City & State New York 09052016

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CityAndStateNY.com

September 5, 2016

DREAMS DO COME TRUE PHOTO BY ANDRÉ N. BECKLES /CUNY

Orubba Almansouri City College of New York Salutatorian 2016 B.A., English and History

HER STORY Almansouri, in a graduation speech that moved Michelle Obama to invite her to a White House summit on women, told how she broke barriers that kept traditional Yemeni girls out of school.

AWARDS Winner, Mellon Mays Fellowship Winner, Colin Powell Fellowship

GOAL Master’s in Near Eastern Studies, then a Ph.D.

cuny.edu/welcome

CUNY★AMERICANDREAMMACHINE

THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK CITY COLLEGE OF NEW YORK-1847 HUNTER COLLEGE-1870 BROOKLYN COLLEGE-1930 QUEENS COLLEGE-1937 NEW YORK CITY COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY-1946 COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND-1956 BRONX COMMUNITY COLLEGE-1957 QUEENSBOROUGH COMMUNITY COLLEGE-1959 CUNY GRADUATE CENTER-1961 BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE-1963 KINGSBOROUGH COMMUNITY COLLEGE-1963 JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE-1964 YORK COLLEGE-1966 BARUCH COLLEGE-1968 LAGUARDIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE-1968 LEHMAN COLLEGE-1968 HOSTOS COMMUNITY COLLEGE-1970 MEDGAR EVERS COLLEGE-1970 CUNY SCHOOL OF LAW-1983 MACAULAY HONORS COLLEGE AT CUNY-2001 CUNY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM-2006 CUNY SCHOOL OF PROFESSIONAL STUDIES-2006 GUTTMAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE-2011 CUNY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND HEALTH POLICY-2016 CUNY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE-2016

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City & State New York

September 5, 2016

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EDITOR’S NOTE / Contents For kids all across New York, classes are about to begin. The first bell will be ringing on Tuesday in Albany and Buffalo, on Wednesday in Rochester and Syracuse, and on Thursday in New York City.

While students are wrapping up their vacations and heading back to school, we’ve been busy this summer putting together this Back to School special edition.

City & State’s Ashley Hupfl turned in an update on the state’s evolving Common Core standards, freelance reporter Frank G. Runyeon solved a complex word problem on charter school funding, and Editorial Director Michael Gareth Johnson wrote a report about a new investment in physical education instructors.

Of course, it’s not all academic – we also have a preview of the key state Senate primary matchups this month, an insightful analysis of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s political nonprofits and a revealing Q&A with former Mayor David Dinkins.

Ready to learn? Let’s get started.

Jon Lentz Senior Editor

12.

STATE SENATE Previewing the biggest Sept. 13 primary races.

6.

DAVID DINKINS Q&A The former mayor on Crown Heights, community policing and Rudy Giuliani.

15.

DE BLASIO’S NONPROFITS

Why New York City’s mayor counted on 501(c)(4)s.

18.

EDUCATION

Will New York’s Common Core revisions be a reboot or a rebrand?

30.

SLANT

The Empire Center’s Bill Hammond on a troubling Obamacare trend.

At-risk CHILDREN

need our attention

by Danny Donohue Every day, across New York state, thousands of children are at risk of abuse and neglect. Their situation is made worse because the people responsible for their protection - child protective services workers - are overwhelmed by caseloads that threaten the social safety net. Continuing economic challenges for working New Yorkers and an unprecedented heroin epidemic are contributing to the strain. In some places, caseloads can run up to nearly 70 active cases per month.

Last spring, both the Senate and the Assembly acted to address the needs of kids. Legislation capping caseloads and moving New York in the right direction was approved by both houses. It follows the conclusions of the OCFS report by capping active cases to 15 per month and requiring adequate staffing to ensure appropriate follow-up, investigation and site visits to assess the well-being of children in a variety of circumstances.

That is simply dangerous and nearly impossible to handle. But don’t take my word for it. That was the conclusion of a 2006 report by the state’s Office of Children and Family Services. It found that smaller caseloads have a direct benefit for children under supervision.

Now it’s up to Gov. Andrew Cuomo to sign it and give these kids a chance at a better life. It’s the right thing to do for the children and our communities. CSEA joins with many other responsible organizations and elected officials in urging the Governor to sign and set the standard.

These at-risk children deserve better than the attention they’re receiving under current circumstances.

Caseworkers know this and agonize over the working conditions that too often leave them only bad or worse choices. They have difficult work to do under the best of situations, but rarely have the luxury of that reality. They know that one bad decision can have horrific consequences. They also know there can be unacceptable outcomes through no fault of their own.

It’s the worst kind of stress.

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DA N N Y D O N O H U E , P R E S I D E N T

Danny Donohue is president of the nearly 300,000 member CSEA – New York’s Leading Union – representing workers doing every kind of job, in every part of New York.

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City & State New York

September 5, 2016

NATALIA BRIGGS/OFFICE OF GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO; JOHN HAEGER AND MICHAEL J. OKONIEWSKI/NYS FAIR

STATE FAIR SNAPSHOTS The Great New York State Fair, which came to a close on Monday, was kicked off last month by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who announced his $50 million revitalization plan for the Onondaga County fairgrounds.

Syracuse hosted the country’s first state fair back in 1841, and the event has been held each year for decades at the fairgrounds in Geddes, just outside the city. Here’s a snapshot of the sights that were on display.

Governor & PSC’s embrace of nuclear power should include Indian Point

BY THOMAS CAREY Recently, Governor Andrew Cuomo endorsed the merits of in-state nuclear energy when he presided over the announcement that Exelon Corp. would purchase the FitzPatrick nuclear power plant, in Scriba, N. Y., near Oswego.

This followed the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) approving changes to the State’s Clean Energy Standard just days earlier, embracing nuclear power plants and their critical zero-carbon contribution to our energy supply.

All of the upstate nuclear plants had been struggling financially and faced imminent closure. The PSC and the Governor, through his New York Clean Energy Standard, clearly support nuclear energy while the state seeks more renewables sources to avoid increased fossil fuel emitting greenhouse gases.

As part of the state’s Clean Energy Standard plan, the Governor has committed to cut New York’s carbon emissions by 40% by the year 2030. The FitzPatrick plant alone prevents 3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually – the equivalent to keeping over 600,000 cars off the road, according to the announcement by the governor’s office.

Governor Cuomo should be commended for taking action and finally spotlighting the importance of New York’s nuclear fleet. Next, he can go one step further.

This prioritized the continued operations of New York’s nuclear power fleet — including, R.E. Ginna in Ontario, NY (576 MW), Nine Mile Point in Oswego (1,900 MW), and FitzPatrick in Scriba (850 MW)—as a bridge to our energy future for at least the next dozen years.

I represent Plumbers and Steamfitters and many of our members also work at Indian Point. My grandfather and father helped construct it and my brother, sister and I have all worked there. We know for certain that it’s a very safe place to work and live within proximity to.

The governor said, “This state needs a clean energy policy that is realistic and that can be implemented before we destroy this planet, and I believe nuclear plays an important role in that clean energy policy.

I believe if FitzPatrick closed it would be a financial crisis.”

Like the three upstate plants, Indian Point, which employs more than 1,000 working men and women, provides crucial economic benefits to millions. It generates 25% of the power for New York City and Westchester and $1.6 billion in economic activity.

Businesses near the plant, such as hotels, hardware

stores and mom-and-pop shops, are able to thrive because local residents earn good wages, own homes, raise families and can spend their income in our community.

Indian Point has provided all of the building trades unions throughout Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess and Ulster counties with millions of man hours of good paying, safe jobs as well as the utility workers, staff and vendors that all play an important role in the safe secure, vital day to day operations of the plant.

Just as New York State has given its vote of confidence in the substantial benefits of Ginna, Nine Mile Point and FitzPatrick, it’s time to also embrace Indian Point. We all need the plant to continue providing a clean, affordable power source that promotes jobs and economic development for all of us.

About the Author: Thomas Carey is a business agent of Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 21, and Vice President of the Westchester and Putnam County Central Labor Council.

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CityAndStateNY.com

September 5, 2016

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, New York City Mayor David Dinkins’ administration was thrown into chaos when 7-year-old Gavin Cato, an AfricanAmerican from Crown Heights, was hit and killed by a vehicle driven by a member of the neighborhood’s Jewish community.

The subsequent killing of Australian divinity student Yankel Rosenbaum by a group of young African-American men plunged the neighborhood into the Crown Heights riots, which exposed the deep divisions between two of New York’s communities, and dogged Dinkins for the rest of his time in office.

On the Slant Podcast, Nick Powell and Gerson Borrero spoke with Dinkins at his office at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs about the legacy of the riots, Rudy Giuliani’s charged remarks in support of Donald Trump and the importance of healing the

‘See? I told y

City & State New York

September 5, 2016

rift between New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Nick Powell: With this being Charlie Rangel’s last year in Congress, the last member of the Gang of Four will soon be out of public office. As you look at the last five-plus decades, what is the defining legacy of the Gang of Four, of you and Charlie Rangel and Percy Sutton and Basil Patterson?

David Dinkins: Well much can be said about each of us, not so much about me, but the other three. Percy Sutton, who was our leader, always had vision. I mean in 1977, when he told me he was going to run for mayor, I said, What? No black man is going to be running for the mayor of the City of New York. But Percy thought he could and it was an interesting year, a whole lot of people ran, there was Mario Cuomo, Percy Sutton, Herman Badillo, Bella Abzug, Ed Koch, there were at least one or two others. And it resulted in a runoff between Koch and Cuomo, and there was always this tension between Manhattan and Harlem and Brooklyn, and so some of the guys in Brooklyn said they were going to support Mario Cuomo and so Sutton said to hell with them, we’ll support Koch. And Koch at the time was seen as a very liberal, progressive politician. He’d fought against the mob

in Greenwich Village, he was in the City Council and in the Congress a very liberal, progressive person, so it wasn’t very hard for us to do. So we supported Koch and he won and that was because of Percy Sutton really. As you know things changed later and so much so that in ’89 I ran against (Koch).

Gerson Borrero: You had a very poisonous relationship with Rudy Giuliani – he often attacked you very harshly both on and off the campaign trail. But when you see him today campaigning for Donald Trump, do you think his anger has gotten worse or was he always this bad?

DD: I saw him on television at the Republican Convention this year and he was ranting and raving, and I said, I’ve never seen him quite like that. And since then I’ve seen him on television a few times introducing Trump at various spots and I say to my friends, did you see Rudy on television? And when they say yeah, I say, see, I told you. He’s not a nice guy, let me leave it at that.

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him personally, my staff largely did. The last time I saw Trump was maybe a year, year and a half ago, and he said let’s get lunch, and I assumed it was a you-call-mypeople kind of thing, but we never did. I think some of the things he’s said during this campaign are absolutely outrageous and I think people in other parts of the world are concerned about what is going on in the United States, because not only is the country in trouble if he were to be elected, but the planet is in jeopardy. You could have a nuclear holocaust if he were to do some of the things he’s suggested he might do. I mean, damn, it’s frightening, it really is.

GB: I’ve got to bring to an unpleasant point in our city’s history, the Crown Heights riots, it was 25 years ago this month. I was asked about it recently, and what the lasting effects of it were, and to me I still just see an open wound. But from your perspective, what has changed and did anything purposeful come out of it? What are your personal feelings about it, and would you have handled it differently NP: And what is your impression of today?

