City Hall - November 14, 2011 by City Hall News

Vito Lopez, below, plots his comeback (Page 6), ex-OTB workers cry foul over lost benefits (Page 8)

Vol. 5, No. 17

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November 14, 2011

and Ron Richter, above, is under pressure to keep kids safe (Page 27).

Manhattanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rookie prosecutor has spent two years learning his job the hard way Page 10 Andrew Schwartz

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

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CITY HALL

UPFRONT

A Mayor Dressed For Success…In Washington

next year; perhaps he only wants to try mbitious people should be members of the budget Super Committee, where does that leave New York? Bloomberg is a restive man who on for size how it would feel to own the familiar with this piece of advice: and New York business leaders who dined always needs a new challenge, which bully pulpit. with senators at his house. “Dress for the job you want.” In the meantime, Bloomberg has a day “Real deficit reduction means more was great for the city when he took office Perhaps that’s the spirit behind Mayor Michael Bloomberg jobs today and tomorrow,” he said. “But amid disaster in 2002. Six years later, job. He won reelection narrowly, after a giving what sounded real deficit reduction requires real polit- settled into the job and looking for a campaign that portrayed him as the handslike a presidential ical courage—and that, unfortunately, is new challenge, he seriously considered on leader solely equipped to fix New York’s economy. But in boardrooms and clubrunning for president. speech in Washington, the biggest deficit we face.” Clearly, the twinned urges that moti- houses across the city, the sense is that the In the unlikely event Bloomberg can D.C., last week. In earnest remarks pull off a deal, it will be an astonishing vate Bloomberg—helping the world and air is slowly leaking out of City Hall’s balloon. For Bloomberg, Washington remains to an earnest forum, accomplishment, and America will owe achieving great things for himself—are still churning. Perhaps he still harbors a unconquered. Until that changes, expect full of economic insight him a debt of gratitude for his effort. But if he can spend his days focused glimmer of hope that America will draft him to keep dressing for success. and statistical detail, Adam Lisberg —Adam Lisberg, Editor Bloomberg was a man on the national issues that captivate him, him for an independent presidential bid trying to find a middle ground between Democrats and Republicans, both of whom he thinks are heading off a cliff. New York City Health Department ofﬁcials believe there are more than He gored oxen on both sides—telling Top 10 dog 500,000 dogs in the city, but the number of licensed dogs is falling: Democrats to trim social services and names in 2010: health spending, telling Republicans to 110,000 MAX 104,449 101,274 101,031 let the Bush tax cuts expire and to tax 100,619 99,398 100,000 97,568 carried interest as ordinary income. ROCKY Follow my plan, Bloomberg said, and LUCKY the United States can balance its budget 90,000 PRINCESS 82,211 in a decade. “If the world’s richest country cannot 80,000 BUDDY balance its books over the course of a COCO decade, something is terribly wrong,” he 70,000 said. “It’s just not that difficult to do, if we BELLA 60,000 have the courage.” CHARLIE Nobody elected Bloomberg to be AmerLOLA ica’s budget arbitrator, but he seems to be 50,000 enjoying it. In his speech he name-dropped LUCY the types of people he’s been talking with 40,000 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 lately—CEOs, House and Senate leaders,

By The Numbers

Downward dog?

Source: NYC Health Dept.

The Month Ahead (Nov. 14–Dec. 2) New York City rezoning conference, sponsored by Department of City Planning and Harvard and Baruch colleges

League of Conservation Voters holds cocktail party at the New York Yacht Club in Manhattan, featuring ESDC President Ken Adams

Thanksgiving Rep. Yvette Clarke’s birthday

Fund-raiser for State Sen. Joe Addabbo, Howard Beach, N.Y. Sen. Chuck Schumer’s birthday Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway speaks at Government Affairs Professionals meeting

Rep. Gary Ackerman’s birthday

Digital health conference, Pier 60 in Chelsea City Council holds hearing on revised living wage bill

Panel for Educational Policy meeting in Queens

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NOVEMBER 14, 2011

UPFRONT

Where’s Cuomo? Not in his native Queens—or most other boroughs

ranklin Delano Roosevelt made several stops in the Bronx during his time as New York’s governor. So did Nelson Rockefeller. George Pataki frequented the borough for work and pleasure—one of his favorite eateries is said to be in Belmont. Bronx Borough Historian Lloyd Ultan can’t recall any governor— much less a Democratic governor—serving a term without making a single stop in “the most Democratic county in the whole country,” where 70 percent of registered voters are Democrats. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo has not yet set foot in the Bronx since assuming his post in January, even though 9 out of 10 Bronx voters pulled the lever for him. In fact, the Queens native has hardly visited New York City’s outer boroughs, home to more than one-third of the state’s population. Travel records posted on Cuomo’s “CitizenConnects” website show him making just one trip each to Brooklyn and Staten Island this year. His only Queens appearance was to walk across the Nassau County border in the Little Neck-Douglaston Memorial Day parade. Meanwhile the governor has made seven appearances in Nassau County, six in the Buffalo area, and five in and near Syracuse, as well as a dozen in Manhattan. He recorded almost 50 trips upstate, including eight related to Hurricane Irene, about double the number he made to New York City and Long Island combined. Asked why the governor hasn’t been seen more often in the outer boroughs, spokesman Matt Wing said only that Cuomo has traveled throughout the state for multiple public forums. “Governor Cuomo is governor of the entire state of New York, and will continue to travel to every corner in order to engage the people in their government,” Wing said. Ultan says it is probably too early into Cuomo’s four-year term to judge, but the Bronx could use some attention from Albany. “The Bronx is the poorest county in New York,” he said. “Anything that can be done on the state level, and anything the governor could do to alleviate those issues, would be welcome.” —Pei Shan Hoe

NYC BRONX

MANHATTAN

QUEENS

BROOKLYN

STATEN ISLAND

Pei Shan Hoe is a reporter at The New York World,, an accountability journalism project covering city and state government based at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

hypocrisy.” “It’s burlesque,” he complained. “If it were a Richard Nixon mask, I suppose it would be okay.”

