City Hall - March 2, 2010

Carolyn Maloney, right, fights back against Reshma Saujani (page 8), the homeless problem continues to plague City Hall (page 4),

Vol. 4, No. 12

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March 1, 2010

and Teamsters chief Greg Floyd, left, embraces his inner Larry King (page 22).

the

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Vito Lopez and the end of county

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In Race To Replace Felder, A Split Over Government Funding Philosophy Old differences linger as others are overcome ahead of election

BY CHRIS BRAGG

Lazar believes the solution is winning more funds for Jewish social organizas David Greenfield drove tions that help the neighborhood’s poor. his Honda down Ocean Avenue, His campaign is touting Lazar as a conhe pointed to the one- and sensus builder with 40 years working in two-family homes lining the streets of government as former director of fiscal Midwood and complained about how affairs for the Department of Buildings and former regional director for the Demuch each one cost.

“That one on the corner? A million-and- partment of Mental Health.

Lazar was not made available by his a-half to two million. That little one? Only a million,” said Greenfield. “Plus, you’ve campaign to comment.

Campaign advisor Gary Tilzer, though, got the tickets, property tax increases, water rates, tuition costs. For a lot of spoke on his behalf, arguing that his young families like mine, these costs are candidate’s power will be in securing member items and other budget earmarks really astounding.” for the district.

“There are two kinds of Council members: those who know how to get funding from the speaker and those who don’t,” Tilzer said. “Joe Lazar knows how to find money inside a budget.”

Greenfield, meanwhile, believes these affordability issues are best addressed by putting money directly into the pockets of families. He points to his work winning a $330 state tax credit for private school parents through Teach NYS, a broad coalition of religious leaders which has used aggressive union style tactics that have rankled the Jewish political establishment. On the Council, Greenfield said he would push for a $500-per-child tax credit for public and private school parents.

Though their candidates may be divided in their take on how to approach getting cash into the district, the social and political organizations in Boro Park are not: nearly all of the major groups in the area, which encompasses a David Greenfield is fighting Joe Lazar for significant portion of the district, are united behind Lazar. votes in Boro Park and beyond.

This is unlike what happened in Greenfield has been thinking a lot several recent races, when the growing about property costs in Boro Park, ultra-Orthodox Hasidic population has Midwood and Bensonhurst recently. In split with Assembly Member Dov Hikind, addition to putting together a campaign the conservative Orthodox longtime ahead of the March 23 special election to power broker.

But this special election proved replace Simcha Felder, he has recently bought a home there—because, like his different. When Hikind initially pushed fellow frontrunner Joe Lazar, he did not for former Council member and Brooklyn live in the district he hopes to represent Civil Court Judge Noach Dear to run, before Felder resigned to become a Hasidic leadership expressed concern about returning Dear to the Council, deputy comptroller under John Liu. Everyone seems to agree there is an af- according to a source who has spoken to fordability problem in the neighborhood, Hikind about the situation.

Hikind backed off of his support where many parents send their children to yeshiva schools that can run $13,000 a for Dear, who ended up not running.

Precipitating Dear’s decision, Hikind year per child.

But solving the problem remains a announced his endorsement of Lazar.

Since then, most of the Boro Park thornier question.

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BRONX

Boro Park QUEENS

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political and social leadership has thrown their support to Lazar, though one major slice of the Bobov Hasidic community so far is remaining neutral for fear of offending Greenfield, according to a STATEN source involved in talks with ISLAND that community about an endorsement for Lazar.

Observers say the unity of Boro Park was demonstrated recently when wealthy real estate attorney Nachman Caller decided to drop out of the race.

Shiya Ostreicher, a political powerbroker in the Hasidic Belzer community who is backing Lazar, asked Caller to drop out, according to an unpublished letter Caller wrote to the newspaper Hamodia that was obtained

by City Hall.

Caller is Hasidic, while Lazar is conservative Orthodox, but the political leadership of the Hasidic community bypassed the chance to try and put the first Hasidic on the Council, in part over concerns that Calller would play a spoiler for Lazar.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Hikind ally, also discouraged Caller from running.

Greenfield, meanwhile, has plenty of prominent supporters as well. Kings County Democratic Party leader Vito Lopez, who is backing Greenfield, met with Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey and helped seal Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s endorsement of Greenfield.

Lopez and Greenfield also have a close relationship.

“One thing I respect about him is that he’s loyal to his friends,” Greenfield said.

Lopez and Greenfield have worked together on a number of issues important to both Lopez’s majority-Catholic district and to South Brooklyn’s Sephardic Jewish community, for whom Greenfield serves as political liaison.

Last year, Lopez and Greenfield teamed to kill a bill that would have temporarily opened the statute of limitations on sexual abuse cases at religious institutions. In the process, Greenfield also built close professional relationships with Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of the Brooklyn Archdiocese and Rabbi David Neiderman of South Williamsburg’s United Jewish Organization, two powerful Lopez allies.

But Tilzer, the Lazar advisor, indicated that they would seek to use Greenfield’s close relationship with Lopez against him.

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“What do you think these people from the county party are supporting Greenfield for? Not for the community’s good,” Tilzer said. “They’re concerned about constructing housing projects and developments.”

Other maneuvers by Lopez on Greenfield’s behalf have not worked out as well as the Bloomberg endorsement.

The night before former Council candidate John Heyer was set to endorse Lazar, two of Lopez’s advisors approached Heyer at the Cathedral Club of Brooklyn annual dinner and asked him to reconsider. Heyer declined.

Brooklyn Democratic Party district leaders have also asked Jonathan Judge, a Republican who is the third candidate in the race, not to run, since Judge could siphon off some support from Greenfield. But Judge has decided to stay in the race.

Two other candidates, a college student named Abraham Tischler and a Republican named Kenneth Rice, have also filed petitions with the Board of Elections.

With much of the Boro Park political class united against him, Greenfield is hoping his political allies in Bensonhurst and Midwood, two neighborhoods that have traditionally been less politically active than Boro Park, will drive up turnout there. He has the support of State Sen. Carl Kruger, the powerful Finance Committee chair whose district covers much of the area.

At the same time, Greenfield hopes to win some support from a younger generation in Boro Park that is also not beholden to the neighborhood’s political leadership.

“The door-knocking has gone especially well there,” Greenfield said.

“They’ve never had someone knock on their door and ask them what they needed. They’ve always had someone telling them what to do.” cbragg@cityhallnews.com

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MARCH 1, 2010

In Maloney Primary, A Battle For The Future Of The Democratic Party Fur and pearls vs. dark suits and trendy scarves as Saujani tries to unseat incumbent

BY ANDREW J. HAWKINS ast year, Rep. Carolyn Maloney was hoping to be in a primary against a younger, well-financed female opponent this fall. But instead of running against Kirsten Gillibrand for the Senate as she had planned, Maloney is defending her own congressional seat against Reshma Saujani, a 34-year-old Democratic fundraiser and hedge fund lawyer.

The race is already shaping up as a generational clash, with the Maloney in her fur and pearls in one corner, and Saujani with her dark business suits and trendy scarves in the other. Maloney is counting on the Democratic establishment, as well as reliable primary voters in the Upper East Side portion of the district, to send her back to Washington. Saujani, meanwhile, is banking on an influx of young professionals and immigrant voters—especially those residing in the Queens portion of the district—to buoy her insurgent candidacy to victory.

Saujani’s campaign launch at an East Village coffee shop in late January was full of just such a group of hip, silk-tied young people juggling coffee cups and Blackberries, there to support one of their own as she tries for Congress.

“I know that I’m young, and that I have a funnier name than Barack Obama, and that I’m 12 inches shorter [than him],” Saujani said, standing on a bench so she could be better seen by the crowd.

After riffing for 10 minutes on her unique immigrant biography and her support for key Democratic ideas (health care, job creation, women’s rights, etc.), Saujani asked the crowd to envision how the city might look 10 years from now.

To her supporters, Saujani is not only a new face in politics, but a representative of the pushback against the Democratic establishment in support of the city’s much-maligned financial sector. She says she plans on running on, not away from, her Wall Street record, even as Maloney’s supporters attempt to link her to some of the financial sector’s more ethically questionable firms. In the past few years, Saujani bounced between several investment funds before her most recent stint at Fortress Investment Group, which managed one of the firms involved in the recent loan default of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. (Saujani recently stepped down from Fortress to campaign full-time.)

After 18 years, Saujani now reasons, voters deserve a choice.

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“If you walked outside and asked them who their congressional representative is, maybe one in nine will know,” Saujani said after her coffee shop speech. “There’s never been a real viable primary.”

Behind the scenes, the battle lines are already being drawn. Saujani’s camp is blasting Maloney for what they see as her do-nothing role on the House Financial

run on and no real roots in the district.

Already, the primary is causing rifts among members of the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee, with the older Maloney loyalists lashing out at a handful of younger members for defecting to Saujani’s campaign. Both candidates are scrambling to sew up the support of highprofile East Side women. Maloney allies say that even though she has the reputation as a “ditzy blonde” who sometimes forgets names, she is more politically astute than her critics credit her for.

“Have no doubt, underneath the blonde veneer, she’s a street warrior,” said Assembly Member Micah Kellner.

Both sides are also staffing up at a rapid pace. Saujani’s team, so far, includes PR guru Matthew Hiltzik, whose client list, which includes Alec Baldwin, Katie Couric, Harvey and Bob Weinstein and conservative commentator Glenn Beck, reads more A-list Hollywood than Washington, D.C., political power.

Kevin Lawler, who has run campaigns

Maloney allies say that even though she has the reputation as a “ditzy blonde” who sometimes forgets names, she is more politically astute than her critics credit her for.

Services Committee, as well as her disconnection from her district, which they say now includes more fiscally conservative voters who are not loyal to any one party. Maloney’s campaign, on the other hand, is seeking to portray Saujani as a Wall Street stooge with no record to

from Brooklyn to the Adirondacks, was brought on to manage Saujani’s campaign. And Benjamin Yarrow, former communications director for the William J. Clinton Foundation, will be helping out with speech writing and policy advice.

Cathy Lasry, president of the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee, Saujani’s campaign co-finance chair and wife to billionaire hedge fund manager and devout Clinton supporter Marc Lasry, said that Saujani’s experience raising money for both Hillary Clinton and John Kerry’s presidential campaigns has prepared her for the eventual street fight that an Upper East Side primary race is likely to become.