DD: Let me first point out that the Donald Trump? I’m sure you kind of tragedy of Crown Heights is the deaths tangentially dealt with him as mayor? of Gavin Cato, a young black boy, and DD: I did, as mayor and as Manhattan borough president, but I didn’t deal with Yankel Rosenbaum, a divinity student from Australia who was set upon by a gang of young blacks …

Frequently when I read about it, it says that there were several days of rioting, culminating Listen to, subscribe and in the death of Yankel review this week’s podcast Rosenbaum, but by searching for “New York that’s not the way it Slant” on iTunes, Stitcher or happened, it happened your favorite podcast app. the way I described it. I was accused of holding back the police and permitting blacks to attack Jews – that was not true. It was particularly painful to me because I saw myself as a friend of the Jewish community and Israel, and I point to a few things that happened before. Percy Sutton and I formed a group called BASIC, Black Americans in Support of Israel Committee, when it wasn’t too popular to do. I stood alone at Madison Square Garden and denounced Minister (Louis) Farrakhan because he described the Jewish religion as a gutter religion, or some language like that. I did it by myself, no big press conference, just me. So Farrakhan said that I didn’t deserve to live. Now he didn’t mean that

you’

On 25th anniversary of the Crown Heights riots, David Dinkins reflects on community policing, Rudy Giuliani’s resurgence and how history has proven him right

CityAndStateNY.com

DAVID DINKINS SHOWS OFF HIS MEMORABILIA IN HIS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY OFFICE.

“

I SAY TO MY

FRIENDS, DID YOU SEE RUDY ON TELEVISION? AND WHEN THEY SAY YEAH, I SAY, SEE, I TOLD YOU.”

September 5, 2016

someone should go assassinate me, but some nut in the fourth row might have thought that’s what he meant. So Ed Koch insisted that I take police protection and I did have cops with me for several weeks. And I’ll remind you of something else. You may remember in 1985, Ronald Reagan went to Bitburg to honor the German war dead, he said. But there were SS troops buried there. So a lot of Jewish organizations were outraged and went to Bitburg and picketed against Ronald Reagan, “the Great Communicator.” I went instead with the American Jewish Congress to Munich and there were only three blacks in that group: Dick Gregory, the comedian, Bill Tatum, the publisher of the Amsterdam News, and I. And I spoke at the gravesite of the White Rose.

The White Rose were young German students, some of whom were summarily executed simply for handing out leaflets against the Nazis. So our position was that if you were going to honor some German war dead, these are the ones you ought to honor ... So I’m the same guy now and here’s Crown Heights, and you accuse me of holding back the cops and letting blacks attack the Jews?

There’s nothing worse than feeling that you’re being falsely accused. So that was painful, it was really painful, because that’s not what happened. But today things are much better in Crown Heights because of a few people ... like Ritchie Greene, who’s a marine I might add, who has formed a group called the Crown Heights Youth Collective. In fact they just had some sort of commemoration, some folks thought they shouldn’t, they said you shouldn’t celebrate this, others had a different attitude – but the point is that blacks and Jews are sitting down together. Because there was a lot of strife in those days before the incident that we’ve been talking about, because the city permitted a police vehicle to sit in front of the Hasidic headquarters on Eastern Parkway and blacks didn’t have anything like that. Today they tell me that there’s a car that sits in front of a black church not doing a damn thing, but just to demonstrate balance. So you know The New York Times does running obituaries on public figures … On me there’s one and I maintain the first sentence will read, “David Dinkins, first black mayor of the City of New York.” And the next graph will be Crown Heights.

NP: As I’m sure you’re aware Bill de Blasio has had his difficulties

PHOTOS BY ANDREW KIST

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City & State New York

September 5, 2016

negotiating with Gov. Andrew Cuomo on a number of important issues. That dynamic between mayor and governor in New York’s history has always been contentious, but there’s also been plenty of times where they’ve been able to work together. How did you navigate that relationship with Mario Cuomo?

DD: Well your observation is accurate that there’s always been tension between the mayor of New York and the governor of New York, that was true with Lindsay and Rockefeller. I use to call Mario Cuomo and he would have one of his people call Norman Steisel, my first deputy, and find out what I wanted before we would communicate. But we did get some things done, there was the New York-New York plan to help the homeless, we did a lot of things. And I might add, that had it not been for the Legislature, it was a battle I admit, but had it not been for the Legislature and the governor, we would not have gotten the right to put a surcharge on personal income tax which was how we funded the Safe Streets, Safe City program and produced thousands of cops and lots of other good stuff. So the governor was helpful most of the time, but as you point out there is always this tension, I don’t know why, because the City of New York is the hen that lays the golden egg and so the rest of the state should make sure we’re taken care of.

GB: So today you have a governor from Queens, born, raised and educated here, and now he’s in Albany and he’s acting like he wants to take down a mayor who may not be born here but who is trying to do a fair job. If you had these two in a room and you don’t have to worry about running for election ever again, what would you tell Andrew Cuomo and what would you tell Bill de Blasio?

DD: Well, I would tell them that they really need to find a way to bridge whatever differences they have because it’s important to the people of our city, and obviously the people of our city are also the people of the state, so the governor should care about that as well.

As you doubtlessly know, Bill de Blasio worked in our administration, he was a good right hand to Bill Lynch, who I owe much credit for the things we got done.

Bill Lynch died too young at 72 but he was amazing. So I think that it should be understood by the governor and the mayor that they really are on the same

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“

YOU KNOW THE

NEW YORK TIMES DOES RUNNING OBITUARIES ON PUBLIC FIGURES … ON ME THERE’S ONE AND I MAINTAIN THE FIRST SENTENCE WILL READ, ‘DAVID DINKINS, FIRST BLACK MAYOR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.’ AND THE NEXT GRAPH WILL BE CROWN HEIGHTS.” side. I don’t know that there are any particular political ambitions that either has and I don’t know the answer to that, whether they want to run for the same office, I don’t know that to be the case, but I would think that it would be in the interest of each to see to it that the city does well. That doesn’t mean they have to always agree, of course not. Who’s to say that de Blasio’s always right and the governor’s always wrong? I don’t say that. But they ought to find a way to bridge the differences they have because of our people, because of the youngsters we have. I mean we’ve got tons of little kids, and we owe them the right to achieve their potential, and it starts at the top with the governor and the mayor.

NP: I was reading an interview with your former Police Commissioner Lee Brown, and he was talking about community policing and how you started to introduce that idea under your administration and now it’s started to be reintroduced under Bill de Blasio and Bill Bratton, who is departing. I’m just curious to get your sense of that model, and do you think it’s something that needs

continuous investment?

DD: I do, I think it is vital. You see, the police need the community, and the community needs the police. The community needs the police for obvious reasons, protection and what not. But the police also need the community because a lot of crimes get solved because of input by the community. Lee Brown’s thought was that cops ought to get out of the car and walk the beat and get to know the community. I point to this a few years ago – the senior minister at Abyssinian Baptist Church, which is a famous church at 138th Street, where Adam Clayton Powell Sr. spoke and began his run for public office, Rev. Calvin Butts was on 138th Street and he was broached by two officers who stopped and asked him for his ID. The point is that they should have known him, how could you not know?

That’s maybe an extreme example, but that’s the kind of thing (community policing solves). It ought to be that the kids should say hi to the police officer.

When I was a little boy we were told if we get lost or have some difficulty we should go ask the police officers, and it’s sad we don’t have that now, because it’s a tough, difficult and dangerous job.

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September 5, 2016

FROM THE DESK OF DAVID DINKINS

A tour of the former mayor’s Columbia University office

“I sit here and I look at these pictures and I reminisce,” former New York City Mayor David Dinkins said, gesturing to the photos, degrees and memorabilia crowding the walls of his office at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. On the floor are more boxes, filled with pictures that will soon replace the framed degrees.

“I don’t need those,” he said.

– JEFF COLTIN

“One of my guest lecturers, George Daniels, who’s a federal judge, and who was my counsel, he came here and was speaking to the class and he read that statement. He said, ‘Who do you think said that?’ People guessing, Bratton, all kinds of names. He said, ‘No, it was the PBA president.’ He had that framed and gave it to me. There is an awareness by the leadership of the PBA that it is important that there be a relationship between the community and the police.”

“I’m a Dodger fan. As you leave, you’ll see a photograph of Jackie Robinson stealing home against Yogi Berra in the World Series. The ump called him safe, Yogi says he was out. But you hadn’t been to a ballgame till you’ve seen Jackie Robinson steal home from third. He would challenge the pitcher, then break for the plate and slide in under the throw.

Beautiful!”

“Harry (Belafonte) was the master of ceremonies at the inauguration. He and I were born the same year, except he was born in March and I’m in July. But I married him to his current wife, Pam. I’m a nuptialator!”

City & State New York

September 5, 2016

“In 1945 I was still in high school, going to graduate in May or June and turn 18 in July. Once you turn 18, you had to register for the draft, and once you registered, they put you wherever they wanted. The only way to get the branch of service you chose was to enlist. … The reason I wanted to be in the Marine Corps was I figured if you were well-trained you’d increase your chances of surviving. Because people you knew were dying. This was not like Vietnam. Everybody was going to war. The war ended while I was in boot camp. And the drill instructor came in and said, ‘Get down on your knees and thank God the war is over. Now get up, nothing’s changed.’ And nothing had changed, it was just as tough as it was before.”

“See this white fellow in the middle here? His name is David Goodman. He’s the brother of Andrew Goodman, who was Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, who were killed in Mississippi (during Freedom Summer, 1964). His mother, who’s gone now, she formed the Andrew Goodman Foundation, and I serve on that board with David. He’s a good guy.”

“Thanks to (Deputy Mayor) Bill Lynch, we got Nelson Mandela to come here. … Oh, what a man. He stayed at Gracie Mansion and I was concerned whether or not the bed in the small suite was sufficiently long, and it was. It wasn’t until two years later at the Democratic National Convention here in New York, I took Al Gore and Bill Clinton to meet Nelson Mandela, who had come back to town. There were a lot of photographs taken. I looked at the pictures later and realized that Bill Clinton was taller than Nelson Mandela. And the reason I thought the bed might not be long enough is in my mind he was 10 feet tall.”

“(During the Crown Heights riots) I was accused of holding back the police and permitting blacks to attack Jews. That was not true.

It was particularly painful to me because I saw myself as a friend of the Jewish community and Israel. And I point to a few things that happened before. Percy Sutton and I formed a group called BASIC, Black Americans in Support of Israel Committee, when it wasn’t too popular to do. I stood alone at Madison Square Garden and denounced Minister (Louis) Farrakhan because he described the Jewish religion as a gutter religion or some language like that. By myself, no big press conference, just me.”

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STATE SENATE

PRIMARY PREVIEW While the general election is still a few months away, a number of state Senate candidates are gearing up for tough tests in this month’s primaries. In some districts that are heavily Republican or Democratic, the Sept. 13 primary is the only contest that matters. In other districts, the primaries will simply narrow down the number of candidates for even tougher fights in November – when the state Senate could be up for grabs. Here’s a snapshot of some of the biggest races.