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* Political satirist Randy Credico thought he was in good company, marching on the frontlines in lower Manhattan with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, wearing a President Barack Obama mask and carrying a sign that read “Hi,

www.cityhallnews.com Publisher/Executive Director: Darren Bloch

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

I’m President 1%.” But some of the organizers thought differently, asking Credico, who is white, to remove the mask because of, as one organizer said, “racial sensitivity” issues. Credico was not happy, telling City Hall the protesters “reveal their own [expletive]

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• The union for New York City hotel workers is worried about too many new hotels. At least that’s what Joshua Gold, political director for the powerful Hotel & Motel Trades Council, wrote to the city Planning Commission last week. He urged the commission to require a special permit for every new hotel in a proposed rezoning of 18 blocks of

Hudson Square, saying that otherwise large commercial buildings would be pressured to convert to hotels. If that seems odd for a union, remember that a special permit requires approval from the labor-friendly City Council—and pressures hotel developers to agree to a union workforce. • Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver expressed general support for the pension fund reform plan put forward this month by

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Oneida Nation

Giving Thanks Without the turkey, Native Americans in New York celebrate thanksgiving

or most New Yorkers, the origin of Thanksgiving is a harvest feast shared by Pilgrim settlers and friendly Wampanoag Indians who helped them survive the brutish winter. But for many Native Americans in New York, the custom of thanksgiving is more widespread, and much older. “Native tribes have had thanksgiving ceremonies for thousands of years,” said Arlene Hirschfelder, an author of multiple books on Native Americans. “Giving thanks is not new—in fact, it’s ancient. This Thanksgiving Day is no biggie.” Some tribes in New York celebrate the American version of the holiday, but they place more emphasis on their own customs. “What we always say is we like to give thanksgiving every day, and many other times during the year for ceremonies,” said Darwin Hill, a traditional chief of the Tonawanda Band of Seneca Indians. In New York, the Six Nations of the Iroquois are known for starting meetings and ceremonies with a thanksgiving address. Typically recited in one of the Iroquois languages, the speaker recognizes everything from a tribe’s beginnings to the basic elements of life to the sun, moon and stars. “It covers a lot,” Hill said. “It can take about a half hour to say it. So that’s what we say is thanksgiving for us. We observe it every day, not just on a special day.”

The Shinnecock tribe celebrates a Thanksgiving gathering a week before the national holiday, said Beverly Jensen, a tribal member and spokeswoman. The boisterous community gathering includes a meal with succotash, corn, venison, oysters and clams, and often a basket dance performed by the young women in the tribe. “It’s the Shinnecock nation giving thanks, and that’s how we do it,” Jensen said. “We have our own Thanksgiving, which is why we are healthy people—we have two Thanksgivings.” Yet some groups want nothing to do with the American holiday, seeing it as the start of centuries of theft and broken promises. “The legacy after the first Thanksgiving is that the Native people were basically overwhelmed, with their land taken, and that sort of thing,” said Professor Philip P. Arnold, interim director of the Native American Studies program at Syracuse University. But the early, friendlier interaction provides the basis for celebrating the bond between indigenous groups and the immigrants who adopted the harvest festival and made it an American tradition, Arnold said. The Oneida Indian Nation, for example, has a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Comptroller John Liu and the city’s union leaders, saying he was in favor of any plan that aims to cut costs. “We have not seen specific legislation,” Silver said. “But clearly it is something we understand would reduce costs, and clearly we are supportive of anything that reduces costs.” The city’s plan would consolidate the management of the city’s five pension funds under the authority of a new board run by a professional manager. The plan would require approval by the Legislature in Albany.

elected officials, stakeholders and residents to listen, answer questions and share facts about our company,” said Walmart spokesman Steve Restivo. Most of the company’s lobbying is city-based, and it has shelled out money more consistently than major groups concerned with state issues.

* As Walmart campaigns to put a store in New York City, it has become one of the state’s top spenders on lobbying. The company’s $2.4 million lobbying tab ranks it as the fourthbiggest spender through the first eight months of 2011, said the New York Public Interest Research Group’s Bill Mahoney. “It’s no secret that we’ve stepped up our efforts to engage with

CITY HALL

The Oneida Nation’s float, “The True Spirit of Thanksgiving,” has appeared in the Macy’s Thanskgiving Day Parade since 2008 and will be among the entrants again next week.

Day Parade each year as a reminder that Indian culture remains an important part of this country, said Ray Halbritter, the Oneida leader. “Four hundred years ago, American Indians welcomed the first Europeans

who came to our homelands in the spirit of thanksgiving,” Halbritter said. “For us, the Thanksgiving Day holiday is about friendship and helping those in need.” —Jon Lentz jlentz@nycapitolnews.com

* Public Advocate Bill de Blasio is staffing up for his expected mayoral run, and is poised to bring aboard Nicholas Baldick as senior campaign advisor. Baldick, founder of the D.C.-based Hilltop Public Solutions, has been involved in every presidential campaign since 1992. Another source close to de Blasio said former top Clinton administration aide Harold Ickes, a longtime de Blasio mentor, and Patrick Gaspard, executive director of the Democratic National Committee, are expected to serve as advisers to de Blasio’s campaign, though not in a formal, paid capacity.

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november 14, 2011

Who’s The Boss? After big win, Brooklyn boss says the political world has returned to kiss the ring Andrew Schwartz