“She gets it,” Lasry said. “She may not have run for Congress before. But she does understand. I’ve listened in on strategy meetings. She gets it.”

Maloney has not backed off the battle for Clinton credibility, featuring Hillary Clinton in a campaign video released in February. Bill Clinton appeared at a fundraiser for her last summer, at the height of her Senate deliberations.

And she has continued to try overwhelming her upstart opponent with an avalanche of big-name endorsements. Not willing to leave anything to chance, she made sure to secure key endorsements as early as October. And the day after Saujani’s modest campaign kick-off, Maloney held a “Women for Maloney” breakfast fundraiser at the Yale Club, netting the congresswoman over $100,000 and featuring Gloria Steinem, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s girlfriend Diana Taylor.

Maloney’s campaign team is a mix of veterans and fresh faces. George Arzt is handling communications, while Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who last worked for failed Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley, is doing the congresswoman’s polling. Relative newcomer Matt Tepper has been brought on to manage the campaign.

Most East Side observers predict an easy win for Maloney, given her decades in office and Saujani’s inexperience. But the fear still exists that if she does not win by a commanding margin, she could open herself up to more formidable opponents in the future, especially if the district is redrawn after this year to include more Queens and less Manhattan. And if Saujani loses this year, there are some who think she could potentially run a better campaign in 2012, when a redrawn district may include a larger, more diverse portion of Queens.

Current and former Maloney aides, though, say a narrower-than-expected margin could be more a result of the growing anti-incumbency mood among voters than any particular weakness of Maloney herself.

“Obviously Carolyn would prefer to have a big margin,” said one former senior Maloney campaign staffer. “But this year’s going to be a mess anyway for everyone.” ahawkins@cityhallnews.com

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After Broadway Success, DOT Goes On The Road With Traffic Transformations Advocates warn that city may have to trade some control for local upkeep assistance

BY SAL GENTILE n late November, Randy Wade, the director of pedestrian projects at the Department of Transportation, stood in a room at the Casita Maria cultural center in the South Bronx, briefing local activists on a plan to redesign a nearby intersection. She pored over maps, blueprints and aerial photos, reviewed principles of traffic calming and offered examples of what DOT calls “Thinking Big” projects: pedestrian plazas in Manhattan, bus lanes in the Bronx.

Though only five people came to hear her speak, Wade went on for more than two hours.

“They were looking for impact. Even specific things, like certain businesses that might be located on a certain street, and how would that business be impacted if the traffic were reversed, or if there were more traffic, or less traffic,” said John Robert, district manager of the local community board. “I was surprised.”

He added: “But that means maybe they’re listening. That would be nice, right?”

Now that Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s experiment with pedestrian plazas on Broadway is complete, his message to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan has been simple: “More,

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better, faster.” Over the next four years, DOT officials plan to “export that Broadway experience,” as one insider put it, to neighborhoods across the city.

In order to do that, DOT officials have had to overhaul the way they design and sell those plans to local stakeholders.

The Department has adopted a policy of dispatching high-ranking lieutenants like Wade to community briefings across the city, seeking more extensive feedback before announcing its plans.

DOT held over 2,000 such meetings last year.

And DOT officials have established a new internal decision-making mechanism designed to anticipate community backlash, according to people briefed on the process. The new protocol has longtime “livable streets” advocates in the Department asking jarring questions about DOT projects, like: Are their parking changes involved? Are there signal light timing changes involved? Is there a potential problem with deliveries?

“There’s a tough line with this kind of stuff, because there are transportation and planning experts who work for the city who are coming up with a lot of these ideas, and it’s not something you want public opinion to always decide what’s best, as far as traffic flow is concerned,” said one administration

official. “Ultimately they’ve learned that, that said, you have to work with people. … You can’t just spring it on people and do it in the dark of night.”

DOT has also had to confront a new and politically tricky question: Who pays for the pedestrian plazas? DOT’s coffers are bare, and not every neighborhood has its own Times Square Alliance, or the deep-pocketed benefactors that come with it. Community boards and business improvement districts have clamored for their own Broadway-like plazas in recent months—but want control over the plans in exchange for their money. For a department that has long sought exclusive control over its plans, the shift could be unsettling.

“DOT may have to relinquish a little bit of control in exchange for some longterm assistance in maintaining these types of public spaces. Communities are reluctant to provide those resources if they don’t have a seat at the table,” said Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives. “DOT has been very reluctant to open up the planning process, because I think they see that as tantamount to chaos.”

In an interview, Sadik-Khan said the Department had developed procedures for incorporating community feedback into its planning process.

“Broadway was a very focused example of what it is that we’re doing in other communities, and community issues differ. You need to tailor transportation projects to meet local needs,” she said.

“We’ve come up with strategies to improve safety on our streets and work with communities to tailor projects that meet those local needs.”

Already, advocates and lawmakers say they detect a softening of DOT’s approach. In a meet-and-greet earlier this year with new Council Transportation Committee chair Jimmy Vacca, SadikKhan assured him that DOT’s focus would be on easing conditions for drivers, saying: “DOT acknowledges that the transit infrastructure of New York City is roads.”

But some lawmakers remain skeptical. Vacca said he is preparing to hold hearings on the results of the Times Square experiment, and would aggressively scrutinize plans for similar projects elsewhere.

“If we take this pedestrian plaza planning process to other parts of the city, you will be often diverting traffic onto residential streets. And that poses other problems,” he said. “The concept may be good, but I think that each individual location has to be looked at.” sgentile@cityhallnews.com

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Legislators In Albany And New York Float Hydrofracking Bills Gas industry says legislation in response to Marcellus Shale propsal would kill all drilling efforts

BY ANDRÉ TARTAR ov. David Paterson has made clear that he will wait for the state Department of Conservation to finish studying the risks of the proposal before making any final decisions on drilling in the Marcellus Shale.

That could take months, however, and several state legislators who fear the drilling could contaminate New York City’s water supply say they are not content to let the process drag out any longer.

They are pushing a set of bills that would either impose tight regulations on the drilling or possibly kill the Marcellus Shale proposal altogether.

State Sen. Tom Duane and Assembly Member James Brennan have introduced two bills that would prohibit any permits for oil or gas drilling from being issued

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for two years, prohibit drilling within five miles of the New York City water supply and ban drilling anywhere within the Delaware River watershed.

Duane said that he sees no current justification for hydrofracking, the controversial drilling method that extracts oil by propelling liquid deep into rocks, that has been proposed for the Marcellus Shale project.

“There is no safe hydrofracking technology,” Duane said. “Maybe someday, but certainly not now.”

The natural gas industry believes these bills are so onerous that, if passed, they would essentially stop the project in its tracks.

“If the goal is to chase industry out of New York, this over-legislating will do the trick,” said Jim Smith, of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York State.

Meanwhile, Assembly Member Rob-

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ert Sweeney, chair of the Environmental Conservation Committee, is set to introduce a set of five bills requiring drillers to provide more extensive environmental impact statements, banning hydrofracking fluids that pose risks to human health, regulating where hazardous waste can be discarded and increasing the amount of money drilling companies must set aside for clean-up afterward.

Although Sweeney’s bills are seen by the natural gas industry as less extreme than the Duane/Brennan legislation, business groups still oppose them.

“These bills would simply put up unnecessary roadblocks to drilling, to creating economic opportunity, tax revenue for the state and badly needed domestic natural gas,” said Michael Moran, spokesman for the Business Council of New York. “We would be opposing the bills in total.”

The bills introduced by Duane and Brennan have already attracted a number of Democratic co-sponsors in the Assembly from both upstate and downstate.

Opponents of the drilling say the argument against hydrofracking has also been boosted recently by a report released by the city Department of Environmental Protection.

According to Council Member Jim Gennaro, chair of the Environmental

Protection Committee, many now consider the study the definitive scientific case against hydrofracking. As he sees things, getting approval for the drilling will be difficult in its wake.

“The Paterson administration has to respond to an incredible amount of science and advocacy that has been put forward,” Gennaro said. “It will be very difficult for them to do that.”

The federal government also may get involved. Gennaro said he recently met with a regional Environmental Protection Agency administrator who indicated the agency may now take a stance on the debate over hydrofracking because of the new study. And a bill is working its way through Congress that would close a legal loophole exempting natural gas companies from the Safe Drinking Water Act and water contamination-related liabilities.

Gennaro said the debate in New York about hydrofracking was helping to frame the debate nationwide.

“Everyone around the country interested in this issue is looking at what New York City is doing,” he said.

“One desperate governor after another is seeing this as a way of making money for the state.”

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For Bloomberg, Homelessness Becomes A Political Liability Administration retreats from goal of reducing homelessness as record numbers of families seek shelter

BY SAL GENTILE t a joint hearing this month on the city’s decision to revoke 3,000 federal housing vouchers for needy families, members of three different City Council committees took turns grilling Bloomberg administration officials on why the money disappeared and what could be done to replace it.

Homeless Commissioner Robert Hess, sitting alongside his counterparts at the Housing Department and The New York City Housing Authority, escaped largely unscathed until about halfway through the proceedings, when Council Member Letitia James addressed him directly.

“This population and this constituency has never been a priority for this administration,” James said of the people who had lost their vouchers, many of whom were homeless. “I also believe that the city, not withstanding the fiscal climate, can and would find the money if the political will was there, and if these individuals represented a different constituency.”

James was quickly gaveled out of order

by Public Housing chair Rosie Mendez.

But her message seemed to resonate with the crowd, many of whom roared as Mendez interrupted James. Of all the accomplishments and bold declarations

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of the Bloomberg administration over the years, the mayor’s push to end homelessness remains to many a glaring failure.

Bloomberg’s critics see the issue as a political liability—so much so that one of Bill de Blasio’s first acts as public advocate was to call on the mayor to overhaul his approach to homelessness.

That’s a far cry from 2004, when Bloomberg won almost universal praise for his unprecedented plan to cut the city’s homeless population by twothirds in five years. The announcement made headlines across the country, and endeared him to his critics in the advocacy community.

Six years later, the numbers of families in shelters have not budged, and the mayor and his advisers have been forced by economic conditions to retreat from their ambitious plans.