DISTRICT 10 (D)

Adrienne Adams

James Sanders

State Sen. James Sanders has represented this strongly Democratic Southeast Queens district for a long time, serving as a state senator since 2013 and representing much of the area in the City Council before that. But he seems to have angered the Queens political establishment when he filed paperwork this year for a primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks. Sanders eventually backed out, but his waffling opened a window for Queens Community Board 12 Chairwoman Adrienne Adams to mount a challenge – and pick up institutional support. She earned the endorsement of the Queens County Democrats and has received checks from U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Joe Crowley, who is also the county chairman, and from Meeks’ own campaign. Even Meeks’ wife, Simone-Marie, donated $100 to Adams. That has helped add to Adams’ impressive fundraising total of more than $102,000.

Sanders trails in fundraising, with nearly $75,000, including donations from unions like CWA, NYSNA and 32BJ. In February he was accused of seeking a kickback while allocating his discretionary funding as a City Councilman in 2012, but no charges have been brought.

DISTRICT 31 (D)

September 5, 2016

Marisol Alcántara

Robert Jackson

Micah Lasher

Luis Tejada

Given uptown Manhattan’s strong Democratic leanings, whoever clinches the four-way primary is all but guaranteed to coast through the general election. The district, which runs along the western side of the island from midtown to the tip of Inwood and up through Marble Hill, has long been represented in the by state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, who, as the Democratic nominee for Congress, is presumed to be bound for Washington, D.C. Espaillat endorsed Marisol Alcántara, a district leader in Harlem and organizer for the New York State Nurses Association. She’s also backed by the Bronx borough president, City Councilmen Ydanis Rodriguez and Ritchie Torres, and the Independent Democratic Conference, which has partnered with the Senate Republicans in Albany. Beyond the union she works for, she has received support from the New York State Hotel and Motel Trades Council and Transit Workers Union Local 100.

The city and state teachers unions and state AFL-CIO, however, have lined up behind former City Councilman and district leader Robert Jackson, who unsuccessfully challenged Espaillat in 2014. Jackson has also been endorsed by several Harlem officials, including outgoing U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel and former Mayor David Dinkins.

Micah Lasher, a former chief of staff to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and aide to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, has received support from his old bosses and many in their orbit. The Communications Workers of America and some groups representing the taxi and livery industry have also backed him.

Another unsuccessful contender in the 2014 primary, Luis Tejada, is giving it another go. Tejada founded the Mirabal Sisters Cultural and Community Center and describes himself as a community activist.

Lasher has knocked Alcántara for declining to say whether she would caucus with the IDC or the traditional Democratic caucus if elected, arguing she may empower Republicans.

Meanwhile, Alcántara, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, has suggested Lasher is an out-of-touch operative, saying she had never heard of him before. Lasher’s campaign haul of about $386,600 dwarfed his opponents’: Jackson reported about $101,700; Tejada, $4,100; and Alcántara, $1,300.

D

City & State New York

September 5, 2016

DISTRICT 33 (D)

Fernando Cabrera

DISTRICT 36 (D)

Gustavo Rivera

For those who watched the last state legislative primaries shake out, this year’s showdown between state Sen. Gustavo Rivera and City Councilman Fernando Cabrera may get a sense of déjà vu.

Cabrera, who also serves as the senior pastor at New Life Outreach International, claims Rivera is falling short in bringing state funding to the heavily Democratic central Bronx district. Rivera has pointed out that, unlike in the City Council, the state does not have a member item system lawmakers can use to direct funding to specific community projects or organizations.

Rivera, who is also running on the Working Families Party line, has described his opponent as a Republican in a Democrat’s clothing, pointing out that Cabrera has praised the Ugandan government’s anti-LGBT stances. The senator also questioned why the New Yorkers for Independent Action PAC, which is funded by GOP activists, is supporting Cabrera. The group’s backing comes down to Cabrera being a proponent of an educational tax credit that would benefit private or charter schools, the councilman said. The PAC has already reported spending nearly $256,000 on this and three other races. Cabrera reported raising about $261,500, well behind Rivera’s $610,400.

DISTRICT 40 (D)

Ali Boak

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Andrew Falk

In what has become one of the Hudson Valley battlegrounds in the state Senate in recent cycles, GOP state Sen. Terrence Murphy will face one of two Democrats: Andrew Falk or Ali Boak. Falk, a local lawyer who tried unsuccessfully to unseat Republican Assemblyman Steve Katz in 2012 and 2014, has been endorsed by the Working Families Party and CWA. Falk claims that support for him has grown with each campaign, but every Democratic Assembly member whose district overlaps with S.D. 40 has endorsed former Pound Ridge town board member Ali Boak. Boak also has around $50,000 in campaign funds on hand, while Falk has just under $5,000.

Both Democrats have emphasized the need for ethics reform and knocked Murphy for not immediately calling for former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos to step down following his arrest.

During the primary, they have focused on presenting themselves as the best candidate to beat Murphy, rather than attacking each other.

This is Murphy’s first re-election campaign after he won the seat in 2014 with about 55 percent of the vote, and Democrats have about 10,000 more voters in the district than Republicans, but City & State has designated the general election matchup “lean Republican.”

Jamaal Bailey

Que English

Pamela HamiltonJohnson

Edward Mulraine

Alvin Ponder This Democratic-majority district, which straddles the Bronx and Mount Vernon, was put up for grabs when longtime state Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson announced she would join the Cuomo administration and not run for re-election.

Jamaal Bailey, a Bronx district leader with close ties to Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, is considered to be the heavy favorite. Bailey, who still serves as Heastie’s community relations director, has received endorsements from NYSUT, 32BJ, 1199 SEIU and DC37, among others.

Revs. Edward Mulraine and Que English are also seeking the seat. English has touted her experience as an activist and advocate, while Mulraine served as Williamsbridge NAACP president and on the District 12 school board. Alvin Ponder is a doctor who serves on Bronx Community Board No. 10 and the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit Initiative, and his main issue is access to quality heath care.

Pamela Hamilton-Johnson, president of Community Education Council 11, is also seeking the seat.

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September August 15, 5, 2016

DISTRICT 54 (R)

Sean Hanna

Pamela Helming

Brian Manktelow

Floyd Rayburn

Jon Ritter

With state Sen. Michael Nozzolio bowing out after more than two decades, a slew of candidates are vying to replace the GOP lawmaker. While the Republican committees from the six counties within the district voted to nominate Canandaigua Supervisor Pamela Helming in May, four more candidates will be on the ballot for the September primary, a field that narrowed from 11. Among Helming’s GOP rivals are former Assemblyman Sean Hanna and Lyons Supervisor Brian Manktelow. While Helming actually trails most of her opponents in terms of cash on hand as of the last filings, much of the money flowing to other candidates is coming from their own bank accounts, whereas hers has been raised from individuals and a handful of political action organizations. With a voter enrollment advantage of more than 14,000 over the Democratic candidate, town of Rose Supervisor Kenan Baldridge, Helming has a good chance at holding the seat for the GOP – assuming she survives the primary.

DISTRICT 60 (D)

DISTRICT 60 (R)

Chris Jacobs Al Coppola

Amber Small

Amber Small, a political newcomer who currently runs a neighborhood community center, was passed over

by Erie County Democrats when they endorsed state Sen. Marc Panepinto for re-election, despite numerous rumors circling about the lawmaker. A few days later, he unexpectedly dropped out of the race, reopening the door for Small, who received the backing of the local party after efforts to court candidates with more name recognition – specifically Assemblyman Sean Ryan – fell flat. Now she’ll square off against Al Coppola, a longtime figure in Western New York politics who spent more than a decade as a Common Council member in Buffalo before serving a brief stint in the state Senate, an office he has unsuccessfully tried to regain several times.

Small, who has more than $55,000 on hand, is expected to get union backing, with several already pledging their support. Meanwhile, Coppola has put some money into his campaign account recently, bringing the total to more than $18,000 as of the last filing. Whoever ends up in the general election is likely to see a flood of money from state Democrats and other interests, as this seat could be pivotal to regaining control of the state Senate.

Kevin Stocker

With the backing of the Erie County GOP, Erie County Clerk Chris Jacobs is hoping he can hold off Kevin Stocker, an attorney who has run for the seat several times. While Jacobs has many advantages – name recognition, party support, well-funded donors – Stocker shouldn’t be taken lightly, as he knocked out then-state Sen. Mark Grisanti in the 2014 GOP primary. Grisanti remained on the ballot on the Independence Party line, splitting the vote with Stocker and allowing Democrat Marc Panepinto to win with just over a third of the vote.

Still, Stocker, who is running on a platform of corruption reform, will have an uphill battle as he will be fighting the party machine and taking on a far less controversial candidate in Jacobs. In his last filing, Stocker had $7,800 on hand – meanwhile, Jacobs has more than $477,000 at his disposal. But beyond the considerable donations that are sure to come, as scion of the Jacobs family, owners of Delaware North Companies, the massive food services company, Jacobs can throw his personal wealth – he has already loaned the campaign $200,000 and shifted $100,000 from his County Clerk campaign account – and connections behind his efforts.

City & State New York

September 5, 2016

15

MICHAEL APPLETON/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE

Mayor 501(c)(4) De Blasio’s reliance on nonprofit advocacy groups for his signature initiatives has landed him in hot water. So why did he do it?

By SARINA TRANGLE LAST FALL, community board after community board voted against two zoning frameworks that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio envisioned underpinning his ambitious affordable housing agenda. As the negative headlines accrued, several unions close to the mayor backed the proposals and announced they’d support a new nonprofit advocacy group set up to promote the zoning proposals called United for Affordable NYC Inc. Four days later, on Feb. 12, the lobbying and consulting firm Metropolitan Public Strategies inked a consulting agreement with United for Affordable NYC. For $20,000, Metropolitan would advise the nonprofit and engage in “grassroots lobbying,” according to the document, including asking the public to contact elected officials. Metropolitan reported in disclosure documents that its efforts targeted City Council members, borough presidents, the public advocate and the city Planning Commission chairman. The Council overwhelmingly passed both zoning proposals on March 22.

But a number of current and former City Council members said they were unsure whether United for Affordable NYC contributed much to the proposals’ passage. Some even said they were not certain why de Blasio felt the need to turn to United for Affordable NYC in the first place: If he sought to start a press campaign to persuade New Yorkers to adopt his point of view, his efforts overlooked the media attention the mayor commands by virtue of being the top official in New York City and the central staff and city agencies prepared to trumpet his agenda. If it was a bid to win over city lawmakers, the officials said it was a circuitous route of negotiating with a

AFTER PASSING SIGNATURE ZONING TEMPLATES, NEW YORK CITY MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO CELEBRATES AT AN AFFORDABLE HOUSING RALLY.

crew de Blasio has a good relationship with, quick access to and budgetary leverage over.

The de Blasio administration, however, insists the mayor’s approach was needed to break from other administrations’ years of insufficient resources, attention and solutions for the growing affordable housing crisis.

“Rather than do as every mayor has done and contribute to the intractability of the problem, this mayor chose a different route.

Because this mayor had the guts to change the approach, we won a very tough vote and we’re well into implementing the most significant affordable housing plan in city history,” de Blasio’s press secretary Eric Phillips said via email. “The depth of the affordable housing problem is evidence that nobody before us approached it in the right way. If it was an easy problem to solve with traditional resources and strategies, the affordable housing crisis we’re in wouldn’t be a crisis at all. The need for the non-traditional organizing around a government solution is a result of the historic intractability of the problem we are facing.”