By Chris Bragg

nly a year ago, Assemblyman Vito Lopez’s fortunes seemed on the wane. The Brooklyn Democratic leader had just lost a couple of key district-leader races to a group of insurgent reformers. Federal investigators were probing the nonprofit he had founded, run by his girlfriend. His cancer had returned. In the midst of it all, insult was added to injury: his beloved white-tablecloth Italian joint Cono & Sons closed its doors, depriving Lopez of his regular haunt for wining and dining politicians who came to Williamsburg. But now Lopez is on the rise. His health is better, and talk of the investigations has died down. In September Rafael Espinal—the 26-year-old protégé whom Lopez affectionately calls “Ralph”—won a hard-fought three-way Assembly special election in central Brooklyn, in a struggle widely seen as a proxy battle between Lopez’s organization and so-called reformers in the borough. Ever since, the Brooklyn Democratic leader says elected officials have come in droves to schmooze at his new hangout, a Greenpoint pizza place called Nina’s. And Lopez wants the world to know he’s back and bigger than ever. “My luncheon schedule has been quite interesting,” Lopez said in an interview. “It appears that Brooklyn is getting some respect.” Recently, Lopez was feeling lively enough to don a plaid work shirt and lead a massive rally in front of Brooklyn’s Borough Hall to Zuccotti Park in support of Occupy Wall Street—drawing the kind of media attention he scorned a year ago. Alongside Lopez marched a slew of influential forces that had opposed his candidate in the recent Assembly special election, including nearly all the labor-backed Working Families Party’s member unions. “We said to Vito, ‘Okay, you won,’ and we all agreed that we would show up,” said one top labor official who attended the march. Lopez’s comeback wasn’t spontaneous; it was a product of the kind of calculating political move he has become notorious for over the past decades. He had put his political machine to work in the Brooklyn portion of the Ninth Congressional District race between Democrat David Weprin and Republican Bob Turner, but when he saw the writing on the wall in that contest, he pulled his forces out to focus on Espinal. Espinal ended up beating a candidate supported by the Working Families Party, Jesus Gonzalez, as well as a scion of the rival Towns political dynasty, Deidra Towns. Lopez says the outcome has fundamentally shifted the political calculus

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

With his health improving, and talk of investigations dying down, Vito Lopez is on the rise.

in the borough to his favor, weakening the Towns family considerably. He is already thinking ahead to next year, all but announcing he plans to back a primary challenge against Congressman Ed Towns by Brooklyn Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries. “If you step out in politics and keep ending up on the losing side, that’s a problem,” Lopez said. “He lost a district-leader race. His daughter got something like 21 percent of the vote. That’s pretty bad.” But while labor and elected officials have returned to the fold, Lopez feels the media has yet to properly salute his political accomplishments, such as winning every contested judicial race in the borough this year. Fellow powerbrokers like Manhattan Democratic Leader Keith Wright and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver lost district-leader races in their own backyards, Lopez notes, and Queens Demo-

cratic Leader Joe Crowley suffered an embarrassing defeat in the Weprin-Turner race. People close to Lopez say he is constantly wary of reporters, who seem to revel in his every defeat while ignoring those of his political rivals. Michael Tobman, a Brooklyn political consultant, says the assemblyman also works on the types of issues—such as building affordable housing and organizing neighborhoods and institutions—that can take years to come to fruition. In that sense, Tobman says, Lopez’s more admirable traits often don’t fit well into a blogdriven, 24-hour news cycle. “The chairman has an exceptionally patient and long view of politics,” Tobman said. “It can be out of step with the immediate type of reporting that goes on these days. He’s more about results that happen a year or two past initial press attention, and is more deliberate.” There is no doubt that Lopez’s reach remains formidable. But Lopez’s political

“We said to Vito, ‘Okay, you won,’ and we all agreed that we would show up.”

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opponents say the Assembly special election was a poor measure of his true clout. After all, Gonzalez was running only on the Working Families Party line, banished to a far corner of the ballot, while Espinal was on the prominent Democratic line. Yet Gonzalez lost by a mere 12 points—and supporters say he would certainly have defeated Espinal if they had faced off in a Democratic primary, or in a possible 2012 rematch. “Everybody who was involved understands that in a normal primary, Jesus would have blown the competition out of the water,” said Lincoln Restler, a district leader and member of the insurgent New Kings Democrats who has been a constant thorn in Lopez’s side. A potential rematch is not the only possible looming test of Lopez’s reasserted clout. In 2012 the New Kings Democrats plan to run some six candidates for districtleader posts. That will include the New Kings Democrats defending a seat held by Lopez nemesis Jo Anne Simon, who is running against Debra Scotto, daughter of the so-called “Mayor of Carroll Gardens,” Buddy Scotto. And Wifredo Larancuent, a union official heavily involved with the WFP, may run against Sen. Martin Dilan. In 2013 the Council seat currently held by the term-limited Diana Reyna will almost surely turn into another proxy fight between Lopez and the reformers. And in what could be the highest-profile clash of all, Restler is said to be leaning toward running a primary challenge in north Brooklyn against Councilman Steve Levin, another Lopez protégé. Restler said he was focused on his 2012 district-leader race and declined to comment on a possible Council run. For all of the wind in Lopez’s sails, his new charm offensive has progressed in fits and starts. He joined Twitter, though at first he made his tweets available only to an approved list of followers. And when he tried a live-TV interview, it left him furious. The morning of his Occupy Wall Street march, Lopez went on Good Day New York at 8 a.m. to talk about the rally. He is a renowned night owl who stays up working late into the night, and looked tired as hosts Greg Kelly and Rosanna Scotto started grilling him about his nonprofit, the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council. “It is not my group,” Lopez stammered. “It is a group that serves my district.” By afternoon Lopez was ranting about the media between every introduction of an elected official at the rally, stretching the event out for almost an hour. In an earlier phone interview, Lopez had agreed to meet City Hall at Nina’s for an extended discussion about his comeback. After that day, his chief of staff canceled the meeting, citing a busy schedule. cbragg@cityhallnews.com

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NOVEMBER 14, 2011

Off-Track Benefits OTB retirees struggle to pay for medical care after losing health coverage

$8 million is rational or reasonable, especially since these retirees were promised this when the state took [over] the obligation from New York City.” For now, Addabbo’s optimism provides little consolation for OTB retirees, who are uncertain if they’ll ever get their benefits again. Many are paying out of pocket for much more expensive COBRA plans, which are temporary and will eventually expire. One of them is Bruce Flores, who never thought his health benefits might be in jeopardy when he retired from his job at a bustling OTB parlor in Chinatown in 2007. “I was under the impression all the years that I’d been working that I’d have

