Gotham Gazette

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Open Government

Taking the Public Pulse


When the Straphangers Campaign asked riders at 15 of New York’s busiest subway stops what they thought of their stations, the answers from almost 4,000 riders surprised the advocacy group.

Grading the stations on cleanliness, security, announcements, crowding and ease of getting around, the riders gave their top score to the Yankee Stadium/161st Street station in the traditionally underserved Bronx – despite renovation problems and complaints about rats. The 51st Street and Lexington Station came in dead last in the 2000 survey, even though in many respects it looked better than its Bronx counterpart. A possible conclusion: When it comes to rating stations, many riders would prefer vermin to overcrowding.

Citizens often have different criteria for rating services than experts or officials. Health administrators may evaluate a hospital based on the number of prestigious doctors or the amount of cutting edge equipment. Patients, though, tend to look at whether the triage nurse in the emergency room treated them with courtesy and respect. In San Jose, the heart of the high-technology Silicon Valley, city officials expected residents would prefer to get key information on public services via their computers. No, residents said in a survey: They wanted to speak to a “real” person on the phone.

As governments, including New York City’s, find new ways to assess their performance (for more, see Gotham Gazette’s section Measuring Up), some experts say that all too often officials ignore a key piece -- what the people who are supposed to benefit from government services think of those services. In response, academics, officials and others are striving to come up with ways to take the pulse of the people -- and use that data to improve government performance. The issue has attracted enough interest lately that last month, dozens of policy experts, academics and Bloomberg administration officials turned out early on a Monday morning for a forum at Baruch College on “giving New Yorkers a voice.”

THE MISSING NUMBERS

Since the 1970s, New York City has produced a welter of data to evaluate performance. Key to this is the Mayor’s Management Report, a document brimming with data on lots cleared of rodents, students graduating from high school, fire department response times and so on.

Beyond 311: Listening to New Yorkers
--Diana Fortuna
What Residents Can Tell Government
--Douglas Muzzio
The Web Site, 311, Surveys and Focus Groups
--Jeffrey Kay
Parents Grading Schools
--James Liebman
The Way in San Jose
--Brooke Myhre

Most of this data focuses on what experts call inputs -- money, staff, resources -- and outputs –- usually statistics on services produced by government, such as tons of trash collected, number of potholes filled, the average length of a hospital stay, the number of bathrooms in city parks. But the data may not cover the outcome -- the quality of the service delivered.

It’s the difference between reporting on the number of potholes filled and the number of streets in excellent condition. So a sanitation department may report how much trash it collects but not whether, in the process, it dropped garbage or if it picked up trash from some buildings and not others.

To get that kind of information one often has to ask citizens.

So far, New York City has no comprehensive way to do this. Private groups (Straphangers and the Fund for the City of New York, to name two) have tried to gauge citizen satisfaction -- or dissatisfaction -- with government. Baruch College conducted two surveys for City Council in 2000 and 2001. And some city agencies try to get their own information. According to Jeffrey Kay, director of the Mayors Office of Operations, the Human Resources Administration, for example, asks people who go into their walk-in centers to evaluate the services they received, while the buildings department holds focus groups. (See The Web Site, 311, Surveys and Focus Groups.) And in the coming school year, the Department of Education plans to ask parents and older students to rate certain aspects of their schools. (See Parents Grading Schools.)

The city also culls some data from its 311 non-emergency helpline. But, however useful this might be, it does not provide an accurate picture of citizen satisfaction. “It is representative of who picks up the phone – not necessarily of the broader population,” Diana Fortuna, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, said. (See Beyond 311: Listening to New Yorkers.)

And most people dial 311 only to report a problem. “Do people call 311 to pay the city compliments? Probably not, said Douglas Muzzio, a public policy professor at Baruch College. (What Residents Can Tell Government)

DO YOU NEED TO ASK?

Private companies, of course, frequently get satisfaction information from their customers. Sales figures give businesses a quick indication of whether people like their product. But companies also survey their customers. Customers of online business such as eBay or Amazon are asked for “feedback” and many hotels provide a customer response form.

“How strange that we don’t do this and in the private sector, they do it all the time, “ said Barbara Cohn Berman, director of the Center on Municipal Government Performance at the Fund for the City of New York. “They’re not going to make a purple car if no one’s going to buy it.”

It’s important for government to follow business’ example, many argue. “This kind of research can be eye-opening because it helps government to see things in a different way,” Berman said. When the fund conducted focus groups of New Yorkers in 1995 and in 2001, she said, “no one complained about taxes.” But, overwhelming majorities of people thought the condition of the city’s roads was “critically important” and were very dissatisfied with it.

Taking surveys also allows government to view data in various ways, considering, for example how different racial groups view a city service. “In a city as diverse as New York, such differences in how people experience government services are significant,” said Muzzio.

Getting citizen opinion has a number of advantages, said Marc Holzer, executive director of the National Center for Public Productivity at Rutgers University. “Citizens may have good ideas about government,” he said. Further, “You want citizens to feel they are connected with government….and that government is a good use of their money.”

Despite this, Holzer said, many governments do not like to consult citizens. There is a tendency for this in New York City where, he said, “There’s a certain arrogance at City Hall.” As an example he cited the recent controversy over cell phones in public schools, where the city has persisted in enforcing a total ban, despite parents’ objections.

ASKING THE QUESTIONS

If one accepts that government should consider citizen ratings, the question then becomes how to get that information. It is far harder to do this in government than business, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said in 2001. “It requires a process of asking yourself not only why government exists but in the case of city government why certain agencies exist. What is their raison d’etre, what’s their purpose, and what is the reason the public wants those agencies,” he said.

To try to get answers to these questions, management experts, pollsters and statisticians have devised a number of methods. They include:

--Surveys of a random sampling of citizens: This has been used in a number of cities including San Jose. There the city contacted a statistically selected sample of residents -- not necessarily citizens -- and asked 100 questions about how they feel about the city, their concerns about the quality of life, safety and so on. (See The Way in San Jose.)

--Less random samples: Often these surveys are made available to a broad swath of citizens, any of whom can respond. In Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, a questionnaire on the police went out with the water bills, and in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, a response form was inserted in the local paper. While the results could prove useful, the self-selected sample could provide a skewed picture of citizen attitudes.

--User surveys: Residents who avail themselves of a certain city survey are then asked to evaluate. The Straphanger’s subway station survey is an example of this. Pranger said that, while that effort yielded useful results, it was very labor intensive. “It takes forever to hand out postcards,” she said. And the data has limitations, Pranger said. Responses to surveys, she said, may not be as reliable and standardized as data collected through observations and counts, such as the Straphangers reports on dirt in the subways.