Outside of the mayor’s wing at City Hall, some elected officials and consultants said de Blasio may be reflexively drawn to these nonprofit advocacy groups because of his background as a political operative, where building consensus and then trotting out this support is paramount. The mayor’s allies have

launched similar groups to trumpet other trademark de Blasio initiatives. Some of his 2013 campaign staff launched the Campaign for One New York to promote his push to get state funding for universal pre-kindergarten.

This group then helped create The Progressive Agenda Committee, which endeavored to provide a platform for de Blasio and allies to advocate for federal policies that address income inequality. Now, all three groups are inactive or in the process of disbanding.

“Mike Bloomberg was a businessman at heart; Rudy Giuliani was a prosecutor at heart – and sometimes those skill sets really enhanced their mayoralty, and other times they got in the way of their being better mayors.

This is an example of Mayor de Blasio, who is at his heart a political operative,” said City Councilman Rory Lancman, one of several city lawmakers who have said they want to pass legislation regulating what elected officials can do with nonprofit advocacy groups.

United for Affordable NYC stands out because it was designed to push the mayor’s policy on a city level, where de Blasio already has influence by virtue of his position. Lobbyists and political strategists not affiliated with the mayor said they didn’t see the need for United for Affordable NYC, but believed it showed the mayor lacked confidence in the traditional governing negotiation process, was simply

16

CityAndStateNY.com

accustomed to thinking like an operative or sought a way to raise money outside the limits imposed by the city’s campaign finance system. But another public relations professional, who has not worked for the mayor and who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about flouting client confidentiality clauses, said the nonprofit seemed like a wise defensive cover in case an opposition group launched a well-funded counter-campaign.

Following the zoning vote, no Council member or their staff said they could recall United for Affordable NYC appealing to them. The nonprofit reported that most of the $372,500 it raised was spent on television ads, digital media buys and related design, production and printing costs.

The mayor’s struggles to coax community boards to his point of view, some officials say, reflected shortcomings in his zoning plan.

Assemblyman Charles Barron, who represents a part of East New York where one of the new zoning frameworks is slated to be implemented first, said he believed the measure passed, despite opposition, because the mayor won over the local Council member – the Council has a tradition of deferring to local council members on land-use and other decisions specific to the community. “(City planning officials) have access to do mailings, to do town hall meetings, to meet with everybody, to do robocalls, to put out slick material – why do you need a 501(c)(4)?” said Barron, referring to a nonprofit class that can engage in a significant amount of lobbying, but where donations are not tax-deductible. “Unless they have a bad plan and they’re desperate – and they feel that the plan wasn’t working.”

Similarly, former City Council member Sal Albanese said during his years at City Hall former Mayors Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani and David Dinkins got what they wanted from the Council because they had huge leverage over lawmakers. “(De Blasio’s) actually got more clout over this City Council than prior mayors because he actually was a major player in electing the speaker,” Albanese said. “You don’t have to go out and take private money from people that you’re going to be indebted to – and that’s why you’ve got seven investigations going on right now.”

BY NO MEANS are such advocacy nonprofits unprecedented. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has an organization promoting his agenda, which investigators are reportedly examining for pay-to-play favors.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg worked with the Campaign for New York’s Future, which promoted a Bloomberg-backed congestion pricing plan intended to reduce traffic that ultimately failed in Albany. He also col-

September 5, 2016

“MIKE BLOOMBERG WAS A BUSINESSMAN AT HEART; RUDY GIULIANI WAS A PROSECUTOR AT HEART … THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF MAYOR DE BLASIO, WHO IS AT HIS HEART A POLITICAL OPERATIVE.” — RORY LANCMAN, City Councilman

laborated with Education Reform Now, which was staffed by some of his former campaign and government staff and which ran ads opposing teacher tenure rules as Bloomberg was asking the state government to change them.

Most of these groups, however, promoted policies that required signoff at the state or federal level; the borough president or mayor could not directly approve them.

Still, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whom de Blasio worked for when Cuomo ran the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has used two nonprofit advocacy groups to advance state issues. The Committee to Save New York primarily promoted his economic development agenda through television ads.

At the time, the group’s leaders argued the organization was needed to combat the spending of special interest groups in Albany. More recently, The Mario Cuomo Campaign for Economic Justice advocated for Cuomo’s plan to raise the minimum wage. Unlike groups promoting de Blasio’s policies, the Committee to Save New York did not always disclose its donors. And while some say de Blasio was able to use advocacy nonprofits to circumvent spending limits tied to a public campaign finance system, Cuomo as a state representative cannot opt into such a system.

Sid Davidoff, a lobbyist who has raised money for de Blasio, said nonprofit advocacy groups are a part of political life now that the internet has ushered in additional channels for consuming news, diminishing the power of the mayor or his counterparts to use the traditional press corp to communicate with New Yorkers. As for the zoning proposal push, Davidoff said the group was likely trying to win over constituents in every corner of the city because the Council is “a creature of local politics and local opinions.” “In this case, where you have a (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure), where every community board gets involved … all expressing their

opinions, local press carrying those opinions, it becomes a much larger PR problem,” Davidoff said. “That’s why the mayor felt it necessary to have his message done in this way.”

DESPITE THEIR GROWING conventionality, these nonprofit advocacy groups have a history of controversy. State and federal investigators have reportedly been probing whether contributors to de Blasio’s nonprofit advocacy groups received preferential treatment at City Hall. The feds are also reportedly examining whether contribution limits were intentionally flouted when de Blasio and his allies raised money with the goal of delivering the state Senate to Democrats in 2014.

De Blasio has repeatedly said he and his team behaved legally and appropriately. Nobody working on his campaign or in his inner circle has been charged with a crime.

Legality aside, these nonprofit advocacy groups have raised concerns that de Blasio’s strategy is weakening the city’s campaign finance system by giving lobbyists and firms who do business with the city a way to support him that doesn’t limit how much de Blasio can spend – or who he can coordinate expenditures with. Good government groups have also expressed unease that some involved with the 501(c)(4) organizations also interact with the mayor in their role as lobbyists or strategists for private clients.

Indeed, United for Affordable NYC’s board and contractors are far from strangers at City Hall. Metropolitan Public Strategies has a retainer to push the New York Hotel and Motel Trade Council’s agenda with the city. Two of United for Affordable NYC’s three board members have ties to organizations with city contracts: Carlo Scissura works as CEO and president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce; and James Freedland, who left Metropolitan Public Strategies shortly before the nonprofit launched, worked at Metropolitan

City & State New York

September 5, 2016

when it had a contract with the Mayor’s Fund to Advance NYC, a nonprofit that has coordinated the city’s public-private collaborations for more than two decades.

Metropolitan Public Strategies declined to discuss its work with the nonprofit on the record, except to say there was no overlap between Freedland’s tenure at the nonprofit and Metropolitan and to describe how the nonprofit spent the $372,500 it raised.

The city has provided varying explanations for how Metropolitan’s contract with the Mayor’s Fund was awarded. City & State began asking the Mayor’s Fund in April about Metropolitan winning a $122,000 contract to work with the Mayor’s Office of Immigration Affairs from February 2015 to April 2016 on building a coalition with American cities that shared the de Blasio administration’s vision for immigration reform. The city’s Transparency Project Search tool noted that Metropolitan’s contract was awarded by a method described as “determined by legal mandate.”

This procurement method refers to contracts that must be given to a specific firm or awarded via a particular process under a law or court ruling, according to the comptroller’s office.

This is a rare occurrence. Annual comptrol-

ler reports show no contracts were classified as being signed because of a legal mandate in fiscal year 2015; four were in fiscal year 2014.

This spring, a Mayor’s Fund representative said it and the private donor who funded the initiative, The Open Society Foundation, hired Metropolitan to do strategic planning and communications using a process that followed the organization’s procurement guidelines. In August, a city spokesperson said the “determined by legal mandate” description was an error, and that the agreement came about through a sole source basis.

This is a non-competitive contracting process used when officials determine there is only one company that can provide the required goods or services. In this instance, a City Hall spokesperson said Metropolitan’s history of working with various leaders, its commitment to immigration reform and its experience doing strategic communications and building a communications infrastructure in traditional, online and social media uniquely positioned Metropolitan to help launch the Cities for Action coalition.

ALL THIS INTERPLAY poses a conflict of interest, according to John Kaehny, the ex-

Home Six years before the Statue of Liberty was dedicated, Deloitte opened an office in New York.

Today, more than 5,400 professionals work for the organization in six offices throughout the state, including its global headquarters in Manhattan.

www.deloitte.com

17

ecutive director of the government watchdog group Reinvent Albany.

“You have a nonprofit controlled by the mayor to advance the mayor’s agenda and it includes board members who are lobbyists, who are promoting the interests of clients, who have paid them. I mean, either they’re lying to their client and they can’t do anything to help them, or they’re trying to help their clients, who are trying to get something from the city, right?” Kaehny said. “It’s all based on a lot of legal fiction and wink-winknudge-nudge.”

And some critics say that such conflicts may be unavoidable when a mayor relies on advocacy nonprofits to promote his agenda.

“You’re (de Blasio) lobbying other elected officials who are sophisticated and understand the political process,” Lancman said.

“You already have at your disposal, again, the biggest bully pulpit in New York City and the greatest ability of anyone or any collection of anyone to get your message out and to persuade the public to support your proposals.

(De Blasio’s use of nonprofit advocacy groups is) really unprecedented and completely unnecessary. And it distorts the legitimate governmental process.”

■

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September 5, 2016

Ohhhh … back back to school!

It’s that time again. For many in politics and government, the end of the summer signals the beginning of election season. But for others, especially the thousands of teachers, administrators and other academic staffers all across the state, the change in the weather means it’s time to get back into the classroom.

Of course, some of them haven’t had much of a vacation. New York’s review of its controversial Common Core standards geared up this summer, keeping state and local officials busy and giving extra homework to dozens of parents and teachers who served on review committees assessing the standards.

The Common Core isn’t going to change overnight, either, which means a lot more long study sessions to look forward to in the months ahead.

In City & State’s special Back to School issue, we explore how much those standards might actually change, dig into state funding for charter schools, and offer some tips on how to keep your kids healthy at school.

So grab your packed lunch, tie your boots up tight, and catch that school bus!

City & State New York

September 5, 2016

k to school, l!

CONTENTS

26

20 ARE NEW YORK’S COMMON CORE REVISIONS A REBOOT OR A REBRAND?

By ASHLEY HUPFL

NYRR AND THE NYC DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION ON KEEPING KIDS IN SHAPE

By MICHAEL GARETH JOHNSON

28 SOLVING A CHARTER SCHOOL FUNDING MYSTERY

By FRANK G. RUNYEON

19

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September 5, 2016

BACK TO SCHOOL

Back to the drawing board The state Education Department is trying to learn from past mistakes as it fixes the state’s Common Core standards. Will it be a total reboot or merely a rebranding?

By ASHLEY HUPFL

City & State New York

September 5, 2016

IN 2014, Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced a general election challenge from Republican Rob Astorino. The governor was popular in the state’s urban centers, while Astorino – who ultimately won a majority of upstate counties – focused on expanding his base in suburban areas. At the time, anger over the state’s flawed and rushed implementation of the Common Core standards was reaching a boiling point. About 20 percent of students in grades 3-8 during the 2014-15 school year opted out of the state tests, which were tied to the standards, with even higher opt-out rates in more affluent school districts in the suburbs. Seeking to capitalize on the growing anger, Astorino created the “Stop Common Core” party and ballot line.