By Jon Lentz

illian Santos was setting up chairs for a prayer group at her Oakland Gardens church this spring when she suddenly crumpled to the floor, unconscious. The nuns rushed to call an ambulance, but when 63-year-old Santos woke up, she refused to get inside. She didn’t have health insurance, and she was afraid she wouldn’t have the money to pay for a trip to the hospital. “They’re like, ‘You have to go,’” Santos said. “I said, ‘Sisters, I’m very sorry, I can’t go; I’ll just rest a minute and then I’ll continue doing what I’m doing.’ ” She added, “It’s kind of funny, but it’s really not funny, because you really need to go to the doctor sometimes, and passing out is not such a great thing.” Santos never expected to be in such a position. She had taken her health insurance for granted when she retired last fall after a career as a clerk at a New York City Off-Track Betting parlor. But when the city’s OTB system shut down a few months later, the state stopped paying for health coverage for 900 retirees who had counted on the state’s promises to take care of them in their old age. In the months since, city and state officials have shrugged their shoulders, refusing to pick up the annual $8 million tab. Now retirees like Santos are scrambling to scrape together the money to pay for their care—or skipping trips to the doctor and even the emergency room. “Somehow, in the middle, this got lost,” Santos said. “They decided nobody is responsible for us.” Santos, who has since started paying for temporary benefits out of her own pocket, is one the hundreds of retirees who fell through the cracks. For years the city paid for the retiree benefits and was reimbursed by OTB, until the state took over the system and picked up the tab for retiree health care. Then the agency closed, and the payments stopped coming. Santos’ union, DC 37, is fighting a legal battle to reinstate the benefits, and earlier this year the Legislature passed a bill that would have had the state continue to pay for them. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed the legislation this fall, saying there was no money to pay for it. “I understand that several hundred retirees may not have health insurance

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

“Somehow, in the middle, this got lost. They decided nobody is responsible for us.”

Andrew Schwartz

that they worked hard for and that time is of the essence,” Cuomo said when he vetoed the bill. “However, this bill is flawed because it contains no appropriation authority for any sums to effectuate this program of reimbursement.” State Sen. Joseph Addabbo, who sponsored the legislation, plans to introduce a new bill in January that includes funding sources, and said it could also be resolved in the Legislature’s budget negotiations.

The Queens lawmaker said he hopes the revised bill will become law next year—but was disappointed this year’s bill couldn’t become law despite a relatively small price tag. “There are many bills that get passed in the state that, obviously, if it’s a budgetary matter and it’s passed postbudget, they find the means to pay for, whatever the bill asks for, if it’s reasonable,” Addabbo said. “I certainly think that in a budget of $168 billion, $6 or

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all these benefits once I retired for the rest of my life,” said Flores, who started working as a betting clerk in 1973 but at age 60 is still too young to qualify for Medicare. “To get it pulled it out underneath me like that was a travesty.” Flores said he now pays about $600 a month through COBRA to maintain the same level of coverage as he had before, which covers the regular blood tests, checkups and drug regimen he needs to treat his diabetes. He said that since he’s unmarried, he’s in better financial shape than some of his fellow retirees, who have to pay hundreds more for COBRA benefits since they have spouses and children. “I was looking forward to getting married someday and having benefits for me and my wife, and now that doesn’t seem possible,” Flores said. What worries him the most is that he only qualifies for COBRA for another 13 months. When those benefits expire, he will have to wait several years before he qualifies for Medicare, and he’s unsure how he’ll pay for his health care in the meantime. “With my diabetes, it’s very important that I have these medications,” Flores said. “Where I was able to save a little bit of money before, now I can’t. If this keeps up, I may even have to borrow money, especially when the COBRA runs out. Then I’ll be really up a creek without a paddle.” jlentz@nycapitolnews.com

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Join Us November 21 As We Call for Living Wage Jobs

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On November 21, many concerned residents, elected officials, religious leaders, and community activists who make up the diverse Living Wage NYC Coalition will participate in a historic rally at Riverside Church.

Tuesday, December 6 from 8 a.m. to noon. New York City Bar Association 42 W. 44th Street bet. 5th & 6th Ave.

At a time of rising poverty and alarming inequality, the city needs to do more to create living wage jobs and rebuild the middle class. Become part of this growing living wage movement that’s fighting for economic justice in New York City.

Organized by the New York League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, this forum is generously sponsored by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

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NAACP President Benjamin Jealous will be the keynote speaker and join other distinguished guests in calling for passage of the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act.

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November 21, 2011 6:30 p.m. Riverside Church 490 Riverside Drive New York, NY, 10027

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NOVEMBER 14, 2011

Manhattanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rookie prosecutor has spent two years learning his job the hard way By LAURA NAHMIAS

Andrew Schwartz

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

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CITY HALL

hree months after Vance settled into the office, 33 youths were arrested after marauding gangs fought their way through Times Square and Herald Square, leaving four people shot. It was a vivid image of New York slipping back to the bad old days, and the new district attorney stepped up to counter it. He showed up in person for the arraignments in Manhattan Criminal Court, where prosecutors at first refused to offer the usual plea bargains on disorderly conduct charges. “New York cannot take one step backward in our fight to keep our streets safe,” Vance said afterward. But four months later, his office took a no-jail plea bargain from one of the worst offenders of the night—a 19-year-old caught with a gravity knife who gave a cop a concussion while resisting arrest. Perhaps Vance’s shifting stance was a rookie slip as he tried to find his footing in a complicated world. He plugged ahead at his campaign promises to reorganize the office and oversaw the routine prosecutions that fill the hallways of 100 Centre St. But by the middle of this summer, a series of defeats left him reeling. He inherited from Morgenthau the 2008 case of two NYPD officers accused of raping a drunken woman they had been called to help. It was a difficult prosecution: The woman couldn’t remember critical parts of the alleged assault, and there was no DNA evidence to bridge that gap. Still, when a jury acquitted the “rape cops” of all felonies this spring, Vance took the blame. He also lost cases Morgenthau had brought against three contractors charged with manslaughter in the deaths of two firefighters in the former Deutsche Bank building. He brought a case against two men accused by the NYPD of plotting to blow up synagogues, but couldn’t convince a grand jury to indict them on the most serious terrorism charges. And then a maid at the Sofitel New York said she had been raped by the head of the International Monetary

