Council Member Danny Dromm (center) (William Alatriste)

The City Council education committee oversight hearing scheduled to look into Success Academy C.E.O. Eva Moskowitz twice closing her schools for political rallies has been postponed until April 24th, according to a spokeswoman from education committee chair Daniel Dromm's office.

The spokeswoman said there were scheduling conflicts for multiple parties, but would not confirm if Moskowitz was among those or if there had been contact between the committee and Success Academy.

Gotham Gazette reached out to Success Academy to confirm if Moskowitz was invited or planned to attend. Multiple requests for comment were not returned.

The hearing, labeled on the council's website as "Oversight - Charter School Management and Accountability," was scheduled for Tuesday, April 8th.

Dromm originally publicized his intention to hold the hearing on March 1 after Moskowitz announced she was closing all 22 of her charter schools and busing students to Albany for a March 4 rally. The protest was in response to Mayor Bill de Blasio reversing approval for three Success Academy schools, one existing and two new.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo attended the rally and later lent his support to charter schools with several legislative items in the State budget including a ban on charging rent for charters and a requirement for co-location or rental assistance.

It was the second time this school year Moskowitz has closed her schools for political rallies. The first was in October, also in response to de Blasio. At a campaign event, de Blasio suggested he would make wealthy charter schools pay rent, naming Moskowitz specifically.

The March 1 statement from Dromm said he would also look into the "extraordinary salaries" paid to Success Academy administrators.

As of the writing of this article, the council's website still lists the hearing for April 8th.

by Kristen Meriwether, Gotham Gazette

@MeriwetherK

 Gilbert Taylor (fourth from left) is the new Commissioner of Homeless Services (nyc.gov)

On June 23rd, 2004, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg outlined his five-year strategy to attack homelessness in New York City. It was an agenda his administration vowed would cut the rate by 66 percent by the time the mayor left office at the end of 2009, before he convinced the City Council to extend his and its term limits. And, better yet, he said, it wouldn't cost that much at all. "This new plan aims to replace the City's over-reliance on shelter with innovative, cost-effective interventions that solve homelessness," the mayor declared.

At the heart of this was Advantage. A rental assistance program started in 2007, Advantage would transition thousands of homeless families from the New York City shelter system into affordable housing through one- to two-year subsidies. Both city and state funds would cover 40 percent of rent the first year, and 30 percent the second year.

It was a testament to the Bloombergian mentality of centralized power, replacing the use of Section 8 and Human Resource Administration (HRA) vouchers with a mixture of reimbursement funds - homelessness was now in the hands of Albany and City Hall, not Washington. Families just had to show proof of income to the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) in order to qualify and remain housed.

Fast forward to last week: nearly ten years after that speech, the City Council convened to discuss what went terribly wrong.

Advantage's demise came from a lack of funding, as Governor Andrew Cuomo, and later the program's champion, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, targeted it to be cut in the face of an impending deficit. The collapse of the Advantage program is one of the clearest examples we can see of how the Great Recession barreled into state budgets nationwide, placing the weight of austerity on to the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.

Throughout my reporting on the homeless, the subjects I've interviewed have pointed to Advantage's end as the beginning of a skyrocketing number, with 53,615 homeless people sleeping in municipal shelters this past January - a figure now past Great Depression levels. As of last August, half of all Advantage families have already returned to the shelter system, a Coalition for the Homeless report states, costing the city $287 million in avoidable expenses. This amounts to 8,500 families, 200 more joining every month - all unable to sustain rent without the aid of subsidies. Dasani, the subject of the famous New York Times profile in December, is one of the 18,000 children who were in subsidized rentals, but are now homeless again.

Advantage's collapse writes a significant chapter of a crisis's narrative, one that is now the stark reality of Mayor de Blasio's "tale of two cities" mantra, while fixing it will be one of his greatest challenges. And, like Bloomberg in 2004, the new mayor stands at the drawing board.

In his initial budget for next year, de Blasio restored $8.3 million in homeless services cut by the Bloomberg administration, and allocated millions more to various other homelessness-related services.

To boot, de Blasio and the City Council recently succeeded in having restrictive language stripped from next year's state budget, allowing the birth of a new rental subsidy program. Or, in essence, what could be the second coming of Advantage.

This time around, the de Blasio administration will need to figure out how to make the program last, preventing the "cost-effective intervention" from transforming into a $287 million failure that leaves thousands of families back on the streets.

Maria Walles has some advice.

Walles and her husband lived on Advantage subsidies "for two long years." While living in the shelter system from August 2009 to July of 2010, the couple slowly moved up the Advantage waiting list, eventually landing their first place in Bed-Stuy. For income, she worked as a maintenance assistant, making just above minimum wage. The apartment building they lived in housed four Advantage units: two single mothers, Walles and her husband, and a couple next door.

In March of 2011, Walles began to receive letters in the mail from the Department of Homeless Services, repeatedly informing them of what was to come. "We had to sit down and talk about it each week -- what we'd have to do [once] Advantage was gone," she told me. The last Advantage lease signed in the city was on March 14th, 2011.

Walles asked the Department of Homeless Services for a fair hearing before the subsidies were taken away from her and her husband. When they were denied legal action, she unsuccessfully tried to appeal, and then contacted her local elected representatives to inform them of her situation to no avail.

Their case is a microcosm of what occurred between larger forces, as the Coalition for the Homeless and Legal Aid sued the Bloomberg administration for abruptly shutting off the subsidies for thousands of homeless families and refusing to reinstate them or hear appeals. The non-profit organizations won nine months in rental reprieve, and the city appealed the decision. Luckily for Walles, this court battle bought her and thousands of other families a few months rent, and time. But that didn't last for long: an appellate court eventually struck the decision, and Advantage legally ceased to exist.

"If you were a decent resident, you had to say please, please, please to your landlord, but then you realized you simply couldn't afford the apartment," Walles somberly said. "It took me a minute to realize that I'd have to go through this again."

A few months later, she and her husband ended back in the shelter system in Manhattan. She assumes the same fate for the two single mothers and couple living in the building. The Walleses remain there today.

"My husband and I are tired of doing this. 'Oh, you're back here, Maria?'," she said, impersonating the staff of the shelter. "I don't want to hear that. It's not fair... it's not right."

One of the qualms Walles had with Advantage was its longevity: a concern many homeless advocates say was the inherent flaw of the program. The maximum amount of time one could receive Advantage subsidies was 2 years. To the Bloomberg administration, this was more than enough time for the recipients to move into permanent housing with their accrued savings--the idealistic end goal of the program. "Of course, that's subjective. The last administration did not see that as a flaw," a DHS spokesperson said.

But, for Walles, who now volunteers at Picture for the Homeless as its housing campaign leader, this time frame is not realistic for families like her own.

"The only thing that puzzled me is that it was only for 2 years. I was happy to get it, but it should have been more than 2 years," she said. "Not short-term, long-term. Permanent housing programs, two years or better, so you don't have to see us again. Programs like Advantage take people out of the shelter and put them right back in. I don't want to be a revolving door back into the shelter system."