Cuomo also faced a revolt by New York State United Teachers, the statewide teachers union, in response to his push for a tougher teacher evaluation system tied to students’ performance on the state tests. NYSUT pointedly declined to endorse Cuomo in the 2014 gubernatorial race. Although Cuomo was re-elected by a comfortable margin, the union’s pressure, along with the rising outcry from parents and students protesting against the Common Core standards, ultimately led to a rare reversal from the governor.

In September 2015, just weeks after the news that the number of students skipping the state’s standardized tests had quadrupled to more than 200,000, Cuomo called for a “total reboot” of the underlying standards.

The governor set up a 15-person “Common Core Task Force” to review the standards, and it came back with recommended changes by December.

“The Common Core was supposed to ensure all our children had the education they needed to be college and career-ready – but it actually caused confusion and anxiety,” Cuomo acknowledged when the task force’s final report was released. “Today, we will begin to transform our system into one that empowers parents, teachers and local districts and ensures high standards for all students.”

The state is now making its revisions, following the lead of a few states that have made changes to the Common Core and joining nearly a dozen states actively reviewing the standards. The jury is still out on whether the New York’s new standards will be an improvement, though a number of education experts predict that the state will end up with something very similar to the original Common Core – albeit with a new name.

WHILE NO ONE knows at this point what the standards will look like, similar efforts in several states to review and rebrand the Common Core standards resulted in few real changes.

“We saw that Indiana and South Carolina had gone through this whole process, renamed their standards, but the comparisons that were made between the traditional Common Core learning standards and those that were eventually approved differed very little,” said Tim Kremer, the executive director of the New York State School Boards Association.

A report issued this summer by Kremer’s organization documented the backlash in Indiana by critics who felt the

state’s new standards were too similar to the Common Core. In South Carolina, independent experts found that the state’s revisions “reflect no substantive changes in overall expectations.”

Patte Barth, director of the National School Boards Association’s Center for Public Education, predicts that new education standards being developed in states like New York won’t differ that much from the Common Core, either. “People were upset with Common Core because it happened without much, if any, public discussion,” she told NYSSBA. “People did not feel they had buy-in with the process.

With a public review of the standards, states are now having that discussion. Even if standards remain substantially the same, stakeholders will at least know they had a role in them.”

The idea of “rebranding” the Common Core in New York was floated last September by former state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, but some education experts interviewed by City & State argued that the overhaul will do little to change people’s opinions.

“I definitely think it’s a rebranding and a desire to outsmart the opt-out movement by saying it’s not the Common Core any more in the same way that the (teacher evaluation) tests were changed slightly to also present a kinder, gentler picture of state accountability,” said David Bloomfield, an education professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. “The danger is the slight difference it will make in public attitudes will be offset by the confusion it (CONTINUED ON PAGE 24)

Sachem (Suffolk County)

Opting out

71%

Thousands of New York students are continuing to opt out of state exams tied to the Common Core, even as officials are taking steps to revamp the standards.

Last year, 1 in 5 students in the state skipped the tests. In 2016,

22 percent

50 New Rochelle

Buffalo

New York City (traditional) New York City (charters)

Source: New York State Education Department

16%

70

Brentwood (Suffolk County)

the opt-out rate ticked up slightly to (or 21 percent, by a slightly different tally counting only those who “refused” to take the tests). Here’s the official exam refusal rates in some of the bigger school districts across the state in 2016.

2.4%

21

Rochester Yonkers

6%

33%

30

Albany

Syracuse

8%

10

ELA

MATH

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September 5, 2016

WOULD Whenever a government program, agency or piece of legislation starts to get too stale or too complicated – or even worse, too controversial – one strategy is to sweeten thing up by giving it a new name. One notable example is the upcoming rebranding of the Common Core standards in New York. But it’s by no means the first political renaming – and undoubtedly it won’t be the last, either.

—JON LENTZ

ACORN → New York Communities for Change

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME SMELL AS SWEET?

Sh ake speare aside, ink so. po h t o litician seem t s Atlantic Yards → Pacific Park

Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards development, a project spearheaded by the Empire State Development Corporation and Forest City Ratner, was criticized for its delays, lack of transparency and use of eminent domain. Developers changed its name in 2014 to Pacific Park, purportedly to mark a new phase in the project.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, shut down in 2010 after a scandal in which staffers were secretly recorded giving advice to two conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute. However, the group was later reborn as New York Communities for Change, a laborbacked nonprofit close to Mayor Bill de Blasio.

City Hall and The Capitol → City & State Political publications can change their names, too. In fact, City & State was formed through the merger of City Hall and The Capitol, a fairly easy transition since the same staff produced both titles. Similarly, Politico New York recently became the new name of Capital New York, which if nothing else fully eliminated the confusion over Capital and The Capitol.

Planned Parenthood Association of Hidalgo County → Access Esperanza Clinics Inc. In 2014, a health care network in Texas cut ties with Planned Parenthood, the nonprofit reproductive health care provider, and relaunched as Access Esperanza Clinics.

Republicans have battled Planned Parenthood over abortion, and in Texas the clinics made the move to retain state funding. Some say Planned Parenthood should change its name, too, to reflect a broader focus on women’s health.

Common Core → Indiana College and Career Ready Standards Indiana was one of the first states to drop the Common Core and replace it with its own educational standards, which were dubbed the Indiana College and Career Ready Standards. However, some experts said there was little change beyond the new name.

City & State New York

September 5, 2016

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act → Obamacare President Barack Obama’s landmark health care legislation is perhaps his most significant domestic policy accomplishment, so it’s not surprising that the term “Obamacare” caught on. However, Republicans have used it to try to link the president to an initiative that remains controversial – and the administration has reverted to using the original “Affordable Care Act” phrasing.

Dormitory Authority of the State of New York → DASNY

Acronyms occasionally transition into regular words, such as “laser” (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) and “scuba” (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus). Similarly, the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York in recent years has emphasized its abbreviated form, DASNY. Other examples in this vein include CUNY, SUNY, NYPA, LIPA, JCOPE and NYSERDA.

General Accounting Office → Government Accountability Office The General Accounting Office was created in 1921 and tasked with providing reports on the spending of public funds. In 2004, lawmakers decided that the Government Accountability Office would be more apt, given that the congressional watchdog’s scope extends beyond financial matters. The best part? It can still be called the GAO.

Federal National Mortgage Association → Fannie Mae

Deficit Reduction Assessment → Gap Elimination Adjustment

23

When New York was facing a fiscal crisis in 2009, state lawmakers passed a budget that included a Deficit Reduction Assessment, a steep reduction in school aid that was partly offset by federal stimulus funds. In subsequent years it was renamed the Gap Elimination Adjustment, and it continued to slash education funding up until this year’s budget.

The Federal National Mortgage Association, created in 1938, was shortened to FNMA, which sounded enough like Fannie Mae for it to stick. Similarly, Fannie Mae spinoff Ginnie Mae is the Government National Mortgage Association, or GNMA. The name Freddie Mac, less intuitively, is derived from the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, or FHLMC. All three have dropped their acronyms while wholly adopting their human-like monikers.

Warren Wilhelm Jr. → Bill de Blasio New York City’s mayor was born Warren Wilhelm Jr., changed his name to Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm after college, and finally settled on Bill de Blasio, which he officially adopted just before he was elected to the New York City Council in 2001. De Blasio suggested that the change was due to a troubled relationship with his father, and not for political reasons.

Stop Common Core Party → Reform Party

Education Investment Tax Credit → Parental Choice in Education Act Last year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo tried to re-brand a stalled bill that would offer tax credits for private and public schools, euphemistically calling it the Parental Choice in Education Act. The name didn’t catch on – lawmakers, advocates and the media all stuck with the old name, the Education Investment Tax Credit – and the bill is still stuck in Albany.

Health and Hospitals Corporation → Health + Hospitals The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, a large but financially struggling public health care system, announced a rebrand as NYC Health + Hospitals last fall. The new name, which drops the term “corporation,” was described as a reflection of a shift away from a hospitalcentric approach. No word from Health + Hospitals on whether that “+” is pronounced “plus” or “and.”

In his long-shot bid against Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino created the Stop Common Core Party to capitalize on growing discontent with the controversial education standards. After losing the race, he re-named it the Reform Party in order to broaden the appeal – although the move could make enemies among the state’s other political parties, too.

Government Printing Office → Government Publishing Office In another change that was decades in the making, the Government Printing Office in 2014 was re-branded as the Government Publishing Office. Established in 1860, the GPO had expanded beyond print into digital recordkeeping, and lawmakers updated its name accordingly.

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adds to among the educators who have to do the actual teaching.”

Lisa Rudley, one of the founding members of opt-out group NYS Allies for Public Education, said that rebranding the standards wouldn’t trick critics. “I think it will just aggravate everybody and by the time everybody expels all their energy again and demands a process that’s fully vetted, (they’ll give up),” she said. “It seems like a delay tactic and then people burn out and it just stays.”

Some members on the state’s Common Core review committees have told Rudley that they are frustrated by the process, she said. “They’re feeling that it’s a very controlled environment and it’s not accepting to get more changes than people would like,” Rudley said. “The organizers of all the committees seem to be almost predetermined on what they’re going

Resetting the standards March-July 2016: Standards Review Committees meet July-October 2016: Public comment October/November 2016: Final standards revisions November/December 2016: Consideration by the Board of Regents January 2017: Curriculum revisions begin statewide Summer 2017: Professional and resource development begins September 2017: Initial implementation of new/revised standards 2018-19 school year: First year of revised assessments 2019-20 school year: No consequences for school staff related to assessments until this year

Source: New York State Education Department, February 2016

September 5, 2016

to change and what they’re not going to change.”

Rudley also criticized the relatively short period of time the committees have to meet to review the standards. The standards review committees began meeting in March and finished their work in July. “We can safely say that the Common Core was not vetted by New York educators prior (to its implementation). So, why not give them the time and the process to do a real good look at it?” Rudley asked. “I would go as far as to say that the process is predetermined.”

OTHERS IN THE education arena are more optimistic about the process, saying they have seen a drastic shift in the state Education Department’s engagement with stakeholders this time around. Kremer, the executive director of the New York State School Boards, said that while other states have made only minimal changes, he believes that New York is going through a “pretty thorough process” of review.

In the fall of 2015, the state Education Department received 10,500 responses to an online survey of the current standards.

Following the survey, 138 parents and teachers were selected to join the English Language Arts and Mathematics Standards Review Committees, which began meeting this past spring. The stated purpose of these committees was to review each standard at every grade level to recommend possible revisions and additions to the standards.

Suraj Gopal, a New York City special education teacher who sat on the committee revising the math standards, said he was excited about the upcoming changes. “We basically went through all the standards with a fine-tooth comb and looked for language that was vague and looked for poorly sequenced standards,” Gopal said during a City & State panel discussion last month.

The committee review process was completed in July, and will be followed by a public comment period. The final standards will be revised in October and November, according to an Education Department timeline, and the state Board of Regents will consider them around the end of the year. The initial implementation of the new standards will begin in time for the start of classes in September 2017, with revised tests being implement in the 2018-19 school year.