“We need to acknowledge something, in all honesty,” said Robert Hess, the city’s homeless commissioner. “The mayor said that without anybody, including the mayor, being able to see this incredible economic downturn.”

In many ways, the homeless system has been transformed by Bloomberg despite his failure to decrease the shelter population. Before his announcement in 2004, the city’s homelessness policy had

traditionally been confined to managing, rather than solving, the problem.

In 1979, a state Supreme Court judge ruled that the city must provide shelter to anyone who needs it. High demand has often kept city officials scrambling just to find enough space for the homeless.

Shelters became permanent residences, and intake centers were black holes.

Bloomberg’s plan placed a new emphasis on preventative services and incentives for shelter residents to become self-sufficient. The city’s main intake center became cleaner and more efficient, and subsidies were offered to entice shelter residents to find, and keep, their own homes.

“There are cities all over this country that are turning away families and putting families on waiting lists that are coming to them for shelter. In New York City, we house everyone, every night,” Hess said.

Bloomberg has toed a similar line in his rare public comments on the issue, citing statistics that show the city’s homeless population is comparatively smaller than those of other major cities. “One out of 3,500 New Yorkers lives on the streets,” he would say at campaign stops. “In LA, it is one out of 92.”

That may be true, critics respond, but if the homeless do not live on the street, it is because they are just flooding

into shelters, where their numbers have remained roughly the same for years.

The problem, experts argue, is that Bloomberg’s plan was designed to fight homelessness as a stand-alone problem, not as a symptom of several underlying problems, like poverty and the scarcity of affordable housing.

Arnold Cohen, president and CEO of the Partnership for the Homeless, a nonprofit that provides homeless services and conducts research, said the mayor should publicly acknowledge that he has abandoned his 2004 goals and set in place a series of initiatives to address each of the underlying causes separately.

“What we have to do is immediately say there’s no short-term, quick fix for this,” Cohen said. “If our lens is simply, ‘These are damaged people and we have to get them into shelter,’ that’s all we do.”

Hess, for his part, acknowledged that the goal of reducing the number of people in shelters has been put off for the time being, but argued that the administration should be judged instead by how well it manages the shelter system.

“Will we get to a time when we can focus again on helping reduce the shelter census? Absolutely,” Hess said. “Should that be the litmus test? Absolutely not.” sgentile@cityhallnews.com

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With Six Of 17 On Regents Board Up For Reappointment, Calls To Change Process New agenda and round of proposed changes to state education oversight authority

BY NICK PANDOLFO n a Wednesday in early February, Board of Regents member Roger Tilles walked into his reappointment interview with Assembly Members Deborah Glick and Cathy Nolan. Six minutes later, he walked out with a pretty clear feeling that he would retain his seat for another five-year term.

Tilles is one of six people on the 17member Board whose term is ending next month, an unusually high number for the Regents. But while there is not expected to be much drama in this year’s round of reappointments, people on the Board and some in the Legislature are using the moment to call for changes in how the process works.

While most members seek reappointment, anyone who wishes may apply. Ads are placed in local newspapers across the state calling for any interested candidates, and government representatives reach out into their districts to various active community leaders. Despite the official open policy, though, rarely do applications come from people without political connections to apply.

This year, 38 people sent in applications. (Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office said it did not have a full list.) Of these, 18 were interviewed by the chair of the Assembly Education and Higher Education Committees and any other elected officials who wished to attend.

Most drop out of the running when they learn that the positions are unpaid and require steep time commitments.

Those who remain lobby for themselves ahead of the decisions being made by joint resolution. If one is not reached by the first Tuesday in March, a joint session is held on the following Tuesday.

Typically, the speaker and State Senate leader take over the process after the interviews and decide which candidates are ultimately submitted to both houses for a vote.

There was supposed to be an opening this year. Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) president Karen Brooks Hopkins had originally decided not to seek reappointment after concluding that her duties at BAM did not give her enough time. In late February, though, she reversed course, agreeing to stay on for an additional year. Hopkins declined to elaborate on a decision she said was made at the urging of her colleagues.

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She and the other five incumbents whose terms are ending—Tilles, James Dawson, Harry Phillips, Chancellor Emeritus Robert Bennett and Lester Young— are all expected to be reappointed.

While the members of the Board of Regents will almost certainly remain the same, Board chancellor Merryl Tisch laid out an agenda with several big changes, focused on redefining parameters for high schools, reevaluating a statewide data system, driving dollars to transform underperforming schools and reexamining the effectiveness of New York’s standardized exams.

The Legislature has in the past considered bills that would discontinue the Regents and apply term limits to board members.

Other changes to the structure are being called for in some corners as well: traditionally, appointments have been driven by Assembly Democrats, which has spurred Senate Republicans both to refuse to appear at some joint sessions and introduce legislation that would take the appointment process out of the hands of the Legislature.

“It’s an inside job,” said Assembly Member Mark Schroeder, a Buffalo Democrat who strongly opposes the Board of Regents. “At the end of the day, it is clear to me that the speaker makes the decision. Period. The end.”

Some officials and education experts argue that the process by which members are chosen is distorted by partisan politics.

“You can’t take politics out of a process that is political,” said Joseph Viteritti, chair of the Urban Affairs Department at Hunter College. “You want people who can make sound judgments about things, but in the end it’s a political process.”

Minority Leader Brian Kolb and Schroeder have called for the suspension of the Regents, arguing that the process is antiquated and calling for a reexamination of the purpose of the Board.

“Under its current form and fashion, I’d like to see [the Board of Regents] totally discontinued because they are not an independent body,” said Kolb. “I think we should take a clean sheet of paper and start over again.”

Schroeder agreed.

“The Regents should be abolished,” he said. “I will vote no on principle for every Regents person from now until doomsday, until we restructure it.”

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Our Perspective Macy’s: Treating Workers as an Expense...

Not an Asset

By Stuart Appelbaum President, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, RWDSU, UFCW t a time when some businesses are on life support, this month one of New York’s biggest had some good news to report.

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On February 4, Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren announced that the retailer enjoyed sales of $1.255 billion for the first four weeks of January — an increase of 3.4 percent compared to the same period one year earlier.

“Our company’s sales and earnings results for the month and quarter reinforce the confidence we have in the strategic direction of our business,” Lundgren boasted. “Now that we have implemented fundamental changes to Macy’s operating and A job without organization structure in 2009, we are benefits and good moving into 2010 firmly focused on the execution of our strategies.” wages may not

mean much to

What Lundgren conveniently left out Terry Lundgren. is that among its “strategies” is After all, in 2008 eliminating many full-time positions and alone he received replacing them with part-time jobs. One store where that's planned is Macy’s a pay package flagship on 34th Street. More than 80 valued at full-time workers there were told they $14.8 million. were being given the axe at the same time the retailer would be hiring new part-time employees. Of course, the axed workers could apply to work part-time ... assuming they didn’t mind going without the health care and other benefits they used to have.

A job without benefits and good wages may not mean much to Terry Lundgren. After all, in 2008 alone he received a pay package valued at $14.8 million. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for the people who do the real work at Macy’s — especially the women and men at the 34th Street store who’ll soon have the opportunity of trying to raise full-time families with a part-time paycheck.

Can Macy’s do well while also doing good? Sure they can. Other retailers have proven that the best way to grow a business is to treat workers as an asset, not an expense. Tragically, Terry Lundgren has a different strategy … and Macy’s workers are paying a staggering price for it.

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of the units to market rate.

“It’s fraught with unintended consequences,” said Jerilyn Perine, a former City Housing commissioner and executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council. “It isn’t helpful for the owner of a multifamily building to not know what his rent roll is going to be in six months.”

Allowing landlords to retroactively opt out of the J-51 program by paying back their tax benefits raises further questions

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Real estate companies and their lobbyists have been clamoring for action by the Legislature, which they say is necessary to clarify the fallout from the Stuy-Town ruling.

Landlords Look To Build Support For ‘Rent Freeze’ Bill In Wake Of Stuy-Town Ruling Assembly may block Espada bill in response to claims of developer windfall

BY SAL GENTILE embers of the Assembly are moving quickly to kill a proposal by State Sen. Pedro Espada that would freeze rents in New York City for as many as 750,000 tenants.

According to tenant activists, the Espada bill would amount to a get-out-ofjail-free card for landlords.

The bill would allow landlords who illegally deregulated thousands of apartments while receiving special tax breaks to keep those units at market rate by simply paying back the benefits. A landmark court ruling last year found that the owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village had improperly collected what are known as J-51 tax breaks while converting thousands of apartments to market rate. In the months since the ruling, tenants at buildings from Harlem to TriBeCa have filed suits to claw back millions in rent increases.

Espada’s bill would nullify those suits, saving landlords millions.

“That kind of legislation would essentially let them get away with

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violating the statute,” said Alex Schmidt, the lead lawyer for the tenants in the StuyTown case. “They gamed the system, and they made a lot of money off the system that they gamed.”

Members of the Assembly’s Housing Committee have already promised to block the bill from becoming law.

“This is preposterous,” said Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal of Manhattan.

“It’s not going to go anywhere in the Assembly.”

Tenant advocates in the Assembly have quietly expressed concern that Housing Committee Chairman Vito Lopez might be willing to sign off on a bill that exempts landlords from the Stuy-Town court ruling. But one Assembly member said the tenant advocates in the chamber would block Lopez from moving a prolandlord bill to the floor.

“He may support it, but just because Vito supports it doesn’t mean it’s going to

get to the floor and we’re all going to vote for it,” said the Assembly member. “He can block things, but it’s much harder to push things through.”

The proposal touches on a fresh point of anxiety in the real estate industry, just as some landlords were beginning to emerge from the crashing economy. Experts predict that anywhere from 35,000 to 80,000 units have been deregulated illegally. They believe those landlords could be liable for hundreds of millions in rent overcharges now that the court has deemed the practice illegal. As in the case of Stuyvesant Town, those liabilities could speed—or in some cases prompt—the collapse of landlords’ financing arrangements, threatening hundreds of buildings with foreclosure.

The uncertainty alone has already had a chilling effect on real estate transactions, landlords and developers say. Companies that were once in the market for distressed apartment complexes are now leery of investing in those buildings if the current landlords receive J-51 tax benefits. Those buyers say they would be unable to turn a profit if they cannot convert at least some

that Espada’s bill, for example, does not address. Recipients of J-51 tax breaks are prohibited from raising rents based on renovations and improvement projects to the building. If the owners of a building pay back the tax breaks, Perine asked, would they then be eligible to go back and seek rent increases based on those capital improvement projects?