Berman cautions that surveys, while they have value, can lead to erroneous conclusions. For example, she said many cities ask residents whether they feel safe. When people answer no, governments typically respond by increasing police presence. But, she said, the reason people feel vulnerable may have nothing to do with police presence: It could reflect press coverage of crime, poor street lighting or other factors. “You could be throwing good money after bad by putting more police there,” she said.

Focus groups: These are groups chosen from the population that are sampled through an open discussion – rather than yes or no questions – about a specific issue, product or, in this case, city services. The Fund for the City of New York has employed this approach, said Berman, because in a citizen survey “you can’t find out much about why people say what they do.”

Citizen driven government performance: In this approach, citizen groups collect data on a public service. Straphangers relies largely on this, sending out employees and others to gauge the cleanliness of subway cars or the operation of pay phones in subway stations. Other examples include New Yorkers for Parks, Inside Schools.

All of these methods, if use correctly, have their pluses and minuses. And then of course there’s the original citizen survey: The ballot box is open for public responses every November.

For more information:

How the City Can Improve Tracking of Service Delivery,” Independent Budget Office, February 2002

"Listening to the Public: Adding the Voices of the People to Government Performance Measurement and Reporting" Barbara Cohn Berman of the Fund for the City of New York's Center on Municipal Government Performance discusses performance measures that reflect the public's needs, concerns, and perspective.

Baruch Survey Research Unit

Center on Municipal Government Performance at the Fund for the City of New York

Government Accounting Standards Board. Focuses on government finances and accountability.

International City Council Management Association. It has a center for performance management

National center for Public Productivity. A research and public service organization devoted to improving productivity in the public sector.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Web Site, 311, Surveys and Focus Groups


Taking the Public Pulse
--Gail Robinson
Beyond 311: Listening to New Yorkers
--Diana Fortuna
What Residents Can Tell Government
--Douglas Muzzio
Parents Grading Schools
--James Liebman
The Way in San Jose
--Brooke Myhre

How do you give New Yorkers a voice? How do you bring them into the system? How do you find out what they want? And then once you collect that data, how do you turn it around and how do you produce results?

nyc.gov is sort of the front line. Right now, every city agency and dozens of independent offices are included on the nyc.gov web site. They have their own links. Four hundred and ten forms are available. Fifty-five thousand online forms are submitted for use. People are obviously using the system. There are over 250,000,000 hits or page views. It's been ranked number one in usability for city government services and number two in digital governance.

You can contact agency heads. You can contact the mayor. There are 16 comments and feedback forms. Over 730,000 forms are submitted to nyc.gov annually. That's a significant amount of interaction between the citizens and government. And at the bottom, it provides easy access to the performance data in many different formats.

311 is a great base. It's taking 46,000 calls a weekday. To date, over 35 million calls have been made to 311. You can request information. You can ask easy questions. You can make a recommendation. You can also say, "I just passed a pothole" and that information goes directly into the system.

The average call waiting time is 15 seconds. Eighty eight percent of the calls are picked up within 30 seconds.

Now that begs the next question: Are we just seeing how quickly the call is picked up, or are we looking at the quality of it. Is there follow-up? Are you getting the right answer?

In terms of citizen surveys, we don't have a citywide strategy, but different agencies are doing different things. Our Department of Buildings has focus groups in each field office. The Department of Finance has a huge amount of customer survey data as does the Department of Parks. The Human Resources Administration has ongoing surveys in their walk-in centers: "Do you feel you got what you needed while you're here?" The Department of Aging has a senior advisory council.

Once you collect the data, once you go after what the citizens want, how do you turn that into producing results.

You can do it by holding agency and managers accountable for collecting this data. If they collect it, at least they have the information. That's the obvious first step.

Then you need to present it to the public. And you need to always refocus and always try to get a new sense of what people want.

Jeffrey Kay is director of the New York City Mayor's Office of Operations 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Residents Can Tell Government


Taking the Public Pulse
--Gail Robinson
Beyond 311: Listening to New Yorkers
--Diana Fortuna
The Web Site, 311, Surveys and Focus Groups
--Jeffrey Kay
Parents Grading Schools
--James Liebman
The Way in San Jose
--Brooke Myhre

Government officials, management experts, and program analysts agree that government services must be customer driven and results-oriented. Governments should pay attention to residents' perceptions and assessments of the quality of the services they receive. “The best way to encourage good performance is to measure it, and the best indicator of government performance is citizen satisfaction,” according to the International City and County Management Association

Hundreds of municipalities, including Phoenix, Miami-Dade County, Detroit, San Diego, San Francisco, Austin, San Jose, and Portland, Oregon, use resident surveys to evaluate the quality of services.

Resident surveys provide a unique perspective on municipal services that is not available from other sources. In particular, resident surveys can provide information on:
• constituents' satisfaction with the quality of specific services;
• facts on who uses – and does not use –various services, including how often people use the services and how to use them;
• the reasons specific services are disliked or not used
• high priority but inadequate services;
• potential demands for new services;
• residents' evaluation of and support for policy or service delivery options.

Resident surveys concentrate on the outcomes or results of government services – how satisfied people are with their schools and parks, how safe they feel in their neighborhoods. On the other hand, administrative measures including those found in New York City's Mayor's Management Report focus on inputs (money, staff), effort, and sometimes outputs (tons of trash collected, number of potholes filled). While these are important, what the public wants from government centers on results.

Furthermore, resident surveys allow for the analysis of individual differences in how people use and experience city services – for example, differences by race, ethnicity, age, and gender. In a city as diverse and dynamic as New York, such differences in how people experience government services are significant.

The city's 311 program provides much valuable data to managers and policy-makers as well as the city's diverse stakeholders. But 311 data are not outcome measures. And users of 311 are not representative of New York City residents generally. Callers self-select, violating the cardinal rule of survey research that calls for a random sample.

Interestingly, callers to 311 may not be the most disgruntled New Yorkers. In fact, most dissatisfied customers don't complain -- they just take their business elsewhere. In the public sector, the dissatisfied citizens may simply stop trusting government or move someplace else.

And what about the things New Yorkers like about their government – do people call 311 to pay the city compliments? Probably not. A citizen survey would help capture positive views and document areas where New York City government should keep up the good work.

Moreover, calls to 311 are motivated by a need for information or services, not to provide feedback. The system in no way enquires about residents' awareness, use and assessment of services, nor does it provide data on the demographic or socioeconomic characteristics of its users.