Jeanne Beattie, a spokeswoman for the state Education Department, said the agency’s goal is to have updated draft standards that reflect the feedback it has received from teachers, administrators, parents, business leaders, higher education

representatives and other stakeholders.

“While it’s much too early to say precisely what the revised standards will look like, as the committee’s work is not yet finished, it’s fair to say that there will be changes,” Beattie said. “Even with these changes one thing is certain – the standards continue to be rigorous and to challenge our students to do more.”

MaryEllen Elia, the state education commissioner, said there would be “many discussions with the Regents” regarding the revisions and input from the public.

“At some point, probably in December or January, we will, as the Regents group, be voting on whether or not to move forward on those suggested standards,” Elia said at City & State’s recent On Education conference.

“When you change standards, of course, the assessments ultimately have to be changed.

They won’t change in a year. They’ll take time. And we will have committees of practitioners from New York state, teachers and others, working with us to change our standards.”

State Sen. Carl Marcellino, the chairman of the state Senate Education Committee, said he was confident in the state Board of Regent’s ability to review and finalize the standards, adding that it is best to let them handle that responsibility.

“We try to let the Board of Regents do their job,” Marcellino said. “We try to avoid getting into the political sphere where the Legislature would start passing bills to include this, include that. Then it becomes a political monster, and frankly I don’t think that would be productive for anybody.”

IN 2009, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included $4.35 billion for his federal Race to the Top initiative. If states agreed to certain education policy requirements, such as implementing higher standards intended to make students more college- and career-ready and instituting annual professional performance reviews for teachers and principals, they could receive a share of the money.

New York adopted the Common Core standards in 2010 and implementation began in the 2011-12 school year. Almost immediately, parents and educators raised concerns about the rushed implementation that was done while seeking little to no input from stakeholders.

Marcellino said the lure of federal money ultimately drove the state to quickly adopt the standards. New York received about $700 million in Race to the Top funding.

“Just about everybody had problems

City & State New York

September 5, 2016

State-by-state standards States that adopted the Common Core:

46

States that never adopted Common Core:

4

States reviewing Common Core:

12

Former Common Core states implementing other standards:

5

STATES THAT DROPPED COMMON CORE AND ADOPTED OTHER STANDARDS: Indiana: In 2014, Indiana became the first state to drop the Common Core standards.

However, some experts said that the new Indiana College and Career Readiness Standards were not that different.

Oklahoma: The state reinstated its old education standards in 2014 and spent two years developing its new Oklahoma Academic Standards, which were approved in March. Some experts noted that they include significant differences, including extending them to kindergarten.

South Carolina: In 2014, South Carolina became the second state to drop the Common Core. Its revised South Carolina Collegeand Career-Ready Standards, adopted last year, were found to have few substantive changes.

with the way the Common Core was rolled out. It was done in a haphazard way. It was done too quick. The lure of money was there, which I had asked our people not to take,” Marcellino said. “I said it was too much and it took control away from the states and put it in the hands of the federal government and I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Both former state Education Commissioner John King and Tisch, who oversaw the implementation of Common Core, have since left their positions, and the state’s education system is now under new leadership. King, who went on to become the U.S. secretary of education, was replaced by Elia, while Betty Rosa, an outspoken critic

Missouri: The state in April approved its new Missouri Learning Standards, which put more emphasis on cursive handwriting and language arts research, among other changes.

Tennessee: In April, the state adopted the Tennessee Academic Standards, which used the Common Core as a starting point.

Sources: National Conference of State Legislatures, New York State School Boards Association, media reports

of the Common Core, is now the Board of Regents chancellor.

“The whole issue is, people, when I came a year ago, were at a high fever pitch. They were very stressed,” Elia said. “I think it was important for the work I did initially, which was to get around the state, talk to people, hear what they felt were really needed changes and then, with the Regents, supporting that.”

NOT EVERYONE AGREES that New York’s Common Core review process has a predetermined outcome. Kyle Belokopitsky, the executive director of the New York State PTA, said she’s hopeful the agency has

25

learned from its past mistakes.

“The jury’s still out until we see what happens, but I do know there’s a lot of people engaged in this process,” she said. “They’ve been meeting regularly to review the standards. I actually just spoke yesterday to some of the parents that were on a standards review committee and they were hopeful. I can’t imagine SED would be going through this whole process if they were just going to ignore everyone’s input.”

Bob Lowry, the deputy director for advocacy research and communications for the state Council of School Superintendents, also touted the state’s process.

“We do not know what will come out of the process the Education Department is following and whether we would support the changes that emerge. But the process is a good one,” he said in a statement. “The process you would need to follow is roughly the same and would probably resemble what SED is doing – e.g., survey educators and others about what is good or bad about the current standards, convene committees to develop actual revisions, and circulate a draft to the public for reaction.”

NYSUT Vice President Catalina Fortino said the work the state Education Department is doing to engage stakeholders is heartening, but said the union will be specifically looking for the agency to continue to seek out teacher input after the review process is finished.

“Now comes the really crucial part of this process, which is for SED to design a feedback mechanism to the field. One that would engage teachers, one that would be teacher-friendly and one that would really capture the working knowledge of the teachers on the standards,” Fortino said.

“That’s going to be key because what we don’t have to have is decisions made by a few, we want to have standards shaped by what’s working in the field.”

Marcellino believes that the state has an opportunity to set a new tone for the education system, but ultimately it can’t appease all critics. Kremer agreed, and argued the state shouldn’t try to win any popularity contests.

“There will be people who will always feel as if these standards are not age-appropriate and they may believe that whatever revisions are done, even after a very extensive process that engages a lot of stakeholders, it’s still not right. We’re always going to have people who are not satisfied that the standards we put forth are the right ones,” Kremer said. “But I would hope people would say there has been sufficient time to get our head around these things and there’s been a lot of stakeholder input around this process.”

■

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CityAndStateNY.com

September 5, 2016

BACK TO SCHOOL

More than just dodgeball

City teams up with nonprofits

to reinvent gym class

By MICHAEL GARETH JOHNSON

Listen and subscribe to the podcast by searching for “City & State” on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app.

LINDSEY HARR, NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION OFFICE OF SCHOOL WELLNESS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

RACHEL PRATT, NEW YORK ROAD RUNNERS SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF YOUTH AND COMMUNITY SERVICES

IT’S AN EXCITING time for Lindsey Harr. During a recent taping of the City & State Presents podcast, the executive director of the New York City Department of Education’s Office of School Wellness didn’t hide her enthusiasm as she talked about the new investment from the city to hire 500 physical education teachers over the next three years.

“The mayor and Chancellor (Carmen Fariña) have made a real commitment into equity and excellence and to ensuring that all students are getting the kind of outstanding physical education that will enable them to be successful in and out of school,” she said.

The investment is in line with the mayor’s campaign promises to bridge the equality gap in the city. But Harr says the decision to invest more money and energy into wellness education comes after years of study, including a pilot program called PE Works that was tested in eight school districts last year.

“There has been a lot of foundational work down over the last several years in this area,” Harr said. “And with our work on the pilot we were able to test out some models and some approaches that we think will be effective in working with all schools.”

Harr says the PE Works program will now be implemented in all schools, starting with with needs assessments and the

development of action plans. The goal is not just to make sure that children are active and make intelligent decisions about their health. It is also to teach them about how they can access city programs to reach these goals, a skill they can use for the rest of their lives.

To accomplish this, the DOE works actively with nonprofits who have similar goals, like the New York Road Runners. Rachel Pratt, the senior vice president of youth and community services at NYRR, says working with the DOE is a natural fit.

“I think we both have our own goals and visions for what we are doing, and they just sync up so nicely. We keep in contact with each other. We also move ahead knowing that we are on track.”

NYRR has several programs in New York City schools, including the Mighty Milers, Young Runners and Run for the Future.

They have been partnering with the DOE for more than a decade. Harr says the partnership works because the nonprofit approaches the schools with an open mind. “(NYRR)’s commitment to schools is a core part of their mission. They have always been focused on what the needs are in the schools and what the department’s priorities and visions are,” Harr said.

After receiving direction from the DOE,

NYRR works directly with the schools to find teachers or principals who will champion their programs. NYRR’s programs are free of cost, but they need support in the schools. The organization’s goal is to sign up more than 700 schools this year, with a focus on districts where the need is greatest, but they are not solely focused on providing programs in the schools.

“We also bring kids to events,” Pratt said.

“So kids who have never been to Times Square are suddenly running a race in Times Square during the New York City Half (Marathon), or they are running in Central Park, or they are going to a park in the Bronx. They are seeing that there is this whole community of other kids who are also running. And for some, it’s the first time they have done that – been surrounded by the idea of team and people with common interests.”

Harr noted that this ability to provide opportunities for students to apply and practice what they are learning in schools once they leave the classroom is paramount when looking for nonprofit partners like NYRR. “Having partners like NYRR who are a community resource, who are working inside the schools, who are providing complementary programs and services, that is modeling what we want to see in our communities,” Harr said.

■

RUNNING A SCHOOL IS NOT JUST ANOTHER JOB

provides the foundation for learning. We take the littlest people and help to mold them into caring and educated human beings.

YESSENIA ROSARIO EARLY CHILDHOOD DIRECTOR

Nicholas Cardell Center Washington Heights, Manhattan As Director of the Nicholas Cardell Center in Washington Heights, Ms. Rosario emphasizes instruction in both English and Spanish, reflecting the bilingual homes in which her students live. Her holistic approach to educating two and four year olds recognizes that every child is different. “Other professions come with a script,” she said. “Ours comes from the students’ ability or inability to learn.”

COUNCIL OF SCHOOL SUPERVISORS AND ADMINISTRATORS LOCAL 1: AMERICAN FEDERATION OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS, AFL-CIO.

CSA_CS082616_FP.indd 1

9/1/16 1:32 PM

The The 28

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September 5, 2016

BACK TO SCHOOL

charter charter charter school school

funding my s t funding mystery e ry unding mystery

By FRANK RUNYEON for NEW YORK NONPROFIT MEDIA

In 2011, the state Education Department received a $113 million federal grant to create 400 charter schools by 2016. But at the last bell this past school year, just 256 charter schools served the state.

What happened to that money?

A representative for the state Education Department explained that about 73 percent of the money has been spent so far to fund 112 new charter schools and $30 million remains in the grant fund. The department was given a one-year extension through July 2017.

The vast majority of charter schools in New York are set up as 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, funded largely through tax dollars, that operate free of many regulations imposed on other public schools, in order to allow them flexibility to try new teaching techniques.

Asked about the shortfall, David Frank, executive director of the New York State Education Department’s Charter School Office, said, “the goal was never 400. The goal in the grant was 150 schools under the grant period.”

Still, the first sentence of the NYSED charter school grant application summary reads: “The New York State Charter Schools Program (CSP) Project 2011-2016 seeks to double the number of high-quality charter schools (to almost 400 charter schools) that serve students in New York State.”

There were 171 charter schools operating in New York in spring 2011, the year the state received the federal grant. To date, New York has just 256 charters operating, with 270 likely to be ready to serve students in the fall. An additional 20 are approved, but will remain in the planning stage, according to estimates from Northeast Charter Schools Network and education officials.

