City & State Magazine - May 12 2014 Edition

May 12, 2014

SPOTLIGHT:

Technology and Telecommunications

A Q & A with

Rangers Great Turned Environmentalist Mike Richter

CIT YANDSTATENY.COM

@CIT YANDSTATENY

CONTENTS May 12, 2014

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14

HEALTHCARE

15

INFRASTRUCTURE

24 26 28

CITY AND STATE, LLC President/CEO Tom Allon tallon@cityandstateny.com cityandstateny.com

INSIDE THE MORELAND COMMISSION

An in-depth look at the Commission’s report and its investigation into lawmakers’ campaign expenditures

SPOTLIGHT: TECHNOLOGY AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS Tech Town

By Wilder Fleming

Q&As with Chris Collins, Jeff Merritt, Ben Kallos, Linda Rosenthal and Martin Golden Nicole Gelinas’ 7 questions for Airbnb … State Sen. John DeFrancisco on reducing taxes … plus, political advice from Jeff Smith A Q&A with former NY Rangers goalie turned environmental activist Mike Richter

Art Director Guillaume Federighi gfederighi@cityandstateny.com

PUBLISHING

EDITORIAL

Publisher Andrew A. Holt aholt@cityandstateny.com

Editor-in-Chief Morgan Pehme mpehme@cityandstateny.com

Vice President of Advertising Jim Katocin jkatocin@cityandstateny.com

Managing Editor Michael Johnson mjohnson@cityandstateny.com

Marketing Graphic Designer Charles Flores, cflores@cityandstateny.com

Government Relations Sales Director Allison Sadoian asadoian@cityandstateny.com

Albany Bureau Chief Jon Lentz jlentz@cityandstateny.com

Illustrator Danilo Agutoli

Business Manager Jasmin Freeman jfreeman@cityandstateny.com Office Administrator Kyle Renwick krenwick@cityandstateny.com Distribution Czar Dylan Forsberg

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Contract Killer

By Wilder Fleming

BACK & FORTH

A Q & A with

Chairman Steve Farbman

Striving For Mediocrity

By Matthew Hamilton

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Technology and Telecommunications

61 Broadway, Suite 2825 New York, NY 10006 Editorial (212) 894-5417 General (646) 517-2740.

Advertising (212) 284-9712 advertising@cityandstateny.com

The Side Effects of I-STOP

By Kristi Berner

PERSPECTIVES

SPOTLIGHT:

@CIT YANDSTATENY

Richard Ravitch: City Sage

By Susan Arbetter

30 May 12, 2014

CIT YANDSTATENY.COM

First Among Equals

By Nick Powell and Azure Gilman

STATE

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Cover: Guillaume Federighi

What We Know (And Don’t Know) About the UFT Contract

By Nick Powell

13

16

Rangers Great Turned Environmentalist Mike Richter

CITY

City Hall Bureau Chief Nick Powell npowell@cityandstateny.com Reporter Matthew Hamilton mhamilton@cityandstateny.com Associate Editor Helen Eisenbach mhamilton@cityandstateny.com

Graphic Designer Michelle Yang myang@cityandstateny.com

Columnists Alexis Grenell, Bruce Gyory, Nicole Gelinas, Michael Benjamin, Seth Barron, Steven M. Cohen, Susan Arbetter

City & State is published twice monthly.

Copyright ©2014, City and State NY, LLC

city & state — May 12, 2014

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Letters to the

Editor

By Morgan Pehme Editor-In-Chief

UNSUNG HEROES

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city & state — May 12, 2014

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he opportunity of a lifetime for a prosecutor to be able to potentially clean up one of the most corrupt state governments in the nation.” That’s how the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption’s cochair William Fitzpatrick describes his feelings to City & State in this issue upon first being offered the job by Gov. Cuomo last year.

I must admit that I have found it heartening— and more than a little surprising—how many people approached their work on the Commission with the same idealism expressed by Fitzpatrick, who can hardly be dismissed as a political naïf after 22 years as the elected district attorney of Onondaga County.

Except for a few bad actors with ulterior motives, the commissioners and staffers who signed up for Moreland did so in the true spirit of public service— in the greatest sense of this often hollow phrase.

These people truly believed in the Commission.

And why shouldn’t they have? When Gov. Cuomo initially floated the Commission he hyped it as the nuclear option for eradicating corruption in Albany.

After years of the Legislature thumbing its nose at cleaning up its act—even as its members were hauled off in handcuffs en masse—this Moreland Commission would be the broom that would sweep away the scum and shame the state’s lawmakers into instituting the reforms it is imperative we enact if New Yorkers are ever to regard Albany with anything but anger, embarrassment and distrust.

It was to achieve this proud aim that so many accomplished and talented individuals gave their all to the Commission.

Of course, they signed up long before Gov. Cuomo started spinning the revisionist depiction of the Commission’s creation that he now maintains was always the case. Had the governor portrayed the Commission from the outset as he does now—an extension of his will—they would never have gotten involved. These dignified men and women are not of the character to submit to being pawns.

Sadly, because of how the Commission was misrepresented to them, these good people are now being tainted by the meddling and manipulation, the threats and the intrigue, that they bravely fought— and continue to fight—to resist. Ironically, public opinion seems to be turning against the Commission as a result of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s investigation into its ignominious end, yet it is this same probe that may very well be what ultimately vindicates the noble work of its devoted members—

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In his column “The Risks of Choice,” Bruce Gyory wrote about how the Ho bby Lobby case before the U.S. Supreme Court could affect New York State politics.

“A broad court-imposed prohibition on contraceptive rights could become another fireball on a hot summer night that wreaks cold political havoc for many Novembers to come,” writes Gyory.

In my honest opinion, this seems more than a bit misleading. As I understand it, the court will decide whether Hobby Lobby must pay for contraceptives for its employees when some specific contraceptives are abortion agents and therefore against the company owners’ religious beliefs. No matter what the court decides, it’s not going to impose a broad “prohibition on contraceptive rights,” just whether or not a company must foot the bill against its beliefs. Contraceptives of all kinds will remain readily and cheaply available.

—hudsonvalleywest (via cityandstateny.com) In “A Greater Good,” Nicole Gelinas wrote that the benefits of Citi Bike to New York City exceed the necessity that it turn a profit, and that the city should do what it must to protect its newest means of public transportation.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has challenged the New York media to resurrect muckraking. and brings to fruition what they hoped to accomplish when they answered the governor’s call. This U.S. Attorney, who has shown no tolerance for corruption as usual, is perhaps just the Heracles needed to clean up the Augean stable of Albany.

Lastly, a word about leaks. Gov. Cuomo has spoken disparagingly about the leaks that have come out of the Commission—as if it were the leaks, not the broken promises, brazen interference and cynical calculations that were the problem.

It is disappointing to hear the governor resort to this “stop snitchin’ ” mentality. Last September U.S. Attorney Bharara issued a bold and inspiring challenge to the New York media to resurrect investigative reporting and embrace the proud tradition of muckraking. “A nation of sheep will get a government of wolves,” said Bharara, quoting the great Edward R. Murrow.

Investigative reporting hinges on the courage of whistleblowers to come forth and expose what they know to be wrong, particularly when there is no other avenue for this information to see the light of day.

The people who have taken grave personal and professional risks to disclose the truth about what happened behind closed doors in the Moreland Commission are not “play[ing] politics,” as the governor has suggested. They are true warriors for the public good—heroes who deserve our admiration and gratitude.

Agreed. Just as other forms of public transit bring value to the neighborhoods they’re in, so too will Citi Bike. The challenge is in looking at the program within the greater context of the other systems it integrates with, as opposed to in a silo.

That’s tough to do since Alta is a private company, but other programs have found ways to bridge and redistribute value (the vouchers suggestion is a good one and is currently being tested with healthy food by the NYC Dept. of Health). The software problems aside—those problems can be solved— the focus should be on building a way to measure the outcome of the program not just on Alta’s balance sheet but on real estate values, tax income, tourism, commuting and the myriad other systems improved

by Citi Bike’s presence in a neighborhood.

—Bureau Blank (via cityandstateny.com) Welcome analysis. Profits are not the only measure—and sometimes should never be used— of the impact of a business on the city. Otherwise, the only work in Manhattan would be on Wall Street, which is hardly what we want or need.

—Norma Munn (via cityandstateny.com) To have your letter to the editor considered for publication, leave a comment at www.cityandstateny.com, tweet us @CityAndStateNY, email editor@cityandstateny.com or write to 61 Broadway, Suite 2825, New York, NY 10006.

Letters may be edited for clarity or length. cityandstateny.com

C & S’ ALBANY POWER 100 RECEPTION

On April 28 City & State hosted its annual State Of Our State forum, featuring two panel discussions, one about bringing business back to New York, the other focused on creating jobs in the state. A reception honoring the members of C&S’ 2014 Albany Power 100 list followed the event.

State Senate Majority Co-Leader Dean Skelos with Ben Kerns

State Sen. David Carlucci (center) and State Senate Majority Co-Leader Jeff Klein

Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner

State Sen. Diane Savino

6 PEF President Susan Kent

View of the reception from the penthouse balcony of Taste Albany

Blair Horner and Barbara Bartoletti

Marsha Gordon and Jerry Kremer

Assemblyman Keith Wright CITYANDSTATENY.COM

Empire State Development Corporation Director Ken Adams with Gianluca Galletto

Steven Neuhaus and John Gamberoni

CITY & STATE — May 12, 2014

The Parkside Group’s Evan Stavisky

WE NEED SCAFFOLD LAW REFORM NOW! FORCING OUR CHILDREN INTO OVERCROWDED CLASSROOMS

PUTTING MWBE FIRMS AT RISK

In 2013, Trial Lawyer Special Interest Groups: • Spent a record $1,147,139 lobbying New York State elected officials which was a 9.7% increase over the previous year and a 37% increase since 2010 • Gave a whopping $1,280,639 in direct political contributions to New York State elected officials It is clear who is benefiting from the status quo and the lengths they will go to protect the gravy train.

Rich trial attorneys are blocking reform of a 130 year old law to preserve injured workers’ rights to sue, make construction sites safer, and create thousands of new jobs. New York is the only state that has this type of scaffold law.

Rev. Jacques Andre DeGraff The New Agenda

Louis J. Coletti

President and CEO of the Building Trades Employers Association

Quenia Abreu New York Women's Chamber of Commerce

Monica Foster NYS Association of Minority Contractors

Paul O'Brien Building Contractors Association

William Shuzman Allied Building Metal Industries

Lloyd Douglas Minority Business Leadership Council

James Heyliger Association of Minority Enterprises

Samuel P. Padilla, P.E. National Hispanic Business Group

Elizabeth Velez Latino Builders Council

Walter Edwards Harlem Business Alliance

Edwin Lopez NYC Electrical Contractors

Nayan Parikh Indo-American Architects & Engineers

Edwin Lopez New York City Chapter, Inc. NECA

Michael Elmendorf Associated General Contractors of NYS

Timothy H. Marshall Jamaica Business Resource Center

Patricia Ricketts Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce

David Etkind Interior Demolition Contractors Association

Cheryl McKissack Women Business Council

Tony Saporito Mechanical Contractors Association

Kieran Ahern Structural Steel Painting Contractor Association Ray McGuire Contractors Association of Greater New York

JOBS, SAFETY AND JUSTICE

William Rothberg Boilermakers Association of Greater New York, Building Restoration Contractors Association, Sheet Metal & Air Conditioning Contractors of NY John DeLollis Association of Wall-Ceiling & Carpentry Industries Jerry Haber Window & Plate Glass Dealers Association Denise Richardson General Contractors Association

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WHAT WE KNOW (AND DON’T KNOW) ABOUT THE UFT CONTRACT

By NICK POWELL

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increases are 1 percent for the first three years (2013–15), before jumping to 1.5 percent in 2016, then 2.5 percent in 2017, and 3 percent in 2018. As soon as the contract is ratified, each teacher will receive a $1,000 ratification bonus as well. The annual raises will be paid in May of each year. The $5.5 billion total cost will be partially offset by $1.3 billion in healthcare savings.

Mayor de Blasio’s chief labor negotiator, Robert Linn, indicated that the city had also identified targeted amounts in healthcare savings for each of the next four fiscal years, starting with $400 million in Fiscal Year 2015, $700 million in 2016, $1 billion in 2017 and $1.3 billion in 2018.

The contract also establishes a career ladder for top teachers through new “ambassador,” “model” and “master” teacher positions, compensated with an additional $7,500, $7,500 and

$20,000 per year, respectively.

2. New Programs Mayor de Blasio often talks about being a public school parent and conveys his frustrations about not being able to have a voice in improving his children’s classroom experience.

Directly addressing that concern, the UFT contract creates a 40-minute period every Tuesday for teachers to reach out to parents by email, letter, telephone or face-to-face meetings.

Teachers can also use this time to create newsletters, school or class websites, or other strategies to increase contact between parents and teachers. There will also be an increase in the length of parent-teacher conferences from 2.5 to 3 hours, and the number of evening parent-teacher conferences will double from 2 to 4 each school year.

Both Mulgrew and Schools

Chancellor Carmen Fariña talked up another new program designed to serve as an incubator for innovation in the classroom, with the primary goal being to improve student achievement.

The new contract provides a pathway at up to 200 schools in the city for these innovations, which range from extending the school day to giving teachers greater say in shaping a curriculum and having a voice in hiring decisions. A joint panel comprised of UFT members and Department of Education employees will review proposals and select schools for the program. For a school to participate, the principal and 65 percent of UFT staff in the building must agree to the proposal.

The agreement also establishes a pilot program allowing for 80 minutes of professional development time each Monday for teachers.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew detailing the preliminary contract agreement reached with the city, flanked by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña.

ROB BENNETT FOR THE OFFICE OF MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO

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illed as the dawning of an education reform era in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew announced on May 2 that they had reached a preliminary contract agreement with a deal that puts an end to the often acrimonious relationship between union leadership and City Hall.

“I don’t accept the status quo in this town when it comes to education,” de Blasio said. “To really achieve a greater reset, we needed a contract like this that gave us a strong platform for change, and today we’ve achieved it.”

While the agreement serves in part as a vehicle for the type of education reform de Blasio has espoused for months, the 9-year contract also satisfies the union’s major priorities, including retroactive pay increases, changes to the terms of teacher evaluations and additional professional development hours.

Still, despite the fanfare with which the deal was announced, there was a puzzling lack of key details provided, particularly on the question of concessions made by the teachers’ union on healthcare costs, an area the city had targeted during talks as a way to offset the pay increases.

We parsed some of the contract details provided by the union and the mayor’s office to bring you a few key highlights of the deal and zero in on the remaining questions marks.

CITY & STATE — May 12, 2014

What We Know 1. The Numbers The total length and gross cost of the contract is nine years at $5.5 billion, which covers the past four and a half years in which teachers went without a contract, and extends until 2018. On the face of it, the UFT received every last cent of the four percent retroactive pay increases it sought from the previous bargaining round, though the raises will be phased in incrementally.

For the current round, the annual CITYANDSTATENY.COM

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CIT Y

Bargaining for Common Sense and Respect Mark Cannizzaro, Executive Vice President of CSA Formal contract negotiations have begun and we at the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators (CSA) are pleased to see a change in approach from the city leadership.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Fariña have stressed collaboration over competition and promised to take a look at the merits of our current accountability system. The mayor and chancellor have been much more respectful to our member educators than the previous administration was when I was a principal eighteen short months ago. We’re looking forward to long overdue discussions. As a recent school principal, I’m especially excited to sit down at the table to negotiate on the behalf of our school leaders.