Noise complaints offer an example of how such information might be misused to diagnose where service problems exist. A map of noise complaint calls made to the city's quality of life line in fiscal year 2001 found more complaints from Staten Island's community boards than from all of the Bronx -- a borough three times Staten Island's size. As one Bronx community board member stated at the time, "The only reason why the number of [noise] complaints may not be as high is that many of the people in our community don't trust the system. And they don't believe that they are going to get results.”

Douglas Muzzio is a professor of public policy at Baruch College  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beyond 311: Listening to New Yorkers


Taking the Public Pulse
--Gail Robinson
What Residents Can Tell Government
--Douglas Muzzio
The Web Site, 311, Surveys and Focus Groups
--Jeffrey Kay
Parents Grading Schools
--James Liebman
The Way in San Jose
--Brooke Myhre

From having worked inside government, I know there is a tendency to look at all the steps that take you from the beginning to the end, but not always at how consumers view what you do.

We already have methods to find out how consumer view what government does. There's voting. Another is 311, which provides us with a lot of information and a new way for citizens to be involved. And of course, there are citizen surveys.

Can surveys provide citizen input into broad strategic planning efforts and goal setting? Can the public help figure out what our goals are? What are we trying to accomplish as a city? What are our priorities?

There are different types of surveys. In the general citizen survey, you ask a statistically significant group of citizens what they think. User surveys, taken immediately after a citizen has used a service, ask what his or her experience was. With audience specific surveys, you try to understand how a particular community reacts to and appreciates a service.

Some places use independent pollsters to conduct the surveys. Sometimes city auditors or comptrollers do this. They can do this work by mail or by telephone. The information obtained may then be or may be included in a performance document, the equivalent of the New York City Mayor's Management Report.

Let's take a look at the kind of information we would have if we were to ask citizens what they think. Consider water. In New York, we have material such as notices of violations and warnings issued in the watershed, patrol hours for the police and water protection staff, whether waste treatment plants are meeting federal standards. Obviously these things should be measured, but they are not outcome oriented. In Austin, they ask, "Are you satisfied with your home's water pressure?"

In the section of the Mayor's Management Report on parks, you see parks rated exceptional for overall conditions, playground safety, drinking fountains, trees pruned. Other cities ask citizens, "What is your satisfaction with appearance of parks in your neighborhood," "How often are you there?"

And cultural affairs: The Mayor's Management Report lists payments made to the cultural institutions group and new capital projects initiated. But from the citizens' perspective you could have questions about overall satisfaction with cultural arts programs and whether people feel the city supports a diverse range of cultural programs.

Obviously, 311 was not founded as a citizens survey. It was founded to give citizens an easier interface with government. It is hard to argue that it hasn't, in many ways, been a success. Clearly it makes it easy for citizens to access city government. It improves the way they interact with government; they no longer have to call 27 numbers to figure out which agency or bureau handles a specific thing. And there is a lot of information that allows management to understand what is going on.

But does it also function as an indicator of how citizens feel about their government? It is representative of who picks up the phone – not necessarily of the broader population. And it's very hard to infer from it how people feel generally, about services.

So New York should think about how to add citizens as part of its performance management. Some kind of measure beyond 311, that reflects where the citizens are at, ought to be included in New York City's reporting.

Diana Fortuna is president of the www.cbcny.org Citizens Budget Commission

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New York City Council Stated Meeting -- July 19, 2006


Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Gotham Gazette covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.

By a vote of 44 to 5, the New York City Council approved Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to change the way the city handles its garbage in its stated meeting on July 19, 2006 -- a decision council members referred to as "historic" and "monumental." Under the plan, the city will move its trash to out-of-state landfills by barge and rail, rather than by trucks, as it does today. The version of the plan that the council approved was altered to lessen the environmental impact on neighborhoods that will have to play host to garbage facilities and to further encourage recycling.

The city's current system of garbage management has been criticized mainly because of its negative environmental impact. Over the next twenty years, the lifespan of the new plan, truck traffic is expected to be reduced by 3 million miles.

"By removing garbage from the city through barge and rail transport we will dramatically reduce the negative effects of truck traffic on our neighborhoods," said Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

New York City has been in a particularly difficult situation with regards to trash since 2001, when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani closed Staten Island's Fresh Kills landfill without a clear idea of how the city would function without it. Since then, city trucks have dumped garbage at facilities located mainly in low-income neighborhoods in the Bronx and Brooklyn. There, larger trucks pick it up and haul it out of state. Residents in such areas suffer from high rates of asthma and other health problems widely linked to the air pollution associated with such facilities.

Environmental advocates and representatives of the low-income neighborhoods praised the council's decision to address the current situation.

"Today is the single most important day for solid waste issues -- including air quality, and environmental justice impacts -- in the last decade since Mayor Giuliani announced the closure of Fresh Kills landfill," said Ramon Cruz of Environmental Defense, an advocacy group that has been involved in negotiations.

The current situation has also been derided as being financially inefficient. The city expects the immediate financial impact of the new plan to actually raise the cost of handling garbage from about $77 a ton to about $107, but supporters of the plan believe it will be financially beneficial in the long term.

But garbage has always been a controversial issue in New York City, and negotiations between the council and the administration were "long and hard," according to Councilmember Michael McMahon, the chair of the council's committee of sanitation and solid waste management. The vote, originally scheduled for 1:30 p.m., was delayed for five hours as council members and representatives from the mayor's office hammered away at the final details.

"Up until about 3 o'clock this afternoon I thought there would be no agreement," said McMahon.

The stickiest issues all dealt with how to reduce the environmental burden on specific neighborhoods.

For residential waste, the city is planning to open four "marine transfer stations" where trucks will dump garbage onto barges. Two are in Brooklyn, one in Manhattan, and one in Queens. The council strengthened language guaranteeing that these neighborhoods will see a reduction in the amount of waste handled at privately-run truck-based garbage facilities already operating there. The South Bronx is also guaranteed such a reduction, since it has been overburdened for years. A transfer station for commercial waste is also being planned at 59th Street and the Hudson River in Manhattan. The council added a commitment to look for alternative sites in Manhattan as well.

Another contentious issue concerned a facility in McMahon's district in Staten Island where garbage from the four marine transfer stations will be transfered from barges into containers. At the last minute, a cap was inserted limiting the amount of garbage that would move through that facility and the amount of time garbage could stay there.

The proposed reopening of a marine transfer station at East 91st Street will go forward. That site has been the focus of bitter fight last summer. Councilmember Jessica Lappin, who represents the district, voiced her strong displeasure as she voted against the plan.

"I find the reopening of that facility outrageous and unacceptable," she said, noting that it is located in a dense residential area. "I just don't see how you mitigate the impacts on this community."