Frank said that 50 additional New York charter schools received separate funding directly from the federal government through a grant program for charter networks. With all of that taken into account, he said, the picture looks very different.

“If you include the 112 to the 50 network schools, actually, we're above our benchmark of 150,” Frank said. “So, I would say the grant has been a resounding success.”

The department had succeeded in maintaining high-quality schools, strengthening the grant administrative infrastructure, pro-

r er

y

City & State New York

September 5, 2016

moting dissemination of charter school best practices to other public schools and improving outcomes from New York charter schools, he said. Moreover, given the department’s extension, he said, it is too early to judge what the grant accomplished.

“We are not about quantity,” Frank said.

“We want high-quality schools.”

In interviews, education specialists, charter school lobbyists and public school interest groups showed sympathy for NYSED and characterized it as a department overwhelmed with its responsibilities.

Rick Timbs, executive director of the Statewide School Finance Consortium, which represents 433 New York public school districts serving “average and low-wealth communities,” said underfunding and staffing cuts had taken a toll on the state Education Department.

“I think they’re doing their best with what they have,” Timbs said. “We don’t want to diminish our expectations, but at the same time we’ve got to make sure they have the resources to do a good job.”

Lobbyists also noted that certain key government players in the charter approval process have slowed the growth of charter schools in New York.

Andrea Rogers, New York state director of the Northeast Charter Schools Network, said the Education Department was headed in the right direction with the appointment of David Frank, but there had been issues in the past.

“There has been a little bit of a chilling ef-

“STUDENTS IN (CHARTER) SCHOOLS DESERVE EQUAL SUPPORT AS WHAT STUDENTS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOL ACROSS THE STREET GETS. SO, IT'S DEFINITELY AN EQUITY ISSUE.” — ANDREA ROGERS, state director of the Northeast Charter Schools Network

fect in terms of how the Board of Regents has approached authorizing more recently,” she said.

During one round of charter applications in 2015, all 15 applicants were rejected.

“I think (applicants) were looking at that saying, ‘Oh. Huh. A little bit surprising that not a single school was high-quality enough to have gotten a charter,’” Rogers said.

“I’m hopeful that a lot of schools see it differently now and want to put their applications back in front of the board,” she added.

But the broader question of “where the money went” encompasses not just the cost to open new charter schools, but also the cost to run all the state's schools.

Considering New York spends an average of $2,000 more per pupil than the next-highest-spending state, the Empire State is not getting much bang for its buck, said David Friedfel, director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission.

“New York state spends by far the most in the country,” Friedfel said. Part of the reason is the high cost of New York real estate, and other costs of maintaining schools in one of the most expensive parts of the country.

“However, we also have very powerful unions and we spend a lot on teacher salaries and fringe benefits. Personnel costs are the largest costs in education and New York pays comparatively more than other places,” he said.

To allocate education dollars, the state employs a byzantine spending formula – ostensibly to send more money to low-income districts that don’t collect as much local tax revenue and less money to richer areas where the local tax revenue is more robust. But in order to avoid stripping the richest areas of their funding, Albany’s legislative architects put in some guardrails.

The result is that the poorest school districts do receive more money than wealthier districts, but not as much as they otherwise would if those formulaic guardrails weren’t

29

in place – and perhaps not as much as they really need.

And Friedfel said the formula is “built with so many caveats that money is going where it doesn't necessarily need to go.”

In other words, because wealthier districts receive more funding than they really need, more money must be spent overall to aid poorer school districts due to the distribution formula.

And in every district the money is split among all public schools, including the largely nonprofit charter schools and the handful of for-profits that have been in operation since before 2010, when the state banned any new for-profit charters.

“We always remind everyone that charters are public schools. They are a different design and a different delivery mechanism, but it’s public school education and public school students being served,” said Rogers, the charter school advocate.

Rogers argues that charter schools have been shortchanged in terms of how they are reimbursed, leaving some of them struggling to operate.

“We feel very strongly that students in (charter) schools deserve equal support as what students in the neighborhood school across the street gets. So, it's definitely an equity issue,” Rogers said.

Charter schools’ unique status as nonprofits does, however, allow them to raise money privately – a fact the teachers’ union has called the “elephant in the room” when it comes to funding equity between schools.

Timbs, who represents poorer school districts, further argues that charters’ freedom from many collective bargaining agreements, auditing requirements and other regulations represents a savings to charter schools.

“They’re operating without a lot of costs that we have,” Timbs said. “Those differences, all these things we’re talking about, they kind of add up – and certainly the advantage goes to the charter.”

The question ultimately comes down to how to best spend the state’s education budget, Timbs said, noting that he was neither pro- nor anti-charter. But, he said, if charters are providing a superior learning environment, public schools should become more like them. If not, he asked, why pay for two parallel educational systems?

“Probably,” Timbs said, “because politically it works – even if it doesn’t work any other way.”

■

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NYSlant.com

September 5, 2016

A fresh perspective on opinions/ Edited by Nick Powell

A FATAL FLAW IN NEW YORK’S HEALTH INSURANCE MARKETPLACE

“THE

By BILL HAMMOND

PROGRAM

IS

DIVERTING

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE OUT OF THE MARKET FOR DIRECTPAY PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE, WHICH THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SUPPORTING AND EXPANDING.”

he latest Affordable Care Act enrollment figures for New York reveal a troubling trend: Free and nearly free government-funded programs are crowding out private-sector plans in the state’s health insurance marketplace.

The state’s health care exchange, known as the New York State of Health, reported this month that its overall enrollment for 2016 rose to a new high of 2.8 million, inching the state closer to the worthy goal of universal coverage.

But only 272,000 of those people bought private insurance, the lowest number in the exchange’s three-year history, down 34 percent from 2015.

That’s by far the largest such decline of any state in a year that saw nationwide enrollment in private ACA plans grow by 8.5 percent.

The explanation is simple: This is the year

that the Cuomo administration launched the state’s Essential Plan, offering government-sponsored health coverage at little or no cost to people making up to twice the federal poverty level ($23,760 for an individual, $48,600 for a family of four).

Under an optional provision of President Obama’s health reform law – which only New York and Minnesota have chosen to exercise – the federal government pays most of the cost.

Even with minimal publicity, the program attracted 380,000 New Yorkers in its first year – and no wonder. For one thing, people who qualify for the Essential Plan are no longer eligible for tax credits under the Affordable Care Act to offset the cost of private coverage. For them, as a practical matter, it’s the Essential Plan or nothing.

Second, with premiums of either $20 or $0 a month, minimal copayments and no

September 5, 2016

annual deductible, the state is practically giving insurance away. As pointed out in a marketing video evidently aimed at young, urban types, the monthly cost of comprehensive coverage is comparable to the price of a “sweet fedora,” a bejeweled smartphone case, or a used ukulele.

So the Essential Plan is an undeniable bargain for those who get it, but it has less desirable side effects for the state as a whole.

To begin with, the program is diverting hundreds of thousands of people out of the market for direct-pay private health insurance, which the Affordable Care Act was supposed to be supporting and expanding.

Without a healthy, functioning direct-pay market, the law cannot work as intended.

And New York’s market needs all of the paying customers it can get, to spread risk across the largest possible pool and generate stable revenue.

So far, New York State of Health has been struggling to find those customers.

Consider how the New York exchange’s performance compares to that of Florida, a state of similar size. While New York sold 272,000 private Affordable Care Act policies, Florida sold 1.7 million. The New York State of Health exchange is reaching just 22 percent of the target population for private ACA plans, the second-lowest rate in the country, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

New York also has the second-highest in-

City & State New York

surance premiums in the country, undoubtedly contributing to the low enrollment numbers. As it happens, the Essential Plan could well make that worse.

The exchange’s enrollment report shows that Essential Plan members skew younger, which usually means healthier: 42 percent of its enrollees are older than 45, compared with 51 percent for those buying private coverage through the exchange. Both insurance company executives and independent analysts have predicted that removing this cohort from the private market will push up premiums for those left behind.

The danger is that higher costs will push other younger, healthier people to give up coverage, leaving behind the sicker customers who especially need insurance, setting up a vicious cycle of rising costs and shrinking enrollment. This pattern, known as a “death spiral,” all but killed New York’s direct-pay insurance market before the Affordable Care Act revived it in 2014.

The Essential Plan also marks a significant expansion of New York’s taxpayer-financed health-care system, which is already one of the nation’s most generous and expensive. The rolls of the state’s Medicaid health plan for the poor and disabled stand at 6.1 million, or 31 percent of the population. The Essential Plan layers another two percentage points on top of that, with more likely to come.

The Cuomo administration says the program actually saves money for the state by leveraging federal aid for certain noncitizens whose care is now fully paid for with state dollars. Of course, those federal funds ultimately come out of taxpayers’ pockets, too.

Supporters of the Essential Plan say that private insurance remains prohibitively expensive for poorer families, even with the help of Affordable Care Act tax credits. For many, that is undoubtedly true.

But why not try to close that affordability gap by tackling the factors that keep premiums high, including Albany-imposed insurance taxes and coverage mandates? Why not gear state policy toward bringing New York’s health costs closer to national norms?

At the very least, officials should rethink the design of the Essential Plan – to protect the viability of the private insurance market for those New Yorkers who still need it.

■

Bill Hammond is the director of health policy at the Empire Center and a former columnist for the Daily News.

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PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES SEPTEMBER 5, 2016

Notice of Formation of IMPRCR 4115 50TH LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/20/16. Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o RCR Management LLC, 155 Riverside Dr., Ste. 1D, NY, NY 10024.

As amended by Cert. of Amendment filed with SSNY on 06/23/16, name changed to 4115 50TH LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of IMPRCR 4541 39TH LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/20/16. Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o RCR Management LLC, 155 Riverside Dr., Ste. 1D, NY, NY 10024.

As amended by Cert. of Amendment filed with SSNY on 06/23/16, name changed to 4541 39TH LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

CONTENT LENDING LLC filed Arts. of Org. with the Sect’y of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/21/2016. Office located in NY County.

SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 535 110th St., Apt. 5D, NY NY 10025. Purpose: any lawful act.

BESSO LLC filed Arts. of Org. with the Sect’y of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/8/2016. Office located in NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 124 W 93rd St., Apt. 7B, NY NY 10025. Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of Diana La Mere, LLC. Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State to NY (SSNY) On July 12, 2016. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against may be served. The Post Office address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC served upon him/her is: 7014 13th Avenue, Suite 202 Brooklyn, NY 11228.

The principal address to the LLC is: 66 Fort Washington Ave #64 New York, NY 10032.

Purpose: any lawful act or activity.

Notice of Formation of Fair Shake Food LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/12/2016.

Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: US Corp. Agents, Inc. 7014 13th Ave #202.

Brooklyn, NY 11228.

Principal business address: 360 E 88th St. #8F, NY, NY 10128.

Purpose: any lawful act.

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NOTICE OF FORMATION of East 14th MK LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. Of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/14/2016. Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to principal business address: 511 Canal St. Ste. 600, NY, NY 10013. Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Application for Authority of RCC TRS, LLC filed with the Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/5/16.

Formed in DE 1/31/05.

Office loc.: New York County.

SSNY is designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The address SSNY shall mail copy of process to is 712 Fifth Ave., 12th Fl., New York, NY 10019. The office address required to be maintained in DE is 110 S. Poplar St., Ste. 101, Wilmington, DE 19801.