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Although former Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Mayor Michael Bloomberg sometimes sang high praises for school leaders, their actions contradicted their public show of respect. CSA members continued to be inundated with paperwork, surveys, compliance tasks, dysfunctional data systems, investigations and ineffective and inaccurate accountability metrics that require more work than is humanly possible. More exasperating, this bureaucratic busy work takes our members away from the students they were tapped to serve. Our members also have been held accountable to roll out complex new learning standards, but haven’t been given adequate resources to get it done.

Yet, they’ve persevered and succeeded; they made sure teaching and learning came first; they made our mayor and chancellor look good. Toward the end, the mayor and chancellor publicly gave credit where it was due. Chancellor Walcott described our members as “the finest and most talented principals and administrators ever to lead our system,” and Mayor Bloomberg referred to them as “the great unsung heroes” who have made an “enormous difference.”

Unfortunately, their praise didn’t extend beyond words; they continued to pile on unproductive tasks. They also continued to avoid collective bargaining.

I’m thankful that the tone has changed and our relationships with City Hall and Tweed have improved, but I have no illusions. Education has become more politicized than ever before. The whole CSA negotiating team will expect to fight hard to protect our members’ rights and working conditions, and to secure a fair package of compensation.

city & state — May 12, 2014

We’ve been hard at work getting as much feedback from CSA members as possible. It’s clear our members want fair pay and want common sense to prevail when it comes to how they spend their time.

We promise to fight hard for principals, assistant principals and all school supervisors and we look forward to it.

3. Reforms During his initial remarks at the press conference Mulgrew firmly stated that New York City is in “education reform mode,” and the language in the contract seems to back his claim. To that end, teacher evaluations, one of the major points of contention between Mulgrew and the Bloomberg administration, have been streamlined, with evaluations now focused on eight components instead of the current 22. Teachers in non-tested subjects or grades will also now have the ability to be graded only on the performance of students

danced around exactly which parts of the teachers’ healthcare package would be different under the contract agreement, with Linn and Budget Director Dean Fuleihan providing targeted numbers for saving and speaking mostly in broad strokes about “menus” of options for making the delivery of services more efficient.

Two ideas Linn mentioned as likely to be included on that menu were utilizing centers for excellence to provide services, and central purchasing of prescription drugs. The details on the healthcare savings are crucial to the mayor’s ability to settle the remaining

“To really achieve a greater reset, we needed a contract like this that gave us a strong platform for change, and today we’ve achieved it.”

they actually teach, instead of having their test results lumped in with those of other students. The agreement also includes new rules to reduce excessive paperwork, including the creation of duplicative and unnecessary electronic records.

The UFT agreed to major changes to the Absent Teacher Reserve Pool, such as requiring that it take no more than 50 days to permanently remove teachers from the pool for “behavior inconsistent with the expectations established for professionals.”

Hearings for those individuals will not exceed a day.

Mutual consent hiring, a process in which teaching positions are filled at schools based upon the agreement by both the teacher and the principal, is preserved in the contract, and Fariña also stressed that there will be no “forced placement” of teachers— when teachers are assigned to schools by the DOE.

What We Don’t Know 1. Healthcare Concessions The de Blasio administration

contracts smoothly.

2. Where’s the Money?

It is safe to say that Mayor de Blasio cannot afford to give away the farm to every single municipal union seeking a new contract, and it is still unclear where the rest of the savings will come from in the executive budget to offset the huge price tag of the UFT agreement.

There is already an indication that the mayor is playing hardball with some of the uniform unions, with the state’s Public Employment Relations Board granting the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association an impasse after its contract talks with the city stalled. Reports indicate that the administration offered the police union no raises over the first three years of the deal. Ultimately the city may have no choice in the matter, however, as the impasse means the PBA will enter binding arbitration. If an arbitrator determines that the union deserves the retroactive raises it desires, and the city has the ability to pay, the arbitrator’s decision is final.

The situation bears watching. Next week’s release of the executive budget will likely reveal more about precisely what the city can afford to pay. cityandstateny.com

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FIRST AMONG EQUALS WITH MEMBER ITEMS REFORM, MARK-VIVERITO CREATES DISTANCE FROM QUINN

By NICK POWELL and AZURE GILMAN

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city & state — May 12, 2014

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ne Speaker’s power grab is the next Speaker’s platform for reform.

The New York City Council’s annual practice of handing out discretionary funds to nonprofit organizations and other local groups has long been a point of contentious debate, both within city government and among good-government organizations. Some say the process is ripe for corruption and abuse, while others argue that member items are an effective mechanism for funding organizations that provide vital community services.

On May 7 the Council adopted a sweeping rules reform package introduced by Speaker Melissa MarkViverito, part of which aims to ensure that the member items process is more equitable moving forward. Among the approved changes is a provision that calls for all discretionary spending given to City Council members to be allocated based on a “fair, objective formula that is publicly disclosed.”

All 51 members of the Council receive discretionary funds each year that go toward “local initiatives”(i.e., nonprofit and community-based organizations) with the exact amount determined by various factors but never equaling less than $80,000 per district.

The new system will equalize the distribution of core member item amounts—“core” being those that go toward local organizations, as well as those that serve children or seniors.

There will also be a needs-based increase to Council members based on the number of people in poverty in their respective districts, which could add up to 25 percent of a Council member’s core discretionary amount for antipoverty efforts.

The most momentous member items change, however, is to the Speaker’s power over her own pot of discretionary dollars—dubbed the Speaker’s List—which funds organizations that provide services that exceed the amount an individual member can fund, or that serve a larger geographical area than a single Council

district. Under the new rules, the Speaker no longer has the authority to decide how much of the discretionary funding each Council member is given to distribute to local organizations and projects each year—a privilege the previous Speaker, Christine Quinn, had been accused of abusing, according to current and former Council members. Instead the Speaker’s List will be limited to 50 percent of total discretionary member expense allocations.

“We will take the politics out of member items,“ said Mark-Viverito when she announced the package of rules changes.

Unfairly or not, there was a widespread perception that former Speaker Quinn used her pot of discretionary funds as a means to punish recalcitrant members and reward the fealty of others. Tony Avella, a former councilman who is now a state senator, told City & State last year that because of his outspoken behavior, Quinn had denied him member items in retaliation.

A July 2011 member items analysis issued by then Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer (now the city comptroller) reinforced this notion, finding significant disparities in member item allocations across the city’s Council districts. For instance, former Councilman Domenic Recchia, an ally of Quinn’s, received the most dollars in member items from the Speaker: $1,630,064. On the flip side, former Councilman Charles Barron, one of Quinn’s most vocal detractors, received the third-lowest amount: $399,464.

“Personally, the prior Speaker was very vindictive, punitive, and denied the constituents of a district their fair share, so if you did not take the same position as the Speaker, you were punished ... Money went to persons who lived in those districts who had residents in their district who gave graciously and abundantly to the Speaker,” said Councilwoman Inez Barron, who took over the Council seat of her husband, Charles, after he was term-limited out of office.

Bronx Councilman Fernando Cabrera, who served under Quinn as well, agreed with Barron’s assessment, and emphasized the socioeconomic implications of the rules change. “I represent the fifth-poorest district in the entire city and if you look at the allocations … [the] cost of speaking up on certain issues that differed with the previous Speaker was [being] penalized—and actually it wasn’t me who got penalized, it was the constituents.”

To be fair to Quinn, many of the new transparency measures largely piggyback on reforms to the member items process she had already put in place. Under Quinn it was mandated that the Schedule C form, which lists all the organizations that apply for Council discretionary funds, be released to the public, along with the name of the member who sponsors each item, the amount distributed and its stated purpose. Quinn’s Council also required applications and allocations for member items funding to be searchable via its website.

Mark-Viverito’s rules changes build on those reforms by adding discretionary spending awards to the city’s Open Data Plan; creating new “open data” requirements to facilitate the searching and downloading of discretionary spending awards; and requiring discretionary fund grantees to provide a short report on their use of the money.

Mark-Viverito has made a concerted effort to distance herself from her predecessor since taking over the Speaker post in January, aiming to fashion herself a consensus builder in the chamber. Her first major legislative initiative, an expansion of the paid sick leave law—which Quinn bottled up in the Council before relenting and letting it through last year while running for mayor—passed overwhelmingly.

With member items reform on the table, Mark-Viverito can potentially close another controversial chapter of Quinn’s tenure.

Interestingly, Mark-Viverito, one of the first four Council members to pilot participatory budgeting back

in 2011, did not include institutional support for PB as part of her package of rules reforms, even though she had previously favored doing so.

Participatory budgeting is a method currently being employed by a handful of Council members to promote civic engagement in their communities.

The residents of districts represented

by Council members who choose to participate in PB are allocated a portion of their members’ discretionary funds to vote on how they would like it to be distributed.

“The idea of getting the institutional support from the Council as a body to really create a more uniform process [for participatory budgeting] that would be applicable at a citywide level—and those of us that are doing it would advocate for it too—that brings visibility and accountability,” MarkViverito told City & State in August.

It remains to be seen whether the reforms to the member items process will satisfy Mayor Bill de Blasio and the several good-government organizations that have called for discretionary funding to be banned outright. Through statements, the mayor has reiterated his stance that member items should be eliminated, yet the Council does not need the mayor’s approval to alter its rules.

The fact that Mark-Viverito diverged from the mayor in her approach to member items reform also offers her an opportunity to contest the notion that she is too close to him politically—a criticism that was also leveled at Quinn for her relationship with former mayor Michael Bloomberg. Still, Mark-Viverito was confident the reforms passed by the Council would be enough to win over Mayor de Blasio.

“We see it as a reinvestment of taxpayers’ dollars in our districts,” said Mark-Viverito. “These go to organizations that employ locally, that provide very grassroots community-based services … so we’re going to continue to make that case, and that’s what’s going to be part of our conversation with the mayor.” cityandstateny.com

By SUSAN ARBETTER

T

he first thing Richard Ravitch said to me when he walked into the LCA pressroom was: “What about that dinner you promised me?”

I was floored. I had made that invitation six months earlier, after he had generously helped with a series of radio programs on city finances. I wanted to thank him, so I plucked up the courage to invite him to dinner when I was next in New York City—an invitation I had every intention of making good on. But I was surprised that he remembered. I have no doubt that Ravitch, whose counsel has been sought by senators, governors, judges and bank presidents, has no shortage of dinner dates. So for me the moment was just more evidence of what I already knew.

Ravitch is not only a great man but a damn nice guy.

Ravitch was in Albany to promote his new memoir, So Much to Do: A Full Life of Business, Politics, and Confronting Fiscal Crises. I was to interview him on The Capitol Pressroom, and then again before an audience at the Rockefeller Institute. During the course of the day, one idea struck me over and over again about the book and about Ravitch. He is genuinely concerned about the future of American cities.

While much of the advance press for the book has focused on his comments regarding the tail end of the Paterson administration and Andrew Cuomo’s pre-election maneuvering, there are other more substantive ideas that Ravitch is eager to impart to readers: that elected officials have promised more to the people of this country than they can afford. That while those promises may have been made in good faith, the electorate should recognize that without paying more in taxes, they may not get what they’ve been promised.

“The political system has, for the moment, decided that cutting taxes is more important than reinvesting in the future,” Ravitch said. “That decision was made openly and democratically, and therefore you can’t ascribe any evil motives to it.

You can disagree with it.”

His assessment of the tax cuts in the recent state budget is not quite as measured.

“I was, frankly, flabbergasted!” he said. “I didn’t see any voices in

CITYANDSTATENY.COM

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people there.”

But during this visit to Albany, Ravitch spoke most passionately about the financial state of cities.

He is bewildered that we haven’t learned from the mistakes of the past. Discussing his role in the deal that saved New York City from default, he stressed how it almost went to pieces several times, but that the threat of bankruptcy was sufficient to bring the parties to an agreement.

He’s not sure such a threat will be enough now.

“Some people think the way to solve the problem is to reduce the benefits, retirement benefits, to public employees,” he said. “I know governors who have argued for that very vigorously and who want to do it on a nonconsensual basis. You have people who think the federal government should be able to write unlimited quantities of checks to solve the problem. It’s a much more complicated problem than that. And it’s only going to be resolved if the people in politics are willing to ultimately come to some kind of consensual arrangement about how we deal with this great physical crunch.”

When Ravitch was asked what he thought New York State should do to help upstate cities, his explicit reference to Gov. Hugh Carey may have revealed what he thinks of the current governor’s lack of action.

“Governor Carey always recognized that the cities and local governments, whereas they had individual responsibilities, were still children of the state, and that one had to bear in mind that the credit of the state … had to be used to the extent that it was financially feasible to help,” he said.

Ravitch has two priorities at this point in his life: to ensure that reporters understand how to write about municipal finance, and to urge good people to run for office, as he did back in 1984. While he says he was a lousy candidate, he also claims, “I am an Emersonian in every sense of the word. The only way you make things better is through politics.”

Lest you think that Ravitch is just another a gray-haired eminence issuing nonbinding judgments from the sidelines, think again. Our former lieutenant governor was just named a court advisor by the judge overseeing Detroit’s bankruptcy to help evaluate the city’s debt-cutting plan. Detroit is lucky to have him.

We are too.

Meat, Jobs & the Cost of Energy

By Bruce Reingold

The Bronx is famous for many things: Yankee Stadium, the Bronx Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, top universities, and Hunts Point, home for nearly 40 years to the Hunts Point Cooperative Meat Market, a cornerstone of the New York City economy.

The 39 businesses at the Meat Market employ nearly 2,000 workers, 80% of whom are New York City residents, the majority are unionized and earn almost double the region’s “living wage” ($116 million total wages and benefits annually). These businesses directly and indirectly foster $670 million in economic activity in the city annually and support over 1,200 jobs in the city’s food service, transportation and other economic sectors.

Meat Market products go to thousands of regional supermarkets, butcher shops, hotels, restaurants, hospitals and nursing homes, supplying 50% of the city’s meat demand. Given that the city’s restaurant and hotel industry hosted some 53 million tourists in 2013, the economic impact on the city is enormous and vital.

Electricity is indispensable to ensuring food quality and safety, our top priority. The Meat Market’s seven buildings contain 1 million square feet of refrigerated and freezer space essential to keeping our products at the proper temperatures. Refrigeration must be provided 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, which results in monthly electricity bills that average more than $400,000 a year and exceed $550,000 a month during the summer, more than double the cost 2 years ago – a distinct competitive disadvantage.

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Not surprisingly, we are vocal advocates for policies and programs that promote efficient, low-cost and reliable electricity and are seeking to implement electricity conservation measures at our aging facility.

We are grateful to Governor Cuomo and his staff who proactively reached out to find ways to help reduce the Market’s energy costs and, ultimately, the cost of providing food product to consumers. Programs like the Governor’s energy regulation initiatives will help us and other energy consumers reduce energy costs while protecting the environment. Only by collaboration among state and city agencies, the private sector and direct investment, will we achieve our goals and preserve the irreplaceable economic benefits which our businesses provide to the city every day of the year.

Bruce Reingold is the General Manager of the Hunts Point Cooperative Market.

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The New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance (New York AREA) is a diverse group of business, labor, environmental, and community leaders working together for clean, low-cost and reliable electricity solutions that foster prosperity and jobs for the Empire State.

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CITY & STATE — May 12, 2014

CITY SAGE

the Legislature at all questioning that priority in the recent budget discussion!”