Also voting no were Councilmembers Dan Garodnick, Gale Brewer, Oliver Koppell, and Domenic Recchia. The plan must still be approved by the state.

TOUGHER ON GUNS

The council also passed four bills aiming to curb gun violence. Two bills were passed unanimously. One, Intro 362., calls for those convicted of criminal possession of a weapon to enter a registry, the first of its kind in the country. The other, Intro 365, outlaws the possession of firearms that have been painted to look like toy guns.

The other two bills were approved by votes of 47 to 2. Republicans Dennis Gallagher and Andrew Lanza voted "no" on Intro 363, which requires gun dealers to physically inspect their inventory twice a year, and Intro 364, which would keep people from buying more than four handguns in a calendar year.

GAS PRICES

The Council also approved Intro 296, , which says that gas stations must keep their prices the same for a 24-hour period before they can change them again. The Department of Consumer Affairs that sends investigators out to monitor prices across the city would enforce the regulation. The measure was approved by a 43 to 6 vote, with Councilmembers Simcha Felder, Daniel Garodnick, Helen Sears, Dennis Gallagher, Andrew Lanza, and James Oddo, voting no.

The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for August 16, 2006.

Reforming - and Not Reforming - the Budget Process


Each summer, State Assemblymember and Brooklyn Democratic party boss Vito Lopez throws a massive summer picnic, busing 4,000 senior citizens from Bushwick to Sunken Meadow State Park in Long Island for live music, dancing, and a steak and chicken dinner.

It is also one of the most important political gatherings of the year; elected officials from across the city and state come to shake hands, campaign, and have their photo taken with Lopez, who wears an apron while tending the barbeque.

Many members of the City Council, including Speaker Christine Quinn, owe their jobs at least in part to Lopez, so it was not surprising that when the City Council recently approved the city's $53 billion budget, they made sure to allocate $100,000 for the picnic.

Each year, in addition to the major initiatives in the budget, the City Council also hands out tens of millions of dollars in grants for various programs - senior centers, Little League teams, volunteer firefighter squads, religious groups, and community organizations. Most of the funding goes to worthy organizations doing important work in the city, but there are also items that many would see as "pork." (See the full list online - pdf format.)

This year, Speaker Christine Quinn promised to reform the way the council allocates such money, but critics still question how funding decisions are made and how they serve the personal interests of local politicians.

"Does the public have any idea of the amount of money being distributed, and how?" asked Rachel Leon of Common Cause.

The State Legislature and governor also dole out $200 million of these grants each year, and the process in Albany is even more secretive. This year, the Albany Times Union sued Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno because they refused to make the information public.

Does New York's budget pork need to be trimmed?

BRINGING CITY COUNCIL BUDGET DOLLARS HOME

The 51 City Council members, who each represent about 157,000 people, obtain money for their constituents and neighborhoods in several ways.

Each individual member can request grants - often called "member items" - ranging from about $1,000 to $100,000 for tenant associations, senior citizen programs, cultural groups, and youth and community organizations.

This year, member items included grants such as $5,000 for the Point Breezy Volunteer Fire Department, $8,500 for the Roosevelt Island Day Nursery, $4,000 for the Yorkville Common Food Pantry, $3,000 for the Contello Men's Club, $10,000 for the Doll and Toy Museum of New York City, $10,000 for the Guardian Angels, and $5,000 for a youth program at the Maranatha Baptist Church.

In total, more than one thousand organizations received some kind of municipal funding.

In addition, all 51 City Council members receive a sum of money - often called "discretionary funds" - to spend in their districts.

This year, each member received a total of $340,464, of which $151,714 must be spent on programs for youth and $108,750 must be spent on programs for the elderly. Members can allocate the remaining $80,000 as they wish.

The argument for giving City Council members a substantial role in allocating money in their districts is that they know the community's needs. (For an explanation of how the council has been allocated money in the past, see the article Community Development or Political Pork?)

But the City Council is often criticized - even by some of its own members - for loading down the budget with too many pet projects.

"There is so much pork you can almost hear it oink," said former Bronx Councilmember Madeline Provenzano in response to last year's budget.

The process has also been criticized.

In the past, council members had to submit their specific budget requests to the speaker and make the argument that their projects were worthy. The speaker would then decide which items to include in negotiations with the mayor. Politics often came into play, with the speaker rewarding members who were loyal and punishing those who were not.

"There was no rhyme or reason to what got on the list," said Councilmember David Weprin, who also chairs the finance committee.

THE COUNCIL'S EFFORTS AT REFORM

This year, Speaker Christine Quinn, who in her first term has looked to overhaul some of the council practices, tried to reign in the council's budget process.

Under a new policy, each major council spending request had to have the support of at least 10 council members from at least three boroughs. This forced individual members to build a certain amount of consensus for their projects.

"The fact that a member had an idea and put it forward does not mean that it will get carried as a priority nor does it mean it will get into the budget," Quinn said in June.

Councilmember Weprin said that compared to the past council initiatives were more thoroughly vetted by members and by the council's finance staff.

After some initial complaints, most of the council members say they now prefer the new procedure.

"It made council members say 'yes' to some and 'no' to others," said Bronx Councilmember James Vacca, who was not in office last year, but as the head of a community board was familiar with the past process. "I'm not saying that I got all the money I asked for... but on the whole it was significant progress."

And for the first time, the City Council put the list of all of the organizations or programs that receive city funding - known as "Schedule C" - online for the public to read.

Still even with the reforms, the end result is not radically different.

Overall, the effort did not reduce the amount of spending in the budget. This year's $52.9 billion budget is the largest in city history, and the council added about $233 million to what the mayor proposed, which is about similar to previous years.

It is impossible to compare how many "member items" were doled out in total compared with the past, since the budget documents do not add up the initiatives.

And the process is still far from transparent.

All of the budget decisions still happen behind closed doors. Records do not say which member requested the funding. And there is little information on how the grant will be spent.

In an effort to create a more transparent budget process, Councilmember Hiram Monserrate recently said he would introduce a bill that will require future budgets to include the name and district of council members requesting funds as well as the amount contributed to each organization.

"[We must] ensure a new transparency law is in place before we find ourselves in yet another flawed budget process,” said Monserrate.

And this year, council members did not even know exactly what they were voting on until they were handed the budget documents at nearly 1 o'clock in the morning, just minutes before the vote.

"We still have a long way to go to make it a more open process," said Queens Councilmember Tony Avella.

ALBANY'S SLUSH FUNDS

As is often the case when comparing city and state government, Albany makes City Hall look good. The State Legislature has an even more secretive and dysfunctional way of dealing with member items.