"Advantage was a completely unrealistic one-size-fits-all solution," Patrick Markee of Coalition for the Homeless told me. "Studies have shown that people who have long-term subsidies for their apartments stay in them, which is good for taxpayers because it saves money on the shelter system."

"It's fiscally prudent to have long-term assistance," Markee explained. "Shelters are expensive, costing the city $3,000 a month for a family." Walles believes the price tag to the taxpayer is even higher, ranging anywhere between $3,000 and $6,000 for a family.

"When Bloomberg announced it, it became a revolving door to shelters and costly to taxpayers," he continued, echoing Walles. "It would have been improved if there were longer-term subsidies, and it used federal housing subsidies available."

Sources said this is another way to supplement a new rental subsidy program: to reinstate the Section 8 and HRA vouchers that were dismissed when Advantage was implemented. By doing so, the mayor could use federal housing subsidies available to him to cut costs. A DHS spokesperson said that newly appointed Commissioner Gilbert Taylor has made this a priority of his department, along with prevention measures and collaboration with other city agencies.

"It's a crisis we will confront with every tool at our disposal," Commissioner Taylor said at his appointment in December. "I share Mayor-Elect de Blasio's fundamental commitment to more aggressive homelessness prevention policies and housing support to transition people from shelters to stable living."

With the legislative pathway to a new rental subsidy program now clear, DHS can begin to rebuild the Advantage model from the ground up. However, according to the agency, winning a removal of the restrictive state budget language was just the first step of a long process, with no approximate start date for a new program.

"We're hopeful that we can get a similar program to Advantage," the spokesperson told me. "We haven't talked about what it'll look like yet. It's so far been an internal effort, dealing with a new concept and new language."

Maria Walles just hopes City Hall remembers what happened last time: to her, the 8,500 families, including her own, now back in the shelter system as a result of Advantage's collapse should serve as a shocking reminder of what's at stake here for over 53,000 New Yorkers.

"Hopefully, we can--no, we need to find a way to change it. I don't want to be a revolving door into the shelter system again, and neither should anyone else," she said, pausing for a second to collect her thoughts. "I don't know... I'm scared. That's all I can say."

***
John Surico is a freelance journalist. His reporting can be seen in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.

 Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen (left) (Transition 2013)

Mayor Bill de Blasio campaigned with a promise of ridding the city of income inequality, a bold idea, particularly in a city with such a staggering income gap. Three months into his term and most of his cabinet appointed, how the mayor and his administration will attempt to accomplish this lofty goal is beginning to take shape.

On Wednesday, Alicia Glen, de Blasio's deputy mayor for housing and economic development, gave her first major policy speech since being appointed on Dec. 23. Speaking at an Association for a Better New York breakfast in front of numerous elected officials and members of the business community, Glen outlined the City's plans to modernize the city workforce and how these efforts tie into broader economic development.

"When it comes to making major land-use decisions, using our own capital, or providing incentives, our objective is to catalyze dynamic mix-use, mixed-income projects that attract good paying jobs," Glen said.

She said the city will shift to mix-use development (both housing and office/retail space) to ensure economic and workforce development, as well as land-use policies are all aligned. The multi-faceted approach is expected to provide much needed relief, pulling more New Yorkers into the middle class through added affordable housing, job creation, and job training programs.

As an example, Glen cited the recent deal the City struck over development at the old Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn. The de Blasio administration negotiated for 40 more units of affordable housing than previously outlined during Bloomberg-era negotiations and the facility will provide office space suitable for the technology industry.

On the workforce front, Glen spoke at length about changing the way the city views the tech industry and tech jobs. "The New York City Tech Ecosystem," a new report released on Tuesday by HR&A Advisors, a strategic advisory firm, shows that the "tech industry" is no longer companies like Google and Facebook. Tech jobs are not simply entrepreneurs, coders, and engineers. While demand for those jobs has continued to grow, the definition of a "tech job" has been rapidly expanding, to one that applies to virtually every industry.

The study found that in New York City, 291,000 people are employed in the city's tech ecosystem, with 150,000 of those jobs in non-tech industries. The study also found that 44 percent of those tech jobs do not require a bachelor's degree.

Improving workforce development
Despite a half billion-dollar investment in workforce development, the city is not providing the training needed for the types of jobs available now and into the future.

"Right now, too many workforce development programs move at an analogue speed in a digital age," Glen said. "We need nothing less than a thorough reinvention of workforce development in this city."

Glen said the administration will move away from a workforce development model that simply pairs job seekers with current jobs. Instead, the City will help workers build skills for jobs that are or will be in demand. She said this will not only ensure New Yorkers get a job, but a higher wage job and a way to advance in the workforce.

This 'ladder up' ideal aligns perfectly with de Blasio's vision of creating opportunity, closing the income gap, and reducing inequality. It is the lens through which he sees the world, and one that Glen shares.

"You are not putting aside all of the traditional principals of how you negotiate public sector development projects, but it is what are you bringing to the table and what lens are you bringing to it," Glen said when she was appointed on Dec. 23. "What we are going to start with is how does this benefit those who need those jobs and services most and then how are we going to integrate that into smart deal making."

The goal is bold, not one that will be achieved overnight. Glen mentioned multiple times that de Blaio himself presented what was a bold and, to some, overly ambitious idea at a prior ABNY breakfast: a tax to fund universal pre-kindergarten and after school programs. The tax never materialized, but the State did authorize $300 million per year for five years to pay for the pre-K program.

The pre-K fight, while daunting, was not nearly the uphill battle this cultural shift will be. Training a 21st century workforce for the digital age starts in the classroom. While the city has made strides with schools like the much-praised P-Tech, in Brooklyn, the education system in New York City falls far short of producing students ready for the knowledge economy.

The mayor, who made a surprise visit to the ABNY breakfast on Wednesday morning, acknowledged the challenge, but said the change is central to the future of the city.

"We are going to move on a lot of different fronts to give you the kind of workforce you need so this city can remain strong," de Blasio said.

by Kristen Meriwether, Gotham Gazette
@MeriwetherK

 Mayor de Blasio announces his Vision Zero plan (nyc.gov)

Leading up to the state budget agreement reached in Albany on March 31, Mayor Bill de Blasio had only one legislative goal: secure funding for his pre-kindergarten plan. His singular focus paid off with the State placing $300 million in the budget for de Blasio's signature campaign initiative.

Despite securing pre-K funding and with it a political victory, the mayor is not nearly done in Albany. To achieve his Vision Zero traffic safety plan, the details of which he announced February 18, de Blasio will need multiple bills to pass through the state legislature before the session ends on June 19.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders did not include any of de Blasio's Vision Zero initiatives in the state budget, which was signed April 1, but legislators in both the Assembly and the Senate have already introduced bills to move the plan forward.

The changes the mayor is proposing are lofty and push the bounds of what Albany allows municipalities. De Blasio wants:

• full local authority over the number and placement of red light and speed cameras
• the city speed limit lowered to 25 m.p.h.
• increased penalties for several traffic crimes, including driving with a suspended license and leaving the scene of a crash

Advocates who have been pushing for reform for years say these measures along with the other elements of Vision Zero could save hundreds of lives and prevent thousands of injuries. Each year, approximately 40,000 New Yorkers are seriously injured in traffic accidents and roughly 250 are killed.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver introduced a bill on March 31 that would authorize 140 speed cameras in New York City. While it is not the unbridled control the mayor is asking for, it would provide a drastic increase from the 20 currently installed in the city.