Ravitch’s book takes the reader from his boyhood on West 81st Street, where his New Deal parents sent him to a progressive school in Harlem, to his enormously frustrating experience as lieutenant governor under David Paterson.

In between, the chapters of Ravitch’s life unfold seamlessly as particular themes emerge.

This “quintessential participant observer,” as he calls himself, consistently followed a path that allowed him to work on projects that spoke to his values—like affordable housing at the Urban Development Corporation and public transportation at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

While municipal finance can be dry, Ravitch manages to infuse his book with a blend of anecdotes, humor and detail that gives the reader a sense of being in the room.

Such as during his retelling of the story of the New York City fiscal crisis: After the deal to rescue the city was finally clinched, and handshakes and congratulations had gone around, Ravitch, alone in his apartment, suddenly realized that the banks might not stay open long enough to assure that the necessary payments could be made.

The story of his frantic phone calls to track down the person who could authorize the banks to stay open brings a human element to the tale.

While writing about a particularly tough negotiation with the transit union, he squeezes in this nugget of wisdom he received from Mayor Wagner: “Remember that what’s most important to the union leader is to come out looking like a winner; let him do that, and you’ll save the public a lot of money.”

Not surprisingly, while speaking at the Rockefeller Institute Ravitch was asked about the recent contract agreement between the MTA and transit workers. His concern was evident.

“The MTA, for reasons that I can only imagine, voluntarily offered to reduce its revenues recently, which I think breached their fiduciary obligation, their board’s obligation,” Ravitch said.

“Second of all, I don’t know, after this last labor settlement, whether they will have enough revenue to finance their next five-year capital plan—and that’s of great concern, I know, internally to the professional

H E A LT H C A R E

SIDE EFFECTS

HEROINE UPTICK FOLLOWS CRACKDOWN ON PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSE

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman at a March 2012 I-STOP announcement in Western New York.

CITY & STATE — May 12, 2014

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ew York State’s recent efforts to crack down on prescription drug abuse— especially dangerously addictive opioids like hydrocodone and oxycodone—have been enormously successful. The results of the so-called I-STOP program are so good, in fact, that some are linking the state’s rapid uptick in heroin use to the lack of availability of prescription opioids— commonly known as Vicodin and OxyContin.

This theory was put forth during testimony at a series of bipartisan hearings currently under way across the state, conducted by the New York State Senate Task Force on Heroin and Opioid Addiction.

“I-STOP has been extremely effective, with the unintended consequence of increasing our heroin and opioid use,” said state Sen. Phil Boyle, the chairman of the task force, which has heard from police officers, doctors, rehabilitation specialists, addicts and parents of addicts, among others.

I-STOP stands for the Internet System for Tracking Over-Prescribing Act. The legislation created an electronic prescription monitoring program that requires doctors and pharmacists to check a patient’s controlled substance history before issuing a new prescription. The registry, which was initiated in June

2013, has dramatically decreased instances of “doctor shopping,” where a patient illegally obtains prescriptions from multiple practitioners, according to the state. Comparing the fourth quarter of 2012 with that of 2013, the Department of Health noted that doctor shopping was down 75 percent.

Until the state can provide statistics that the Health Department says are not currently available, however, the link between the success of the prescription monitoring program and the increase in heroin abuse will remain a theory.

Several factors contribute to the rapid rise in heroin addiction, according to some experts, with the decrease in the street supply of prescription opioids being just one of them.

“I-STOP has often been pegged, but I don’t know that it was the driving force,” said Dr. Jeffrey Reynolds, the executive director of the Long Island Coalition on Alcohol and Drug Dependence.

Reynolds said the trend toward greater heroin usage started several years ago, in part owing to an increased awareness by pharmacists, as well as by consumers who are now destroying pills they don’t use and by the high profile arrest of several doctors who were overprescribing. But a huge factor is price, Reynolds said, as people progress in their addictions from, say, two to eight pills a day.

“Vicodin is $40 a pill,” Reynolds said. “Then someone taps you on the shoulder and says, ‘Heroin is exactly the same drug, but it’s much cheaper.’ ” Boyle echoed that sentiment. “In Long Island the price of OxyContin is $30 each, and heroin can be purchased for six dollars a bag,” he said. “So you know where the addict will go.”

Whether or not I-STOP is a major contributing factor, many medical and treatment professionals agree that heroin abuse is increasing at a dangerous rate, and addicts who want to quit are finding it nearly impossible to get insurance companies to approve the intensive inpatient treatments heroin addicts generally need. Instead insurers are pushing care to cheaper outpatient counseling, with no doctor to monitor the difficult detox process.

The consequences can be deadly.

Dr. Michael Dailey, an emergency room physician at Albany Medical Center, said insurance carriers will not deem inpatient treatment a “medical necessity” until the addict has failed outpatient therapy.

“These people want help, but there is nowhere for them to go,” Dailey said. “If you have to fail outpatient rehab first, then you go back to the drug again. What if the next time you touch the drug you’re dead?”

Amy Sucich is the assistant director of counseling at the ambulatory detox program at St. Christopher’s Inn, a Putnam county shelter that has 174 beds for men in crisis. Many insurance companies are only allowing 10 days of treatments for addicts, which is not nearly enough, Sucich said. “It’s extremely frustrating,” she said. “I don’t know if medical necessity means you have to be dead.”

As a bigger percentage of her

program’s patients are heroin addicts, there are more deaths from relapses, Sucich said.

“Years ago we would hear of a few deaths a year,” she said of those who had gone through St. Christopher’s treatment process. “Now we hear of a few deaths a month.”

Addicts and their families are often willing to accept the outpatient therapy option, Reynolds said, because they want to believe a serious opioid addiction can be treated with relative ease. But that’s usually not the case.

“The likelihood of success with just sitting with a counselor is not all that great,” he said. “I know of a dozen young people where it didn’t work who are now either incarcerated or dead of overdoses.”

“It’s like showing up at the ER with a limb ripped off,” Reynolds added.

“But let’s put on a Band-Aid.” While Reynolds feels the I-STOP program—which was spearheaded by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and passed by the state Legislature in 2012—is a good first step to controlling drug abuse, he believes if lawmakers want to really make a difference, they should require insurance companies to “treat addiction in a way that is comprehensive and based in science.”

Reynolds and Dailey both find the state’s lack of data on opioid drug addiction inexcusable.

“We’ve gotten leadership from our attorney general: Eric Schneiderman is a real hero,” said Reynolds. “But there ought to be an equal force in public health. This state has no five-year plan for dealing with an opioid crisis.”

“Our data sucks, quite frankly,” said Dailey. “We don’t know as much as we should about the heroin problem.

We just know it’s getting worse.”

“Vicodin is $40 a pill. ... Then someone taps you on the shoulder and says, ‘Heroin is exactly the same drug, but it’s much cheaper.’ ” CITYANDSTATENY.COM

OFFICE OF NEW YORK STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL

By KRISTI BERNER

STRIVING FOR MEDIOCRITY New York Underperforms in Return on Infrastructure Spending

By MATTHEW HAMILTON

York.

That’s the message conveyed by a soon-to-be-released set of countrywide highway system rankings. The Reason Foundation, a national public policy think tank, pegs New York as No. 43 overall in its 21st Annual Highway Report, an increase from No. 44 last year and No. 45 two years ago.

The report, which will be released at a later date, was previewed at an Empire Center forum on the state’s infrastructure late last month.

“You’re looking at the overall snapshot—the overall rankings.

You don’t want to get too obsessed with any one ranking,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, assistant director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation. “The lower the ranking you have, it means the more money you’re spending to get a worse system.

It’s a double negative.”

Feigenbaum said New York spends an average of $462,098 per mile on its highway system, nearly double the national average of states such as Illinois and Ohio, both of which are categorized as New York’s peer states.

Though New York’s spending is understandably higher than that of states in the South, for example—where roads are not battered by harsh winters—the state still has a highway system that is in the bottom 10 states in the nation, according to the report.

New York falls in the lower tier of almost every category analyzed in the study, which includes rankings of everything from funding disbursements to road and congestion conditions to fatality rates. The only areas in which New York cracks the top 30 states are rural principal arterial condition (No. 28) and fatality rate (No. 11).

New York’s worst category is deficient bridges, with a ranking of 49th out of the 50 states.

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“It was interesting to hear from Baruch [Feigenbaum] that our cost per mile is about twice what it should be because we go around the state and talk to the different regions and talk to the people in charge. Even on the state side, with maintaining the infrastructure, they’ll tell you that they have about half the resources they need just to maintain what’s out there,” Associated General Contractors of New York State President and CEO Mike Elmendorf said. “We’re not talking about improving it. We’re not talking about making it better.

We’re not talking about expanding it so we have opportunities for economic development. We’re talking about just keeping it the way it is, which in many cases is not that great anyway.”

New York isn’t the only Northeastern state with heavily urbanized areas to receive low rankings. New Jersey comes in at No. 50 in terms of total, capital and bridge, and maintenance disbursements. Rhode Island is 50th in terms of deficient bridges.

Feigenbaum pre-empted possible criticism of the ranking system by acknowledging that less urbanized states may have an advantage, though that still does not explain why New York ranks so low.

By Robert W. Amler, MD, MBA

He pointed to states similar to New York in population, land mass, density and geographic area that perform better. Those states include Ohio (14th), Illinois (27th), Michigan (32nd) and Pennsylvania (41st).

The only category in which New York does better than any of its peer states is in fatality rate.

Improving New York’s standing in the next year may not be all that easy. City & State reported in March that congressional gridlock could pose a problem for obtaining reimbursements to address crumbling infrastructure across the state. Other factors such as project labor agreements, high insurance premiums and prevailing wage laws—all discussed at last month’s Empire Center forum—also make some infrastructure projects more costly to undertake in New York.

According to Feigenbaum, however, New York doesn’t need to shoot for the top—or even the top 20—to dramatically improve its highway system.

“New York is never going to be No. 1. We’re not trying to get New York to be No. 1,” he said.

“We’re trying to get New York to be 25, which is an achievable goal.

If Ohio can be 14 and Illinois can be [27], New York can be 25.”

New York Medical College (NYMC) is proud to have played a role, through its comparative medicine facilities, in accelerating the growth of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., one of the nation’s fastest-growing pioneers in commercializing innovative new medicines. In 1989, Regeneron had four employees and opened a 10,000 square-foot laboratory near the NYMC campus in Westchester County, New York. Twenty-five years later, the company employs more than 2,000 people with headquarters and research laboratories located in Westchester and a large-scale manufacturing facility in Rensselaer, New York.

NYMC is equally excited about the future success stories that will follow Regeneron’s example and are poised to emerge from BioInc@NYMC, the biotechnology incubator on the NYMC campus.

According to NewYorkBIO, “the New York area is the largest and richest bioscience community in the world.” More than 60% of “Big Pharma” firms are headquartered in the area. The industry supports more than 75,000 direct jobs and the metropolitan area was named Genetic Engineering News’ #1 region in the US to find a biotech job.

Westchester is home to some 8,000 biotechnology professionals, representing 20% of the industry workforce and largest concentration in New York. The Hudson Valley biotech cluster already makes a substantial contribution to economic development and is projected to grow.

With the help of various partners in New York State, in particular Empire State Development and the US Department of Commerce, NYMC is expanding its facilities to encourage small start-up biotech firms to advance development and commercialization for candidate drugs and vaccines, in support of the NY BioHud Valley initiative.

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Biotech start-ups in the incubator can readily access university scientists and sophisticated equipment at a fraction of the usual costs, as well as focused training in business skills. Their innovative processes also require a steady flow of electricity. The facility itself needs to maintain acceptable levels of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning to ensure that lab conditions meet health and safety standards. A voltage fluctuation, brownout, or blackout could threaten millions of dollars invested and years of medical research. For these reasons, it is important that New York maintain its commitment to a diverse energy portfolio and strengthen in-state energy infrastructure to power the next generation of medical innovation.

Robert W. Amler, M.D., M.B.A., is the vice president of government affairs for New York Medical College and dean of the School of Health Sciences and Practice, and Institute of Public Health. He has served as Regional Health Administrator for the US Dept. of Health and Human Services and has a well established career as a thought leader in the medical and health care industry.

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New York AREA’s membership includes some of the state’s most vital business, labor and community organizations including the New York State AFL-CIO, Business Council of New York State, Partnership for New York City, New York Building Congress, National Federation of Independent Business and many more.

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CITY & STATE — May 21, 2014

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eing middle of the pack would be a major improvement for New

Incubators Sustain Growth of NY’s Life Science Industry

INSIDE THE REPORT CO-CHAIRS’ PICKS TO WRITE MORELAND REPORT WERE NIXED FOR SECOND FLOOR INSIDER

By MORGAN PEHME, JON LENTZ AND MATTHEW HAMILTON

A

city & state — May 12, 2014

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n assistant counsel to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who professed himself to be the author of the NY SAFE Act, was ultimately selected as the lead writer of the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption’s December 2013 report after several independent candidates for the position were nixed, according to multiple sources within the Moreland Commission.

Alex Crohn, the self-proclaimed author of the SAFE Act, had not been the Moreland Commission co-chairs’ first choice to write the muchanticipated report the Commission released on Dec. 2.

Their choice was Adam Skaggs, then a senior counsel to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice and an expert on several areas central to the Commission’s work, including campaign finance law.

Skaggs had interviewed for the job, was approved unanimously by the co-chairs—William Fitzpatrick, Kathleen Rice and Milton Williams— and was offered the position.

However, the Commission’s executive director, Regina Calcaterra, nixed the choice, making it clear that the governor’s office did not approve of Skaggs’ selection. Meanwhile, Skaggs had taken another job, at the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition.

After Skaggs was passed over, the Commission continued its search for an independent report writer.

Other candidates with significant expertise in areas of the Commission’s focus included Zephyr Teachout, a professor at Fordham University Law School and the former national director of the Sunlight Foundation, and Jenna Adams, a former staffer to Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh who is now state legislative director to New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

Ultimately, the co-chairs decided on Alex Camarda, the director of public policy and advocacy for the good-government group Citizens Union. Camarda had been highly

recommended for the position by Moreland commissioner Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School who is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on government ethics. However, before Camarda was notified that he had been hired, Calcaterra threatened to resign as executive director if the Commission hired Camarda.

“I was considered for the position, but my understanding is ultimately a staff member from the governor’s office assisted the Commission in writing the report rather than expend funds hiring an employee outside the government,” said Camarda.

According to the dozen Commission sources interviewed for this article, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to anger the governor’s office, Calcaterra was open with the Commission’s staff and commissioners about the fact that she was closely coordinating with the governor’s office, and that in many instances her demands were extensions of orders handed down by the Second Floor, in particular from the Secretary to the Governor, Larry Schwartz.

Calcaterra, who did not return calls for comment from City & State, had been appointed executive director of the Commission by Gov. Cuomo when he announced the Commission’s creation on July 2, 2013. Just days earlier Calcaterra had wrapped up her work as the governor’s appointee as executive director of the previous Moreland Commission he had called, which focused on the Long Island Power Authority and released its final report on June 22. Sources say that after Calcaterra threatened to resign over Camarda’s hiring, the governor’s office made it clear to the co-chairs that Calcaterra would be staying on, and that the executive chamber would not agree to the hiring of an independent good-government report writer.

By early October there was still no writer on board to draft the report, despite the days quickly ticking down

to Dec. 1—the date on which Gov. Cuomo had mandated by executive order that the Commission release a preliminary report detailing its findings. As such, the co-chairs agreed to accept a report writer selected by the Second Floor, provided they would be allowed to hire a second independent writer to work alongside the executive chamber’s choice.