Each year, Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon hand out $170 million in member items. The governor also gets a $30 million pot of money to pass out as he sees fit. But unlike the City Council, the State Legislature does not provide a list of how the money is spent. Even the State Comptroller, who has the power to audit state contracts and other finances, does not have the authority see the list.

In an effort to learn how this $200 million in taxpayer money is spent each year, the Times Union of Albany has spent months trying to get the records using the New York's Freedom of Information Law. When both Bruno and Silver refused, the newspaper filed a lawsuit to force them to produce the information. The Albany District Attorney David Soares even began an investigation into the matter.

After many months, the Times Union did get a hold of some member item records from the past - including some that raised suspicions.

In 2004 and 2005, records showed that Assemblymember Vito Lopez funneled $700,000 in member items to the same senior center that sponsors his annual picnic, with no explanation of how the money would be spent.

During the same time period, one of the largest recipients of member item funds was the North Bronx Westchester Neighborhood Restoration Association, which received $1.4 million even though its founder, State Senator Guy Velella was found guilty of accepting bribes and sentenced to a year in prison.

"It's a total waste of money," State Senator Jeff Klein, who now holds the seat, told the Times Union.

In response to the scrutiny, the State Senate has posted some information about member items on its Web site, but many of the grants are for unspecific organizations at undisclosed locations. E.J. McMahon, a budget watchdog for the Manhattan Institute, called the list of member items "almost worse than nothing."

"Were they ever to become completely public, the files would surely yield many more conflicts of interest and cases in which state funds are being quietly funneled to friends, families, and contributors," the New York Times editorial board recently wrote. "That is to be expected when so much money is handed out in the dark."

Alexander Perkins and Shoshana Schwartz also contributed to this article.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giving the Newest New Yorkers the Vote


Debate about proposed federal immigration policy -- and a growing mobilization by immigrants and their allies -- has brought immigrants center stage in American politics. Evolving relations between immigrants and the native born are, in many respects, remaking America and what it means to be American.

These changes are also reshaping New York. To reflect that, a bill currently in the City Council aims to strengthen immigrant political power. The Voting Rights Restoration Act (also known as Intro 245) would grant voting rights to legal immigrants who have resided in New York City for at least six months to vote in local, municipal elections. The bill, which would empower long-term residents -- not transients or tourists -- has over a dozen sponsors and is gaining greater support and attention.

A similar bill was introduced in the last council but did not pass. Hearings were held on it in November. At that time, a number of witnesses spoke in support of the measure, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg opposed it. In a letter, Karen Meara, the mayor's director of city legislative affairs, said, “The administration believes that the better avenue for expanding the franchise is by making available the appropriate mechanisms and incentives for non-citizens to obtain citizenship."

Such debate is about the very nature of citizenship and democracy in America, including who should be allowed to vote. After all, voting is only for citizens, right? Not really.

When Non-Citizens Could Vote

Although it is not widely known, non-citizen voting is as old as the republic itself and as American as apple pie and baseball. Non-citizens voted from 1776 until 1926 in 40 states and territories in local, state, and even federal elections. Non-citizens also held public office. In a country where "no taxation without representation" was once a rallying cry for revolution, such a proposition did not seem far-fetched but another way to have government rest "on the consent of the governed."

Globally, more than 40 countries allow non-citizens voting rights in local and/or national elections. In this country, non-citizens vote in local elections in six towns in Maryland and in Chicago school elections. Parents who were not citizens could vote in New York City community school board elections from 1968 until 2003, when the community school boards were eliminated with the reorganization of the school system.

Another dozen jurisdictions from coast to coast have launched campaigns to win voting rights for non-citizens, with such efforts underway in Washington D.C., California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, North Carolina, Colorado, Texas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. These campaigns propose allowing long-term residents to vote in local and/or state elections, but not federal races. Proponents, who include a broad range of immigrant and civil rights groups, faith-based organizations, unions, and civic leaders, contend that winning voting rights would help advance immigrant interests and provide benefits to all members of localities more generally.

Advocates of non-citizen voting say the reasoning behind their movement is similar to the ideas that animated the women’s suffrage and civil rights movements. Voting has always been about who has a say and who will have influence over the actions of government, not citizenship per se. The idea that non-citizens should have the vote is older, was practiced longer, and is more consistent with democratic ideals than the idea that they should not.

One in Five New Yorkers

Non-citizens work in every sector of the economy, own homes and businesses, attend colleges and send children to schools -- and pay billions in taxes each year. They are subject to all the laws that govern citizens, serve in the military, and die defending the United States. Yet, they cannot vote on issues that affect their daily lives.

Nationally, almost 25 million adults are barred from voting because they lack U.S. citizenship. In New York City, non-citizens make up 22 percent of the total adult population. That is one out of five New Yorkers. About 80 percent of the immigrants in New York came to the country legally. In some City Council districts, the proportion of non-citizens rises to over 40 percent.

Some elected officials represent the interest of all their all their constituents – citizens or not. But many others ignore the concerns of non-voters in their districts. Excluding immigrants from the political process can lead to discriminatory public policy and private practices in employment, housing, education, healthcare, welfare, and criminal justice -- not to mention racial profiling, xenophobic hate crimes, and arbitrary detention and deportation. Non-citizens suffer social and economic inequities in part because policymakers can ignore their interests. Immigrant voting rights, advocates argue, would help reverse such inequities. It would put greater pressure on candidates, parties and public officials of all political stripes to take into account and heed the wishes and interests of all New Yorkers.

Opponents counter that immigrants should just become citizens to gain the right to vote. But getting citizenship takes eight to ten years, or longer – longer than the two terms for the mayor and all City Council members

Some critics say that such legislation would reduce incentives to naturalize and cheapen citizenship. But voting is only one of at least 10 rights and privileges that immigrants gain when they naturalize. Others include qualifying for certain benefits, public jobs and appointments, travel, and ability to bring relatives to the U.S. This legislation would permit legal residents to vote only in municipal elections -- not state and federal elections -- leaving plenty of incentives to naturalize.

Advocates of resident voting support efforts to speed up the naturalization process and to increase pathways to citizenship. But they argue that these are not mutually exclusive efforts. On the contrary, non-citizen voting would better prepare incipient Americans for eventual citizenship.

Democracy is an evolving concept and practice. The expansion of the franchise has been an important vehicle for disempowered groups in American history to achieve economic, social and civil rights and equality. The immigrant rights movement is today’s civil rights movement, and non-citizen voting is the suffrage movement of our time. New York, home of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, symbolizes America’s past and future as an immigrant nation. It would be appropriate to affirm this leadership role by restoring non-citizen voting in our great city’s elections.