On Tuesday Gov. Andrew Cuomo hinted the cameras will be a priority, despite their being left out of the budget.

"We did not get to that in this budget, but we will and we will shortly," Cuomo said at the budget press conference.

"I think the speed light camera [legislation] will probably move very quickly when we get back into session," state Sen. Martin Dilan, who is on the senate transportation committee, said by phone Tuesday. The Senate will be back in session on April 23.

De Blasio has support for home rule from Sen. Adriano Espaillat, who has introduced a bill seeking city control of red light and speed camera enforcement programs. Assembly Member Gabriela Rosa sponsors the companion bill in the Assembly.

On the penalty front, Sen. Michael Gianaris introduced a bill that would increase the punishment for drivers who kill or injure someone while operating with a suspended license.

Members in both the Assembly and the Senate are also working on bills to lower the speed limit in New York City. Sen. Dilan and Assembly Member Daniel O'Donnell both have bills which would bring the speed limit to 20 m.p.h. in the city. Sen. Brad Hoylman sponsors a bill which would lower the speed limit to 25 m.p.h., in line with the mayor's initial request.

Competing bills on the same topic can be a death sentence for both, but with so many lawmakers behind the concept, compromise seems likely.

"I believe at the end of the day there will be some agreement where we will be protecting the pedestrians of New York City and other parts of the state," Dilan said.

Unified Voice
The proposals being asked for by the mayor are by no means new. Street safety advocates, who have watched traffic-related injury rates climb in recent years, have been pushing for changes in Albany with minimal results.

But the climate has changed, due in large part to de Blasio's leading a unified push.

"There is definitely a new momentum behind the Vision Zero efforts because the mayor has made it a priority," said Senator Gianaris. "He [de Blasio] is a unifying force in bringing a lot of the advocacy community together."

On Tuesday city officials gathered in Brooklyn for the second in a series of Vision Zero town halls to educate the public about the program and get feedback. At the meeting, department of transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg echoed the calls for Albany to act.

"We're [going to] also be working with our partners up in Albany," said Trottenberg. "We are committed to seeing if we can get more local control for the city in terms of speed cameras and setting our own speed limit, those are tremendously important things for safety."

Juan Martinez, general counsel and legislative director for the street safety group Transportation Alternatives, said in a phone interview Tuesday legislators are no longer looking at bills as a single piece of legislation to consider, but as a part of a larger plan to ensure safer streets.

"Any one of these ideas on their own had a tough time because they are competing with one another and with other things in the agenda," said Martinez. "But now, we have a Vision Zero program. We have a rationale that explains all of them."

He continued, "I think it is a game changer. I expect a lot of really significant action in this session."

To push Albany to act, Transportation Alternatives is leading a lobby day in the capital on May 6.

Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, chair of the city council transportation committee, said he will joining the lobbying effort.

"It's time for Albany to step up. They played petty politics by omitting Vision Zero from the budget, now they threaten lives with their inaction on pending legislation," Rodriguez said in an email. "New York City must have the ability to control its own streets."

Despite unity and momentum, it will be a sprint to the finish to ensure the Vision Zero proposals are passed through Albany.

"Trying to read the tea leaves in Albany is a dangerous game," Gianaris said. "But I can tell you those of us who care about this are going to work as hard as we can to make sure those get done."

by Kristen Meriwether, Gotham Gazette
@MeriwetherK

Additional reporting by Ben Max

Albany leaders (Mike Groll/AP) 

Albany--If you've only heard one thing about the state budget agreement that oozed out in bits and pieces around midnight on Friday night as most New Yorkers were sleeping or otherwise enjoying their weekends, it is probably that New York City will get $300 million for pre-kindergarten expansion.

That is the news being touted, of course, by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has been on a universal pre-K crusade for well over a year now. Notwithstanding what is being seen as a pre-K win for all involved, legislators say the budget is a mixed bag for the city and, perhaps even more strikingly, reform advocates have come out against the campaign finance deal reached by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders.

On Monday legislators are scheduled to begin session at noon, only breaking for dinner before pulling what has become an all-too-familiar all-night session to debate and vote on budget bills while, again, most New Yorkers will be fast asleep. Though significant debate is likely on several pieces of the tentative deal, nothing is likely to change given that the deal was negotiated and agreed upon by the major Albany power-brokers.

As far as New York City goes, here are the key pieces of the deal:

Education
Mayor Bill de Blasio made pre-K the centerpiece of his mayoral campaign and, once in office, went to Albany to fight for the ability to tax the city's wealthy to fund the initiative. But de Blasio was stymied. Gov. Andrew Cuomo fought de Blasio's plan tooth and nail, refusing to increase taxes on any New Yorker.

In this election year, Cuomo positioned himself as a fiscally conservative friend of business and pressured legislators to reject de Blasio's tax and to lower proposed pre-K funding amounts to the city. In the end, the city walks away with almost all the money it sought to ramp up the program - de Blasio said he would need $340 million - but de Blasio's populist tax plan is dead and Cuomo made inroads to undermining mayoral control of schools by including a provision in the budget deal that mandates the city find space for charter schools inside city school buildings or pay for space elsewhere.

In the end de Blasio spun it all as a victory. "With the investment announced today, this state has made a powerful and historic decision that will change the lives of tens of thousands of children," he said in a statement.

Ethics and Campaign Finance Reform
Ethics and campaign finance reform were supposed to be major features of this election-year budget. Cuomo's initial budget proposal included major reforms to create an election law enforcement unit and a small-donor public campaign finance system. And, Cuomo's Moreland Commission to Investigate Corruption had issued other recommendations for overhauling the state's campaign finance system in December.

Public financing of campaigns was a major sticking point in these latest negotiations, and what finally made it into the budget was a proposal to test a small-donor matching system in this year's comptroller race. Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli had previously asked legislators to use his office as a testing ground for such a system, but DiNapoli and good government groups are unhappy with the shape of the impending plan.

"I was excluded from the negotiations," DiNapoli said in a statement. "There are also questions on whether this proposal can be fairly and reasonably implemented in such a short time frame."

As outlined, the state's dysfunctional Board of Elections would be in charge of the opt-in system, and there are only five months until the primary - which makes good government groups think the system would not function ideally. The reform-minded groups united to issue a joint statement on Sunday urging DiNapoli not to take part in the test run because of its shortcomings.

"This proposal is so flawed that should it pass, the groups will urge Comptroller DiNapoli and his potential opponent(s) to refuse to participate in the system and take public funding," read the statement issued by The Brennan Center, Common Cause, Citizen Action, Citizens Union, League of Women Voters and the New York Public Interest Research Group.

Sen. Jeff Klein, leader of the Independent Democratic Conference, stoked hope in the good government community when he told Zack Fink of YNN that negotiations over public campaign finance are not over and that a separate deal could come together this week.

Eschewing the typical Red Room budget announcement with all legislative leaders in attendance to draw attention to a timely deal, Cuomo held a conference call on Saturday to discuss what he called "the highlights" of the deal.