The governor’s office sent Alex Crohn. No bona fide independent writer was ever hired.

Ari Savitsky, a lawyer with the firm WilmerHale, was brought on as the report’s nominal independent writer; however, multiple sources depicted him as a glorified copy editor, not a primary writer of the report. Savitsky declined to comment when reached by City & State.

Crohn, a graduate of Harvard Law School, came to the Commission directly from the executive chamber, where he worked under Mylan Denerstein, the governor’s counsel.

Crohn spoke widely with members of the Commission about his work in the governor’s office, claiming that he played a significant role in writing legislation. He was particularly proud of his role in authoring the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act of 2013, commonly known as the NY SAFE Act. “This is the hardest thing I’ve had to write since the SAFE Act,” several Commission sources recall Crohn bemoaning aloud on numerous occasions while working on the December Moreland report.

Commission sources also say they overheard Crohn, who sat in the bullpen with the rest of the Moreland Commission’s staff members, engaged in long conference calls that appeared to focus on the implementation of the SAFE Act. Crohn could not be reached for this article, and the computerized message that answered his cell-phone number stated that “the person you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this

time.”

While Crohn’s claims about authoring the SAFE Act could not be confirmed independently by any sources within the executive chamber, a review of Gov. Cuomo’s public schedule appears to substantiate that Crohn was involved in the legislation to some degree. Two days after the SAFE Act was passed on Jan. 15, 2013, Crohn is listed as being in attendance at a meeting with the governor and several of the his top aides, including Denerstein, as well as law enforcement officials Sgt. James Sherman of the New York State Police’s Pistol Permit Bureau and Kevin Bruen, assistant counsel for the New York State Police.

The following day, Jan. 18, Crohn would be in attendance at another meeting with the governor, Denerstein, Elizabeth Glaser (then the deputy secretary for public safety), Sherman and Bruen; and on Jan. 29 he is listed as having been at a meeting that included New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico.

Crohn also shows up on the governor’s schedule on March 25, 2013, again in a meeting with Sherman and Bruen, and on Feb. 24, 2014, in a meeting with the governor, Denerstein and Bruen.

The governor’s office declined to comment for this article.

Commission sources say that by Crohn’s own admission, he was an unusual fit for the job, lacking as he was in professional expertise in ethics reform, campaign finance, the penal code or any of the other areas principally germane to the Commission’s work.

Despite this dearth of qualifications on paper, Crohn would not only serve as the lead writer of the Commission’s preliminary report—which, with the shutdown of the Commission, now appears will be its only report—but sources say he also wrote the muchtalked-about dissent to the section of that report recommending the introduction of publicly financed elections in New York State.

While one independent expert, who

Co-Chair William Fitzpatrick had imagined that when the Moreland Commission’s December report was completed, he would present it to Gov. Cuomo with great fanfare. Instead the rollout was markedly subdued.

Sources say the simmering tension split the Commission into two distinct factions: on one side, the three co-chairs, the lion’s share of the commissioners, Perry and the investigations team, and the vast majority of the staff; on the other, a few commissioners like Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney, and staff members directly selected by the governor’s office, namely Calcaterra, Crohn and the Commission’s press secretary, Michelle Duffy.

The dissent inserted into the December report over the Commission’s decision to recommend the introduction of the public financing of elections in New York State was a glaring illustration of this fissure within the Commission.

It was not until a week or two before the report’s delivery date on Dec. 2 (the report’s official due date was Dec. 1, a Sunday) that the notion that it would include a dissent was first brought up. Mahoney, a close ally of Gov. Cuomo’s, led the charge to include the dissent, as well as the effort to get other commissioners to sign on to it. Mahoney would also later claim to some of her fellow commissioners that she had written the dissent, though multiple sources assert that it was actually authored by Crohn.

As previously reported by the Daily News’ Ken Lovett, at the morning meeting of the Commission on Dec. 2, the day the report was released to the

public, a great debate erupted among the commissioners over the inclusion of the word majority in the dissent.

Tensions were riding high, particularly as some of the commissioners were only seeing the dissent for the first time that morning—slipped in, as it was, at the 11th hour.

The underlying significance of the debate over the word majority was a belief held by many members of the Commission that the Cuomo administration was orchestrating the introduction of the dissent to undercut the significance of the Commission’s support for publicly financed elections.

As Lovett wrote at the time, “Cuomo aides were pushing for a dissenting opinion on the issue. The thinking is that Cuomo, hoping to wind down the commission, can try and push the Legislature to agree to many of the commission’s other recommendations.

He then would be able to argue that the Senate GOP wouldn’t go along with public financing, an issue that even had the commission split.”

Co-chair Milton Williams in particular was adamant that the report not say majority, because it made it sound like the vote within the Commission in favor of recommending public financing was closer than it actually was. He pushed to make the distinction clear that the Commission unquestionably recommended publicly financed elections in New York State, even though seven of its

25 commissioners had signed on to a dissent.

Eventually the commissioners agreed that the several instances of majority would be omitted. Still, the co-chairs were so suspicious that Calcaterra would try to make lastsecond unapproved alterations to the language in the report that, from the late morning when the commissioners’ meeting was adjourned until the report was finalized that evening—a period in excess of six hours—the co-chairs literally stood over Crohn as he put the finishing touches on the report to personally assure themselves of the integrity of the document.

Around 6 p.m. Calcaterra left the co-chairs and Crohn as they were reviewing the final draft of the report and went to her office.

At 6:05 p.m. the report was made public on the Commission’s website without the co-chairs signing off on its release. It was not until an article from Nick Reisman of Capital Tonight appeared on the State of Politics blog referencing the report’s release that the commissioners and staff realized that it had already gone out—and that the version made public still included the majority language.

Multiple sources recall that the commissioners present were livid, particularly Williams, and immediately sought out Calcaterra to insist that the report be corrected on the Web. Shortly thereafter, without the press

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city & state — May 12, 2014

OFFICE OF THE NEW YORK STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL

requested to remain anonymous so as not to upset the governor, said that it was not unheard of for the author of a report to also write its dissent, provided the dissent accurately reflects the perspective of the dissenting minority, a Commission source bristled at what the source believed was an inherent conflict of interest.

“It’s crazy,” said the source. “It’s nothing short of crazy. It’s just completely counterintuitive.”

Crohn did not end up writing the entire report. Several Commission sources say that the first draft submitted by Crohn was riddled with grammatical mistakes and factual errors. Moreover, as Jimmy Vielkind would write in Capital New York the day after the report’s release, “its recommendations mirrored Cuomo’s recent legislative platform” and seemed to be aimed chiefly at affirming the governor’s agenda— thus undermining the appearance of the Commission’s independence.

Appalled at the low quality of the work and its lack of specifics, particularly in detailing the Commission’s investigations, the co-chairs decided to silo off the executive summary of the report to Danya Perry, the chief of investigations for the Commission, since that would be the part of the report most likely to be read by the public and the media. According to multiple sources, Perry was selected because of her thorough knowledge of the status of the Commission’s investigations and because the co-chairs trusted her.

Some other sections of the report were handed off to Commission members who were experts in the respective areas covered.

Reached for comment, Perry declined to speak about the Commission.

After Perry completed the executive summary in November, the co-chairs refused to show it to Calcaterra, convinced that she would instantly share it with the Second Floor. In response, sources say, Larry Schwartz called the co-chairs directly and insisted that they turn over the executive summary. But Commission sources say the co-chairs were adamant in refusing, particularly Kathleen Rice, and the ensuing dispute caused a further breakdown in the co-chairs’ already icy relationship with the Second Floor. Though the co-chairs would eventually yield and turn over the executive summary to the governor’s office, thereafter the relationship between the two sides— the co-chairs and the executive chamber—would be characterized by mutual distrust.

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city & state — May 12, 2014

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being notified, the changes were made.

As Lovett would report the following day, a number of Commission sources doubted that the release of the wrong version of the report had been unintentional on Calcaterra’s part.

This suspicion was fanned by the fact that Reisman’s fully formed blog post front-loaded with details of the dissent came out at 6:10 p.m.—just 5 minutes after the report was released—leading some Commission staff members to speculate that Reisman had been leaked details of the report in advance by someone pushing the dissent angle. These theories were further reinforced when Mahoney went on Capital Tonight that very evening and infuriated a number of her fellow commissioners by publicly questioning the Commission’s ability to be wholly independent.

“I think we’re making a mockery of this whole process if we try to pretend that a group of us that’s been appointed by the attorney general and the governor is investigating the attorney general or the governor,” said Mahoney on Capital Tonight a few hours after the report was released.

Whether these occurrences are evidence of a coordinated strategy to undermine the report or mere coincidence, what is verifiable is how surprisingly subdued the governor’s office’s reaction was to the release of the report. Exactly six months earlier, the executive chamber had played up to maximum effect the press conference in which the governor announced the creation of the blue ribbon commission and the appointment of its 25 commissioners.

At that press conference Cuomo said, “This is a powerful signal, and I want to signal to two audiences. One are the elected officials in the state of New York—we’re going to raise the bar on public integrity, public trust.

And second is the people of the state.

I want to say, ‘Look, we have the best people in the business watching.’ ” Six months later, there would be no press conference rolling out the report. The first time the governor would address the report would be the morning after its release, when he called in to The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, primarily to provide updates about the Metro-North crash in the Bronx that had occurred two days earlier.

In the interview Cuomo was relatively low-key about the Commission’s uniqueness and impact: “To clean up Albany, I think the Moreland Commission’s basic point is when the combination of money and politics is not a good combination. Now, you can say ‘Yes,

we know that. We knew that from the Feerick Commission. We know that in Washington, and we know that in every state government.’ And it’s true.”

Although Cuomo said, “The Moreland Commission report makes [the] case very well” that stricter ethics legislation needed to be passed in Albany, several Commission sources construed the governor’s comments as minimizing the Commission’s importance and work to date, particularly when he noted, “There are obviously some questions in the report that we still have to develop and work through.”

One Commission source with no apparent connection to the executive chamber speculated that perhaps the governor had downplayed his response to the report in light of the tragic train crash the day before. Another source rejects this theory, pointing out that the evening of Cuomo’s Brian Lehrer appearance, the governor held a lavish $50,000 top ticket fundraiser at the Roseland Ballroom with a muchpublicized special performance by Billy Joel.

Despite all of the heated battles and dramatic showdowns over the report, virtually every source interviewed for this article both on and off the record expressed that they were largely satisfied with how it had ultimately turned out from a substantive standpoint.

“I thought then—and I still think now—that it was a good product, and a lot of good people worked really hard on it, and I think its message resonates even today,” said Moreland co-chair William Fitzpatrick.

Still, Fitzpatrick admitted that the way the report was released did not go the way he had imagined when he signed on to be a co-chair. When Gov. Cuomo first offered him the job, Fitzpatrick, the district attorney of Onondaga County for the last 22 years, says he saw it as “the opportunity of a lifetime for a prosecutor to be able to potentially clean up one of the most corrupt state governments in the nation.”

“In my mind I pictured myself and Kathleen and Milt walking up to Governor Cuomo as if we were Earl Warren handing Lyndon Johnson the Warren Commission report, but there was so much last-minute stuff going on that the rollout wasn’t what I expected,” Fitzpatrick said.

“But that’s neither here nor there.

It eventually made its way into the public’s domain.”

Additional reporting by Michael Johnson

INSIDE THE INVESTIGATION INTERNAL DOCUMENTS REVEAL COMMISSION TARGETED QUESTIONABLE CAMPAIGN SPENDING BY STATE LAWMAKERS

By JON LENTZ, MATTHEW HAMILTON AND MORGAN PEHME

10 to 12 state lawmakers.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was interested enough in finding out what the Commission had discovered that he has launched an inquiry, in part, to get to the bottom of whether “investigations potentially significant to the public interest have been bargained away as part of the negotiated arrangement between legislative and executive leaders,” as he wrote in a letter to the Commission’s members on April 3—a reference to the ethics deal struck between the governor and the Legislature as part of their budget agreement at the end of March, which coincided with Cuomo’s announcement that he was shutting down the Commission.

Now City & State can cast light on at least one of the areas of inquiry pursued by the Moreland Commission’s investigations team.

Commission documents obtained and authenticated by City & State show that Moreland’s investigators sought to determine if lawmakers were spending the contributions they received for legitimate campaign-oriented purposes, or whether any money was going to their personal use, in violation of state law.

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lthough the Commission investigated a number of different areas of potential wrongdoing by members of the Legislature, including the improper claiming of per diem allowances and outside employment, multiple Moreland sources said that at the time the Commission was disbanded, the personal use investigation had become one of its main focuses.

“It was clearly one of the Commission’s greatest priorities during its last months of operation,”

said a Commission source, who characterized the personal use probe as the Commission’s “most ongoing” investigation. This source, like the half dozen or so other sources within the Moreland Commission who spoke to City & State for this article, did so on the condition of strictest anonymity both out of fear of reprisal and citing the U.S. Attorney’s ongoing investigation.

The Commission’s inquiry into personal use tracked campaign dollars spent by the current members of the state Legislature from July 2007 through June 2013 (as reflected in filings from 2008-13). Notably, the Commission did not look into the filings of the governor, the attorney general or the state comptroller.

According to multiple Commission sources, the legislators the investigations team chose to focus on were determined strictly on the merits: no party or conference was singled out.

Legally, candidates for the state Senate or Assembly are not required to itemize purchases less than $50, but investigators wondered whether lump sums categorized as “unitemized”—or large unspecified credit card charges —concealed purchases of goods or services unrelated to a campaign.

The Commission’s investigators decided to hone in on lawmakers who had accrued at least $10,000 in unexplained credit card expenses or other unitemized expenditures within the six-year span it analyzed. Based upon this criterion, the Commission narrowed its focus to more than two dozen state lawmakers, who, according to the documents obtained

by City & State, span both houses of the Legislature and include Republicans, Democrats and members of the Independent Democratic Conference in the Senate.

The documents do not explicitly accuse any lawmaker of outright wrongdoing or allege any criminality.

In an informational, lawyerly tone, they summarize the expenditures that caught the attention of the Commission’s investigators, and the status of the Commission’s inquiry into each of the individual legislators probed. Though the documents are undated, they refer to subpoenas issued as recently as Feb. 18, 2014; presumably they originate after that date. A Commission source who reviewed the documents but refused to comment on any specific investigations would say only that the personal use probe had advanced between the time the documents were issued and when Cuomo announced he was disbanding the Commission on March 29.

Multiple Commission sources expressed frustrations and regret that the personal use investigation was cut short. The investigations team was set to subpoena the campaign treasurers of the lawmakers in question, as well as the vendors pertaining to the relevant expenditures, but it never got the chance.

Still, before Gov. Cuomo shut down the Commission, information from the personal use investigation was turned over to Albany County District Attorney David Soares, with the hope that he would pursue potential criminal charges. According to multiple Commission sources, the executive director of the Commission, Regina Calcaterra, was deliberately left out of the loop in the outreach to Soares by the investigations team, out of concern that she would tip off the governor’s office, and that the executive branch would in turn try to influence whether the referrals were made.

Sources within the Commission

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city & state — May 12, 2014

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tate Sen. George Maziarz shelled out more than $140,000 in campaign funds over a sixyear period without identifying what exactly he purchased, according to an investigation by the now defunct Moreland Commission on Public Corruption—by far the most of any state lawmaker. State Sen. Patrick Gallivan was found to have about $80,000 in unreported campaign credit card expenses, including hundreds of dollars spent on cigars, tanning, and at salons and casinos.

