the Council could get the details sorted out by the end of the year, but several things will need to change to make it happen.

The council website runs the Legistar system which is used by municipalities around the country. The system can export some data into Excel spreadsheets, but currently the site does not have a feature to produce and display all of the data required by the new rule in an open data format.

Council staff indicated the Council is in ongoing discussions with Granicus, the vendor that runs the Legistar system, about what features can be available to accommodate its needs. Due to an increase in requests for open data around the country, there are a number of other cities pushing for similar features, so changes could be made in the coming months, according to the staff member.

People anxious to obtain council data may not have to wait for Granicus. The Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan non-profit that uses technology to make government accountable, is eager to step in in the meantime.

Sunlight is currently scraping data on the council website to put on their new city-focused website, opencivicdata.org. The site aims to be a legislative resource similar to their previous project, openstates.org.

Data scraping, building code to read and pull data from a non-machine readable format like a PDF or Word document, is not fool-proof: extremely tech-savvy individuals can, at times, manipulate the data; scrapers can miss pieces of information.

"Scraping is not 100 percent perfect," Rebecca Williams, a policy analyst for Sunlight Foundation said by phone May 8, adding that this is why they want the Council to release the data as open data. "If they change the site, our scrapers can break."

Williams said she hopes to see the Council eventually use an open application program interface (API). This format, used by the MTA for much of its data and subsequent apps, allows developers to pull proprietary data directly from a site. It is currently the most effective way for developers to build applications.

"By opening up the legislative process with an open API we can empower civic hackers and entrepreneurs to create applications that make our government accessible and accountable to all New Yorkers," Council Member Ben Kallos said in an emailed statement. Kallos, a long-time open data advocate, said he applauds the rules reform, adding it is a technological leap forward.

Public Technology Plan
The value of opening up data as a way to increase transparency is unquestionable, but simply having data accessible in machine readable format cannot be the end point.

"The whole concept behind open data is that the government is going to tell people what they are up to," Michael Flowers, urban science fellow at the Center for Urban Science and Progress, and the city's first chief analytics officer, said by phone May 9. "Simply releasing data sets on an open data portal doesn't achieve that. It is a necessary start, but it doesn't achieve that."

After historic open data laws were passed in 2012, the City of New York created an online portal with over 1100 sets of machine readable data. While applications have been created by both the City and third party developers, there are still mountains of data that lay untouched.

"Some of the metrics that get applied for the success of an open data program are kind of ridiculous," Flowers said. "I would judge the program by what people have done with it."

As it sits in its current format, the data is unreadable to people who do not have the skill to code - which is the vast majority of the people in the city.

"It is not a cool thing for the government to get a clubby relationship with a very narrow segment of the 8.5 million New Yorkers to the exclusion of the rest of the 8.5 million," Flowers said.

He suggested that keeping developer needs in mind when releasing the data is critical, but there must be a balance, as well as some accountability.

"If [developers] want people to rely on them, they will have to come up with tools that allow the public to access that information in a meaningful way as well," Flowers said.

The Council, which, ironically, passed the open data law for the city but lags behind on its own site, will be able to learn from the City in dealing with open data. As part of its rules package the Council will create a Public Technology Plan. The plan is only a commitment at this point, but will be a way for the Council to roll out changes related to open data without codifying it in its official rules. Putting technology details in the rules, such as requiring a certain type of code, could actually be counterproductive because technology changes so rapidly and the rules can't be modified again until the next session in 2018.

"We can't fully evaluate the council's rule changes as they pertain to embracing technology until the technology plan is created and implemented, but their intent appears to be to expand the use of technology to make the Council more accessible to the public," Alex Camarda, director of public policy at Citizens Union*, said by email May 14.

There is no formal committee to which the technology plan is assigned, although the technology committee is a likely landing spot, according to a source in the Council. The source said key players who use open data would likely be consulted to make recommendations on the plan, but there was no determination as to whether these meetings would be open to the public or if proposals would be made and then presented for consideration at a public hearing.