Cuomo told reporters that if legislators pass the test campaign finance system and reforms to the state's bribery laws, he will end his Moreland Commission, which the legislature has challenged both in court and in their budgets by withdrawing funding. A number of Moreland appointees issued supportive statements, talking up the reforms contained in the budget deal. But other Moreland members griped about the deal's political nature.

Good government groups insist Moreland has more work to do and that its efforts should not be interrupted for the measures contained in the budget. However, some insiders say the Cuomo administration took a lot of PR damage for the way it handled the commission when it was revealed that Cuomo had a hand in influencing who would be investigated and that the commission was not looking into Cuomo's own finance history. Ending the commission boosts Cuomo's relationship with the legislature in an election year, when Cuomo is trying to run up his vote tallies across the state.

What the City Got

Key for city residents is a renters' tax credit that is in the final budget deal. The credit would be based on the percentage of yearly income a person spends on rent. The governor's budget office estimates that the rebate will be around $100 a person. There is $85 million set aside for the credit in the budget.

The city also stands to benefit from a $2 billion education bond act that would allow the city to build new school buildings to replace trailers where overflow classes are held at some of the city's most crowded schools.

On another key issue of contention, de Blasio and Cuomo managed to come to an agreement on language that would allow the city to (re)start a rent-subsidy program for previously homeless families.

And, Cuomo's plan to reduce the requirements for companies and private users to report their use of pesticides was removed from the budget. Many city legislators, including Sen. Liz Krueger, opposed the measure because they said it would lead to less accountability and interfere with research into how pesticides affect New Yorkers.

What the City Didn't Get

De Blasio did not get the $200 million he requested to fund after-school programs. Another of de Blasio's signature issues, his traffic safety plan known as Vision Zero, was ignored in the budget. The program relies, in part, on 150 new red light and speeding cameras, which must be approved by the State. Sen. Martin Dilan, a ranking Democrat on the Senate's transportation committee, said that while he didn't expect components of Vision Zero to be addressed in the budget, he does expect a larger push for them after the budget is wrapped up.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) did not see $40 million swept from its lockbox as originally proposed; instead, $30 million was taken from the MTA and put into the state's general fund. Transportation advocates decried the move, saying that it hurts passengers, who have seen service stuck at 2010 levels while fares continue to rise.

In what has been taken as the biggest insult to city-based legislators, legislative leaders failed to reach an agreement on The DREAM Act, which would provide tuition assistance to undocumented immigrants.

The Assembly passed the bill earlier this year, while the Senate recently took a surprise vote (without alerting activists who supported the measure), which resulted in the bill's failure. Supporters had already been focused on including the act in a budget deal, so they continued on that path.

There was discussion of giving tax breaks to those who donate to a private DREAM fund, but advocates opposed that measure and no further compromises on the issue were broached. A number of Hispanic legislators told Gotham Gazette last month that they would vote against the budget if the DREAM Act was not included.

Sen. Jose Peralta, the DREAM Act's Senate sponsor, told Gotham Gazette on Sunday night after reviewing the budget with his conference that he felt the budget was overall a good thing for the state. "There is never a budget where everyone gets what they want," he said. Adding that he and his colleagues are working to bring the DREAM bill to a vote again later this session.

Peralta's optimism at least partially stems from recent reports that Cuomo may call for special elections to fill two vacant senate seats, which could lead to more Democratic votes in the Senate chamber - where the bill failed by only two votes. One of the seats is in Brooklyn and is almost assuredly going to be won by a Democrat who supports the act. The second, a Long Island seat, will be more of a battleground, but Democrats feel holding another Senate vote could convince several Democrats and Republicans that previously voted against the measure to change their minds.

Legislators who left Albany on Friday without a budget deal to vote on returned on Sunday to discuss the budget with their conferences. A number of groups are still planning their responses to the budget deal and have only had the weekend to plan protests or other tactics. Some of the budget bills were introduced in time to allow them to age the mandatory three days and can be voted on on Monday. The education and health budget bills were not introduced on time and Cuomo will have to issue a 'message of necessity' if he wants all of the budget to be technically on time.

"This is a mixed bag for New York City," said Peralta, "but it looks like everyone got a piece of something they wanted and it will be the fourth on-time budget in a row."

by David King, Albany Editor

@DavidHowardKing

New NYPD IG Philip Eure (left) & Department of Investigations (DOI) head Mark Peters (DOI) 

NEW YORK—It was a long, difficult road to get Local Law 70, which created the office of the Inspector General for the NYPD, passed through the City Council. But on Friday, nearly two years after that battle began, Philip Eure was named as the city's first NYPD inspector general (IG).

Eure, who was appointed by Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters, will officially start May 27. With a $5 million annual budget and staff of about 50, Eure will look broadly at NYPD policies and practices with the goals of increasing public safety, protecting citizens' civil liberties, and improving police-community relations. He will have the power to make recommendations, but cannot directly change NYPD policy.

Since October 2012, when the IG bill was first introduced in direct response to the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices, the landscape of police and community relations has changed dramatically.

Stop-and-frisk data from 2011 shows the NYPD stopped a record 685,724 New Yorkers, 87 percent of whom were either black or Latino. Of all the stops, 88 percent were found innocent of wrongdoing. Despite this data and increasing criticism from both the public and elected officials, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg refused to admit there was a problem or direct his police chief, Ray Kelly, to alter policies. The administration's refusal to budge on stop-and-frisk became a major driver for Local Law 70, which was introduced by Council Members Jumaane Williams and Brad Lander.

The law passed the Council in dramatic fashion in June 2013, but would need to override a veto from Mayor Bloomberg in August. This, along with public outcry and a federal judge's ruling in Floyd v. the City of New York that the NYPD had been practicing stop-and-frisk unconstitutionally, coincided with changes to the practice.

Even without an inspector general in place, stop-and-frisk numbers dropped dramatically. In 2013, the last year of Bloomberg's mayoralty and Kelly's leadership of the NYPD, only 191,558 stops were made, 85 percent of which were of blacks or Latinos.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who campaigned, in part, on promises of major stop-and-frisk reform at the NYPD, hired Bill Bratton to be his police commissioner. Bratton has touted his ability to mend fences between police and community, as evident in his work as police commissioner in Los Angeles. Bratton said he would continue to use stop-and-frisk, but that it must be done constitutionally.

Along with this new regime, the city will soon have a federal monitor in place to directly oversee stop-and-frisk policy, oversight which stems from the Floyd ruling.

The number of stops has dropped significantly since Local Law 70 was proposed and the new administration's approach to the practice is in sharp contrast to its predecessor's. With stop and frisk already reformed to a large extent, the practice will not necessarily be the IG's central focus.

So what will newly appointed Inspector General Eure focus on? That is still unclear.

"[Local Law 70] talks about looking at policies and procedures of the NYPD with the goal of enhancing police accountability and building confidence in the police, respecting civil rights. Those will be the touchstones of my approach as we go forward," Eure said at Friday's press conference. "Stop-and-frisk issues, other Fourth Amendment issues, and other constitutional issues involving policing will be on the radar screen."