State Sen. Greg Ball laid out around $23,000 at retail stores, including Brooks Brothers, Banana Republic and Amore Clothing.

The Commission also flagged purchases ranging from car repairs and auto insurance to children’s items—even a payment to Do-do, the self-proclaimed “Clown of Clowns”— as well as tens of thousands of dollars charged to state lawmakers’ credit cards with little to no explanation of what they bought.

These revelations were uncovered by the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption as part of a broad investigation into the spending of campaign funds by state lawmakers that was shut down when Gov. Andrew Cuomo abruptly disbanded the Commission last month.

To date, there has been considerable speculation about what exactly the Moreland Commission’s investigations team probed over the months it was in operation, but few specifics have been disclosed to the public. Several legislators and critics have openly dismissed the Commission’s work as a “witch hunt.” Conversely, Moreland Commissioner Makau Mutua said earlier this month that the Commission had unearthed potential criminality by

FLAGGED FOR FURTHER REVIEW The Moreland Commission identified dozens of questionable expenses during its partially completed investigation into state lawmakers’ campaign spending. Here are some dubious expenses it turned up:

STATE SEN. GEORGE MAZIARZ Over $125,000 in purchases at retailers such as Target and BJ’s Wholesale and electronics stores such as Apple Online, including about $56,000 in unreported expenditures.

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STATE SEN. PATRICK GALLIVAN Approximately $80,000 in unreported credit card charges, including $1,200 spent at casinos, $1,000 on cigars and $300 on tanning beds and at salons.

STATE SEN. JOHN BONACIC Over $100,000 in unitemized expenditures.

STATE SEN. GREG BALL Approximately $23,000 in retail stores, including Brooks Brothers, Banana Republic and Amore Clothing.

STATE SEN. DIANE SAVINO $40,000 in self-reimbursements without any memo detailing the reason or source of original payment.

city & state — May 12, 2014

STATE SEN. MARTIN GOLDEN At least $200,000 at Bay Ridge Manor, which is owned by his brother, Patrick, and which the senator has an interest in.

(Golden’s campaign treasurer said to City & State the expenses were appropriate and that the senator does not benefit from them.)

STATE SEN. MICHAEL NOZZOLIO Approximately $17,000 at Hickey Freeman, a men’s suit manufacturer, for fundraising. (The senator said to City & State that any expenditures for apparel was for campaign logo athletic pullovers given to participants at fundraising events and to campaign volunteers.)

STATE SEN. JOHN SAMPSON $38,000 of unitemized credit card expenditures without any memo detailing the expenses, as well as over $50,000 in expenditures relating to the New York Yankees described as fundraising.

STATE SEN. RUBÉN DÍAZ, SR. Five cars held under his campaign account, although he surrendered four of the vehicles by 2010.

declined to specify which lawmakers had been referred to Soares for prosecution. A spokeswoman for the Albany County District Attorney said that the office does not comment on “matters of public integrity investigations.”

A former spokeswoman for the Moreland Commission declined to comment because the Commission had been disbanded. A cell phone number for Calcaterra was disconnected, and City & State was unable to track down more current contact information for her.

City & State’s independent investigation of the expenditures cited in the Moreland documents found no proof of illegality on the behalf of any elected official or candidate. While there are a number of expenditures that raise questions, several experts consulted by City & State made the point that the legal definition of what constitutes a legitimate use of campaign funds in New York State is extremely broad, and that even expenses that seemed like personal use on their face could actually be allowable based on the letter of the law.

Bill Mahoney, the research coordinator at NYPIRG, said after reviewing the documents that the Commission appeared to have gotten off to a promising start with an unprecedented review of a system plagued by wildly inconsistent reporting by campaigns and lax oversight by the state Board of Elections.

“Some of them might have good explanations, and I’m sure many of them do,” Mahoney said of the lawmakers scrutinized by the Commission. “It’s possible to run up a lot of money in small expenses running a grassroots-style campaign. But it’s also very possible that some of them are intentionally hiding this money to avoid letting their voters see how they’re spending campaign funds.”

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hile the documents obtained

by City & State do not quantify or rank the Commission’s relative level of interest in the subjects of its inquiry, several legislators stand out based upon the number of entries pertaining to each individual lawmaker and their descriptions.

The legislator with the most number of entries about him is state Sen. George Maziarz, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate leadership.

According to the documents, Maziarz amassed more than $140,000 in unitemized campaign expenses in filings reported between 2008 and 2013—which averages out to more than $23,000 a year, or nearly $2,000

a month. The senator’s campaign also had “over $67,000 of charges and expenditures to Chase and Chase Card Services,” identified broadly as “office” expenses. The total sum, which exceeded by tens of thousands of dollars the amount of unspecified expenditures by each of the other lawmakers flagged, is broken down in depth within the documents and includes details not included in the senator’s public campaign filings.

The Commission found that the Maziarz campaign doled out more than $125,000 at retailers such as Target and BJ’s Wholesale Club, including $56,250 in expenditures that investigators concluded had not been reported. Another $10,000 from the senator’s re-election funds went to specialty chocolatiers, a florist and wineries and wine stores. The campaign committee also paid for $7,850 worth of reading materials at Borders, Readers Digest and Barnes & Noble, with $2,000 labeled as “unreported” by the Commission.

The Commission also tabulated the Maziarz campaign spending $12,000 at arts and crafts stores like Michaels and Oriental Trading; $7,000 at the now-defunct online gift boutique Southern Living at HOME and its successor, Willow House; and $4,000 on purchases related to children, including from Toys ”R” Us and Mud Pie, and payments to Do-do, the clown.

A company called MEM Enterprises also received a cumulative $39,000 from the Maziarz campaign.

A Commission document notes that the company has only one employee, brings in $54,000 a year and is based at a residence owned by a person who appears to be the senator’s relative.

Efforts to reach MEM Enterprises were unsuccessful, however, based upon inquiries made by City & State, it appears that the company’s address is the same as that of the senator’s brother, Marvin Maziarz, a retired Niagara County Community College professor.

John Conklin, a spokesman for the Board of Elections, said that it is not illegal to pay family members for legitimate campaign services.

In response to questions from City & State, Maziarz issued the following statement: “We have followed all campaign laws, reported all expenditures and have always been very transparent.”

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ccording to New York law, state-level campaign contributions can be used for “any lawful purpose,” but they “shall not be converted by any person to a

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tate Sen. John Bonacic’s committee had the secondhighest total of unspecified campaign spending after Maziarz’s, according to the Commission documents, reporting over $100,000 in what appear to be credit card payments with “little or no information” about their “underlying purchases.”

Bonacic’s treasurer wrote to City & State that the campaign abides “by all the rules of the NYS Board of Elections and all their filings are proper.”

The next highest total was run up

by Gallivan, who had about $80,000 in “unreported credit card expenses.”

In Gallivan’s case, records for a Capital One card revealed $1,200 spent at

casinos, $1,000 on cigars and $300 on “tanning beds and at salons.”

The senator also had approximately $4,000 in unreported charges to AT&T, $3,500 in unreported charges to Verizon Wireless, $4,000 in charges to the DeLacy Ford dealership in Elma, N.Y., and almost $3,000 in unreported loan payments to M&T Bank. The Commission was apparently unable to obtain records for an American Express card that had $47,000 in unreported campaign charges.

“We have always endeavored to comply with the state’s campaign financial disclosure requirements and are in the process of reviewing all of our filings to ensure full compliance,” Gallivan’s campaign said in a statement.

Although the Moreland documents distinguish between “unreported” and “unitemized” in their analysis of lawmakers’ expenditures, City & State was unable to verify examples of unreported spending cited in the documents and it is possible that some items categorized as “unreported”

“UNLESS YOU OUT-ANDOUT STICK [CAMPAIGN DOLLARS] IN YOUR POCKET AND WALK AWAY, EVERYTHING’S LEGAL.” were in fact personal spending that was later paid for with a candidate’s own money, rather than campaign funds.

Conklin noted that many candidates use a personal credit card and submit part of their bill to the campaign committee to get reimbursed for purchases that are legitimate campaign expenses. In other cases lawmakers will foot the entire credit card bill, campaign expenditures included, and later repay themselves using campaign funds for the campaign-related expenditures.

“Either way is perfectly proper,” Conklin said.

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tate Sen. Greg Ball’s expenditures also raised eyebrows, according to Commission documents, including $23,000 spent at retail and clothing stores and “large amounts of money on hotels all over the United States (and in some cases, outside the United States).” Among the Ball campaign’s bigger clothing purchases were $680.60 at a West Nyack Banana

URBAN PULSE By: Apurva Mehrotra, Policy Analyst, Community Service Society

Out of Care and Into the Fire: Foster Youth Need More Support on Path to Independence In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the words “foster care” were synonymous with high profile cases of abuse and neglect and a city struggling amidst a crack epidemic that was tearing entire communities apart. Today, the foster care system is in a better place.

But are the young people in the system any better off?

Unfortunately, outcomes for foster youth in New York are so poorly tracked that it is difficult to say. This in itself is telling. However, studies conducted in various parts of the country reveal abysmal outcomes for foster youth, particularly those who “age out,” exiting the system as independent adults without having been reunited with their parents or adopted by another family.

The poor outcomes for foster youth are why Community Service Society has joined with the Children’s Aid Society and organizations across the state to advocate on behalf of the roughly 20,000 children in the foster care system in the state of New York. We want to ensure that when these young people age out, they will do so with the necessary skills to live promising, independent lives.

Our first goal is to make it easier for foster youth to attend and succeed in college.

In 2012, there were over 4,000 foster youth age 18 or older who either exited the system or remained in care. By piecing together data from various sources, we found that fewer than 1 in 4 college-age foster and former foster youth in New York attend college. Given the increasing need for some post-secondary education to get a decent paying job, it is imperative that more foster youth participate and succeed in higher education.

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Young people we spoke with across the state identified two major reasons for the low rates of college enrollment among foster youth: 1.) a financial aid system that is too complex and fails to cover the cost of attending college and 2.) a lack of knowledge of programs and services that can help students succeed once they are on campus.

Other states do better. Twenty-one have policies that completely cover tuition expenses for foster youth. In Texas and Florida, young people in care simply need to provide proper paperwork to the college they are attending to be exempt from paying tuition.

This simplifies the financial aid process and makes it so young people can use other forms of aid for college-related expenses, such as housing, books, and transportation.

And states around the country are doing a better job of ensuring that foster youth have access to resources that will help them succeed once they are on campus. In California, at each of the over 100 community and technical colleges in the state, there is a foster care liaison who can guide students to appropriate resources. Other states have interactive websites that help foster youth navigate the application and enrollment process while also providing contact information for resources at colleges.

In New York, foster youth are forced to cobble together financial aid from a variety of sources, which adds to their perception that the process of applying for college is too complex, that they can’t afford it, and that they may be better off preparing for aging out of the system by finding a job and saving money. On campus, foster youth are often unaware of programs that can assist them with the adjustment to college. A great caseworker or knowledgeable agency staff can make all the difference—but no system or standards ensure that every child in foster care has access to the help they need.

The Youth in Care Coalition will launch its campaign on May 13th in Albany in the hopes of beginning a serious discussion on how the state can make college graduation a realistic and obtainable goal for youth in foster care. New York can and should do more to ensure that some of the most vulnerable young people in the state can move out of foster care with the tools they need to succeed.

LEARN MORE www.cssny.org

city & state — May 12, 2014

personal use which is unrelated to a political campaign or the holding of a public office or party position.”

However, the “personal use” ban does not explain what “personal use” actually means, and that ambiguity has created a loophole enabling candidates to buy anything that could conceivably have some connection to a bid for public office or even serving as an elected official. Some lawmakers have used campaign funds to pay legal fees.

And in one famous case, then Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno used more than $1,000 from his campaign to buy a cover for an indoor pool at his home, arguing that it was because he would use it occasionally for political events.

Experts say that few, if any, violations of the law are ever pursued, and the state Board of Elections has acknowledged that it has little recourse.

As a Board of Elections spokesperson told the Times Union in 2005, “Unless you out-and-out stick it in your pocket and walk away, everything’s legal.”

The Board of Elections’ Conklin told City & State that the law “is broad and it has been broadly interpreted by the Board over the years, but that is the current state of the law.” Conklin also said that the agency would soon be adding a new compliance unit with more resources than the current enforcement unit. The new compliance unit was created as part of the ethics reform package passed along with this year’s budget, which Gov. Cuomo has attributed, at least in part, to the work of the Moreland Commission.

“We are planning on doing more follow-up with filers to insure they are making complete and correct filings more in keeping with our requirements,” Conklin said in an email. “In the past, with only 4 auditors we have spent most of our time making sure a filing was made and doing follow-up audits as to form when we had the time and opportunity.”

city & state — May 12, 2014

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Republic in October 2010, $581.61 at a Brooks Brothers in Central Valley in January 2011 and $252.72 at Amore Clothing in Albany in March 2012.

He also spent several hundred dollars at the iTunes Store in 2011 and on what appears to be a $99-a-month gym membership for half a year in the middle of 2010.

Asked to explain the specific purchases noted in the Moreland documents, Joe Bachmeier, a spokesman for Ball, responded in an email, “The clothing purchases were for campaign use, including campaign photos, television shoots and production. iTunes downloads were for campaign iPod use at dozens of campaign events. The gym membership was part of an incentive package for campaign staff.

As for paying for hotels, dinners and meetings, as a campaign and office, we have a strict policy of never allowing a constituent, lobbyist or other party to ever pick up a tab, we pay for all meetings to avoid any question of impropriety.”

The Moreland documents also cite a 2013 study by NYPIRG that found Ball’s campaign reported 995 expenditures between January 2011 and January 2013 with the payee’s address either missing or incomplete—more than double the figure of the campaign committee with the next highest number of incomplete filings in the state during the same period of time, that of Mount Vernon Mayor Ernie Davis, and 584 more than the thirdplace finisher: state Sen. Maziarz’s campaign. In all, NYPIRG determined that 66.8 percent of Ball’s itemized expenditures over the two-year period were missing at least part of the payee’s address.

Though Ball, Bonacic, Gallivan and Maziarz are all Republicans, the Commission’s investigators did flag legislators on the other side of the aisle as well. State Sen. John Sampson, who is currently under indictment for a host of corruption charges and others allegations, got the Commission’s attention for $38,000 in “unitemized credit card expenditures without any memo detailing the expenses.”

Sampson also had over $50,000 in expenditures related to the New York Yankees described as fundraising costs.

Attempts to reach Sampson’s campaign were unsuccessful.

The Commission documents also note that another Democrat, state Sen. Rubén Díaz, Sr., who had over $18,000 of unexplained charges and expenditures to American Express from mid-2007 through mid-2013, at one point “held five cars under his campaign account,” although by 2010

he had “surrendered the plates” of four of them.

Díaz said he was not available to comment.

State Sen. Diane Savino, a member of the Independent Democratic Conference, had $40,000 in selfreimbursements without any memo detailing the reason or source of original payment. Bronx Democratic Party Chairman Carl Heastie, one of the few members of the Assembly who turn up in the Commission documents, attracted attention for the approximately $25,000 in unitemized credit card expenditures his campaign made over the years the investigators analyzed, most of which without any explanation of their purpose.

The Savino campaign declined to comment.

Heastie, reached by phone, said, “I’ve heard nothing from them. I’m not concerned whatsoever. You’re not required to itemize expenses under 50 bucks.”