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Courtesy the Manhattan DA

he library was full of guns. Leather-bound law volumes, potted plants, a well-trod carpet—in the middle of this understated display of institutional sobriety lay 13 semiautomatic weapons on a folding card table. Cyrus Vance Jr., in a dark pinstriped suit and tortoiseshell glasses, stood behind a podium next to the gun display, shoulder-to-shoulder with a pack of black-clad, thick-necked cops and investigators. “We believe we have dismantled one of central Harlem’s most violent and destructive criminal street gangs,” he told the reporters and camera crews gathered in the law library on the eighth floor of his downtown office. As he laid out a tale of firearms and violence, his voice softened: “The crews are getting younger.” Almost two years after voters chose him as Manhattan’s first new district attorney in over a quarter century, Vance is still perfecting a public role that requires him to exemplify law and order. His appearance that day showed it. Not yet entirely comfortable with forces that lock up bad guys, not entirely without sympathy for the people who get locked up, Vance can still find himself as out of place as a gun in a library. In 2009 Vance’s thoughtful, measured approach to criminal justice earned him the endorsement of the legal establishment, the editorial boards and predecessor Robert Morgenthau, the paterfamilias of criminal justice in New York. But a string of high-profile losses has some who once supported him questioning his judgment. Vance occupies an office where past success has been determined by its occupants’ longevity. He has two more years to convince the public he isn’t in over his head— that his stumbles were merely the very public education of a nonpolitician.

Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Vance took up her cause. It was the biggest case of his short career, one with the potential to define him—especially after it blew up in his face. “We are not an office that is focused exclusively on winning, getting points on a board,” Vance said. He was sitting in his office a few days after the news conference with the guns, repeating the same logic he had used to defend his decisions on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, when his office decided to end its prosecution in August. “We really do view our job as ultimately administering justice,” he said. “If we believe after careful review that, that a case has changed in its complexion, in such a manner that we do not know any longer beyond a reasonable doubt what we believe actually happened, then we have an obligation, I think, to act on that.” Vance, like his prosecutors, like most of New York City, believed the maid. DNA tests showed sexual contact occurred. But when his investigators found distressing signs of deceit in her background—and found she had lied about a gang rape in her native Guinea—they concluded they had a victim they could not support and a case they could not prosecute. Strauss-Kahn walked free. Vance won support from many prominent lawyers—Leslie Crocker Snyder, who ran against him two years earlier, wrote a sympathetic piece for the Daily News—but others saw a double standard. The “rape cops” had no DNA but a white victim and went to trial; Strauss-Kahn was just the opposite. “It sends a bad message to women,” said State Sen. Bill Perkins, one of several minority legislators who urged Vance to move forward with the case, even if he might lose. “He had initiated the call for an investigation, and then he changed his mind when the pressure seemed to come on him. A DA that buckles under pressure like that is not good for women, obviously in this case, and it’s not good in general.” Ironically, Vance won office after campaigning on promises to pursue crimes directed at women and seek stronger penalties for perpetrators of intimate partner violence. “It wasn’t good for him politically to make this

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arrest,” said Vance’s friend Bob Silver, a partner at law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner. “Then, despite an enormous amount of opposition from groups who are key voters for him, despite their vocal, vehement opposition, he decides that because the witness is obviously unreliable, he has to drop the case. Ultimately that was the right thing to do, but politically it was not in his interest.” Or as veteran consultant Hank Sheinkopf, a close friend to Morgenthau, once put it: “People don’t forget about rape.”

ritics said the Strauss-Kahn case was an example of a calculated political decision that backfired when he dropped the case, alienating the voter blocs he needs to court the most: women and people of color. Vance, who admits he was a political novice, has had a rude introduction to political life in other ways, as well. His office needs money, and he has to secure it from the city’s political establishment. In his office, yards from legendary prosecutor Frank Hogan’s old desk and Morgenthau’s wire fan, he talked about sharpening his political skills. “I hope I’ve gotten better,” Vance said. “I believe I’ve gotten better. But others will tell you whether they think I’ve gotten better.” Vance succeeded at mending the once-fractured relationship his office had with Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Unlike Morgenthau, who was insulated from political pressure by dint of age and a half-century’s worth of political clout, Vance needs Bloomberg’s help. A key part of his platform, a family justice center, is still unfunded. A bill increasing domestic violence penalties that Vance hoped would pass the state Legislature fell prey to partisan infighting in the State Senate. His office’s $91 million budget depends on a variety of sources, including the city’s budget, controlled by Bloomberg, and discretionary funds from both the City Council and the borough president. But Vance also seemed to make a key decision deferential to the mayor. The office prosecuted John Haggerty, a consultant to Bloomberg’s 2009 reelection campaign, who was NOVEMBER 14, 2011

“I’m convinced that all four of those who have not yet done it will do it, including him,” Koch said, before calling for an independent commission to investigate the NYPD that would be similar to the Knapp Commission of the 1970s, which revealed an agency rotten to the core. Part of the call for a new investigative commission comes from a report published by the Citizens Crime Commission, headed by Vance’s former challenger Richard Aborn. “Let me just say this,” Vance said, locking his fingers together. “We prosecute police cases in this office. Just as an instance, a police sergeant took a plea for falsifying information related to arrests.… It’s an issue of whether you want to have, as you had under the Knapp Commission, 50 lawyers and 50 staff members, occupying a full floor of the World Trade Center.”

convicted of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the mayor’s campaign. Vance’s prosecutors took the unusual step of granting Bloomberg immunity in exchange for his testimony. Experts wondered why Haggerty was the only person tried in a case where it seemed Bloomberg’s campaign had skirted campaignfinance laws—though Vance did score a much-needed victory when the jury convicted Haggerty of felonies. Asked whether he’d deliberately courted the mayor’s favor to mend their relationship, Vance said, “It always is better to have people on your side than opposite you when you’re trying to achieve an objective.” When Morgenthau occupied the most prominent local prosecutor’s office in America, taking on corporate crooks as well as vicious murderers, he enforced a credo among his lawyers that they must prosecute without fear or favor. To Vance’s critics, the Haggerty case seemed like an example of a favorable prosecution pursued out of political fear. On NY1 after the case’s conclusion, host Errol Louis asked a roundtable of consultants to weigh in on “another of the political aspects of this case.” Three of the four consultants agreed the case raised more questions than it answered. “I thought [Vance] was guilty of selective prosecution,” said Republican consultant Jake Menges. Only consultant George Arzt, who worked on the Vance 2009 campaign, said the case was sound on principle.