One of the first major Fourth Amendment issues he may have to deal with involves the NYPD Intelligence Division. In 2011 the Associated Press published a Pulitzer Prize winning series of stories exposing the NYPD's surveillance of the Muslim community in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

"We believe that is a critical issue on the table that has not been addressed directly by anyone in the administration," said Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. "There has been no tangible or concrete proposals of how we can ensure the NYPD does not target an entire community based on faith."

She said her organization met with DOI Commissioner Peters prior to his appointing Eure to discuss issues related to the Muslim community. She said in the coming months, they will be calling on the IG to investigate the Intelligence Division.

"Neither the mayor, nor the New York City Council nor any other entity in New York City has been able to understand what that operation looks like," Sarsour said. "We believe the IG will be uncovering some very pertinent information related to the spying program."

While much of the discussion surrounding the IG has involved stop-and-frisk and surveillance of Muslims, the bill gives the IG a broad mandate to look at any and all NYPD policies.

This could include a key de Blasio initiative. As mandated by the mayor, the NYPD will begin implementing policy changes to meet his Vision Zero goals. Among the many changes, the NYPD will be tasked with improving the training and protocol for the collision unit which investigates traffic crashes.

State law requires police to investigate every crash where there is a serious injury, although advocates argue that is not always occurring. As part of Vision Zero reform, the de Blasio administration has vowed to meet the State standard.

"They are not there yet," said Steve Vaccaro, an attorney who represents pedestrian and cyclist crash victims. "One of the things [an IG] could do is audit the performance of the collision investigation squad and see what are the scope of changes in which these investigations are being done."

Vaccaro also pointed to the recent uptick in pedestrian summons being issued in the jaywalking crackdown. He argued officers are trying to enforce a State law that does not apply to New York City, and the entire practice was counter productive.

"The IG is the perfect person to look at this," Vaccaro said.

by Kristen Meriwether, Gotham Gazette

@MeriwetherK

 Gov. Andrew Cuomo (center) convened the Moreland Commission in 2013 (Mike Groll/AP)

Albany, N.Y.---"Fishing expedition!" "Abuse of powers!" "Bullying!" These are all things legislators have said about the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption, which was convened by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on July 2, 2013 in order to investigate wrongdoing in Albany and make recommendations for reform.

After being elected in 2010, Cuomo had long threatened to form such a commission, but in the Spring of 2013 at least two legislators wore wires as participants in FBI investigations and several more were indicted. The state legislature balked at Cuomo's reform proposals so he formed Moreland.

And now, almost nine months after its formation, legislative leaders have made it clear in no uncertain terms that they want the commission to go away. Both houses have brought lawsuits that challenge the legal authority of the commission to investigate the legislature, and both of their budget plans zero out funding for the commission. As budget negotiations head into their final days, legislative leaders appear to be trying to leverage the end of the commission in exchange for some sort of elections and ethics reform package.

But according to members of the commission and advocates, the genie is already out of the bottle: even if the legislature gets its way and the commission is de-funded, investigations have begun, threads have been unraveled, and data has been collected.

On Monday, Moreland Chair and Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said during a live chat for Syracuse.com that if the legislature is successful in shutting down the commission, investigations will be forwarded to the proper agencies so that they can be pursued.

Other commission members and staffers have recently expressed frustration that the hard work they have put into investigating the culture of corruption in Albany could be bartered for a less-than-ideal agreement on election and ethics reforms in the state budget.

Sources on and close to the commission told Gotham Gazette that Moreland has dug up plenty of smaller offenses, such as legislators falsifying their travel records for their own financial benefit, as well as larger offenses including massive violations of campaign finance law.

On Wednesday, the FBI raided the office of Assemblyman William Scarborough and left with boxes marked "evidence." Scarborough told reporters that the FBI, along with Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, was investigating his possible abuse of Assembly travel expenses.

Last week, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver called the commission "a fishing expedition," leading Fitzpatrick to call Silver's comments, "maybe the dumbest" thing he had heard during his time in public service. "Perhaps he hasn't noticed, but several dozen fish have been removed from his chamber under his watch for blatantly stealing from the tax-paying public," Fitzpatrick wrote during the live chat.

A number of rank-and-file legislators and staffers said they have not had Moreland on their minds as of late; they feel confident the commission will be dealt with by the leadership in budget negotiations. But a few acknowledged in private conversations on Wednesday that the FBI's presence in the capitol was a reminder that the commission is still out there.

"The D.A.'s comments were very clear," said Karen Scharff of Citizen Action NY, a social justice organization. "These investigations are going to be pursued, the legislature can't stop that, and I hope that they wouldn't want to."

Citizen Action has lobbied Cuomo and legislative leaders to enact a system of public campaign funding that it says would reduce the pay-to-play culture that sees large donors pressing legislators to support or introduce favored legislation.

Scharff pointed out that three of the four men negotiating the budget support public financing of campaigns: Silver, Independent Democratic Conference Leader Jeff Klein and Cuomo have all said they support a public matching system similar to the one used in New York City. Republican Senate Leader Dean Skelos has publicly bashed such a system, but the budget proposal drafted by Skelos and Klein and passed by the Senate did include vague support for such a system. As budget negotiations continue it is hard to tell how committed to campaign finance reform any of the three supporters really is. Advocates hope that Cuomo won't simply say that Skelos opposed the measure and therefore it didn't make it into the budget.

For its part, Moreland has also further exposed the failings of the state's much-maligned Board of Elections (BOE). One Moreland hearing focused on the Board, which is run by both a Democrat and a Republican, regularly stopping investigators from doing their jobs, in some cases telling them to stop being so inquisitive. Good government groups claim that cases they refer to the BOE almost always end up being dismissed despite heavy evidence that the law has been broken. Cuomo has proposed creating an independent election enforcement agency.

Insiders point out that even if an agreement is struck to end Moreland and do away with its investigations in exchange for some sort of reform, altogether squashing its work would be almost impossible to accomplish.

The district attorneys who chair the commission could easily pick up the threads of investigations once the commission is disbanded. Many of the commission's investigators come from prestigious backgrounds and have powerful connections in the law enforcement community - staffer Kelly Donovan is the executive deputy attorney general under Attorney General Eric Schneiderman while others have deep connections to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

"Now that this has started, there doesn't seem to be any way to put the genie back in the bottle," said Alex Camarda, director of public policy and advocacy at Citizens Union (Citizens Union's sister organization, Citizens Union Foundation, publishes Gotham Gazette).

Bill Mahoney, research coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), cautions, though, that Moreland has the kind of tools at its disposal that make running a massive investigation into corruption in Albany feasible, but that local district attorneys may not have the staffing or funding to follow up. "People who are concerned about wasting taxpayer money should want to see Moreland continue its work," said Mahoney, who added that the vast majority of legislators likely aren't under investigation and should support removing those who break the law.

by David Howard King, Albany Editor

@DavidHowardKing

Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez (William Alitriste)

It's a New York City ritual: hurry up and wait. Across the city, car owners rush to move their vehicles and then, they wait. Once the street sweepers come by and those who've been double parked or driving around in circles quickly claim good spots in front of their buildings, they wait again. All told, it's typically a two-hour process each time – one that car owners become numb to and non-car owners marvel at.