The Commission also flagged Brian Kolb, the Assembly minority leader, and state Sen. Jeff Klein, the head of the IDC and co-leader of the Senate Majority coalition, but the documents contain few details on either leader.

“My campaign committee is committed to properly detailing all expenditures and revenue figures. We have not been notified of any improper practices,” Kolb said in a statement.

As to Klein, Candice Giove, the IDC’s deputy director of communications, said, “The Senator’s campaign filings are in full compliance with the law.”

The remaining two dozen-plus lawmakers probed by the Commission attracted attention because of unitemized spending by their campaign committees, primarily in the $10,000 to $20,000 range.

Categorizing expenses as unitemized is common practice, of course. One of the Moreland Commission documents specifically noted that large unitemized spending totals could simply be a reflection of inadequate campaign finance disclosure, and not constitute a violation. A City & State review of campaign expenditures of all 63 of the state’s senators between July and December of 2013 found that 29 of them—close to a majority—reported unitemized expenses in their filings.

Additionally, the 29 senators identified their unitemized expenditures with little consistency, with some listing lump sums and others going so far as to provide details for individual unitemized expenditures—in one case down to $1.50 for a miscellaneous expenditure.

S u c h d i s c r e p a n c i e s

notwithstanding, there is a proper format for tallying unitemized expenditures on campaign filings, Conklin said, noting that the Board of Elections holds seminars on how to accurately file such reports. The problem is that candidates and campaign treasurers often do not follow the rules.

“The seminars are not mandatory and we do try to do our best to communicate to all new treasurers the importance of attending one of the seminars and reading the handbook,” Conklin said.

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hether Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature will act this session in an effort to plug some of the porous provisions of the campaign finance laws governing personal use and the reporting of expenditures remains to be seen.

Susan Lerner, the executive director of the good-government group Common Cause New York, said the ethics package in this year’s state budget did not include any provisions to address the types of campaign spending the Moreland Commission was investigating. She added that the Legislature has indicated it is comfortable with the vague statutes and standards that allows candidates to decide for themselves, which expenses are and are not related to their campaigns.

“It is amazing to me that our elected officials don’t realize how they put themselves between a rock and a hard place by not setting a higher standard that’s clear in the law for what is an appropriate expense and what isn’t and how to report it in a way that does not invite questions and aspersions,” Lerner said.

An entity could be designated or created to conduct audits of all candidate filings, Lerner said, similar to how the New York City Campaign Finance Board operates. Alternately, it could take a more random approach, similar to the system in Arizona—where the Arizona Clean Elections Commission audits campaign books without warning.

Lerner added that the Moreland Commission clearly established that the Board of Elections does not see itself as having the responsibility or the capability to enforce the campaign finance elections law.

“There are various ways to address this. Right now, it’s not being addressed at all,” Lerner said. “There is no oversight.”

In its preliminary report issued to the public in December, the Moreland Commission concluded there were “few rules limiting the personal use of campaign funds and even less

enforcement.” The report cited a 2013 legislative proposal by Gov. Cuomo that campaign contributions should be used only for a purpose “directly related to promoting the nomination or election of a candidate or the execution of duties associated with the holding of a public office or party position.” Among its recommendations, the Commission called for legislation more clearly defining what candidates cannot spend campaign dollars on, which would bring the state in line with stricter federal rules.

The Senate Democrats’ ethics package announced earlier this month includes tighter regulations on campaign spending. A bill sponsored by state Sen. Terry Gipson would only allow expenditures “promoting the nomination or election of a candidate” or for carrying the duties of public office, and would more clearly define the “personal use” ban to cover a range of specific non-campaignrelated expenses, including mortgage and rental payments, clothing, cars and sporting events and concerts. A bill sponsored by Assembly Minority Leader Kolb includes a similar list of “expenditures for personal use” that would be explicitly banned. Kolb’s bill and another measure introduced by the Senate Democrats would also prohibit campaign spending on criminal attorney or legal fees.

Whether anything will come of the Commission’s extensive investigation into personal use—or any of its other investigations, for that matter—is another area of uncertainty. Though Bharara’s office has already taken possession of all of the Commission’s investigative files and issued a grand jury subpoena “seeking emails, text messages and other records from all of the members of the Commission,” according to The New York Times, it is unclear whether Bharara will pursue the personal use investigation or its findings.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

NYPIRG’s Mahoney said that while the Commission had several strong leads in its investigation, it did not appear to have had enough time to find any smoking guns—if indeed there were any to find.

“It’s possible they had informally started investigations that had gone further, but anybody who picks this up, like the U.S. Attorney, will probably need to spend a lot of time starting these investigations from scratch,” Mahoney said. “It’s a shame that they made so much progress in starting an investigation into this area, but were unable to follow this investigation through to completion.”

TECHNOLOGY AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS 24 Tech Town 26 Contract Killer

T E C H N O LO G Y A N D T E L E CO M M U N I C AT I O N S

SPOTLIGHT

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27 The Scorecard

CITY & STATE — May 12, 2014

28 The Roundtable

CITYANDSTATENY.COM

T E C H N O LO G Y A N D T E L E CO M M U N I C AT I O N S CITY & STATE — May 12, 2014

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TECH TOWN

Will NYC retain its newfound cachet as a start-up magnet?

By WILDER FLEMING

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nly in the past several years has New York City garnered a reputation as an up-andcoming tech center. The buzzing start-up scene that has spawned wellknown companies like Kickstarter and Tumblr would not have been recognizable a decade ago. Last year Facebook doubled its office space in the city, and Google—having overflowed its 750,000-square-foot office in Chelsea—is now hunting for room to fit an additional 3,000 employees. A recent report from state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office found tech to be the fastest-growing industry in the city, having created some 25,000 jobs between 2009 and 2013.

However, despite its promising takeoff, analysts say there are still some hurdles to surmount before New York’s position as an axis of the tech industry is insured. They boil down to three main obstacles: a yawning skills gap, the high cost of rent and access to speedy Internet—or lack thereof.

“The tech sector in New York is clicking on so many levels, but there could be some real challenges around the bend,” said Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, a policy think tank.

“Already talent, or lack of engineering talent, is the biggest challenge. The tech sector is growing so fast and they’re looking for people with a certain skill set … The biggest issue is that the companies can’t hire fast enough.”

Bowles applauds education initiatives like Cornell’s newest project: a 12-acre school on Roosevelt Island with a curriculum geared for job placement in the city’s tech sector. But Cornell’s tech campus has yet to be built, and it alone won’t produce enough new recruits to feed the demands of the evolving job market.

“In the long-term New York City desperately needs to groom New Yorkers to be able to access these jobs,” Bowles said. “This is not just good for tech companies; this is also good for a lot of people in New York who would love to get into this high-paying and fast-growing field but don’t have the

skills right now.”

While the Great Recession pummeled traditional New York industries like finance and real estate, it also drove down rents, which in turn may have helped jumpstart the city’s tech market.

“A lot of the growth of the tech sector has happened in the last four years, coinciding with the time when there wasn’t a whole lot of other growth in New York’s economy,” Bowles said. “So a lot of tech start-ups were able to get fairly inexpensive rent in the Flatiron District, the Meat Packing District, in DUMBO—and a lot of those areas that had cheap rent are now full.”

Then there is the issue of broadband access: New York City poses particular problems due to aging infrastructure and haphazard density—labyrinthine tangles of wires and pipes that one wouldn’t find in a place like Austin, Texas, for instance—and it is home to only a few telecommunications giants with little incentive to provide higher speeds at lower prices.

“Our physical building infrastructure isn’t prepared for broadband,” said Andrew Rasiej, chairman of NY Tech Meetup, a member organization that advocates for the industry in New York City.

“You have factory buildings and office buildings throughout the city that do not have access to broadband even if it’s available in the street.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio and his legal counsel, Maya Wiley, have said they will use the city’s franchise agreements with cable companies like Verizon and Time Warner to leverage cheaper rates. But it appears the aim of this tactic will principally be to enable

more lower-income New Yorkers to connect, and it remains to be seen how much actual power the city will have when it comes down to carrying through with the plan.

While those companies do offer fairly inexpensive Internet packages— between $35 and $50 per month— the catch is in the speed: Verizon’s $39.99 “high speed” Internet-only deal offers download rates of 0.5 to 1 Mbps, which is okay for casual surfing but prohibitively slow for downloads of any real volume and completely unacceptable for a tech company in need of serious bandwidth. Time Warner’s $34.99 offer advertises speeds of “up to” 15 Mbps, meaning that at any given time the bandwidth could be lower. Internet speeds starting at 15 Mbps from Verizon cost $49.99 per month and services bundling Internet, television and phone run between $70 and $80 in New York City.

To put those prices in perspective, take Kansas City, Mo., where Google’s fiber network offers speeds of 1,000 mbps for $70 per month, or Chattanooga, Tenn., which has similar speed-for-price thanks to a communityowned municipal broadband network that is run as a utility.

“In Kansas City you have people that are basically buying regular, single family homes and turning them into data centers or co-working spaces,” Rasiej said. “Verizon and Time Warner are not going to give New York City Google-level gigabit fiber everywhere.”

New York City companies fortunate enough to occupy a building with broadband access can pay Verizon around $299.99 per month for

“The tech sector is growing so fast and they’re looking for people with a certain skill set …

The biggest issue is that the companies can’t hire fast enough.”

500 Mbps. But to be fair, in San Francisco, arguably the urban tech mecca of the United States, the major telecoms offer even slower speeds and at higher prices than in New York.

“For New York City to be the most wired city in the world, which is a stated policy goal of this current mayor, we need to have the highest speed at the lowest cost, hardwired or fiber service, and the fastest and lowest-cost wireless services available in the world,” Rasiej said. “If the City of New York could achieve that, not only would the world’s best engineers and entrepreneurs flock here but it would be guaranteed its place again as the greatest city in the world.”

Despite these obstacles, Rasiej is optimistic about the de Blasio administration’s grasp of the need to nurture the industry. Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen recently touted the findings of a report produced by NY Tech Meetup and sponsored by ABNY, Google and Citigroup, showing that New York City’s tech industry generated over $5.6 billion in tax revenues in 2013 and that 44 percent of the jobs do not require a bachelor’s degree.

De Blasio recently appointed a new commissioner to the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications: Anne Roest, previously an IT director at the state level. He has yet to name a new chief digital officer, but Crain’s recently reported that when he does, the administration plans to elevate the position to an office of its own—one close to the mayor’s ear and perhaps with its own budget.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg did a lot to promote the city’s budding tech industry. Raseij hopes the new administration will be able to play an even more concrete role in guiding its course.

“This is a transformational moment in the city’s economic history because we’re going from the industrial age to the information age,” Rasiej said.

“Mike Bloomberg set the stage, and now it’s time for Bill de Blasio to deliver on it.”

CITYANDSTATENY.COM

T E C H N O LO G Y A N D T E L E CO M M U N I C AT I O N S CITY & STATE — May 12, 2014

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CONTRACT KILLER

CAN NEW YORK’S PROCUREMENT POLICIES KEEP UP WITH THE CHANGING TIMES?

By WILDER FLEMING

N

ew York is in many ways a leader when it comes to the use of technology for innovation in government. The state’s Open Senate website was an early model for transparency in terms of making proposed legislation and committee schedules available to the public. The comptroller’s Open Book initiative takes advantage of the state’s integrated accounting system—a fiscal ledger that records most financial transactions across all state agencies— allowing the public to easily track payments made by the government.

And outgoing Health Commissioner Nirav Shah won the first annual Health Data Liberators Award last year for his efforts to make his department’s data easily accessible.

New York City is by many accounts even further ahead in terms of digital transparency than the state. It has its own public tracking system for city spending—Checkbook 2.0. It is known as the first major city to set up a phone bank for nonemergency public inquiries—311—and its Open Data Law—which requires all city departments and agencies make their internal records of operation centrally available in an easy-to-analyze format by the end of 2018—is widely considered a model for the nation.

Still, thought leaders in the technology realm say the cumbersome processes by which both the city and state governments go about procuring, implementing and maintaining technology initiatives fail to take advantage of the most innovative possible solutions and inevitably lead to wasted taxpayer dollars.

“New York is probably the poster child for hiring extremely large companies for just about everything,” said John Kaehny, executive director of the nonprofit think tank Reinvent Albany, who also helped write New York City’s Open Data Law. “Big names like IBM, CISCO, Oracle— they get a tremendous share of all IT contracts. The process for getting state contracts is very onerous, and the opportunity cost to your small business of not getting that contract is gigantic.

It’s not worthwhile for a lot of the more nimble digital start-ups in places like New York City.”

As with most government processes, New York’s procurement policies—at both the city and the state level—are from an era when technological innovation did not occur at the breakneck pace it does now.

And in the time it takes to write up a request for proposal (RFP), put it out for bid, pick a winner and negotiate a contract, the original spec for the project is no longer up-to-date and may not be the best option.

“The implication is that the state is not getting the cheapest and most innovative technology,” Kaehny said. “The state overpays a lot. And even though New York City has the reputation for being the hottest place right now for tech start-ups behind Silicon Valley, the fact is that city government takes very little advantage of all that tech innovation, and New York State even less so.”

Internal department policies are hindering progress as well, according to Andrew Rasiej, chair of NY Tech Meetup, which fosters New York City’s growing technology community.

For instance, the hiring qualifications for civil servants in the tech sector have not been upgraded in quite some time.

“Let’s say you work for the Parks Department and you want to build an iPhone app. You can’t go to the union and say ‘Give me an iOS developer, please,’” Rasiej said. “They will give you an engineer who maybe the last time they were trained on anything, it was MS-DOS.” “So instead of going internally to get civil service workers to do that job, the agency writes an RFP and tries to hire an outside firm to do the work, which is (A) inefficient, because of the procurement process, and (B) doesn’t create any innovation because the work is being done outside of the agency as opposed to inside,” Rasiej continued.

Most large IT development projects—both commercial and governmental—fail in some way,

according to Standish Group data published on Computerworld’s Healthcare IT blog. An analysis of 3,555 projects with estimated costs of over $10 million from 2003 to 2012 showed 52 percent of them to be “challenged”—they ran behind schedule, over budget or did not meet user expectations. Another 41.1 percent were utter failures—discarded for another option or abandoned completely. Only 6 or 7 percent of projects were categorized as a “success.”

The Bloomberg administration’s disastrous CityTime project—which, ironically, was meant to streamline New York City’s payroll process—is an obvious example of the problems that can arise: Before a trio of contractors was convicted of defrauding the city of tens of millions in taxpayer dollars, the project had already undergone a series of false starts with other vendors.

Even an outwardly successful project like New York City’s innovative 311 service has caused the city trouble.

“The technology that was adopted for 311 ended up being very difficult and expensive to maintain, and very difficult to improve upon and innovate around,” said Andrew Hoppin, founder and CEO of New Amsterdam Ideas, one of the few start-up companies that contracts regularly with New York City and state government. “So it isn’t just about initial procurements; it’s also about how to maintain software and how do you keep pace with the times.”

Rasiej believes the procurement process could be reformed to be less static: “The idea of buying a product once and having it continue to serve its purpose for some longer period of time is a somewhat obsolete model,” he said. “Could we move … [it] to something more like commissioning, where the service a provider is bidding on [is] an ongoing dynamic relationship with the government agency; where they are obligated to have their technology maintain parity with both the state-of-the-art and the changing dynamics of the service in need?”

Hoppin, formerly the chief information officer in the state Senate, was largely responsible for the design of the chamber’s website.