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Gotham Gazette is an independent publication of Citizens Union Foundation
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by Kristen Meriwether, Gotham Gazette
@MeriwetherK

Voters in India wait to cast their ballots (Henry Austin/NBC News)

The world's largest ever election concluded in India on Monday with a record voter turnout. Almost 67 percent of 814 million registered voters cast a ballot for a new government. But what could the decisions of more than 540 million people mean for a city more than 8000 miles away?

New York City is home to 207,196 Asian Indians, according to the American Community Survey 2012. And 27,991 of them immigrated to the city between 2000 and 2011, looking for jobs, families and even asylum. If the results of the Indian elections, on May 16, are anywhere close to what multiple exit polls suggest, then the number of Indians migrating to the city is likely to increase.

Most Indian polls predict that the National Democratic Alliance led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will come to power, with BJP leader Narendra Modi at the helm.

Modi, the current chief minister of the western state of Gujarat, has been a divisive figure in Indian politics. In 2002, communal riots ripped through Gujarat killing more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, and Modi faced accusations of inaction against the riots. The United States has refused to grant Modi a visa since 2005 citing the riots as a reason.

But the shadow of 2002 is starting to fade. Western nations that earlier shunned Modi are holding out the olive branch. Yesterday, President Obama, congratulating India on a successful election, said he looks forward to working with the new government. As the votes are tallied this week, New York may begin to anticipate the predicted Modi wave crashing against the shores of Manhattan, as changes in Indian policy are poised to affect immigration to the city.

On two issues that will likely lead more Indians to America, Modi and the BJP have made themselves clear.

First, Modi means business - literally. He is known for his lean towards industry and has promised to ramp up economic reform and development. India and the US already have a strong trade relationship. In 2013, the US exported $21 billion in goods to India, importing more than $41 billion worth. Modi has also said he will ease restrictions on trade and Foreign Direct Investment, so these numbers will certainly rise. With expanding economic ties, there's likely to be higher immigration through employment visas. Between 2002 and 2011, 95,914 immigrants came to New York City on such visas allowing lawful permanent residence. Of those, 7,579 were Indians (almost 27% of the total Indian immigration to the city between 2000 and 2011.)

The second, more controversial issue is India's law on homosexuality. A December 2013 ruling by the Indian Supreme Court overruled a lower court's order decriminalizing sexual relations between people of the same gender. Section 377, an archaic British-era law that made same-sex relationships punishable by the penal code, was a controversial issue that had people out on the streets, both in support and protest.

Modi's party has boldly spelt out its position. After the December ruling, the party president Rajnath Singh said in an interview to the Telegraph, "we believe that homosexuality is an unnatural act and cannot be supported." So India's approximately 2.5 million homosexual citizens (according to India's National Aids Control Program) would be considered criminals by a BJP government. It wouldn't be surprising then to see an increase in Indians seeking asylum in New York City. Almost 11 percent of the 27,991 Indian immigrants between 2000 and 2011 were refugees.

The BJP government's effects wouldn't only be limited to Indians. In typical conservative vein, the BJP has been extremely vocal on the issue of illegal immigration into India from its eastern neighbor, Bangladesh. Modi marked the day of election results, Friday, as the deadline for thousands of immigrants, mostly Muslims, to leave the country since, he says, their influx has led to ethnic tensions and even instances of violence. Where will those who listen go?

On this side of the globe, the most immigrants to New York City between 2000 and 2011 have come from Bangladesh, with a 74.2 percent increase in the city's Bangladeshi population. They are set to soon overtake Indians in their numbers. With home becoming hostile territory, more Bangladeshis might very well make their way west, where there are greener pastures of religious freedom.

During his November 2010 visit to India, President Obama, while addressing a joint session of the Indian parliament, said that the relationship between the United States and India "will be one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century." With the National Democratic Alliance back in power after ten years, the parameters of that partnership would change dramatically. As 1.2 billion people wait with bated breath for May 16, one can be sure that the world, the US, and New York City are watching carefully.

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by Samar Khurshid for Gotham Gazette. Khurshid is a journalist from India currently pursuing a master's in magazine journalism at New York University.

@GothamGazette