Mostly, the waiting read books, listen to WFAN, or play games on their phones until the alternate side parking window closes and they are free to get on with their days. It's car-owning New York City-living – at least for those who don't pay for a garage or have a driveway.

But, a bill introduced in the City Council last month could drastically change New York City car-owning as we know it, and, in the process, also bring significant change to city revenue.

Manhattan Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, chair of the Council's transportation committee, wants to end alternate side parking restrictions as soon as a street has been swept, negating any further wait time for affected drivers.

Rodriguez first proposed the idea in 2010, but despite his securing 30 co-sponsors and holding a hearing on it, the legislation never made it to the council floor for a vote. A lot has changed in four years, though. New York has a proud outer borough car owner for mayor, a council speaker who co-sponsored the original bill, and many elected officials city-wide who strongly support the change.

Though a seemingly small parking-related bill, the success of this legislation may be a sign of how far New York's new political leadership is willing to go in undoing the ticket-frenzy policies of the previous administration. At its core, the bill helps working and middle class New Yorkers who can't afford to pay to have their car in a garage, but hurts one of the great money makers in city history: parking ticket revenue.

Sweeping change

Alternate side parking regulations are in affect in 54 of the 59 community boards in New York City, with the only exceptions coming on most of Staten Island and in parts of eastern Queens. The Department of Sanitation's 435 street sweepers run 47,400 scheduled routes across the city every year, during which time cars are not allowed to park for varying intervals. Car owners who do not move their cars can get hit with a ticket: $65 in Manhattan south of 96th Street or $45 elsewhere.

Rodriguez argues his "common sense bill" would bring relief to working class New Yorkers. "They don't need to be wasting their time when they can be at their jobs or be in their house with their family," he said. "This would benefit the working class who don't make top figures to have their cars in a parking garage. They are the ones suffering the most."

He also said the change would help the environment because drivers would not be idling in their cars for hours every week.

Lawrence Berezin, a retired lawyer who runs the website New York Parking Ticket, said it's a quality of life issue.

"I think alternate side parking is barbaric," he said. "The idea that when its five below zero in February that you get out in your bath robe and slippers and you go out to your car to cruise around looking for a parking space or illegally double park, is barbaric."

He circulated a petition four years ago to pass Rodriguez's bill and said he thinks the political climate in New York is right for the legislation to succeed now.

'New day in New York City'

Many people who supported the legislation in 2010 have since been elevated to positions of power in New York City. As a rank-and-file council member, current speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito co-sponsored the bill. As chair of the council's sanitation committee in 2010, now-Public Advocate Letitia James convened a hearing on the bill and supported it strongly. Comptroller Scott Stringer, then Manhattan borough president, testified at that hearing in favor of the rule change.

James and Stringer are still in favor of the bill, which currently has nine co-sponsors.

"This legislation would make the lives of New Yorkers easier without sacrificing the cleanliness of our city streets," James said in a statement. "I am hopeful that incoming (Sanitation) Commissioner Kathryn Garcia will take a second look at this legislation to determine its feasibility, especially in light of the positive impact it could have on the lives of so many New Yorkers."

"Councilmember Rodriguez's bill will help us make our streets smarter, safer and more efficient," reads a statement from Stringer. Thousands of drivers in this City are forced to circle for parking or idle until street sweepers come through – polluting the air, causing unnecessary congestion and making streets more dangerous. In a city where our snowplows are GPS-enabled, it's time to upgrade our technology so New Yorkers spend more time being productive and less time behind the wheel."

Mark-Viverito did not respond to a request for comment, but Rodriguez said he has talked with her about it.

"With the new leadership in the Council I think we will have a hearing very soon," he said. "We are in a new day in New York City where we have a different leadership, they are more open and more inclusive."

As for the mayor, he campaigned as Mr. Outer Borough.

"I live in the outer-borough neighborhood," Mr. de Blasio said during the campaign according to The New York Times. "I drive my own car, I think I understand what a lot of people are experiencing and confronting every day, and how life in the outer boroughs particularly has gotten more difficult, less affordable."

While reformed parking rules will be friendlier for car owners, the rule change would mean less revenue for the city. And parking tickets are something previous administrations have counted on to pad city coffers.

De Blasio railed against the previous administration for nickel-and-diming small businesses and accused the mayor of inappropriately and unfairly using Department of Health violations as a way to increase revenue.

A spokesperson for the Department of Sanitation said there would be no comment on proposed legislation but that its position has not changed since 2010. Then, sanitation chief John Nucatola, who retired in October as director of the Bureau of Cleaning and Collection, said the rule change would not work because traffic agents may not know when a street had been swept and that sometimes sweepers return to a street to clean it again within the alternate side suspension window.

Rodriguez, like Stringer, says that argument doesn't hold up any longer now that Sanitation has proved it can use GPS trackers to see what streets have been plowed around the city in real time. They argue the same technology can be used on sweepers.

"That concern shouldn't be there anymore," Rodriguez said.

If those logistical concerns are worked out and the change goes into effect, city revenue will be impacted.

Money maker

New York City took in $505.6 million in parking ticket revenue in 2013, according to the Department of Finance. Each year, the City issues between 1.3 and 1.6 million tickets for alternate side parking violations. Last year, those tickets led to the City raking in more than $70 million.

The income has been steady. Data from the Department of Finance shows the city has made between $63.8 and $71.5 million each year in the last decade from alternate side parking violations. It is unclear how many of those would not be issued if Rodriguez's proposal were in effect.

Rodriguez's bill also includes a proposal that drivers who are in their cars and able to move when a street cleaner approaches would not ticket-able, which would also mean fewer tickets issued.

Rodriguez's office has not looked into revenue implications and there was never a fiscal impact statement conducted on the original bill. Spokesman Russell Murphy said such revenue is "ill gotten" anyway.

"While we understand the city earns revenue from this, if it is simply earned through creating an inconvenience, it should be reformed," Murphy wrote in an e-mail.

One of Mayor de Blasio's early key initiatives is his Vision Zero campaign to reduce the number of pedestrian fatalities. The first bullet point in the press release announcing the plan is "Increasing Enforcement Against Speeding."

"The NYPD will increase precinct-level enforcement of speeding violations by adding additional personnel in its Highway Division and ensuring every precinct has access to state-of-the-art speed detection devices," reads the mayor's office press release.

If the alternate side parking legislation passes and the City wants to compensate for the resulting dip in revenue, it will have to work twice as hard to make up for it with speeding tickets. New York City keeps 100 percent of the revenue it earns from parking tickets, but it has to split revenue from speeding tickets with the state. Some have pointed to this as one reason the City has so aggressively ticketed parking violations while expending few resources on speeding enforcement.

A report from State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says the revenue split is "particularly complex," but one key takeaway is that the state assesses a surcharge on every ticket issued and the surcharges, which can run as high as $93, are sometimes larger than the speeding tickets themselves.

The Bloomberg administration never explicitly admitted to focusing on parking tickets instead of speeding tickets, but it is clear that the revenue-sharing structure leaves the city with less than half of speeding ticket fines, according to a Daily News column written by Sam Schwartz, a former New York City traffic commissioner.