ance’s failures have made headlines, but his successes have not. He set up a conviction integrity unit to look for prosecutorial mistakes from the past and set them right. New York has had far fewer wrongful-conviction cases than some other states, but the creation of the unit sent a message that runs counter to many prosecutors’ refusals to admit the possibility of error. Vance also cleared a persistent backlog of criminal cases. He fulfilled many of his 2009 campaign promises before he was halfway through his term. This strategy won over politicians who once supported other candidates, like Upper West Side Assemblyman Micah Kellner, who initially supported Crocker Snyder. “If he’s running for reelection, I’m supporting him,” Kellner said. Vance seems to give extra attention to street crime and domestic violence, a different tack from his predecessor, who routinely prosecuted cases of national and international scope. Vance is working through city crime block by block, liter-

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

ally. The office has made more than 2,000 community presentations to build support for a plan to create neighborhood district attorneys who can focus on specific neighborhoods in New York to understand the underlying criminal connections. “Bottom line, we need as a DA’s office to always stay focused on what’s happening in terms of street safety and personal safety in Manhattan,” Vance said. “That won’t ever become a secondtier priority for us.” Yet other first-tier priorities loom. Manhattan Criminal Court is clogged with more than 500 arrests and deskappearance tickets for Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested under confusing and chaotic circumstances. They are refusing the usual stay-out-of-trouble dismissals because they want to keep protesting. How to pursue those cases—espe-

ance ran for office promising to be the tough-oncrime prosecutor who would also be wise and above politics. He would be the district attorney who not only compassionately sussed out the causes of crime, but also crushed it when he found it. “That person doesn’t exist,” said one person who worked closely with Vance during the 2009 campaign. Vance’s supporters, including former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who once worked with Vance as a young prosecutor, insist that his medium— careful, thoughtful prosecutions—is the message. “The important criterion is, are they pursuing justice the right way?” Spitzer said. “While it is always easy in the immediacy of a verdict to look back and sometimes cast negative judgment, I think Cy has done a superb job, and I’m confident that over time the public will understand Andrew Schwartz that.” cially if hundreds of defendants insist Vance’s first term is up in two years, on individual trials—will shape Vance’s and incumbent district attorneys tend image in the eyes of liberal Democrats, to be reelected. His supporters expect as well as the financial and real estate that by the next time his name appears titans who have an outsize influence in on a ballot, he will have learned to fill the Manhattan. office that Morgenthau left empty. His At the same time, trouble is looming rivals will be watching for more signs with the NYPD, the same agency that that he hasn’t. needs to work hand in glove with prosStanding in his law library, looking at ecutors. Bronx District Attorney Robert a tableful of guns through tortoiseshell Johnson has indicted officers in a ticket- glasses, the former law professor talked fixing scandal that no one seriously thinks about getting firearms off the streets of is confined to just one borough; other Manhattan, but he may as well have been cops have been snared on more serious providing the justification for why he charges, from planting drugs on the inno- should stay in office. cent to smuggling guns. One block with fewer guns would lead, Former Mayor Ed Koch, who once over time, to a city with fewer guns—and supported Crocker Snyder and now gives two years in office could lead to another full-throated endorsement to Vance, says term and, maybe, a legacy. he has no doubt Vance and the city’s other “This,” he said, “is incremental, slow, three district attorneys will bring their important work.” own ticket-fixing indictments. lnahmias@cityhallnews.com

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Supreme HeadachE In wake of Citizens United, Campaign Finance Board system under attack from both sides of the aisle By Chris Bragg

he U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision two years ago opened the floodgates to unlimited outside spending in federal elections. That sparked lawsuits across the country seeking to use that precedent to eviscerate local campaign laws—almost all backed by corporate interests. But in New York City, the situation is different: Both left-leaning unions and right-leaning business interests are challenging parts of what is considered to be among the country’s best public campaignfinance systems. “It’s a little bit of an anomaly, because here in the city it’s the unions that are engaging in more independent expenditures—not corporations,” said Alex Camarda, policy director at the good-government group Citizens Union. New York City’s law tries to mute the influence of

by 2013 its website will show all spending on behalf of every city political candidate, whether by union, corporation or campaign committee, on a single easyto-read page. But unions are crying foul. Blocking certain disclosures has become a top priority for the New York City Central Labor Council, the city’s umbrella labor group, even as it grapples with vital financial issues like budget cuts and pension reform. The union-affiliated communications shop BerlinRosen sent out a widely circulated list of talking points before an Oct. 27 CFB hearing that ended up packed with union political directors, rank-and-file union members and nonprofit heads. The main dispute is over the “internal” communications between unions and their members. CFB members want new rules, for instance, to require disclosure of spending on campaign mailers unions routinely send to their members.

Blocking certain disclosures has become a top priority for the New York City Central Labor Council. money in politics by using tax dollars to give hefty matching funds to candidates who can raise small contributions from a broad array of donors—limiting their need to chase large sums. In exchange for accepting public funds, candidates voluntarily agree to spending limits that would otherwise be an unconstitutional infringement on their political speech. If they face wealthy self-funded opponents who don’t accept those limits, the Campaign Finance Board gives them bonus matching funds to help level the playing field. In late June the Supreme Court declared a similar law in Arizona unconstitutional on free-speech grounds. Since then, James Bopp, the prominent conservative Indiana lawyer who won that case backed by corporate-funded think tank, has launched further legal action against New York City’s campaign finance systems, and a judge vacated a previous ruling upholding that aspect of the city law this summer. The CFB is expected to conference with Bopp in January on how the city’s law can be modified to accommodate the Supreme Court’s Arizona decision—if at all. At the same time, though, the CFB has been deluged with criticism from left-leaning unions over proposed rules to force more disclosure of independent campaign spending. Following Citizens United and the heavy outside spending that occurred in 2009 city elections, a city Charter Revision Commission put a little-noticed, vaguely written measure on the ballot requiring individuals, unions and corporations to disclose their outside spending. It passed overwhelmingly in the fall of 2010. The CFB has since begun to draft rules implementing the charter change. If the board has its way,