“It’s one of these, like, ‘if you went back in time and killed your grandfather’ problems,” she said. “It’s endless.”

As a result, real estate companies and their lobbyists have been clamoring for action by the Legislature, which they say is necessary to clarify the fallout from the Stuy-Town ruling. That way, landlords say, they would know what their liabilities are, and would be able to stave off the worst of the consequences, such as foreclosure or possible eviction of tenants.

“It would be our hope that if you pay back your benefit, then you’re not covered

by J-51 anymore, and this way, you could keep just doing what you’ve been doing for the last 16 years,” said Frank Ricci of the Rent Stabilization Association, a landlord group, adding of Espada’s bill, “It’s certainly something that we’re willing to talk about and explore.”

But even if Espada’s bill dies, landlords are still likely to walk away from the StuyTown ruling having pocketed millions. As Schmidt noted, the statute of limitations on illegal rent increases lasts only four years. Landlords who wrongfully deregulated apartments for close to two decades will get to keep the bulk of that money.

“They’ve not only made hundreds of millions of dollars from before the four-year period, they’re still making it, because of the way the four-year rule works,” Schmidt said. “This is a huge financial windfall for the landlords who deliberately, opportunistically violated the statute.” sgentile@cityhallnews.com

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Hospitals Worry That St. Vincent’s Fate Could Be Prescription For Their Own Future Independent medical centers around the city fall victim to funding shortfalls

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collides with changing

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he fate of St. Vincent’s in Lower Manhattan is part of a trend engulfing hospitals across the state.

In 2004, the Pataki administration convened a commission headed by Stephen Berger to “right-size” the state’s hospital industry. The Berger commission mandated a handful of closures to increase efficiency, using a “survival of the fittest” approach to shut the emptier hospitals and boost the healthier ones.

Now, some experts have taken a different view toward the closures of remaining hospitals, seeing them as a warning sign. If the smaller hospitals start faltering, they say, the resulting strain could overwhelm the successful larger ones.

Independent hospitals do not have the clout to bargain as effectively with labor and insurance companies. As the economy has worsened, many have tried to affiliate with larger hospital systems as a last resort—but with limited success.

Officials at the state Department of Health said their powers to orchestrate restructuring, mergers or closures are limited.

“It’s not like there’s a template to follow,” said Department spokeswoman Claudia Hutton.

Advocates like David Sandman at the New York State Health Foundation argue that the problems facing hospitals, although exacerbated by the recession, represent major structural flaws. Only a massive rethinking of health care delivery is likely to help, they say.

“What I really think we need is to develop a new model that is less than the full-service hospital but more than a clinic, and a financing system that would support that,” said Sandman. “There are many communities in New York where that’s what they need. They might need emergency care, they might need outpatient care, they might need imaging service, they might need a small number of beds.”

Across the city, local hospitals are facing major restructuring or worse, and local officials are pledging a fight.

A year after Queens saw the closure of Mary Immaculate and St. John’s hospitals, one of the borough’s last full-service options is in survival mode. State Sen. Joe Addabbo says Jamaica Hospital, which

has been in the red for many years, may resort to “a drastic curtailing of services” and layoffs if it cannot make it through this tough budget year.

“I don’t foresee closure,” said Addabbo. “My initial concern is emergency room services.”

Addabbo, State Sen. Shirley Huntley and other Queens politicians have been trying for months to find a cash infusion for Jamaica, which is part of a struggling network of hospitals that care for many uninsured and Medicaid patients.

So far no funding has been found.

Huntley said she hopes the Department of Health will prevent Jamaica from closing if the situation worsens.

Meanwhile, in Harlem, North General remains glad to be independent. Its creditors, though, may not agree. The 990 form the hospital filed in 2007, the last year on record, showed a $20 million operating deficit on $118 million revenue, with a net deficit of $165 million. According to a United Hospital Fund report in 2008, it was delinquent on its loans.

North General has been talking to Mt. Sinai about a takeover, but Mt. Sinai is reluctant to take on the smaller hospital’s debt.

North General does have political leverage. While there are three hospitals that could serve Harlem, it has symbolic value as a locally run operation that the state has long supported.

On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Lenox Hill Hospital has already given up on independence. Like North General, the 153-year-old elite Lenox Hill is a onceproud, once-independent hospital grasping for help. Long financially healthy, Lenox Hill Hospital received a negative credit rating last year and laid off 45 employees. It is trying to seal a sponsorship arrangement with North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System that would allow it to retain more control of its operations than a merger.

Lenox Hill spokeswoman Ann Silverman would not comment about the details of the discussions in which the hospital is engaged, but she did confirm that they are underway.

“We are in active discussions with NSLIJ,” she said. “Like many other independent hospitals across the country, we’re exploring a strategic alliance with a larger health care system.”

Direct letters to the editor to editors@cityhallnews.com.

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When corporate America

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WINTER he windows in Cono’s Restaurant, in the dwindling Italian section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, are lined with snake plants. Mother-in-law tongues, they are sometimes called.

Their green stalks fill the restaurant windows from top to bottom and keep anyone from peering inside.

Cono’s is a white tablecloth, Italian red sauce kind of place. It is where Brooklyn Democratic powerbroker and party boss Vito Lopez receives the politicians who come from all over the state to pay tribute to him. If a passerby could have peered through those window plants on a desperately cold day in January, he would have seen a table full of political reporters, gorging themselves on antipasta, seafood, ravioli and iced tea, waiting for former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford to emerge from a backroom where he was, at Lopez’s behest, meeting with a roomful of Brooklyn politicians.

Officially, the meeting was called for the entire Brooklyn delegation at the county, city and state levels, but certain people with whom Lopez has been feuding were not invited: Diana Reyna, a former Lopez staffer-turned-bitter foe; Jo Ann Simon, a district leader hailed by good-government groups who lost a race to another former Lopez staffer, Steve Levin; and everyone else who had, for one reason or another, at one point or another, made the enemies list Lopez keeps in his head.

Except perhaps for the assumed quiet blessing he got from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Ford had no bigger supporter as he weighed his primary run than Lopez. As with everything the Brooklyn boss does, though, the support came with rampant speculation about his motives and motivations. Was he still bitter after having the rug pulled out from under him during the Caroline Kennedy fiasco? Was he trying to stick a finger in the eye of Sen. Chuck Schumer—but why, since Schumer had endorsed his staffer Levin in the Council race, as unusual as that was for a United States Senator to do? Was he doing the bidding of the Bloomberg administration, who also were seen as Ford supporters and Lopez allies? Was he hoping for federal pork for his district? Or, did Lopez just want to remind politicos around the state that he was not someone who could be taken for granted?

“I don’t know!” said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, shaking his head and throwing his hands up as he left Cono’s. “I don’t know! I hear you what you are saying! I wish I knew!”

Back inside, the meeting had broken up, and Brooklyn elected officials were ducking questions about whether or not they were for Ford or Gillibrand. Lopez led Ford through the dining room, whispering into his ear, “You were really good. Really good. You were able to remember names. That’s a really good skill.

Chuck Schumer can do that. You come back, you know their names. People like that.”

In front of the press, Ford heaped praise on the chairman, marveling that they only met for the first time a week earlier.

“It feels like it’s been two years, three years since we’ve known each other,” Ford said, beaming up at his new benefactor.

Lopez said Ford had promised, if he were to win the Senate race, to come back and help out at Lopez’s annual Thanksgiving Day feast—“I hope that isn’t irregular,” he said, making a joke out of his dealmaker reputation—and he was asked if he was receiving any pressure to ease up on his support of someone who is not yet a candidate but is threatening to primary an incumbent senator.

“Individuals have inquired about what I was doing,” Lopez said. “That, in itself, that was sending a message. So did I hear anything directly from anyone, was it in the form of a threat? No, none of that, and that doesn’t happen in this sophisticated world.”

So then, Vito, why is Brooklyn reaching out to Ford when everyone else is lining up behind Gillibrand?

What exactly is going on here?

“We think we should have a dialogue. It’s not a backroom deal,” he said. “I think Brooklyn is different.

And I’m really proud of that.”

Vito Lopez And The End Of County by david freedlander

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espite serving a quarter century in the Assembly, and longer as the de facto head of the sprawling social service empire and affordable housing developer called the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, and the last five years as head of the largest local group of Democrats in the country, Vito Lopez remains someone whom people in his corner of Brooklyn and in the political world beyond have deeply divided feelings about.

To some, he is responsible for bringing back Bushwick from the charred brink of the 1970s.

To others, he has done so only in so far as it benefits RBSCC, to the exclusion of a host of other agencies in the area that do good work. To some he is a political organizer par excellence, someone who, as one former aide put it, counts votes on one hand, and runs candidates and wins against ineffective incumbents.

To others, he is vindictive, and only runs candidates who will do his bidding.

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MARCH 1, 2010

How can the same person, insiders wonder, make sure to call officials long out of office when he hears they or a relative have become ill, and also carry grudges that get embedded deep into the Brooklyn bedrock? Is he a renegade, or is he a relic?

Everyone does seem to agree however, that during an era when political clubs cease to matter, when reforms have stripped country organizations of their power, when the smoke-filled room has become American Lung Associationcompliant, that Vito Lopez remains New York’s last political don.

Lopez works mostly out of the Bushwick United Democratic Club, a political clubhouse without working heat with a busted door lock that he founded to mount his first run for Assembly in 1984.

“A shithole,” Lopez calls it.

He is sitting in the back office, slumped in a chair surrounded by butcher paper with neighborhoodby-neighborhood and housing development-by-housing development graphs of signature-gathering efforts. He has on his usual sweater vest, his hair parted over to one side, comb-over flopping.

He is easily the biggest thing in the room, tables and desks and file cabinets included.

Stacks of yellowing palm cards cover every flat surface. The walls are a time piece of political campaign posters past and present.

Cuomo for Attorney General. Dilan for State Senate. Dilan for City Council. Political aspirants from Brooklyn and beyond come here to sit at Lopez’s knee and ask for his blessing. He receives them all.

Mostly, however, the club is a shrine to Maritza Davila, who Lopez backed unsuccessfully against Reyna, and especially Steve Levin, who won a seat in the neighboring district.