In addition to developing software programs for government use, his company compiles a growing library of open source software—programs that are unlicensed and free for any government, organization or person to download—and also offers maintenance services for those agencies and organizations that would rather not deal with the upkeep themselves.

Hoppin is an advocate for governments freely sharing software that is proven to work, as opposed to reinventing the wheel every time a service needs to be developed. Brazil, he points out, has an “open source first” policy, meaning government agencies must consider all existing available options before contracting to build anything new. Great Britain has saved a significant amount of money using open source software to run its government systems, Hoppin says. He speculates that in New York, a centralized database listing all tech projects the government wants to roll out would do wonders to coordinate needs across agencies and serve to head off waste and redundancy.

As for the problem of accountability, Hoppin thinks that ideally a distinction could be drawn between large and small projects: the procurement process could be streamlined in order to encourage small businesses to compete to win contracts of a more modest scale.

“The argument would be that we can afford to make it faster because the costs of failure are lower, as long as you are transparent about why it failed and something is learned from it,” Hoppin said. Still, he concedes that there is currently zero political tolerance in government or in most organizations for admitting the possibility of future failure: “Right now there’s no vested interest on the part of somebody inside government—unless they are an incredibly resolute and outside-ofthe-box thinker—to take on risks.”

CITYANDSTATENY.COM

THE STATE In the past year, the Cuomo administration poached two key members of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s tech team. Rachel Haot was named the state’s deputy secretary for technology and tasked with overseeing efforts to streamline services from a digital perspective and support public engagement.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo also tapped Andrew Nicklin to head up and expand the state’s open data website, Open New York. He is joined by Dr. James Hendler, an artificial intelligence researcher and one of the originators of the Semantic Web, and Dr. Theresa Pardo, director of the Center for Technology in Government at the University at Albany, who will serve as the state’s open data advisor and Open NY policy advisor, respectively. In the Legislature, George Maziarz chairs the committee on Energy and Telecommunications. Andrew Hevesi chairs the Committee on Oversight, Analysis and Investigation, which deals with issues related to open government.

THE CITY Mayor Bill de Blasio recently named Anne Roest, a veteran of state government, to be commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, bringing some shape to the administration’s muchawaited tech team. Several elected officials are already well-known for making technology a priority.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer has long advocated for webcasting all public hearings, including borough board meetings.

City Councilman James Vacca chairs the Committee on Technology.

Councilman Ben Kallos, a software developer, has advocated for using technology to streamline government in his role as chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations.

THE ADVOCATES New York is home to many influential tech entrepreneurs and CEOs. Among those who help bridge the gap between the tech community cityandstateny.com

THE ISSUES

both city and state comptrollers’ offices list the government’s monetary transactions on the websites Checkbook 2.0 and Open Book New York. Still, New York has plenty of room for improvement in the area of transparency. Many agencies have yet to comply with the mandate of making data available for download or have not utilized the latest technology to make it easier for citizens to access information.

THE TECH INDUSTRY Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a big effort to lure the tech industry to New York City— subsidizing office space for start-ups and setting aside 12 acres for a hightech Cornell campus on Roosevelt Island. At the state level, an increasing

number of nanotech companies are calling New York home, encouraged

by SUNY’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, and Gov. Cuomo is incentivizing new, tech-based companies to establish themselves at state universities with his Start-Up NY initiative, which enables them to operate on a tax-free basis for 10 years. A recent report by the state comptroller’s office found that high tech jobs are growing four times faster than the rest of New York City’s economy. The only downside is that current demand for qualified applicants is significantly outstripping the city’s ability to supply it. New York City’s slower Internet speeds and lack of affordable space are also major concerns for the growing industry.

BY THE NUMBERS: LIVING WITHOUT INTERNET • 3.5% of New Yorkers don’t have physical access to broadband • 3.5% of the state’s population comes out to roughly 700,000 people • About 245,000 of those 700,000 people live in New York City SOURCE: NEW YORK STATE BROADBAND OFFICE

BROADBAND ACCESS Mayor de Blasio has made high-speed Internet access a clear priority for his administration. His newly appointed legal counsel, Maya Wiley, has said she plans to use the power of her office to make telecommunications companies with existing franchise agreements with the city—such as Verizon and Time Warner Cable— offer cheaper Internet packages to lower-income residents. At the state level, Gov. Cuomo’s Broadband Program Office has established two task forces—one to map the availability of broadband across the state and another to explore ways to extend cable infrastructure to mostly rural areas where New Yorkers live without the option of accessing broadband in their homes.

OPEN DATA New York has been a trailblazer in the movement to make government data open and accessible to the public. Both New York City and state have open data laws compelling government agencies to post their massive troves of information online.

Outgoing state Health Department Commissioner Nirav Shah won the first annual Health Data Liberator award for his efforts to make his agency’s information public and

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THE PLAYERS

and the government is Andrew Rasiej, chairman of New York Tech Meetup, the city’s influential coalition of entrepreneurs and tech companies. John Kaehny, director of the think tank Reinvent Albany, also helped write New York City’s landmark Open Data Law. Andrew Hoppin, former chief information officer of the state Senate, now heads up New Amsterdam Ideas, a forprofit social venture that develops programs for government use, and also provides open source software for free. Noel Hidalgo is the cofounder and director of BetaNYC, a group focused on open government and civic engagement. Jonathan Bowles is executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit organization focusing on expanding economic opportunity for New Yorkers.

T E C H N O LO G Y A N D T E L E CO M M U N I C AT I O N S

THE SCORECARD

T E C H N O LO G Y A N D T E L E CO M M U N I C AT I O N S CITY & STATE — May 12, 2014

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THE ROUNDTABLE Technology and Telecommunications

the joint purchasing power of cities and municipalities all over the world. Cities would be empowered to customize their software, build upon one another’s work, and share advances. Expanding open data will make government more accountable and grow a burgeoning crop of new technology start-ups that generate income by making government information useful to New Yorkers.

JEFF MERRITT Senior advisor to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio

BEN KALLOS New York City Councilman Q: Mayor Bill de Blasio has prioritized making broadband affordable and accessible throughout New York City. What needs to be done in order to achieve this goal?

BK: Free or low-cost broadband for low-income families should be a part of the city’s cable franchise agreement, which I first advocated for when the agreement was up for negotiation in 2009. Comcast has done this nationwide outside of New York by offering free or low-cost computers and Internet to families who have a child eligible for free or reduced price school lunch[es]. New York City can build public/private partnerships with service providers like Verizon and Time Warner to ensure all families have the access they need. New York City has free Wi-Fi available in many parks and public spaces, which the City Council has made a budget priority, so we can be a fully connected 21st century city.

Q: What else is a top priority for you right now in the technology and telecommunications arena?

BK: Children of all genders and socioeconomic backgrounds should have equal access to a robust science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. My background in computing and software development opened doors for me, and all children deserve that same shot at the next generation of high quality, good-paying jobs. I am pleased that the City Council’s preliminary budget response calls on the city to save taxpayer dollars by using Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) to create a Civic Commons developed by harnessing

STEM education programs across the CUNY system, and better leverage the great training programs in the nonprofit and private sectors.

CHRIS COLLINS U.S Representative Q: The so-called digital divide has been singled out as one of the biggest barriers to success for people living in poverty. Where are we in the effort to address this problem?

CC: Unfortunately, the digital divide is still a significant problem in communities across my congressional district and in communities across the nation. In my district specifically, there are large rural areas that currently lack access to broadband, making life difficult for business owners, farmers, families, students and school districts. As chair of the House Small Business Subcommittee on Health and Technology, I recently held a hearing on this important topic.

Out of that hearing came the distinct realization that the current National Broadband Map paints an inaccurate portrait of national broadband access and hinders communities looking to apply for grant funding to help expand access. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration ( N T I A ) , w i t h i n the Department of Commerce, is responsible for administering the National Broadband Map. Congress must put pressure on the NTIA to do a better job of accurately assessing and documenting broadband access, or lack thereof, across the United States.

Q: Where do you think Mayor Bloomberg came up short, and what do you want to see the new administration do differently?

JM: New York City is home to one of the most dynamic tech and creative communities in the world, yet inside the halls of government, tech innovation continues to lag behind. City bureaucracy and procurement processes impede the development of new ideas, slow the pace of change and limit partnerships with up-and-coming tech firms.

To fully embrace technology across all city agencies, City Hall has to break from the mold and change the way it does business. That means placing a greater emphasis on local technology partnerships, expanding competition for city tech contracts, and creating an environment where new perspectives and outside-thebox thinking in government are rewarded, not feared.

Q: What else is a top priority for you in the technology arena?

JM: We need to ensure that a tech boom for New York is an employment opportunity for our young people and New Yorkers across all five boroughs. Every month, thousands of tech jobs go unfilled because local firms can’t find the talent they need. In a city with more than 340,000 unemployed adults, it’s an absurd reality. To address this gap, the city will need an all-hands-on-deck approach.

We have to dramatically scale up computer science education in our public schools, refocus workforce training programs to emphasize skills development, strengthen tech and

LINDA ROSENTHAL State Assemblywoman Q: One area of focus for you as chair of the New York State Assembly Commission on Science and Technology has been 3-D printing. What are the pros and cons of this new technology? What legislation have you introduced that deals with it?

LR: Three-dimensional printing has the ability to revolutionize the ways in which we manufacture and purchase all kinds of goods. It has already begun to lead to advances in the medical and scientific fields.

3-D printing uses computer-aided design information to build or print a physical object layer by layer, using ink made of plastic, metal or even organic material—such as human cells—among other things. 3-D printers are already being used to make prosthetic hands, replacement organs created from human stem cells and, unfortunately, guns.

Though this nascent technology is still relatively expensive, as its popularity grows it may soon be available for personal use in homes, schools and businesses. With potentially innumerable applications and the ability to print anything from replacement parts for broken appliances to shoes and handbags, fully commercialized 3-D printing could disrupt or economically disadvantage the more traditional means of sales and production. With this in mind, it is key that we as a state help to promote a growing industry in a responsible and balanced way.

CITYANDSTATENY.COM

Print. Mail. Win.

Smart Schools Bond Act passed in the 2014–15 executive budget, which will make available $2 billion in bond funding to enhance STEM education in the state’s public schools, New York is making huge strides in the right direction.

MARTIN GOLDEN State Senator Q: You have explored the economic development possibilities for the computer and videogame industry in New York. How important is this industry in the state? Is it

growing?

MG: The industry is larger in terms of sales than movies, music and DVDs, and it is growing faster than any of these, with a growth rate approaching 11 percent. The average job in the field pays over $90,000.

Nationally, game development is a huge industry—at nearly $21 billion in annual sales revenues for 2013.

In addition, we have in New York State a strong academic and industry infrastructure, with several schools ranked among the top in the country and two of the world’s leading companies: Take-Two in New York City and Vicarious Visions in the Albany area. We are doing good but not great. New York ranks fourth among states, with $269 million in revenues and 5,500 jobs. California leads with an economic contribution and employment nine times ours.

With the right incentives we can achieve rapid growth here. We can use our industry and academic situation to create critical mass on a statewide basis, with immediate development of high paying jobs, and help in community revitalization.

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T E C H N O LO G Y A N D T E L E CO M M U N I C AT I O N S

Q: The Bloomberg administration made headlines for recruiting tech programs to New York City, most notably the Cornell Tech campus to be built on Roosevelt Island.

Is enough being done at the high school and middle school level to

prepare New York students for these programs?

LR: New York has done a great job recruiting some of the most successful tech companies in the world to locate here—from a growing Google presence in lower Manhattan to the GlobalFoundries campus in Saratoga County, which is building its reputation as a tech giant and legitimate rival to Silicon Valley.

But we must also be an incubator for new talent—for the next generation of programmers, code writers and engineers. Much more needs to be done to ensure that New York’s young people are ready to compete for and succeed in the new jobs that these companies bring. Making STEM education—education in science, technology, engineering and math— available to all students, regardless of gender, race or socioeconomics, is the way forward. I am the sponsor of a bill—A.6417—that will allow school districts to compete for grants to develop new STEM programs and enhance current ones that encourage women, minorities and low-income students in grades 6 through 12 to enter the field. Along with the

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city & state — May 12, 2014

To that end, in September 2013 I hosted a roundtable discussion on 3-D printing with industry experts, academics and regulators to explore this question, and have been working to develop common sense policy recommendations.

Despite the possibilities, there is a dark side to 3-D printing. [It is] already being used to produce firearms and ammunition that are virtually undetectable by metal detectors. I have introduced legislation in New York— bill A.7671—that makes possession of a digitally printed firearm or magazine a class D felony. In my role as the chair of the Legislative Commission on Science and Technology, I will continue to work closely with the industry and other stakeholders to ensure that this technology is fully nurtured in the most responsible ways possible.

PERSPEC TIVES

7 QUESTIONS FOR AIRBNB

NICOLE GELINAS

A

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irbnb, the home-rental service, has helped its “hosts” roll out the welcome mat for more than 11 million “guests” in 192 countries. But Airbnb, its “guests” and its “hosts” are trying New Yorkers’ patience, just as guests begin to stink after three days. As Albany lawmakers address the challenges Airbnb poses to lawmaking and law enforcement, they shouldn’t get distracted by paeans to the “sharing economy.”

Here are seven questions that lawmakers should ask Airbnb: 1. A 2010 law confirmed that it is illegal for people to rent out their entire apartments for periods under 30 days. (People can rent out rooms

A COMMON SENSE BUDGET

CITY & STATE — May 12, 2014

JOHN A. DEFRANCISCO

T

he New York State Legislature recently completed passage of the fourth consecutive on-time state budget, a historic feat that hasn’t been accomplished in nearly four decades. This demonstrates that the State Senate is working together in bipartisan fashion with the Assembly and the governor to deliver real results on issues that are critically important to New Yorkers. These issues include providing more tax relief, job opportunities and a high quality education for every child.

A key priority for Senate

while they are present, although they often violate their buildings’ rules when they do so.) Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s investigators have determined that “the majority of [your] listings were for the ‘entire apartment’” and “for durations under 30 days.” Such rentals are almost certainly illegal. Will you turn over full records over the past three years so we can know for sure, one way or the other?

2. New York State and City designate some real estate as residential and some for hotel use. The state and city, in turn, often offer tax breaks to developers to build residential housing in furtherance of a public policy goal: to create more affordable places for people to live. Do you think that New York has the right to enforce its own zoning and occupancy laws even as you seek to change them? If so, why not cooperate with the attorney general’s attempt to gather information on lawbreaking? Do you think that local and state government have the right to control local and state zoning at all?

3. How many times in any given year do you think New York apartment dwellers should be able to rent out their homes to strangers for a few days, a week or a few weeks? Keep in mind that in a building of 70 apartments, allowing each family to convert their apartment into a hotel suite once a week for a year means that permanent residents of the buildings will almost always be subjected

to transient strangers in the common areas of their homes.

4. Nearly half of New York’s two million rental apartments are subject to state and city rent regulation laws.

Tenants in these apartments enjoy protection from free market forces.

Their landlords cannot raise the rent beyond an annual increase approved by political appointees. Nor can landlords refuse to renew tenants’ leases. In turn, tenants agree to certain conditions.

Tenants cannot sublet their apartments for a profit. Is it fair for rent regulated tenants to enjoy protection from the market on one side and yet benefit from the market on the other? Should New York State ask rent regulated tenants to sign a rider once a year acknowledging that they understand they could face eviction if they rent out their apartments for profit? These questions are especially salient, because both rent control and illegal hotel conversions reduce the supply of apartments for newer market rate tenants who don’t enjoy rent regulation.