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Unlike federal elections—which are primarily waged through broadcast media and require only the disclosure of broadcast spending—most campaigns here are waged through campaign mailers. “In order to provide voters with meaningful information, the rules governing disclosure must be written to reflect the way politics is practiced in New York City,” CFB chairman Joseph Parkes said in his testimony. The current CFB rules exempt a few types of these communications from disclosure requirements, such as regular union newsletters. Yet these are not nearly broad enough for union leaders, who say the current rules would create burdensome reporting requirements: They want all communications with members, from emails to mailers to literature, to be exempt from disclosure requirements. Laurence Gold, an attorney for 1199 SEIU, filed a detailed 36-page counterargument to the proposed rules at the CFB hearing, arguing that the charter amendment was never intended to apply to internal communications. That could serve as the basis for a union-backed lawsuit if the final CFB rules are not to their liking. Those rules are expected to be drawn up within the next few months. Robert Bishop, an attorney and partner at the major union lobbying shop Pitta Bishop Del Giorno & Giblin, said much of the concern actually springs from distrust of the CFB and of how onerous their audits of outside union spending could be. CFB spokesman Eric Friedman said audits of unions would have fewer specific requirements and be less time-consuming than those of political candidates. But Bishop argues that these audits can take years. “They need to find a way to do this so it doesn’t have a chilling effect,” Bishop said. cbragg@cityhallnews.com

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Questionable Authority Tenants sue city housing authority after new system results in Section 8 errors By Daniel Prendergast

espite the smile she wears in front of her two children, Jermaine Walker is worried. The unemployed Brooklyn mom is facing eviction from her apartment after the New York City Housing Authority dropped her from the Section 8 voucher program in February. The agency claimed she never submitted the documents necessary to

There’s no one to help resolve those problems anymore.” NYCHA claims the system—known as NICE for “NYCHA Improving the Customer Experience”—has actually helped make things easier for tenants looking to resolve issues. “NICE has created a more rigorous document tracking process that does not rely on employee discretion and contains builtin quality control features,” spokeswoman Sheila Stainback wrote in a statement.

“I know that there’s nothing I’ve done wrong. I did everything I was supposed to do, and I need that subsidy.” renew the subsidy and promptly terminated her from the program, sending her $60 monthly rent skyrocketing to $1,118. There’s just one problem—Walker did everything right. She hand-delivered the documents to NYCHA months before she was dropped. Now Walker is living with the consequences of NYCHA’s mistake as her landlord tries to evict her. “It’s been devastating,” Walker said. “I try to keep this away from my kids as much as possible. I don’t want them to worry about us possibly not having anywhere to stay.” Walker, 41, is not the only Section 8 recipient who has a gripe with NYCHA. She is one of several plaintiffs in a pair of lawsuits claiming NYCHA errors pushed them out of the Section 8 program without cause or improperly made their rent unaffordable. As a result, all of the plaintiffs are in danger of losing their homes. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio is getting involved too, releasing a report recently that details the number of errors. He recommends NYCHA suspend automatic evictions from unpaid rent until the problems can be resolved. “I know that there’s nothing I’ve done wrong,” Walker said. “I did everything I was supposed to do, and I need that subsidy.” The plaintiffs’ lawyers trace the problems to early 2010, when NYCHA switched from a system that let tenants deal directly with caseworkers to a computerized central call center. Judith Goldiner, an attorney for the Legal Aid Society representing the plaintiffs, said human error is responsible for the nightmare many Section 8 voucher recipients are facing today. “I think part of it is just incompetence,” Goldiner said. “Before this whole switchover it was a program that pretty much ran smoothly, and when it didn’t, tenants had people to talk to who could help them resolve those problems.

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

For many of the plaintiffs threatened with eviction as a result of what they say are NYCHA’s errors, the new system has been anything but convenient. One of the lawsuits claims NYCHA failed to mail some tenant-recertification packages, which give Section 8 recipients several months to reapply for the subsidy before it is set to expire. Others that were mailed and returned were never registered in the agency’s database, the lawsuit says. Another lawsuit claims NYCHA failed to lower other tenants’ monthly rents after they reported a loss of income. While the subsidy covers the majority of the rent, Section 8 recipients are required to pay 30 percent of their monthly income. If a tenant’s income falls, NYCHA is required to lower the tenant’s rent as well. Goldiner blames the errors on the new computerized system, and said the old system’s human involvement kept people accountable. “There’s still a big backlog on the part of the people whose job it was to scan tenants’ information into the system,” she said. “If the information doesn’t get put into the system, the computer is programmed to terminate you.” When some tenants contacted NYCHA to call attention to the problems they were having, Goldiner said, they were told to be patient. In Walker’s case, her patience was rewarded months later with a letter of termination from NYCHA and a notice of eviction from her landlord. “I wasn’t worried until my landlord told me he didn’t receive his portion of the rent,” Walker said. “When I spoke to NYCHA, they told me I was terminated. They said that somebody had gotten my recertification package but that it was never logged into the system. They were basically telling me that somebody just didn’t do their job. Their attitude was pretty much, ‘Oh, well. Deal with it.’ It’s just not right.” editor@cityhallnews.com

Jermaine Walker is part of a group of tenants suing NYCHA for unfair evictions.