Ron Hayduk teaches political science at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and is the author of Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States (Routledge, 2006), and co-director of the Immigrant Rights Voting Project.

An immigrant from Bangkok, Thailand, Chaleampon Ritthichai is the editor of The Citizen. 

New York City's Tourism


 

Texas native Christopher McCarthy said he came to New York City with the typical tourist's skepticism about New Yorkers. But he warmed up to the city on a recent visit here. "Everyone has their stereotypes of being cold and heartless," he said. "I've only felt warm feelings from everyone."

McCarthy's comments might come as a surprise -- he almost died after being stabbed in the heart on the subway during a recent trip. But then again, McCarthy's attitude is an increasingly common one. More tourists came to New York last year than ever before, and 44 million are expected to come in 2006, breaking the record again. And if Mayor Michael Bloomberg has his way, even more out-of-towners will be coming here soon.

Here is a photographic look at the city's tourism industry.

 

 

New City Council Bills - June 13, 2006


At its most recent meeting on June 13th, 2006, the New York City Council introduced 20 new bills, including efforts to rid the city of illegal guns, cleanup graffiti, lower gasoline taxes, and protect the city’s drinking water.

ANTI-GUN LEGISLATION
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made illegal guns a focus of his second term in office. In April, Bloomberg hosted a summit on the topic for mayors from across the nation, and in recent weeks his administration has been working on new legislation as part of the effort.

"Creating local laws that make enforcement easier and prevention more effective is critical in the fight to keep illegal guns off our streets," said Mayor Bloomberg at a recent press conference.

At the mayor's request, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr. introduced four new bills aimed at curbing gun violence in the city.

Intro 362 would require anyone convicted of criminal possession of a weapon to register with a local gun registry, the first of its kind in the country. The legislation would require offenders to report to the police department every six months for four years following a conviction. Failure to comply with the regulation would be a class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison.

Intro 363 would require gun dealers to perform physical inspections of their inventory twice each year, doubling the number of inspections required by current law. Supporters hope the bill will aid police officers in investigating gun theft crimes more effectively.

Intro 364 would limit the purchase of handguns in New York City to no more than four in one calendar year. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms statistics, multiple firearm purchases are a significant factor in illegal gun trafficking.

Intro 365 would outlaw the possession of firearms that have been painted in order to look like toy guns. In 1999, the City Council passed a law requiring all toy guns to be certain pastel or fluorescent colors so that children and police officers would be prevented from mistaking a toy gun for a real one. However, in recent years, some criminals began using gun coloration kits to make real guns look like toys. This bill would also ban the sale of gun coloration kits used to color guns in the fluorescent hues.

"Last year, over 300 New Yorkers, many of them children, were killed with illegal guns," said Speaker Quinn. "We won't stand by any longer."

The City Council will hold its first hearing on the proposed gun legislation on Thursday, June 29th at 10:00 a.m.

FIGHTING GRAFFITTI
In the 1970s, many of New York City's subways were riddled with graffiti, including elaborate murals that covered entire train cars. Over the last few decades, the MTA has increased its anti-graffiti budget and implemented new strategies to combat street artists.

Today, however, the city is struggling to respond to resourceful vandals who have abandoned spray paint and are now using a corrosive acid that permanently defaces the windows of subway cars.

Etching acid (hydrogen fluoride) is traditionally used by artists for printmaking, but is also being used to tag plexiglas on subways. Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr. has introduced Intro 380, which would require a license to purchase and possess etching acid.

<http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40812FA3B5A0C708EDDAC0894DE404482> The Metropolitan Transit Authority has also pledged $25 million to replace those windows that have already been defaced.

GAS TAXES
With gas prices in New York City well above $3 a gallon, lawmakers are looking for various ways to reduce gas prices.

Currently, New Yorkers must to pay an 8.75 percent tax of the total sale at the gas pump. Intro 381, introduced by Councilmember David Weprin, seeks to enact "a cents per gallon" flat tax in lieu of the current tax.

"New Yorkers are already under siege by rising gas prices," said Council Member Weprin. "This is only made harsher by the city's unfair form of a percentage tax on the price of gas."

PRESERVING THE CITY'S WATERSHEDS
The New York City water supply provides over 1 billion gallons of clean drinking water to 8 million residents. To ensure its high quality, Councilmember James Gennaro introduced legislation aimed at protecting the Catskill/Delaware and Croton watersheds.

Intro 375 seeks to protect the surrounding land from encroaching developers by adding a "New York City Water Supply Protection Act" to the city's administrative code.

The second bill introduced, Intro 376, seeks to establish a watershed protection plan to restore and maintain the water quality and integrity of Jamaica Bay. In recent years, Jamaica Bay wetlands have diminished significantly, losing vegetation and wetlands every day.

 

Reforming Public Authorities


New York's public authorities have long been considered a kind of shadow government in the state.Created by the government and operated for a public purpose, these authorities - ranging from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to the Overcoat Development Corporation, are exempt from many of the rules and review under which government agencies normally operate buses.

In 2005, the state enacted some measures to reform the authorities. But a report issued last month by the Commission on Public Authority Reform, known as the Millstein Commission after its chair Ira Millstein, said much more remained to be done. And some critics say even that panel did not go far enough. At a recent panel discussion, several experts discussed the problems with authorities and what could be done to fix them.

Who's Watching the Authorities? by Alan Hevesi

Authorities and Debt by Jo Brill

New York's Debt Limits by Robert Lamb

Getting Politicians to Act by Blair Horner

WHO'S WATCHING THE AUTHORITIES?

During the 2002 election campaign, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it had a balanced budget. Two months later, in January, 2003, when I took office as state comptroller, they had a $2.7 billion deficit. I thought that was pretty strange.

The Independent Budget Office did an analysis (in pdf format) of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. They said, in effect, "You can't have a $2.7 billion deficit; it's a phony. Worst case, everything collapses, you'll have a $900,000 deficit."

But what got my attention was the MTA's response: The $2.7 billion, it said, is the gross deficit and the $900 million is the net deficit. I spent 18 years on the Assembly Ways & Means Committee and eight years as city comptroller and I had never heard of a gross deficit. This was from the public relations office. It was a phony beyond belief.

We went to the MTA and demanded their books and records. We had a big tussle about it. We issued subpoenas, we made them produce records and material, we took them to testify. The end result is we found they cooked the books. They had a second set of books where they hid $512 million so they could get a fare increase. That increase was financially needed but they were timing for political reasons.

Katherine Lapp, the MTA's the executive director, fired the budget director. We issued recommendations for budgeting to the MTA, and required a bunch of administrative procedures. We set up four-year projections, transparent budgeting, gap accounting -- all of the things that New York City had to do after its fiscal crisis. Those regulations are now in place.