Advocates for the City Council bill have said they are confident the new mayor will eventually support the change despite the potential hit to revenue.

"Bloomberg, he's a money guy. De Blasio has a heart, not a cash box," said Berezin.

Wilbert Ortiz, a 33-year-old Bronx resident who spends a chunk of most Wednesdays dealing with alternate side restrictions, said the change would help him get more sleep. Ortiz said he works nights and gets home in the early morning hours, sleeps for a while, wakes up to move his car to a meter to avoid getting a ticket, goes back to sleep briefly, and, finally, when restrictions are lifted, moves his car back in front of his building.

"An hour and a half is a big window," he said. "It would be nice to be able to come downstairs for thirty minutes, watch the sweepers go by and then leave your car there."

 Speaker Mark-Viverito (right) and Council Member Lander (William Alitriste)

It has been a month since the City Council rules committee met in late February to discuss reforming the rules by which the Council operates. Preliminary budget hearings have dominated the Council's time since then, relegating reform to the back burner. But with the first round of budget talks set to end this week, the eyes of the Council are once again focusing on rules reform.

On Tuesday, March 25, the council's 51 members received a survey from Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito's office. The survey, which was developed by the speaker, rules committee Chair Brad Lander, and staff of the rules committee, is completely anonymous in hopes that members will respond openly and honestly.

"It is our rules so we thought it was extra important for members to be able to participate and give their opinion," Lander said Wednesday.

The 11-question survey, a copy of which was provided to Gotham Gazette and is embedded below, is due back to the speaker's office by the end of the week. The survey polls members on many topics discussed at the Feb. 24 Council rules committee hearing, including perhaps the most controversial, member item reform.

Also known as discretionary funds, member items are monies provided to each council member to spend as he or she sees fit in his or her district. Member items have been the source of much controversy in recent years and the new speaker and many of her council colleagues have promised to de-politicize the process by which they are allocated.

The survey also includes questions about the Council developing an independent legislative drafting unit and improving its website and online training tools.

According to the survey, once responses are in and tallied, the speaker will bring a set of proposals to the Democratic and Republican Caucuses for discussion. Following that discussion period, the rules committee will receive a proposal to be vetted at another public hearing before a final proposal is crafted and put to a committee vote.

Lander did not give a time frame for the committee vote, however he did say that the proposal was not expected at the next rules committee hearing on April 3.

Reform is happening
Regardless of the outcome of the survey, rules reform of some kind appears inevitable, according to multiple council members who spoke with Gotham Gazette. How it will take shape—particularly member item reform—is still very much up in the air.

"We are going to have rules reform, no question," said Council Member Mark Weprin. "We made a commitment."

In the fall, thirty-four council members (both new and returning) signed on to a preliminary package of reforms initially outlined in October by Lander and Council Members Jumaane Williams, Fernando Cabrera, and David Greenfield. In addition, Mark-Viverito campaigned for speaker, at least in part, on a platform of reforming the Council.

During her speaker campaign, Mark-Viverito also vowed, if elected, that she would not use member items to punish or reward her colleagues—a practice her predecessor was criticized for using, and something Mark-Viverito has openly opposed. Instead, she promised that under her leadership member items would be allocated in a fair and objective manner.

But how?
In fiscal year 2014, the member items pool was roughly $34 million. How will Speaker Mark-Viverito and the Council decide to split this year's pot fairly and objectively across 51 diverse council districts? The Council does not appear to be much, if any, closer to that answer than it was in Feb.

The original member item reform proposal from the fall recommends funds be distributed equally or by using a needs-based formula. At the Feb. hearing, a panel of representatives from good government groups suggested several elements that could be included in a formula, but none had a formula to recommend.

Citizens Union* suggested using district data such as number of food stamp recipients, reduced-price lunch participants, Medicaid recipients, individuals living under the poverty line, individuals under 18 and over 65, ratio of open space, and access to public transportation. Common Cause New York suggested looking at a number of markers including population, average income, and district size.

These suggestions brought more questions than answers.

"If we're going to do needs-based where is that formula going to come from?" asked Council Member Ruben Wills at the hearing. "We've seen a lot the metrics that would go into it but the formula hasn't been seen."

"It just seems to me it's too complicated to try to come up with a formula...because we're not talking necessarily needs," Weprin said. "These are things that people, communities want," he continued, referring to the types of projects that member items usually fund.

Figuring out a needs-based formula may prove so difficult as to make it a non-starter, despite several members supporting the concept. There is no indication progress has been made since Feb: of the three good government groups who testified, representatives from Citizens Union and New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) said they had not heard from any Council members regarding designing a formula for needs-based member item distribution. A representative from Common Cause declined to comment.

"There have been discussions, but there has been no final answer," Council Member Jumaane Williams said on Wednesday. "I think the best thing is needs-based, but the question is how do you do needs-based."

If the survey sent out on Tuesday is any indication, that question is still unanswered and it is now members' turn to weigh in. Instead of giving members a choice between multiple formulas the survey asks, "If you believe expense funding should be needs-based, what are the top items that you believe should be reflect[ed] in the formula?"

To complicate matters, several council members do not support using a needs-based formula, instead favoring equal distribution.

"There are pockets of poverty in even some of the wealthiest districts throughout the city so a formulaic approach isn't the most viable option," Council Member Mark Levine said by email.

In the Feb. hearing, Council Member Helen Rosenthal said her district is a wealthier district overall, but does have pockets of acute need which may not be accounted for in a formula.

"When we get to the needs-based formulas it gets tricky because a district like mine ends up losing funds both from the mayor's side, from the executive budget, and (from) the council side," Rosenthal said in Feb.

If the Council decides to attempt using a formula for distributing discretionary funds, there is a finite amount of time to agree on one. The budget must be passed by June 30 and reform or no reform, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito will dole out discretionary funding to her members.

Even with a ticking clock, and little decided on, Lander, like many of his fellow members, believe the Council will get the job done.

"I am extremely confident we will have all the rules reform done in plenty of time for the budget," Lander said.

Read the full City Council member survey here: 

City Council Member Survey - March 2014

 *Citizens Union Foundation publishes Gotham Gazette

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is determined to cut taxes (governor.ny.gov)

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's push for universal pre-kindergarten has dominated discussion of this year's state budget negotiations. Though it is doubtful de Blasio has convinced state officials to approve his desired tax increase on the city's highest earners to pay for city pre-K, it now seems likely that the upcoming Albany budget will include funding of some significant amount for a major expansion of pre-K state-wide.

Along with a newly reinvigorated debate over the status of charter schools, the de Blasio-Cuomo pre-K face-off continues to command many headlines, but, a wide array of other issues of major importance to the city will soon be decided on without much public discussion.

By most accounts, the state legislature is only a few days away from shutting down budget negotiations. The backroom bargaining will likely culminate with the annual frenzy of late-night-into-early-morning votes on each budget bill.

If this year follows the typical hurried process of most years, rank-and-file legislators will have only a brief time with the voluminous stacks of budget bills that will be dropped onto their desks fresh from the printers of their more powerful colleagues.