Cert. of formation filed with Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of G’S DELIGHT LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/13/16.

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Notice of Formation of GLEN COVE RESTAURANT II LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/12/16.

Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to

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Notice of Formation of RMA INVESTORS, L.L.C. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/12/16.

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Notice of Formation of NMNY GROUP LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/22/16.

Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 350 Fifth Ave., Fl. 68, NY, NY 10118.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Kudman Trachten Aloe LLP at the princ. office of the LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

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LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 07/06/16. Princ. office of LLC: 1350

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Notice of formation of 79 BAXTER LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the Sect’y of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/13/2016.

Office located in NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: c/o Raber Enterprises, LLC, 175 Canal St., 2nd Fl., NY NY 10013. Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of RPM of Panama City, LLC. Art. of Org. filed with the SSNY on June 1, 2016. Office: New York County.

LLC formed in Florida (FL) on January 28th, 2016. Princ. office of LLC: 2012 Tupelo Ct. Panama City, FL 32405.

SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, 170 E 106th St #2F New York, NY 10029. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notification of formation of MOMENTUM FITNESS, LLC. Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on January 23, 2014. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The Post Office address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC served upon him/her is: 180 W80 Street, Mezzanine.

New York, NY, 10023.

Purpose: any lawful act or activity.

Notice of Formation of CEEDS Staffing LLC. Art. of Org. filled with SSNY on April 7, 2016. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, 833 Broadway, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10003. Purpose: any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of Awesome Accessories, LLC. Art. of Org. filed with NY Secretary of State (SSNY) July 28, 2016.

Office Location: New York County.

SSNY has been designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to principal business address: 324 E. 61st St., #1RE New York, NY 10065 Purpose: Any lawful act.

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF Two Lane Films LLC. Articles of Organization filed

City & State New York

September 5, 2016

with the Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on July 20, 2016. Office location: NEW YORK County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against it may be served.

The Post Office address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against theLLC served upon him/her is: Angela Costrini Hariche, 53 Park Place, #4J, New York, NY 10007.

The principal business address of the LLC is: 53 Park Place #4J, New York, NY 10007 Purpose: any lawful act or activity.

Notice of Formation of Sherwood Clinton LLC, Art. of Org. filed with Sec’y of State (SSNY) on 6/20/16.

Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Sherwood Equities, 745 Fifth Ave., NY, NY 10151. Purpose: any lawful activities.

Notice of Formation of Soussand Associates, LLC, Art. of Org. filed with Sec’y of State (SSNY) on 5/17/16.

Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Philippe Soussand, 30 E. 85th St., #14B, NY, NY 10028. Purpose: any lawful activities.

Notice of Qual. of Silverview CLO LLC, Auth. filed Sec’y of State (SSNY) 3/1/16.

Off. loc: NY Co. LLC org. in DE 2/29/16.

SSNY desig. as agent of LLC upon whom proc. against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of proc. to Att: Adam Hagfors, 40 W. 57th St., NY, NY 10019.

DE off. addr.: CSC, 2711 Centerville Rd., Wilmington, DE 19808.

Cert. of Form. on file: SSDE, Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Purp: any lawful activities.

Public Notice – Matter

Ventures, LLC Notice of qualification of Matter Ventures, LLC. Application of Authority filed with the Secy. Of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/21/2016. Office location: NY County.

LLC formed in DE on 12/02.2012.

SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to principal business address: 421 Bryant Street, San Francisco, CA 94107.

DE address of LLC: Corporation Trust Center, 1209 Orange Street, Wilmington, DE 19901. Certificate of LLC filed with the Secy. of State of DE located at: 401 Federal Street Suite 4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of Honeymix LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on May 25, 2016. Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: 225 W 112th St NY NY 10026. Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of formation of Grafted Hospitality Group LLC, Articles of organization filed with the Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/02/16.

Office location: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to: c/o Marzec Law Firm, 225 Broadway Suite 3000, New York, NY 10007. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of formation of Drake Communications, LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 3/2/2016.

Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 7014 13th Ave, Suite 202, Brooklyn, NY 11228. Principal business address: 113 Nassau St, New York, NY 10038. Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of Marisa Terol llc. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/12/2016.

Office location: NY County. SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy to principal business address: 189 west 89 Street 18L NY, NY 10024. Purpose any lawful act.

Notice of formation of 57Crickets60Elm, LLC, Arts of Org filed with Sec of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/01/16. Office location:NY County.

SSNY designated agency upon whom process may be served against LLC. Principal business address is 3 Wash Square Village, 2-O, NY NY 10012.

Notice of Formation of 55 HAUS LLC. Art. of Org. filed with the SSNY on July 14, 2016. Office: New York County.

SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to the LLC, 220 E. 25th St 4A, NY, NY 10010.

Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Qualification of OBBP PARKING OWNER LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/18/16. Office location: NY County.

LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 08/10/16. Princ. office of LLC: Vanke Holdings USA LLC, Attn: General Counsel, 130 W. 42nd St., 16th Fl., NY, NY 10036. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. DE addr. of LLC: Corporation Service Co., 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808.

Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, Corps.

Div., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of RPA RIVINGTON, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/03/16. Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: To hold real and personal property and any other lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of RatetheBiz, LLC. Arts of Organization filed with the SSNY on June 13,2016. Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: 7014 13th Ave Ste. 202 Brooklyn, NY 11228. Principal business address: 121 W 36th St. NY, NY 10018. Purpose: Any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of 7A MADISON SQUARE LLC. Articles of Organization were filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on August 08, 2016. Office location: New York County.

SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of any process served against the LLC, 262 WEST 38TH STREET ROOM 1701, and NEW YORK, NEW YORK, 10018.

Purpose: For any lawful purpose.

Notice of formation of David R Head Jr LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State NY (SSNY) on 6/9/2016.

Office location NY County.

SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: 7014 13th Ave Set 202, Brooklyn, NY 11228.

Principal business address: & E 14th St.

#1219, NY, NY 10003.

Purpose: any lawful act.

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF Trep Spirit, LLC. Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 7/26/16. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to the LLC to: Trep Spirit, LLC, PO BOX 325, New York, NY 10024. Purpose: For any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of Batelion, LLC Org filed with the Secy. Of State of NY (SSNY) on August 17th, 2016.

Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: United States Corporation Agents, Inc., 7014 13th Ave, Suite 202, Brooklyn, NY 11228. Business address: 412 E 116th Str, #2, New York, NY 10029. Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of formation of Sara Byworth LLC. Art. Of Org. filed with SSNY on 31st May 2016. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to.

102 Saint Marks Place #2, Brooklyn 11217.

Principal address. 102 Saint Marks Place #2, Brooklyn 11217.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of formation of Somerset Regent LLC. Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 8/5/2016.

Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated for service of process.

SSNY shall mail copy of any process served against the LLC to c/o Law Office of Z Tan PLLC, 110 E 59th St, Ste 3200, New York, NY 10022. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

ADVERTISE HERE

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34

CityAndStateNY.com

September 5, 2016

CITY & STATE NEW YORK MANAGEMENT & PUBLISHING Chairman Steve Farbman, President/CEO Tom Allon tallon@cityandstateny.com, Vice President of Strategy Jasmin Freeman, Comptroller David Pirozzi dpirozzi@cityandstateny.com, Business & Sales Coordinator Patrea Patterson

Who was up and who was down last week

JEFF GURAL – When New York made its casino selections in 2014, three bidders had winning hands – but not Gural’s Tioga Downs racetrack casino. Gural did not bow out gracefully, angrily denouncing the “idiotic decision,” and the state reopened the bidding for one more casino. A single bid came in – from Gural – and this week his expansion plan was approved. Yet again, the squeaky roulette wheel gets the grease.

OUR PICK

OUR PICK

WINNERS

LOSERS

All’s well that Endwell – and thanks to the 11- to 13-year-olds of Maine-Endwell, New York is home to Little League World Series champions for the first time in 52 years. The governor may be a loser this week, but he knows a winner when he sees one, touting them at the State Fair and a Mets game. Read on to find out who’s batting 1.000 this week and who’s in a slump.

EDITORIAL - editor@cityandstateny.com Editorial Director Michael Johnson mjohnson@ cityandstateny.com, Senior Editor Jon Lentz jlentz@ cityandstateny.com, Albany Reporter Ashley Hupfl ahupfl@cityandstateny.com, Buffalo Reporter Justin Sondel jsondel@cityandstateny.com, City Hall Reporter Sarina Trangle strangle@cityandstateny.com, Managing Editor Ryan Somers, Associate Copy Editor Sam Edsill, Web/Engagement Editor Jeremy Unger, Editorial Assistant Jeff Coltin SLANT Slant Editor Nick Powell npowell@cityandstateny. com, Editor-at-Large Gerson Borrero gborrero@ cityandstateny.com, Slant Columnists Nicole Gelinas, Bruce Fisher, Richard Brodsky CREATIVE - creativedepartment@cityandstateny.com Creative Director Guillaume Federighi, Senior Graphic Designer Alex Law, Marketing Designer Charles Flores, Junior Graphic Designer Kewen Chen DIGITAL - digital@cityandstateny.com Digital Manager Chanelle Grannum, Digital Content Coordinator Michael Filippi MULTIMEDIA Multimedia Director Bryan Terry

ANTHONY WEINER – From a rising star in Congress to mayoral candidate to respected political commentator to … nothing.

Weiner’s serial sexting continues to be his downfall, and this week his wife announced the two were separating, he was fired by “Inside City Hall” and the Daily News, and reportedly had to suffer the indignity of a visit from ACS for using his kid as a “chick magnet.”

THE BEST OF THE REST LEO DENAULT – Entergy gets $35M

THE REST OF THE WORST ANDREW CUOMO – Hoosick Falls

if FitzPatrick deal collapses

fight raises concerns

RICHARD GOTTFRIED & DIANE SAVINO – medical marijuana

JOSEPH FINNERTY III – De Blasio

expands

ALAIN KALOYEROS – SUNY

ADELE MALPASS – Manhattan

Polytechnic blamed for stalled projects

GOP’s “Stop de Blasio” line approved

JACK MARTINS – judge rules

BROOKE S.B. – wins ruling on

against delaying congressional

guardianship for same-sex couples

contest

ADVERTISING Vice President of Advertising Jim Katocin jkatocin@ cityandstateny.com, Account/Business Development Executive Scott Augustine saugustine@cityandstateny.com, Event Sponsorship Strategist Danielle Koza dkoza@ cityandstateny.com, Digital Sales Director Brie Moran bmoran@cityandstateny.com EVENTS - events@cityandstateny.com Events Manager Lissa Blake, Senior Events Coordinator Alexis Arsenault, Events and Marketing Coordinator Jenny Wu

Vol. 5 Issue 34 September 5, 2016 42

CityAndStateNY.com

September 5, 2016

donor fined for violation

WINNERS & LOSERS is published every Friday morning in City & State’s First Read email. Sign up for the email, cast your vote and see who won at cityandstateny.com.

Art Direction Guillaume Federighi

CITY & STATE NEW YORK is published weekly 48 times a year except one week in January, August, November and December for $124.99 by City & State NY LLC, 61 Broadway, Suite 2235, NY, NY 10006. Application to mail at periodical postage prices is pending at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: City & State NY, LLC, 61 Broadway, Suite 2235, NY, NY 10006.

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