Questions of Corruption

Another problem for the MTA is 2 Broadway. 2 Broadway is an office building the authority leases. It was a good idea: The agency would move out of its expensive mid-Manhattan headquarters, sell the building, sell the air rights and move down to the cheaper building at 2 Broadway. But they had to rehabilitate the inside of the new building. The cost of the rehab was $135 million. The cost today is $450 million. The $700,000 elevators will go for $6 million.

Why? Corruption. The mob came in, they bribed MTA officials, and they ripped off the system. Four MTA officials have pleaded guilty and gone to jail. And some mob guy as well.

And the MTA's $450 million cost? They don't have cash. So they're going to borrow to pay off the rehab costs for the building they can't use now. With interest to $450 million becomes $800 million.

Anther example: The Canal Corruption, which is an offshoot of the Thruway Authority, held a no bid contract to develop the entire 520-mile Erie Canal. It's beautiful and it's got 1,048 miles of shore. The authority did a request to see if there were companies that wanted to build housing or commercial property along the canal. Thirty-six companies responded. Thirty-five out of the 36 never heard from the authority again.

One bidder was brought in for his plan, the Alpine Residential Project, to build houses. A number of years later, they did a competitive bid for the multibillion-dollar Alpine Project. Because the law requires public notification, they put an advertisement of the bid on page 62 of the Contract Reporter, a $175-a-year newsletter. No one saw the ad, so the Canal Corporation sent a Xerox to the politically connected developer. He bid it and he won. He was the only bidder, and his bid price was $32,000. Richard Brodsky, a member of the State Assembly who is hero on these issues, commented that you can't buy a used bus for $30,000. That's the kind of corruption we're talking about.

Some of the public authorities do wonderfully good work. For example, there's the Home Roswell Park Cancer Institute, a public authority. We did an audit of them. Every management measurement was terrific. The board was active, the procurements were right, the funds were reconciled, their cash flow - it was great.

There are 740 authorities in the state. The biggest are like the Port Authority, the MTA, and the bridge authorities. And then a lot of smaller ones in local governments, industrial development authorities, housing agencies, and so on. No one is watching them.

Number Two in Debt

New York State is the second most indebted state in America. Our debt is going to kill us. We are currently $48.2 billion in debt. Obligations that have already been incurred but the bonds have not been sold will raise that figure to $56.6 billion by 2010. That does not include this current budget. We analyzed the budget and beat up the governor and the legislature for spending money that we don't have, then borrowing to meet the difference and digging a deeper hole for us. What the legislature and governor did was to add $10 billion more of state borrowing.

We are second to California in debt. They have twice number of people we do. Three years ago we were ahead of California. The only reason they moved ahead of us was because their economy collapsed and Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected. Schwarzenegger borrowed $27 billion last year.

With state and local debt combined, everyone in this room owes $2,509. Ahead of us is Alaska. Alaska has lots of debt. It's a big state and they build lots of roads and bridges. They spend a lot of money, and they have no people. So you divide their expenditures by no people, you get a high per capita. In New York, you divide our expenditures by 19 million people.

Under the Constitution, that debt is supposed to go to the voters. Last November, you voted on the transportation and bond issue, which is good debt. Debt is good if you spend it for building and repairing. But of the $48.2 billion debt, the amount of debt that was actually submitted to the voters was $4 billion. Instead, a bunch of these authorities borrow money for the state - and the voters do not have to approve it.

Limits on Borrowing

We've got to get this under control. Somebody's got to be able to say to the Public Authorities, "Be independent and have your business model but this debt is not affordable." Now someone will say that authority debt is not state debt. But if the Thruway Authority can't pay off its bonds and goes bankrupt, who is picking up the debt? You are. We are. If the hospitals are going under because they can't pay off their debt, then the taxpayer is going to take this on.

So you have got to watch the authorities. They have to be audited; they have to be reviewed. Somebody has to look at their contracts and be able to say no. Somebody has to look at their debt and say no.

A Time for Reform

Elliot Spitzer, good government groups and I introduced a 165-page Authority Reform Bill, including a commission to look at the authorities to see if we really need them. After all, there's an Overcoat Development Corporation. I don't know what they do.

The governor was very reluctant to do any of this, but there was a reform movement. And we passed a bill that does some good, but was watered down. Originally, the bill created an independent budget office and an independent inspector general to follow the corruption and mismanagement in the authorities. The governor said, "The condition of my signature is they're not going to be independent."

So now we have an inspector general who is appointed by the existing inspector general, who is an appointee of the governor. And we have an independent budget office that's no longer independent; it's a unit of the Division of the Budget. In other words, we're repeating what we have already. No independence.

But a political movement is starting to bubble up to "fix Albany," to make reforms. A powerful coalition of the most sophisticated good government groups are involved. We need to fix the authorities, fix the debt, fix procurement, fix campaign finance, and fix redistricting.

I've traveled around the state talking to editorial boards and the good government groups, and said, "I have a mission for you." Make every candidate, particularly statewide, commit to being a reformer and elect people who are sincere about that. This is our chance. This is our opportunity. We will fix this state.

Alan Hevesi New York State Comptroller

PUBLIC AUTHORITIES AND DEBT

The Citizens Budget Commission where I work is a non-partisan good government group that, since its founding in 1932, has worked to influence positive change in the finances and management of New York State and New York City. About a year and a half ago, the Citizens Budget Commission formed a committee of trustees to look at problems associated with public authorities.

Public authorities are important and do good work. But it was not hard to find problems, major problems.

Authorities provide a business-like organization to do a discrete activity. They are great at taking care of major capital assets and of big public transit problems at airports -- big infrastructure things. They are great at managing capital assets. They also borrow for private organizations like hospitals and universities, so that those organizations can have access to lower cost financing.

New York State's authorities are incredibly diverse in size, scope of operations and purpose. While the comptroller counts 740 authorities, we work with the number 583, the authorities that are not the subsidiaries of other authorities. Of these, a couple of hundred are housing authorities; over 100 are industrial development agencies. There are 44 that are little foundations set up at a SUNY campus to manage the faculty's fund. There are 50 transportation authorities.

Public authorities can range in size from an annual operating budget of a few million dollars to $8.5 billion for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Why Authorities Borrow

What kinds of borrowing do authorities do? One is "backdoor debt": They issue debt for governments -- not just the state government, but local governments too. That debt is backed up by tax revenue

Authorities also issue debt for the projects that they have undertaken on their own. This is called project revenue debt. The third kind of debt is borrowing on behalf of private entities, most often for economic development purposes.