5. Airbnb supporters often say that the company is using the free market to innovate and compete. But Brian Chesky, an Airbnb co-founder, told The New York Times’ Tom Friedman last year that “Hilton has around 600,000 rooms. We will get up to 200,000 people per night by peak this summer.” Does Airbnb consider itself

an old-fashioned hotel operator? If so, should it not comply with all of the rules, regulations and taxes that New York hotel entrepreneurs face?

6. Transient populations pose security challenges. People behave differently on vacation or on business travel than they do at home. They may make themselves more vulnerable to crime by carrying more cash and valuables, drinking more than usual and inviting new acquaintances to their rooms. Hotel companies spend money on security and other arrangements, including daily room checks, to protect guests from themselves and from other guests. Can Airbnb provide a similar level of security to guests, hosts and residents?

7. Insurance companies treat businesses differently from homeowners. A homeowner who runs a business from his home must report this use to his insurance company. Are Airbnb guests aware that in the event of a fire, crime or slip-and-fall, their ability to recover damages may be curtailed by a homeowner’s insurance company that determines it doesn’t have to pay out for business losses on a residential policy?

Republicans has been to provide meaningful property tax relief for hardworking families and senior citizens. In past years, we championed the 2 percent property tax cap and the STAR property tax relief program. The 2014–15 state budget builds upon our efforts in three important ways: new property tax relief, increased school aid and record funding for STAR. A new property tax relief program will encourage municipalities and school districts to operate more efficiently, and hold the line on tax increases. In return, homeowners in these communities will receive a new property tax rebate check in the mail. This important new program simplifies the governor’s original property tax freeze proposal, and it is expected to deliver $1.5 billion in direct property tax relief to millions of New York homeowners over the next three years.

The new state budget also includes a record commitment to improving the quality of education for our students.

State school aid will increase by more than $1.1 billion, bringing the state’s total investment in education to more than $21.6 billion. Not only is this fine news for students, parents and teachers, but it will also help to reduce

pressure on local property taxes.

With the record funding for the STAR property tax relief program included in the budget, middle class families will benefit from a total of $3.4 billion, including more than $900 million for enhanced STAR to help senior citizen homeowners.

More tax relief isn’t the only good news for seniors in the state budget.

We have significantly expanded the income eligibility for New York’s Elderly Pharmaceutical Insurance Coverage (EPIC) program, and included $4.1 million in added funding. These changes will provide prescription insurance coverage to an additional 25,000 senior citizens across New York State.

To help businesses succeed and grow, the budget also contains several important tax reductions and reforms that reflect public input generated during a series of tax reform hearings I co-chaired across the state last year.

These measures include reductions in energy taxes, the elimination of the corporate income tax on manufacturers, and important reforms to the estate tax, which will encourage the preservation of family farms and family-owned businesses.

Though New Yorkers are willing

to provide a helping hand to those in need, they do not like seeing their tax dollars wasted or abused. That’s why for two consecutive years Senate Republicans passed bills to crack down on the misuse of welfare Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards. This year the Assembly joined our efforts, and new rules will now prevent EBT cards from being used at such places as strip clubs, liquor stores, casinos and OTB parlors.

In order to protect taxpayers and keep New York moving in the right direction, the new state budget keeps spending growth below 2 percent, which is consistent with the local spending cap that applies to school districts and municipalities. This is a common-sense fiscally responsible budget that attacks the problem of high property taxes, lowers the tax burden on businesses and provides vital support for our struggling schools.

Going forward, we will continue our efforts to help reduce taxes, create new jobs and give all New Yorkers the opportunity to succeed.

Nicole Gelinas (@nicolegelinas) is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

Republican State Sen. John A. DeFrancisco is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

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Q. What’s your take on Louisiana Congressman Vance McAllister, who was caught on camera making out with his aide and announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election? Should he resign?

JEFF SMITH

Q. I don’t know if you’ll remember me, but I was a student of yours about a decade ago. Since then I worked in finance and attended law school. My impetus for going to law school was to pursue a career in politics.

For the next year I’m moving far away for a new legal job. Given your experiences with the ins and outs of both local and national politics, do you think I should immediately come home and jump into the political world, or look to establish myself in a new city?

—Name redacted A. When you say “pursue a career in politics,” I’m assuming you mean “run for office.” If that is the case, in nearly all cases I’m an advocate for running where you grew up. There are a few reasons why: (1) On the whole, people who meet you as a grown-up don’t care about you as much as people who knew you when you were in diapers.

(2) In your hometown you probably have connections you don’t even know you had.

(3) It’s likely, though not certain, that you feel more passion to serve your hometown than a city to which you are moving in early adulthood.

(4) By coming home to seek office you will avoid the perception that many carpet-baggers face: that your aspirations are more about you than the people you’re serving.

If your family is, or was, involved CITYANDSTATENY.COM

—N.R., St. Louis A. Should his wife smack him upside the head and, if circumstances warrant, leave him? Probably. Should his staffer’s husband organize a movement to remove him from office? Maybe.

Should he resign? Don’t be ridiculous.

I don’t even think it was wise of him to forgo re-election; he’ll probably never have another chance. If McAllister values his office and wants to continue serving he should go to the voters— despite his foibles—and ask for their support. It’s their decision to make, not the decision of Washington-based party leaders who will likely never set foot in his district.

As Matt Yglesias has noted, the key for incumbents to survive political scandal is simple: Don’t quit. Once a pol quits, comebacks are very difficult.

I co-authored an academic study of nearly two dozen scandal-scarred politicians who attempted comebacks, and fewer than half were successful.

McAllister’s home-state colleague U.S. Sen. David Vitter, the Christian conservative who was pilloried by the press in 2007 after being caught patronizing prostitutes, is a case study in sucking it up and hunkering down: he was easily re-elected in 2010, long after the initial media feeding frenzy subsided.

Calls for scandalized politicians to resign are almost always based on selfinterest—made by people who seek to replace the pol, by political enemies, or by party leaders who have another favored candidate. You’ll notice that Democrats aren’t among those calling for McAllister’s resignation; they’d like him around as long as possible in the hope of building a “culture of corruption”-style narrative aimed at House Republicans like the one they

Q. I’m a midlevel campaign operative trying to decide on my next race—and given where we are in the cycle, I have to decide quickly. I have four offers or nearoffers to manage the following: a county exec primary race in a relatively large county, an AG primary in a midsize state, a congressional race and a big Florida State Senate race. Which do you think I should choose?

—B.P., nomad A. Good question. There’s no right answer, but here are some questions you want to ask before making your decision: (1) What’s the candidate’s budget?

And related to budget, what’s the size of the electorate? Obviously, the bigger the better, in terms of your own career advancement.

(2) What are the candidate’s odds of winning? Remember to adjust for primaries, since you have two primaries and two generals. That is, if option No. 1 is a primary in a 62% Democratic county, but option No. 2 is a primary in a swing state with a relatively popular Republican governor seeking re-election, and both candidates have a 50–50 chance of winning their primary, then option No. 1 has about a 45 percent chance of becoming county executive, while option No. 2 has about a 25 percent chance of becoming AG.

It’s not always true that you should favor candidates with the highest odds of winning. For instance, it’s better to take a race with a 30 percent chance of victory than one with an 80 percent chance because there’s no upside in the latter—you’re like a World Series umpire whom people will only remember if he blows a big call. In the former race, conversely, it’s much easier to exceed expectations, whereas a loss is (mostly) discounted. That logic only goes so far, though. You wouldn’t want to manage a race with only a single digit chance of winning.

(3) How’s the candidates’ work ethic?

It doesn’t matter how great of an opportunity a candidate has to win if he lacks the fire in the belly or the discipline to raise money.

(4) Will the race help you develop your network and position you for bigger things? The quality of other staff members and consultants is important; you want to impress the right people.

You’d like the race where you either love the consultants or get to choose them. Getting hired the next cycle is largely about connections, so you may want to give an extra point to a nationally targeted race that gives you a chance to shine with people at one of the party committees in Washington (e.g., the DCCC). Thinking about your specific goal for the next cycle is also critical. For instance, if you hope to run an early-state presidential primary race, you might look for an Iowa or New Hampshire race.

(5) Is the candidate a good fit with you? You need to talk to each candidate to get a feel for your potential relationship, and it’s tough to quantify in advance of actually working with her. But if you’re going to be the manager, you don’t want to spend a year in the trenches with someone you dislike or someone you don’t respect, or—perhaps most critical—someone whose views aren’t aligned with your own. Campaign work can be brutal— 100-hours-a-week brutal near the end of a race—something that’s impossible to do without adrenaline. And it’s not easy to get your juices flowing for a candidate you don’t believe in.

Jeff Smith (@JeffSmithMO on Twitter) is a former Missouri state senator who resigned from office after a felony conviction and served a year in federal prison. Now an assistant professor of politics and advocacy at the New School, Jeff recently co-authored The Recovering Politician’s Twelve-Step Program to Survive Crisis.

PERSPEC TIVES

A political advice column

successfully deployed in 2006. They only regret that he won’t be seeking re-election.

That said, McAllister handled his situation horribly.

When facing scandal congressmen should immediately circle the wagons, get on the phone (or, even better, in person) and ask forgiveness from key House colleagues, state and district politicos, donors, and activists. Make people tell you to your face that they’re going to abandon you—few will have the guts to do that.

Instead, McAllister went dark for days. Then, in his first statement on the matter, he lashed out against the evildoers who had leaked the tape and called for a federal investigation to root them out. I suspect that law enforcement heeded this demand with approximately as much enthusiasm as they greeted O.J.’s calls to forage for the real killers.

In sum, McAllister could take some crisis management lessons from the NBA’s Adam Silver. Indeed, we all could.

33

CITY & STATE — May 12, 2014

DO AS I SAY

in politics in your hometown, that’s another point in favor of staying.

If, on the other hand, your father, like mine, used to scream at Little League umps and was often asked to “vacate the premises,” refused to let the subpar players play anywhere but right field, right fullback or right bench and ordered third graders not to swing in bases-loaded situations with the game on the line, then it may be wiser to start fresh in a new city.

POWER PLAY M

ike Richter is one of the most decorated goaltenders in the history of U.S. ice hockey. He won the Stanley Cup title in 1994 with the New York Rangers, a World Cup gold in 1996 and an Olympics silver medal in 2002, and he was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2008.

Since retiring, Richter has had a second act as an environmentalist: He is a founding partner at Environmental Capital Partners, a fund promoting resource efficiency, and he launched Healthy Planet Partners, which finances renewable energy projects and retrofits for commercial facilities. He also serves on the boards of environmental groups including Riverkeeper and the Adirondack Nature Conservancy. Richter spoke with City & State’s Jon Lentz about water quality, the state’s Green Bank and whether he still has time to play hockey.

CITY & STATE — May 12, 2014

34

City & State: How did you get interested in environmental issues?

Mike Richter: I think I’ve had it as long as I could remember. As a little kid I grew up in Philadelphia, and there was a creek that went through my town, and we played there all the time. At one point it was contaminated by dioxins from a photo plant nearby.

It just changes the nature of the entire town. You can’t fish, you probably shouldn’t be swimming, and it just becomes something to stay away from.

So it was a basic quality of life thing as a little kid. I think the environmental movement has done great things, but one thing that’s unfortunate is it seems to be removed from everyday lives— but it’s not. It’s the foundation of our economy. We can’t extract ourselves from it, and we’re always of it and in it. On a practical level, whether you consider yourself a tree hugger or not, you have every reason to make sure it’s functioning and healthy, and obviously it directly affects the health of human beings.

C&S: You’re involved with a number of environmental groups, including Riverkeeper, which focuses on keeping the Hudson River clean.

MR: Riverkeeper is a microcosm for a lot of what’s going on. There’s a lot more to it than saying, “We’re going to go get the bad guys and the polluters.”

The basic idea is there are rules on the

book that say we can’t pollute. It also is doing some amazing work in terms of getting its water stewardship program.

We can’t just go around and say, “This guy’s polluting, and this guy’s not.” The Hudson River is 300 miles long—and it seems like a single entity, but it’s attached to everything else and it’s a huge 600-squaremile watershed. So it’s a bit of a canary in the coal mine in terms of our land use and agricultural runoff from streams and sewer outflows.

All of those things affect the quality of the river, and it’s really improved a lot in the last 20 years.

In order for it to continue to do so, you’ve got to have a baseline.

They’re doing an unbelievable job with basic sites along the river to test for both biological and chemical contaminants to recognize where they come from and when and why they exist. The better the water, the better the quality of life and the better the property values. garbage in the water, but it doesn’t seem to be fair.

C&S: You’re also involved in the renewable energy industry.

What is your take on the state’s energy policy?

MR: New York’s energy policy is fascinating. New York is such an interesting, diverse state with a lot of population, some very rural areas

and, obviously, some very dense urban areas, and we all need energy. We all have our carbon footprint. We have to figure out what we’re going to do. We’re trying to lower the amount of coal we use, but what are we going to do? That’s the big question.

You have to replace it as well.

There’s been a lot of leadership and a lot of hope on renewables.

They’re not perfect, but we haven’t scratched the surface of deploying existing technology.

I’m not even talking about potential technology, like battery storage and other things that will end up replacing a lot of the dirty technology.

We have energy efficiency technology and, certainly, renewables like wind and solar.

We haven’t even scratched the surface.

When you start bumping up to “You can’t put one more solar panel on a building [but] we still need energy,” then you have a problem. We’re a long way off from that.

That’s what my company Healthy Planet Partners does. We finance the deployment of more efficient and cleaner energy sources for small commercial buildings.

C&S: One initiative at the state level that relates to your work is the New York Green Bank, which is aimed at improving financing for clean energy projects. Are you involved in that?

MR: I know [NYSERDA Chairman] Richard Kauffman pretty

A Q&A WITH MIKE

RICHTER

darn well, and he has been excellent, and the governor has shown really important leadership on this. We’re trying to figure, basically, how to move from one operating system to another, and it’s not going to happen overnight.

There are winners and there are losers.

Sometimes we forget that whole industries will be displaced. But that’s okay; that’s what capital is: that new— and hopefully better—replacements to what was there. And right now we have a huge need for new and better, and that Green Bank and the governor showing leadership is a huge way that a very important state in the union can lead the way to where we need to go. If you look at a lot of this on scale, it can happen. Some of the big, big projects happen. But the credit risk of some of the smaller buildings, for instance, in my world, where I retrofit these buildings, can be high. You have a really willing potential client, maybe an ice rink or a bowling alley or whatever commercial building, and there’s a concern that these guys might not be there in 5, 10, 20 years when you have a decade or longer power purchase agreement. The Green Bank can come in and help mitigate some of the risk financially that’s there. We are moving to a new platform to get the technology out there. The big hurdle is the upfront costs of renewable energy. Many people have been wrestling with this. If you go from county to county and state to state, there are different incentives, different permitting processes, so to get this to scale can be very difficult.

The need is there, the demand is there and the technology is there, so we have to get these things deployed with some kind of scale and rapidity that the environment needs.

C&S: Do you have time to play hockey any more?

MR: I still play in men’s leagues, and I go to the Adirondacks, where I went to high school, outside of Lake Placid. I have a great group of guys. If you boil this down, I’m trying to solve global warming so my pond freezes earlier and melts later. It’s a damn bit of fun playing outside. I’ve always been a fan, and I still am.

To read the entire text of this interview, including Richter’s thoughts on the Rangers’ chances this year, go to www.cityandstateny.com.

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