Lopez takes down a photograph that he keeps in the clubhouse of an even younger looking Levin.

“See, when I first met Steve, he didn’t even own a shirt. He owned a T-shirt,” he says affectionately.

Not only did Levin win, but he won big against Jo Ann Simon, a longtime Lopez antagonist in a district dominated by the kind of upwardly mobile voters to whom the Lopez name reeks of all that is wrong with New York’s political culture. When the New York Times endorsed Simon, the editorial board justified it by called Levin “a prime candidate except for his entanglement in Brooklyn Democratic Party machine” (read: their pick, if not for the connection to Lopez).

Levin should be, in Lopez’s phrase, be “councilman of the month.” No one thought he could win, Lopez says, but he outworked everyone else, campaigned in the housing projects late at night that the others avoided entirely. Levin’s opponents

played up his association with Lopez. And they lost doing it, he brags.

The press is especially at fault. When candidates beat him, the press regards it as a miracle. When Lopez wins, the machine has supposedly triumphed. That is ridiculous, he says. To hear him tell it, he is not the establishment.

“We were thinking outside the box. But I can’t explain that I’m an independent operator. That’s something someone else has to write about, but they never will,” he said. “Steve is smart and he works hard and he won when he shouldn’t have.

So fucking salute the guy!”

No one respects Levin, in Vito’s view, because no one respects him.

Life, for Lopez, is about trading in respect. He has been known to badger politicians and staffers over what he

government bureaucrat like Joe Lazar, running against Lopez-endorsed David Greenfield for what was Simcha Felder’s Council seat.

“I told someone earlier today that I have to think about that, and start going in the opposite direction,” Lopez said, gleefully joking about how he could game his predictable enemies.

Lopez supporters say that he is caricatured by the mainstream media and by his detractors.

He is big, gruff, shlumpy, and retains the vocal inflections of his native Bensonhurst. Yes, they acknowledge, he has built a social service empire, and seems to get his projects fast-tracked through the Housing Committee in the Assembly, which he chairs.

So too with the Bloomberg Administration, which relies on him for the trove of votes he can deliver.

But that, they point out, is how the game works. And even his detractors say that Lopez is a genius at political organizing, knowing how many votes come from which floors of which housing developments, and making sure his constituents get resources.

“Why is it worse for him?” asked one Brooklyn political operative, who, like many of the nearly 40 people contacted for this story, asked that their name not be used for fear of antagonizing Lopez.

“Because if you want to get some guy from central casting that looks like a party boss, you’d pick him. It’s like, ‘I’m shocked there is gambling in Casablanca.’

What is nefarious about people assembling political success?”

Housing officials say that Lopez is one of the few people who understands how projects go from conception to completion, and point out that if he is an advocate for specific development, he is at least an elected one, rather than a selfappointed one.

Still, googling Vito Lopez’s name is enough to make the hair stand up on the back of the neck of anyone who hopes for a glimmer of good government. The

Lopez’s voice started to rise: “I am not corrupt.

Please believe me, I am not corrupt.

I am not the establishment. I am against it. You have to write about it.

But you won’t.” sees as the slightest slight. But they keep coming, and he keeps burning over each and every one of them.

The day after Lopez introduced Ford to Brooklyn, Gillibrand appeared at Simon’s well-apportioned Boerum Hill home for a fundraiser. The crowd was full of his nemeses—Simon, her codistrict leader Alan Fleishman (in the old days, Lopez once said, Fleishman’s office would have been burned down for the comments he made about the county leader to reporters), Rep. Nydia Velázquez, with whom Lopez has a feud dating back 25 years, and members of the New King Democrats, a political club of young, white hipsters devoted to running candidates for empty slots on the county committee to curb Lopez’s power (Lopez told them they should run for the community board instead and worked to get them kicked off the ballot).

Lopez relishes the fact that his antagonists rush to the other end of whatever side he is on, even when that means backing an older Orthodox Jewish

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blogs and the papers and even whole websites are devoted to tales of his schemes—to allegations that he does not live in his district, but in Queens with his girlfriend, who has a high-paying job on the Ridgewood-Bushwick payroll and a seat on the City Planning Commission; that he worked to not extend the statute of limitations on Catholic priest sex abuse claims to get a prized development project passed; that he wantonly blurs the lines between the political and governmental sides of his job.

It bothers Lopez too. He tells about a niece of his who wanted a friend of hers to meet him because she wanted to go into public service. She looked him up, and then changed her mind.

“She goes, ‘Gee, how do you stomach that, how do you live with that?’ And I said, ‘You think about all the good things you do,’” he said.

Many nights, he confides, he drives the streets of Bushwick, looking at each new building he helped bring and thinking about what he calls the “dumps and lots” that were there before. This keeps his spirits up, he said. Surveying his territory and what he has brought to it is his answer to all that gets piled on him, every insult and offense he takes.

And the Brooklyn Democratic Party is in far better shape than it was when Lopez took over in 2005, after Clarence Norman, the previous boss, was sent to jail for extorting money from judicial candidates.

Then, the party was riven by geographic and ethnic turmoil. No citywide elected official, no statewide official, no legislative leader, and, other than Lopez himself, not even a major committee chair in city or state government was held by a Brooklynite.

Now, Lopez ally Domenic Recchia runs the powerful Finance Committee in the City Council, Carl Kruger holds the same spot in the State Senate, John Sampson is the Senate Democratic leader, and the party just flipped Republican-held seats in the Assembly and in Congress.

“Those are accomplishments for a Democratic leader,” he says. “We win seats.

I don’t want to get involved in the Queens dynamic, but they lost six seats this year.

The only seat we lost that we got involved

CITY HALL with was the Diana Reyna seat. And we lost by 180 votes against an incumbent with all of the endorsements.”

Few county leaders would have gotten involved in a race against a popular incumbent, even though she had strayed from the flock. To many, it showed Lopez’s fortitude—that he was willing to pick sides and take a stand, even a risky one. And he was willing to hold to it, even when Reyna won the Democratic primary and Davila kept going against the party nominee on the Working Families line.

But when Davila lost, Lopez lost. A chunk of his credibility, many Brooklyn Democrats say, had fallen. To them, it shows that there is not room in modernday politics for the modern-day boss that Lopez tries to be.

“He would have traded Levin winning for Reyna losing in a second,” says one Brooklyn political operative. “She kicked him in the balls and spat in his face in his own backyard and he couldn’t kick her out. You only owe a county chair something if he is the reason you got elected. You think anyone else is scared of Vito now?”

www.cityhallnews.com Another said he had learned to make sure to not go alone to meetings with Lopez—too often, he will remember the meeting differently, and expect promises never made to be followed through on without fail.

They put up with it because playing along is harmless, and crossing him is just not worth the headache. After losing the vote for city clerk, Lopez called a meeting of the full Brooklyn delegation of the Council. Kings was a proud county, he proclaimed. His was not a borough that would accept this disrespect. It would not stand.

Most members rolled their eyes and spent the time checking their BlackBerries.

“There is an obligatory bowing and scraping,” said one Brooklyn legislative aide, comparing Lopez to his county leader counterparts in Queens and the Bronx. “Everyone does it and everyone feels dirty, and then they get in their cars and go home and the ones that have a good sense of humor laugh about it. You don’t see Heastie and Crowley act like that, and Crowley has an important day job.”

How can the same person, insiders wonder, make sure to call officials long out of office when he hears they or a relative have become ill, and also carry grudges that get embedded deep into the Brooklyn bedrock? Is he a renegade, or is he a relic?

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opez saves Cono’s for the big fish. Smaller meetings are almost always at his political club. He is never alone. He never really negotiates. When he wants something, he either launches into a long list of things he has done for you, dating back years, or he promises a vague payout in the future. Visitors must make elaborate shows of respect, telling him how much they appreciate him and his work as chairman. Failing to do so, especially in a public setting, could lead to a late-night phone rebuke at best. The consequences of disagreeing are well known: at worst, he could bottle up your legislation interminably and threaten a primary.

“Everyone knows he is a madman,” said one survivor of a Vito meeting. “You somehow push the wrong buttons, and he’ll declare war on you without regard to consequences.”

In the old days, when county leaders provided patronage, such displays were more necessary. But the county parties are a shell of what they once were. They can appoint judges, but they no longer control all the election lawyers in town.

Campaign cash is easier to get for city candidates, provided mostly by the Campaign Finance Board. The unions provide the ground troops.

County leaders are best advised to get out of the way and embrace the ones who put the pieces together on their own.

“It’s not like this is 1907 and the county leader is showering riches on district leaders and they need to take it or otherwise their family won’t eat,” said one Brooklyn official. “That’s not the way the world works anymore, and that’s not the way county parties function.”

Lopez observers say that his memory has always been long, his neuroses and paranoia always in place, but that he

has grown increasingly brazen, acting without regard for consequences as he places demands on his members that are becoming harder and harder for them to stomach. In the twilight of county power, Lopez acts like he is the last to know.

There is the Ford thing, the Reyna thing, the Levin thing.

He, of course, says this is all just proof of his lofty independent streak.

“I think that’s a great quality. People like that quality and a lot of people are attracted to me because of it,” he said.

“Thinking outside the box, speaking up and stepping out and be willing to, you know, get whacked.”

And just as the asks get bigger, Brooklyn officials say, Lopez’s power to do anything to enforce them is draining.

When he got behind Caroline Kennedy, many people assumed that it meant a deal had been cut, and she would be the next senator. Few people now really believe that Harold Ford will represent the Empire State in the Senate, with or without Lopez’s blessing. The county leader has lost three of the last four judicial races he has been involved in.

Levin did win, but Lopez lost in his own backyard.

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ome Lopez allies were surprised when he became county leader. Before he started climbing the county ladder, he was the renegade, the outsider who could challenge entrenched incumbents. Whether he cares to be or not, he is the establishment now, even if he bristles when people call him “boss,” or refer to him as “county,” power personified. Some see storm clouds brewing.