According to legislators and other experts, there are several key budget elements other than pre-K that New York City residents should watch carefully:

MTA Sweep

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's budget proposal includes a measure that would take $40 million raised by a tax designed to help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority pay down debt and put it in the state's general fund.

The Department of Budget says the governor's proposed budget increases funding for the MTA by 2 percent, or $85 million. But legislators like Sen. Martin Dilan (D-Brooklyn), the Senate Democrats' ranking member of the Transportation Committee, say that the $40 million in tax money could be used to reduce fare hikes or better performance. The Senate and Assembly have not included Cuomo's proposed maneuver in their budgets. "We can't keep doing this to the MTA and expect it to thrive," said Dilan.

The legislature has passed bills in the past few years that were designed to make it more difficult for funds to be diverted out of the MTA's budget, but last year Cuomo vetoed such a bill. Whether or not the $40 million transfer is stopped this year, transportation experts expect the governor to continue to attempt such actions in the future. Last year Cuomo successfully took $20 million from the MTA.

Renters' Tax Credit

Cuomo balanced his Upstate tax relief proposals, which include cutting property taxes and eliminating some business taxes, with a renters' tax credit for seniors and married couples who earn up to $100,000 a year and have dependents – a measure that will primarily impact city residents.

The budget proposal from Senate Republicans and the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) does not include the credit. Senate Democrats are pushing a broader tax credit for renters, while members of the IDC point to a bill they passed this month that would freeze rents for seniors. The independent Democrats say the freeze covers at least half of the population that would benefit from Cuomo's proposal.

Earlier this month, Cuomo made it clear to reporters that a budget deal won't be reached without the credits.

"The Senate budget eliminates New York City residents from getting tax breaks and the tax breaks only go to Long Island and Upstate," Cuomo said. "That is a non-starter and that is a very serious issue. I believe that is the most serious issue we have on the table. I am not going to pass a budget that shorts the people of New York City."

Pesticide Reporting

New York's pioneering pesticide-reporting law, passed in 1996, is credited with helping researchers discover links between pesticides and health problems. The legislation requires companies to report what chemicals they are using and where. The executive budget changes this to require only that retailers report their sales of pesticides to both commercial and private users.

Environmental advocates are concerned that this will jeopardize public safety because it removes the element that forces pesticide users to report where they are using pesticides. "My constituents care about the environment and are constantly dealing with air quality issues," said Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan). "This is something that matters to them because it actually impacts their health and safety."

Aid to Municipalities

In 2010, New York City saw its Aid to Municipalities Funding zeroed out in Cuomo's budget as the state was facing a $10 billion budget gap. Despite Cuomo's projection of a $2 billion surplus next fiscal year, the city still is not scheduled to receive any aid, which had totaled about $302 million a year from 2008-2010.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg decried the funding cuts in 2011, but Mayor Bill de Blasio didn't mention the issue in his January testimony before the state legislature's joint budget committee. The only issue de Blasio focused on in his written statement was his pre-K plan. State legislators who represent the city said they have been told that New York "is where the money is," and the rest of the state is in greater need. Krueger said, however, that she understands upstate cities are in desperate need of the relatively small amounts of money their mayors come to Albany "to beg for" every year. She noted that New York City's economy has recovered quickly from the Great Recession while most upstate cities rely on property taxes to stay afloat.

DREAM Act

Along with the pre-K and charter schools debates, the DREAM Act has been among the most high-profile topics of late. Supporters of the DREAM Act have been pushing since the start of the session for Cuomo and both houses of the legislature to include the act in their budgets. The Assembly made it part of their budget and passed the measure, which would provide college tuition assistance to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. at a young age.

Advocates felt momentum was building until last week, when they were surprised to learn a vote was about to take place on the legislation. Bills rarely come to the Senate floor for a vote if they don't have the support to pass. Supporters' excitement at seeing the bill come to the floor for debate fizzled as they realized one possible Republican supporter, Sen. Philip Boyle (Long Island), was absent for the vote. Another possible Republican supporter, Sen.Jack Martins (Long Island), voted no, along with Democratic Sens. Ted O'Brien (Rochester) and Simcha Felder (Brooklyn). Felder conferences with the Republicans.

Feeling a bit bamboozled, DREAM Act supporters have returned to their original plan of pushing for the bill in budget negotiations. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) emerged from a leaders' meeting yesterday to tell reporters the act is still "on the table."

"We are fully committed to getting this done this year for these kids," said Sen. Jose Serrano (D-Bronx, Manhattan). "This isn't about spending money. This is about investing in education and our workforce."

Several Hispanic legislators have reaffirmed their commitment to vote against the final budget bills if the act is not included.

The DREAM Act is favored by most Democratic legislators who represent the five boroughs as the city remains an immigration hub. They say that giving immigrants a better chance at education is both morally and practically correct, arguing that it will serve to boost the city's economy.

Moreland Funding

Both houses of the legislature eliminated funding for Cuomo's anti-corruption Moreland Commission in their budgets. Legislators fought Moreland and its legal authority to investigate them since it was empaneled, and now good government advocates are wary that the legislature is looking to trade minor reforms in ethics and campaign financing for the elimination of the commission.

The executive budget calls for an independent elections enforcement head, public financing of campaigns and increased enforcement of election law. The Senate's budget proposal contains a sentence regarding the plans saying only that it intends to "modify" Cuomo's proposal. The sentence is a bit of a coup for good government groups and reform advocates as it is the first time the Senate has included anything regarding campaign finance reform in its budget. Senators had decried such measures as a waste of taxpayer funds. During debate over its one-house budget, Republican Sen. John DeFrancisco (Syracuse) said that there wasn't a "clear consensus" on campaign finance reform but that the details of the issue would be discussed further as the budget process advances.

The city has seen a recent rash of legislators indicted for corruption and several Assembly and Senate districts are currently without representation. Many advocates argue that the city's campaign finance system should be a model for a new state one.

Insurance Marketplaces and Medicaid

In what may be a symbolic gesture, the Senate's one-house budget defunds the state's health insurance marketplace, created under the Affordable Care Act or "Obamacare." Slightly more than $53 million is cut from funding for the marketplace. "We have the most successful insurance marketplace in the nation," said Democratic Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx). "They are trying to defund something that keeps people healthy. This is something very important to the people of my district."

Neither the Governor nor the Assembly is likely to go along with anything close to the Senate's language on the exchanges.

Meanwhile, more practically, the Senate and Assembly also want more say about how the state spends Medicaid waivers. The Cuomo administration has indicated that the $8 billion waiver the federal government approved in February will in part be used to help such floundering Brooklyn hospitals as Interfaith Medical Center and Brookdale Hospital. But Upstate legislators say they have hospitals that need help as well, and they would like more say about where the waiver is applied.

Kruger said that in general this year's budget conversation is not focused in a way that reflects most New Yorkers' priorities. "The state is doing well. We supposedly have a $2 billion surplus. You would think this would be an opportunity to make amends for the cuts we made to essential programs when we were facing a $10 billion deficit," said Krueger. "I don't get the feeling people are thinking about that or listening to the people."

by David King, Albany Editor

@DavidHowardKing