In a report (in pdf format) issued earlier this year, the Citizens Budget Commission figured out the state government, New York's local governments and the authorities that those governments have formed owe a total of $227 billion. Out of that, $41 billion at the state level and $29 billion at the local level is backdoor debt. This is debt that is issued by public authorities but funded by the state and local governments.

Better Budgeting

We started to look at what information should be available for public authorities. Some things are easy to think of: financial reports, financial plans, the state of capital assets, what the authority plans to do in a given year and, once the year is over, how well they believe that they did it. The accountability act signed earlier this year does not require all the information, particularly on finances, that you would like to see. It leaves out the information on the state of capital assets, it leaves out performance measures that you would like to see.

The accountability act does not specify that any particular agency, such as the comptroller or the budget office, put together a big picture.

This is a big problem. The CBC should not be left to come up with that $227 billion figure. Some public entity should be in charge of this and should be making sure that the numbers can be prepared and that they can be aggregated.

And some entity should be monitoring plans and how they are reported. Planning processes are up to the individual authorities. Some have a ten-year plan some have a seven-year plan -- it's hard to tell what is going on. The fiscal years are all over the calendar.

When you see a fare increase when you see a power plant being sited, when you see economic development grants being handed out, you might wonder why the decision is timed that way. The advantage of an authority is to insulate it from short-term concerns. If you can't tell whether it'sworking, then there is something wrong.

Backdoor Debt

There is obviously more to be done. Take the problem with the backdoor debt. The good thing and bad thing about it are the same: It allows you to spread the cost of a project over multiple generations. Why is that good? Because people in the future are going to benefit and they should pitch in. Why is it bad? Because they are not born yet and so are not represented by the current elected officials.

This is why New York's constitution provides debt limits for both the state and local governments. They cannot issue debt unless the voters approve it. The debt limits for the local governments are typically some percentage of public property value.

With so much backdoor debt, clearly the limit is not working. New York's debt is one of the highest in the country. We believe that the debt limit should be based on a concept of affordability that should be calculated by an independent board on a yearly basis. That would the best way to rationally decide how much debt a local government or a state government can carry. The accountability act does not deal with that.

Debt limits are all about state supported debt. Other kinds of debt also could use some work. Some project revenue debt is controlled by the public authorities control board, but much is not. Public authorities build things that matter to our overall quality of life, but their plans are not integrated with the state's plan for capital development. You would like to think that everybody who is building and borrowing money is working together but that's not the case. So we believe that, if a public authority wants to borrow from the public and repay that debt out of project revenues, fine, but let the board decide whether it's a solid financial decision. And that project should be part of a long-term capital plan that the governor's office and the division of the budget have the opportunity to look at.

The last of kind of debt - borrowing on behalf of private entities or conduit debt -- is handed out rather cavalierly. It could be subject to a more competitive process that would also help also keep neighboring industrial development agencies from competing with one another to give the biggest tax break. Some of that private conduit debt is issued on behalf of hospitals. At the same time the governor's commission is deciding which hospitals are going to close, those same hospitals are borrowing money through the dormitory authority to build new capacity. That also needs to be fixed.

--Jo Brill, director of State Studies, Citizens Budget Commission

CRONYISM AND DEBT

Two elements are crucial to the debate on authorities.

One is independence. Without independence, you do not get reform; you get the governor appointing literally 80 percent of the directors of these different authorities. As a result, you get either cronyism or people who are not trained and knowledgeable about the tasks that these authorities are taking on or the debt burden that they are imposing.

The second is debt. The amount of debt imposed by authorities is three to four times more than the amount the state and city are imposing. That is because the state and city are only allowed to issue debt that the voters pass. As a result, they are not able to issue enough debt to do things like build hospitals, bridges, tunnels, etc. Therefore, this is done off budget by authorities.

The need for cost reduction, the need for fiscal responsibility, has been pushed aside, not just in New York but across the United States. The entire United States in the 1920s and 1930s moved from debt paid by tax to debt paid by user fees. In New York City, they required people to pay a water and sewer fee. Those are user fees. Likewise with bridges and tunnels, the people who use them pay for them. The user fees would be set by authorities and the authorities would have no supervision and no control.

The problem is that the total amount of debt for all of these public authorities is so large that they are crowding out each other, and nobody is taking control of the debt burden on us now and on your children or grandchildren. This debt will escalate into the future.

--Robert Lamb, Clinical Professor of Management, NYU Stern School of Business

GETTING POLITICIANS TO ACT

Until about a week ago, I was trying to figure out how to discuss advancing an issue - public authorities reform - that I thought was dead. Last year, the legislature acted incompletely on authorities. Nevertheless they acted and that's the way it works in Albany. You get one bite at the apple. There was no interest, there has been no action in the area of authority reform in Albany, because they did it last year.

Now the Millstein Report comes out with a list of legislative recommendations. I'm not going to go into detail, but let me give you my best case approach to this issue. The problems that we have with the authorities occurred because no one has been watching. When people don't watch there is mismanagement and corruption.

That leads me to my tactical recommendations. The legislators tell me that they're not hearing about reform back in their districts, as they were last year and they wonder if they are off the hook. Now clearly they don't believe this, because all of the candidates running for statewide office are tripping over themselves to position themselves as reformers. They know that the public is still unhappy with Albany, but they feel they have done enough.

So there are two things we have to try to do. First, we need to get a focused legislative rule on the issue of authorities reform. And the obvious place to go is that the so-called independent budget office they created last year that is not independent. It is just another creature of the governor, a governor who has been in office the last 12 years while all this mismanagement and corruption has been occurring. Clearly, as reformers, we want an independent budget office. Ira Millstein, the governor's appointee, says the same thing.

So, go back to your elected officials and say, "As elected officials, where have you been monitoring the authorities of New York State? Now you can show how concerned you are by acting on the call for creation of an independent budget office."

These problems with the authorities have been festering for a long time, and nobody has been paying attention. So focus on one thing, they didn't do the job, they didn't finish last year. But if they don't do anything, which is likely, it sets up a question that every incumbent should be asked: "You've been an incumbent a long time, where were you when all of these problems happened?" An almost Caponesque list of corruption has occurred in the State of New York. Where has everybody been? And what will you do to be different?

Every gubernatorial candidate should be asked the same thing. For Republican candidate John Faso: "Where were you in the Assembly for 16 years? What are you going to do differently?" For Eliot Spitzer: "You have been attorney general for eight years, and what are you going to do differently?"

Politicians are human barometers, they respond to pressure.

--Blair Horner legislative director, New York Public Interest Research Group  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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