Reyna’s win galvanized the anti-Lopez factions in Bushwick. The anti-Vitos are pushing her to challenge him for his Assembly seat, and believe that she could win if she wanted to risk it. A movement to start electing dissident district leaders is gaining steam. There is no consensus choice—for now. But someone who could appeal to the different factions of the county—brownstone Brooklyn, the progressives in his district, the large swaths of central Brooklyn that are bitter over Lopez’s long-running feud with Rep. Ed Towns. The county could crumble, insiders say, if Lopez asks too much of those he helped get into positions of power. People like Sampson and Recchia could decide that they would rather have a county leader take direction then give direction.

Lopez is not oblivious. He hired a new executive director of the Kings County Democrats, Serena Blanchard to, in her words, “reach out to the new communities of Brooklyn.”

“Yeah, the hipsters,” Lopez interrupts.

“And have dialogues. Say ‘What do you need?’ Half of them will probably tell me to go fuck myself. You stand out at a polling site and try to hand out a palm card and they throw it back at you, but I

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want to have a dialogue.”

But the real reason, many say, that Lopez is safe, is because he matters so little. Kiss the ring, if you have to. Show up at Cono’s when he asks. There is no point in looking for a new county leader.

In 2010, county leaders are leaders in title only.

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opez does not like to talk about himself. To him, his work in the community and in elections says enough. Sure, there are questions, enemies. He feels no need to answer them or justify what he does.

“You don’t say nothing,” he said. “If someone says your mother is a prostitute, you get mad, and you get mad. Then they say it, and the best thing to do is, if you explain it away people will think maybe she is. So you’ve got to bite your tongue and live with it. What do I do?”

His voice started to rise: “I am not corrupt. Please believe me, I am not corrupt. I am not the establishment. I am against it. You have to write about it. But you won’t.”

He scoffs at the hypocrisy of the press darlings of the political class—the Independent Neighborhood Democrats, a progressive club in Park Slope, and, obliquely, the Daniel Squadrons and Chuck Schumers of the world.

“You love those politicians who stand on a corner and say how popular they are. They are the stars in your world. But the polls say their stature is going down,” he said. “You poll my neighborhood, I’m probably at 80 percent.”

Lopez had originally agreed to let City Hall spend several days with him for this story and to sit for another interview.

The newspaper contacted Sen. Martin Dilan, a close ally, to provide context to Lopez, and, after a brief conversation, he contacted Lopez, who then abruptly pulled out of the story.

He said they were too many questions about what “reform” meant, too many questions about what life was like for Vito Lopez.

“We sat for over two hours,” Lopez said in a brief follow-up interview.

“And there were six people here, six independent people here, and they all thought your piece was going to be a hit piece.”

Lopez said that after this article ran, that if it was a positive article then he might agree to another interview sometime down the line. Sometime.

Maybe.

“I don’t need this. I have a dozen attorney general candidates coming to see me. We had Ford over lunch, we expected 30 people. Forty-one showed up. Those are facts. Why don’t you write about that?” he said, bellowing into the phone. “I talked to you, and it was like a therapy session. How do I feel about this and that? I don’t need it. Goodbye.” dfreedlander@cityhallnews.com

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EDUCATION

City Should Close Schools Only When All Else Fails

BY COUNCIL MEMBER ROBERT JACKSON n late January, nine of 13 members on the Panel for Educational Policy voted to close 19 low-performing schools. The vote came at the conclusion of an eight-hour meeting where the testimony ran approximately 300:1 in opposition to the closures. The vote reflected very little public sentiment.

What good is a public process if input is not seriously considered and the outcome is always predetermined?

Closing a school is a drastic measure, producing negative consequences for students in both affected and surrounding schools. A closure should be implemented only when other remedial measures have failed. Preliminary steps should include the development of a detailed action plan by the School Leadership Team with additional support from the Department of Education.

School Leadership Teams are policy-setting, school-based councils composed of teachers, parents, administrators and, sometimes, reps from community-based organizations that work in the school. They are responsible for collaboratively developing a school’s Comprehensive Education Plan and determining its budget allocations. Yet SLTs complain they are simply told their school will be closed, a decision imposed by an external authority. There is no

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transparent or step-by-step process for helping a school reverse direction.

The “cut and paste” narratives of the Educational Impact Statements required prior to closure make clear that the individual circumstances of each school are not assessed. An analysis by the Independent Budget Office found inconsistent criteria as justification for closure. Ratings in a school’s Quality Review and scores on a school’s Progress Report sometimes provided conflicting assessments. “The Chancellor has determined that [they] lack the necessary capacity to improve student performance” is a pretty nebulous standard.

School performance is all too often dictated by high school admissions policies that result in concentrations of high-needs students, English language learners, homeless students, overage students and students from lowincome families. It is a fact that higher concentrations of these students produce lower outcomes. The IBO analysis of schools slated for closure confirmed that many had a greater proportion of such high-needs students.

During phase-out, closing schools retain only those students who are on track to graduate. Although DOE claims closing schools get additional resources, with basic allocations determined by enrollment, a shrinking school inevitably

loses programs and staff each year of the phase-out, diminishing the educational experience of the students who remain.

For those who do not stay, the Center for NYC Affairs at the New School has documented a domino effect: students are displaced to adjacent schools, generating overcrowding in those schools and tilting them toward attracting increased concentrations of high-needs students, in turn lowering those schools’ performance.

All this is compounded because students from closing schools drop out or are discharged before graduating at higher rates than at schools not slated for closure.

Closing a school is a lose-lose proposition for students who stay and students who transfer.

One promising approach that deserves reconsideration by the current administration is the concept of a Chancellor’s District. Introduced by Chancellor Rudy Crew, the Chancellor’s District existed for seven years and developed a structured protocol focused on capacity building under highly centralized management.

Schools in the Chancellor’s District had prescribed interventions: reduced class size, increased instructional time, supplemental learning after school, a specific curriculum, specific professional development support, student assessments and additional school-based administrative

support, plus instructional support from the Chancellor’s District. This approach worked—47 of 58 participating schools stayed open and achievement rose, particularly in elementary school literacy.

Let’s try it again.

Individual students may fail but school closures mean the system has failed our kids.

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Robert Jackson, a Democrat representing parts of Manhattan, is the chair of the City Council Education Committee.

Charter Schools Offer New York Parents A Choice In Education

BY JOEL KLEIN hen the Grand Concourse Academy in New York City’s South Bronx held its admissions lottery last year, more than 1,000 students signed up for 70 kindergarten seats. The scene will play out again in April, when Grand Concourse Academy draws names for its next kindergarten class. This demand from parents isn’t surprising when you consider what the school has accomplished—it’s getting outstanding results with students while other schools in the neighborhood have struggled to educate.

What makes Grand Concourse Academy different is that it’s a charter school: publicly financed, but free from all the union rules and bureaucracy that can hinder traditional public schools.

Charter schools are run by not-for-profit boards of trustees instead of municipal government agencies, and can easily be closed if they don’t get good results for their students.

In New York City, we now have 99 charter schools, up from 17 when I started as schools chancellor in 2002. Next fall, another 29 will open their doors for the first time. Most of these are located in

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communities of greatest need. They offer poor families—in traditionally lowerperforming school districts—a choice about where to send their children to school. And those parents are choosing charters. About 31,000 students currently attend charter schools in New York City, and another 35,000 students are on waiting lists. Their results explain the extraordinary demand.

On last year’s New York State English Language Arts and mathematics exams—the annual measures of student achievement and progress—77 percent of charter school students were proficient in English Language Arts and 91 percent were proficient in math, compared to 69 percent and 82 percent of students citywide. These results are even more remarkable because these charter school students outperform the rest of the city even though they are more likely to come from underprivileged backgrounds than students in the city as a whole. In other words, charter schools are proving that poverty is no excuse for educational failure.

Critics claim that charter schools succeed because they “skim” the best kids. In fact, admissions are based on random lotteries open to anyone. A recent ground-breaking study by a Stanford University economist found students who entered lotteries and won spots in New York City charter schools performed significantly better on state exams than students who entered the same lotteries but did not win seats.

One reason many charter schools do so well is that they are able to innovate and differentiate. Many have implemented

longer school days and years and have experimented with teacher salaries.

When innovations like these work well, or don’t, we can learn from them and try to replicate the successful ideas on a larger scale. We can only take advantage of these lessons, however, if schools have the freedom to try new ideas in the first place.

Unfortunately, we’re running out of chances to create more of these innovative schools. Under New York’s current charter school law, only 200 charters may be issued statewide, and all but 20 have already been issued. Last month, the State Legislature failed to lift the cap on charter schools—a requirement, along with other education reforms, in President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative. As a result, the State may have forfeited up to $700 million in much-needed funds.

In this global economy, the competitiveness of our nation depends upon a highly educated and welltrained workforce. To deny our students more high-quality school options like charters puts them, and our futures, at a disadvantage.

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Joel Klein is the chancellor of the New York City Department of Education.

OUR HOPE FOR THE FUTURE ...

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

We’ve faced tough times before — including the Great Depression and two world wars. And, like our parents and grandparents before us, we’ve worked hard to build a better future for our kids, the next generation of New Yorkers, a future made strong through public education.

Yes, times are tough — we’ve already lost more than 5,000 education jobs over the past year. Further cuts to education are the wrong way to go.

Gov. Paterson’s proposal to slash $1.4 billion in education funds would force schools to lay off educators, eliminate programs and derail the substantial progress students have made statewide. The plan would also further burden local property taxpayers at a time when they can least afford it.

Hope for the future starts in our public schools. Urge legislators to do the right thing. Reject education cuts.

Representing more than 600,000 professionals in education and health care www.nysut.org New York State United Teachers Affiliated with AFT • NEA • AFL-CIO

Richard C. Iannuzzi, President

www.nysut.org

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CITY HALL

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MARCH 1, 2010

EDUCATION

Why Race To The Top Matters For New York

BY DAVID STEINER ith a statewide graduation rate of only 70 percent and below 50 percent in many lowincome communities, and too many high school graduates unready for college, we must work urgently to deliver the promise of educational opportunity for New York State’s three million school children.

Keeping the promise requires that all schools have truly effective teachers and principals, rigorous curricula, welldesigned assessments and a clear mission of achieving ambitious educational outcomes for every child.

This is the core of successful K-12 education and the foundation of New York’s Race to the Top application. Race to the Top is a fierce competition that awards funds only to those states willing to make bold changes to ensure all children succeed.

With schools across New York facing the prospect of a $1 billion reduction in state aid, we cannot pass up the opportunity to secure $700 million in new federal funding to help deliver a highquality education.

Our application is rooted in the idea that we cannot place a teacher in a

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classroom, nor a principal in a school, before they demonstrate effectiveness, including the ability to raise achievement of all children in New York’s diverse student population. Our application shifts teacher preparation away from theory toward clinically based practice centered on—and then assessing—key teaching skills and content knowledge that make a difference in the classroom.

Our plan creates new incentives to bring effective teachers—particularly in math and science—into our neediest schools and to encourage more to teach English language learners and special education. Our application supports professional development tied to curriculum content.

To ensure that every student is well taught, teacher evaluation must be transparent, fair and demanding. We propose that teachers’ unions and district administrators use student growth, among multiple measures, in performance-based teacher evaluations.

Finally, because certain schools have failed too many of our students, we endorsed a turnaround list of least effective schools, requiring action plans that could include major restructuring or school closures.

Our application commits New York to stronger assessments—rigorous tests and formative assessments—that fully capture skills and knowledge we expect students to master. In the short run, state tests will assess a fuller spectrum of our curriculum, less predictably. Long-term, we’ll link tests to gold standards like the National Assessment for Educational

Progress, exploring more extensive performance-based questions that probe for understanding and application of learning.

The Regents called for legislation that raises the cap on charter schools, requiring transparency and accountability, with access to reasonable funding and space, subject to community sensitivity. While the governor and the Legislature did not reach agreement in time for the firstround deadline, the regents and I continue to work with our partners in government to address these issues.

New York’s education reform and the state’s Race to the Top application are essential to our sacred obligation to deliver a world-class education to all children, regardless of zip code. For the future of our economy and democracy, we must prepare students for meaningful employment, college-readiness and undertaking responsible citizenship.

Getting us there will be neither instantaneous nor free. We need to get to work, and we need Race to the Top funding to make it possible.

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David Steiner is the commissioner of the New York State Department of Education.

An Important Message from Your School Leaders Ernest A. Logan, President CSA

The Charter School Debate: What’s Best for Children? he charter school conversation that intelligent adults were having has turned into a shouting match that doesn't put children first. It's time to modulate our voices and communicate as grown-ups. We have some anti-charter people screaming about how charter school advocates are profiteers who want to leech all the money from traditional public schools, bust unions and privatize all education. We have some pro-charter people crowing that charter schools are a panacea for all our educational woes and have a divine right to run roughshod over traditional public schools.

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None of these extreme views are helpful. They have risen to an hysterical pitch as states compete for Race To The Top funds. But in NYS, we have a thoughtful Board of Regents Chancellor, Merryl Tisch, who advocates raising the cap on charter schools, even though New York has more than any other state in the nation. On the federal level, we have Secretary of Education Arne Duncan who supports charter schools while carefully scrutinizing their very mixed data and pledging to shut those that fail. These public officials are hardly running off the rails.

CSA welcomes charter schools as a supplement to traditional public schools, a sound way of increasing choice, and an additional spur to innovation and competition.

Charter schools are public schools that are relieved of some constraints so innovative methods may be tested to reach specific academic goals. Because they receive public money, they are prohibited from charging tuition and from rejecting students on the basis of academic achievement, special needs or English language proficiency. The best of these schools often grow from community roots, nurtured by devoted teachers and parents who want to try new ways of educating their youngsters. All charter schools may be unionized so that administrators and teachers enjoy fair wages and benefits. So far, CSA represents school leaders at eight NYC charter schools. None of these schools are run by for-profit companies, many of which are in the game to grab easy money from the public till. For-profit charter schools are a contradiction in terms and should be discouraged.

Charter schools that honor the spirit of the NYS Charter Schools Act of 1998 and have student populations that mirror the demographics of their communities should have financial parity with traditional public schools in the same district.

Several analyses indicate that charters in NYC, and perhaps in NYS, do not enjoy this parity. The charter school funding formula is complex and flawed, and the state should correct it. Charter schools receive less money per student than traditional district schools; they receive no facilities aid. Because of the way the formula works, which is based on what district schools spent two years prior, charter

Council of School Supervisors & Administrators AFSA Local 1: AFL-CIO

schools feel the impact of bad times after this lag. (It is true that they also feel the impact of good times after a lag, but we're not living in good times.) This lag can be especially problematic for unionized schools, where pension and salary costs are determined annually. Another legislative funding freeze will financially cripple the ability of high quality charter schools to meet the promise of the 1998 act to “increase learning opportunities for all students, with special emphasis on expanded learning experiences for students who are at-risk of academic failure.”

At the same time, some charter schools enjoy outrageously unfair advantages. In some districts, including NYC, some charters are treated favorably even though they break rules and make a charade of accepting students unconditionally. They actively recruit students who are most likely to succeed, skimming them from traditional public schools. When the time comes for citywide and statewide tests, special needs, ELL and underachieving students who “slipped in” are forcefully steered back to traditional neighborhood schools often too late for per-pupil funding to accompany them. Such charter schools enjoy artificially boosted test scores whereas the traditional schools that take in the more challenging students at the last moment suffer artificially lowered scores.

Because charter schools are a hot trend, critics suspect that they receive preferential treatment in terms of facilities and accountability measures. Even though research indicates disappointingly mixed results for charter schools, a school system like NYC's occasionally seems more than willing to lace public schools with boutique charters that get the best space in the building, the bulk of supplies, and a ton of favorable publicity before they even open their doors. This trend leaves whole communities fearing that some of their traditional schools will close to make way for unproven charters. According to The New York Times – quoting data from Stanford University's Center for Research on Education outcomes – “37 percent of charter schools [offer] a worse education than children would have received had they remained in traditional schools.” In the end, the charter school mania that presupposes superiority undermines the reputation of all charter schools.

High-quality charter schools are playing an important role in improving our nation's floundering education system. Toxic rhetoric and partisan tactics, both pro and con, hurt everyone. Harping on the high-handed or shady practices of a few charter school organizations encourages some public officials to treat all charters unfairly.

And presuming that charters are superior encourages other public officials to overestimate their abilities to the detriment of all other schools. The only absolute truism is that we owe our children all the good schools we can give them.

Great Schools Begin with Great Leaders! www.csa-nyc.org

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CITY HALL

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MARCH 1, 2010

ISSUE

Stony Brook University

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EDUCATION

Avoiding Mid-Year Cuts So Every School Receives Adequate Funding

BY ASSEMBLY MEMBER CATHERINE NOLAN

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ities 0 univers e top 20 de th vi g ro n p o m ates We are a ur gradu Island orld.* O g w n o e L th r in owe . ectual p compete the intell s need to ie n a p m co

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PROGRAMS

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ith the start of a new decade, the New York State Assembly Standing Committee on Education looks ahead at what needs to be done to make sure that every student in New York State gets the best education possible. Last year, the Assembly helped to stop debilitating mid-year cuts that had been proposed by the Executive.

These mid-year cuts would have resulted in schools and school districts cutting programs and laying off staff half way through the school year. As the state faces continuing budgetary constraints, we must look at all options to make sure that each and every child gets the proper funding for school.

Despite the economic downturn and the demands on state revenues, we in the Assembly have continued to champion education. A universal, free and sound education is the cornerstone of our democracy, our economy and personal lives; this has been the guiding philosophy of the Assembly under the leadership of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

How do we make this philosophy a reality in these severely adverse economic times? It takes skill, thought and strategy to marshal resources in support of quality education and student achievement.

And that is what the Assembly did in 2009. The 2009-2010 state budget closed a $1.7 billion budget gap and stabilized state aid to public schools, continued our historic commitment to foundation aid and recognized the importance of universal pre-kindergarten. This action kept New York continuing our longstanding commitment to rigorous educational standards, student achievement, effective teaching and the transformation of lowperforming schools. It also kept the state on sound financial footing.

As we all know, the challenges grew.

In December, therefore, the legislature passed a measure that reduced further the state’s budget deficit by an additional $2.7 million. This required some tough choices, but cutting programs like the School Lunch and Breakfast Program was not an option. For weeks, the Assembly

Our Centers for Advanced Techno logy, new business inc ubators, and Small Business Development Ce nter provide help an d expertise to ne w and growing bu sinesses.

R.O.I.

receives New York State llar it invests in $16 for every do rsity—a Stony Brook Unive investment.** on urn ret 1,600 percent

BOTTOM LINE

$ 4.7 Billion That’s Stony Brook’s impact on the regional economy.

Plus an additional 59,859 jobs created.

worked to bridge the gap between the Senate and the governor’s proposals and build a consensus about reducing the deficit. In the end, we enacted legislation that saved our children from mid-year cuts in state aid and protected state property taxpayers.

New York continues to face economic and budgetary challenges. We must, therefore, look at all options to make sure that each and every child gets the education necessary for college and work in the 21st century. My colleagues and I strongly support New York’s participation in Race to Top and we in the Assembly have been working hard to secure for New York the maximum amount of funding available in support of quality education for all students.

This year will take creativity, innovation and vision to manage state revenues for education. It will also take all of us working together. I will continue to listen to and work with the school districts, their teachers, administrators and staff, parents and students as well as local, state and federal leaders to fund the best education possible for the children of New York.

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Catherine Nolan, a Democrat representing parts of Queens, is the chair of the Assembly Education Committee.

More Access

More News VISIT STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY AT WWW.STONYBROOK.EDU *London Times Higher Education—QS World University Rankings **The Impact of Stony Brook University on the Long Island Economy, Center for Regional Policy Studies Stony Brook University/SUNY is an affirmative action, equal opportunity educator and employer. 10010647

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MARCH 1, 2010

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Seeking To Broadcast Views To Wider Audience, Unions Take To The Air Teamsters Local 237, DC 37 are first to put advocacy shows on commercial radio

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

BY CHRIS BRAGG oments before Teamsters Local 237 president Greg Floyd began taping an interview for his new radio show, Floyd handed a piece of paper to his guest, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, listing the seven questions he was planning to ask.

“Okay?” Floyd said.

“Good,” Kelly responded, nodding approval.

This is not exactly how they teach people to do it in journalism school. But Floyd, who since December has been hosting Reaching Out With Greg Floyd, a commercial-free, union-funded program on AM 1600 WWRL, makes no bones that his role is to promote his members’ point of view, not to antagonize his laborfriendly guests.

“We just want to get our message out,” he said. “With the economy being so tough, we want to focus on how we can help people.”

Floyd is one of two union leaders whose unions have recently begun paying to broadcast half-hour shows on the station. The other is District Council 37’s executive director, Lillian Roberts, who hosts DC 37 Working For You. Roberts has for years hosted another show on FM

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Newly minted radio host Greg Floyd and guest Ray Kelly examine Floyd’s questions before going on the air.

91.5, the public radio station run by New York City, but a program on a widely listened-to commercial talk radio station is new territory.

The genesis of the new programs came in early December, when representatives of 25 of the city’s unions gathered for a breakfast pitch meeting with Adrienne Gaines, the general manager of WWRL. Gaines told them how the independent, black-owned station had struggled in recent years to produce costly locallyfocused programming, instead relying on nationally syndicated programs.

Unions, meanwhile, had been hit hard by budget cuts and needed to air their grievances beyond their memberships, she argued.

Gaines proposed that unions produce their own half-hour shows as segments in an already-existing three-hour Saturday afternoon program focused on labor hosted by Mark Riley.

“A lot of these unions have messages they want to get out,” Gaines said. “But the opportunities are few and far between, with the mass syndication in radio today.”

Gaines said the shows appear to be doing well, and is expecting to see a spike in listenership in the time slot when new

ratings are released. More unions are now expressing interest in doing their own shows, Gaines said, and the existing shows have booked a number of big-name guests: Floyd’s show has featured John Liu, Bill de Blasio and Kirsten Gillibrand, while Roberts has hosted Bill Thompson.

DC 37 leadership, meanwhile, sees the new broadcast as more than a good business proposition: they say it is actually part of a cause known as the “free press movement,” which promotes journalism free of the corporate consolidation that dominates much of the media market.

In recent months, DC 37’s leadership has been meeting with leaders of the movement to figure out how union-funded journalism can serve as a counterbalance to conservative talk radio.

But not everyone is convinced the union-funded shows fit into this model.

Traditionally, the “free press movement” has championed truly independent media that offered adversarial viewpoints. Elizabeth Rose, a spokeswoman for Free Press, the leading non-profit advocating for independent media, said union-backed shows could lack objectivity in the same way programming tied to corporate interests does.

Still, those around the country with union-funded shows dismiss these concerns. Charles Showalter, host of

the union-backed Union Edge show broadcast in Pittsburgh, said these programs feature far less partisan bluster that conservative talk radio and are much more thoughtful.

“Union talk show hosts are objective,” Showalter said. “I don’t think there’s a hardcore left or right, or that our ideas are unyielding or unbending. Even hardcore Republicans share some of the same issues we share.”

At the recent taping with Kelly, Floyd straddled the line between journalism and advocacy, more Larry King than Glenn Beck.

At one point, Floyd brought up the subject of school safety agents, a handful of which are being sued by the ACLU for alleged abuses against city students. Both Floyd and Kelly defended the agents and did not go into the specific allegations of the lawsuit. Floyd’s chapter of the Teamsters represents the safety agents, while Kelly is their boss.

Still, Floyd said he believes there is lot of value in having such an in-depth discussion about local issues.

Anyway, Floyd said, he is not gunning to be the next Edward R. Murrow.

“I’m not really looking to make a career out of this,” he said. cbragg@cityhallnews.com

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ANDREW SCHWARTZ PHOTOS

Councilman Pothole I

n the months since last year’s elections, Charles Barron has: Gotten into a shouting match with a CUNY trustee at a groundbreaking ceremony; launched into his latest tirade against Council Speaker Christine Quinn with another chorus of fist-raisers egging him on; and became the only Democrat in the Council to lose his committee chairmanship.

Now he is working with a private developer to bring a Whole Foods to his East New York district.

The turnaround, Barron says, is part of a new public relations strategy designed to do one thing: Get people to take him seriously.

On a recent tour of his district, Barron highlighted the parks he has renovated, schools he has funded and even a shopping mall he is helping build. He touted his contributions to each (“That’s my name! See my name! It’s under my wife’s name”) and even briefly complimented one of his arch-nemeses.

“Really, it was me and Bloomberg,” Barron said of one school construction project. “I have to give him some credit.” (Shocked at what he had just said, Barron immediately recanted: “No, I take that back! I don’t want to give him credit for anything!”)

The PR push is due in part to Barron’s interest in running for Congress in 2012 and then, if he loses, borough president in 2013. He has also not ruled out running for mayor.

Driving down New Lots Avenue and Linden Boulevard, Barron discussed his failed challenge to Quinn, what he learned from the experience and what he calls his “conspiracy to take over New York.”

What follows is an edited transcript.

City Hall: So what is this conspiracy?

Charles Barron: One of my purposes for being at City Hall is to really bring democracy to City Hall. I was trying to really bring in reforms. If there are no rule changes, then the speaker rules. That’s my primary mission, because if we bring fairness and democracy to City Hall, then the neediest communities would get most of the resources.

CH: Did your speaker run hurt that cause?

CB: It helped it. It highlighted the contradictions. I was definitely going to vote against her anyway, and when you vote against the speaker, you’re going to lose your chair, or you’re going to be punished. … I ran with the hope that one of [the other Council members] would run. I even told them that. Even before I decided to run, I asked several of them, “Why don’t you run?” They were afraid. They literally told me they didn’t want to be punished by the speaker. And they didn’t trust each other. “She’s going to pick us off, so I’ll

be hanging out there by myself, and I’ll get punished.” How? How could you get punished when you are the new majority? … I asked [Inez] Dickens, I asked [Leroy] Comrie, I asked [Letitia] James. None of them wanted to take on the speaker.

CH: What will you do now that you have lost your chairmanship of the higher education committee to Ydanis Rodriguez?

CB: Nothing has changed. I’m going to lead CUNY. I’m going to go to all the meetings. I’m going to fight during budget times like I always do. … In the context of Ydanis Rodriguez, even though I am angry with him, even though I think he was a sell-out, opportunist, and allowed them to manipulate him—and could cause divides in the black-Latino community—I’m a consummate professional, and in spite of that, I’m going to work with him.

CH: What is your next move in the Council?

CB: I’m just putting one single piece of

reform in. … An equitable distribution of the capital money and an equitable distribution of the expense money. So, instead of me getting $2 million and this one getting $5 million, everyone gets $3 million. Then [Quinn] won’t have power over [Council members].

CH: Is there any chance you could actually get that passed?

CB: I’m trying to keep it simple. Trying to appeal. Trying to get the people of our community to rise up and tell our Council members to do this. There’s a chance that if we put pressure on them, the ones who get one and two million should want to do it. The problem is those who are getting four and five million, they are going to say no, because they are going to get less. So that would be the challenge.

CH: Why not pursue the big reforms you have talked about right away, like changing the way committee chairmanships are assigned?

CB: Those are more challenging. If I can’t get these done, then it’s going to be very hard to say, “Let’s think of another way to deal with who gets the chairs.”

CH: Do you ever think about running for mayor again?

CB: Yes. I’m not taking that off the screen at all. This time around, I hope Bill Thompson wins it. I am supporting Bill Thompson.

CH: Have you ruined whatever relationships you had left in the Council?

CB: I bet if you asked around you wouldn’t find too many people who don’t like me personally, because I try to be as personable as I can. I try not to let politics, the differences we have in politics, affect my personality.

CH: Do you think Quinn dislikes you personally?

CB: I don’t think she dislikes me personally. She just doesn’t know what to do with me politically.

CH: Now that you have lost your chairmanship and received no votes other than your own for the speaker run, how will you get anything done?

CB: I’m not limited to the speaker. I know congressional people, State Senator John Sampson. We have relationships all over the place. I have community organizations. I’m not limiting myself to the city government. This is a huge city. There is power all over the place.

CH: Why is it important to you now to show people that you have accomplished things in your district like every other Council member?

CB: They don’t see this part of me, of what I’ve been able to affect. They’ll hear the battles with Quinn, the battles with the mayor. I want young people that get into politics to know that they don’t have to sell their soul in order to get things done in their community. Our black politicians tell our young people, “If you want to get into politics you have to learn how to play the game. You see, Charles Barron, he’s way out there. He may be getting some news attention, but he’s not getting nothing for his neighborhood. He’s going to get punished. He’s not going to be able to deliver nothing.” And they actually believe that.

CH: What is next for you politically?

CB: I’m looking at Congress in 2012, and the possibility of 2013 for borough president. Or a third option for me is to end my whole emphasis as a personal participant in this. And I’m really excited about the organization we’ve built, Operation Power. It’s a new group we formed. Operation Power got me elected, my wife elected to state Assembly. … I want to write some books. I’m writing a book called Dare to Lead.

CH: Is this important for your congressional run, too?

CB: I’m going to build on this, what I was able to do to transform the infrastructure of East New York, in terms of housing and parks and schools. Not too many people can drive through their communities and point to stuff they’ve actually done. You can actually see the results of the leadership. So I’m definitely going to use that.

—SG sgentile@cityhallnews.com

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Meeting of the

Minds at CUNY CREATIVE ENERGIES…CREATING KNOWLEDGE “GREAT UNIVERSITIES CREATE KNOWLEDGE through both graduate and under-graduate programs.

At The City University of New York, our Decade of Science initiative is moving at full speed in fields that are critical to our nation’s future. At CUNY’s Energy Institute, for example, world-class professors, and outstanding graduate and undergraduate students are conducting groundbreaking research to expand America’s energy capacity to make our nation less dependent on foreign oil.

The City University of New York’s research programs are where students learn how to bring our

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IND, SUN AND WAVES

can generate clean, renewable electricity, but cheap and efficient batteries don’t yet exist to store that power. So the CUNY Energy Institute is developing million-watt batteries for utilities and high-performance storage for electric vehicles. SANJOY BANERJEE (above right), a City College distinguished

professor of chemical engineering, leads a CUNY team of 20 faculty members and their student researchers. They include LORRAINE LEON (Ph.D. 2010, National Science Foundation fellowship), and JUDE PHILLIP (B.E. 2010, Ph.D. applicant), who investigate and develop chemical and biological approaches to improve electrodes for energy storage.

1-800-CUNY-YES www.cuny.edu CUNY TV-Channel 75

scientific innovations to life.”

— Matthew Goldstein

Chancellor