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Daniel S. Burnstein

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LOAN RANGER

Why Eric Schneiderman is the darling of Occupy Wall Street, and what a mortgage deal without New York means for the state BY ANDREW J. HAWKINS

Amid the arrests and the chanting, a strange thing happened at a recent Occupy Wall Street protest in Lower Manhattan: A Democratic elected official was singled out, not for ridicule or scorn but for praise. “We have Mr. Schneiderman, who is not going along with the banks but is investigating them,” said Zacary Lareche, 47, from East Flatbush in Brooklyn. Lareche was standing on the lip of a fountain in the middle of Foley Square, overlooking a vast throng of protesters on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Using the “human microphone” technique popularized by the protesters, Lareche told the assembled crowd about his struggles with foreclosure, and about his belief that Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, was that rare politician working for the victims, not the perpetrators, of mortgage fraud. “We appreciate that,” Lareche said. “We need more people like the attorney general to put their heads together to stop the banks, to bring our communities around.” Schneiderman is making a name for himself, in Zuccotti Park and elsewhere, by objecting to the broad mortgage settlement deal being negotiated between the federal government, attorneys general from all 50 states and the major U.S. banks. Schneiderman has so far refused to be a part of the deal, calling it too lenient toward the banks. Along with Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, Schneiderman is investigating

the loan servicing and mortgage practices of several institutions like Bank of America, and objects to any deal that would release them from some civil liability. The major financial services firms have a heavy presence in those two states, giving their attor-

Andrew Schwartz/Joey Carolino

Eric Schneiderman is making a name for himself, in Zuccotti Park and elsewhere, by objecting to the broad mortgage settlement deal being negotiated by the federal government.

Another reported provision in the settlement would be $1.5 billion to help distressed homeowners, and $2.7 billion to finance legal aid programs, housing counselors and borrower support. If Schneiderman maintains his opposition to the

cates are anxiously awaiting the final deal, worried it will be too weak to have a meaningful effect for stressed-out homeowners. They support Schneiderman’s investigation into bank foreclosure practices, but remain skeptical that any of the money from the settlement will ultimately reach the hardest-hit communities. “Twenty-five billion dollars may at first glance seem to be a big number,” said Josh Zinner, codirector of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project. “First of all, it’s divided among the five biggest servicers, including the four largest banks in the country. In a way, that’s chump change for them, given the amount of damage their practices have caused.” Zinner said it was unclear how the banks would disburse settlement money intended for troubled homeowners. “The vast majority of funds that comes out of the settlement—they’re not going to go to states to set up programs,” he said. “The money is going to be at the discretion of the banks themselves to figure out how to use it. It’s supposed to be used to write down principal, but a lot of that is at the bank’s discretion.” The number of foreclosures has dipped in New York, thanks to a bank moratorium on foreclosures and a court ruling that ended the notorious practice of the financial industry robo-signing foreclosure documents without scrutiny. But experts predict that number will rise again, and warn that the housing crisis is far from over. “Make no mistake: The crisis has not left New York,” said Fern Fisher, a deputy chief administrative judge and director of the New York State Access to Justice program. “There will be more foreclosure filings.” Exacerbating things further is the state’s most recent cost-cutting budget. Funding for a major foreclosure-assistance program was zeroed out in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive budget. The Assembly attempted to set aside $1.5 million to continue funding the program, but Cuomo vetoed it, arguing that the state could not afford the appropriation. Schneiderman said he hopes his stance on the mortgage settlement with the banks will encourage other states to join him in calling for a more rigorous deal. Already, attorneys general from California and Massachusetts have expressed solidarity with New York. And a deal without some of the nation’s most populous states could be widely seen as lacking credibility. With the economy and the housing market struggling through recovery, time is naturally of the essence. “We think we should do a more comprehensive approach,” Schneiderman said. “We don’t think it’ll take very long. It’s a matter of political will.” ahawkins@cityhallnews.com

“That’s chump change for them, given the amount of damage their practices have caused.”

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neys general an outsize voice. With or without New York and Delaware, the negotiations are almost over, and the vague outlines of a deal have begun to emerge. In late October, The New York Times reported the settlement could total up to $25 billion, $5 billion of which would be paid by the banks. The remaining amount would consist of credits to banks for loan modifications for a small percentage of homeowners. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development maintains the deal would hold the banks accountable. Schneiderman disagrees. “The releases are too broad,” Schneiderman said to City Hall after a recent fundraiser in midtown Manhattan. “And the right parties aren’t at the table, either. The only folks that are being negotiated with are the banks, so the only mortgages that are being dealt with are the ones the banks hold in their own portfolios. That’s less than 20 percent of mortgages in America.” Many troubled mortgages would not be included in the deal, such as those handled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Schneiderman complained.

proposed deal, New York could lose out on that pool of cash, further exacerbating the budget woes of cash-strapped antiforeclosure programs across the state. But Schneiderman pushed back against the assertion that New York could lose out if the state were not attached to the final deal. New York-based trustees, like Bank of New York Mellon, that handled toxic mortgagebacked securities are under investigation by Schneiderman’s office. Any cash resulting from the settlement of those cases would be a windfall to the state. “Every mortgage-backed security was full of mortgages that were either in New York or Delaware trusts,” Schneiderman said. “So they have to go through Beau and me, one way or the other.” Besides, he argued, the 50-state settlement isn’t just about negotiating the best deal for New York. “New York will never get left out,” he said. “It’s just a matter of if we can get everyone else on board—for a bigger deal that also would be better for the economy.” Meanwhile New York housing advo-

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The Reboot Repowering power plants garners broad support, but financing remains elusive

By Jon Lentz

RG Energy is ready to tear down its power plant in Astoria and build a new one that’s cleaner, more efficient and more productive. “It’s the equivalent of taking an old diesel-powered truck and replacing it with a Prius,” said Jonathan Baylor, NRG’s New York development manager. And NRG isn’t the only one that supports the installation of far more efficient technology at the site of the natural gas-fired plant. Many of the plant’s neighbors back the idea, the state’s Public Service Commission has given the go-ahead, and now Gov. Andrew Cuomo is citing repowering projects like NRG’s as a source of replacement energy if he succeeds in shutting down the nuclear reactors at Indian Point. The only obstacle? NRG hasn’t found a buyer willing to sign on for a longterm contract, which it needs to secure financing. And it doesn’t expect to get the loan it needs unless the state or the city intervenes. “Our company is not able to put $1.4 billion in cash into this plant,” Baylor said. “We need to go to the capital markets, and we need some assurance of revenue.” NRG’s stalled plans reflect the challenges in financing repowering projects in New York, and touches on one of the main reasons why they are still so rare. “The industry and the producers of electricity have dragged their heels for some time in pursuing this concept energetically,” said Matthew Cordaro, an

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

electric-utility expert and a professor at Long Island University. “A large part is the economics of building new capacity, whatever it may be. There is uncertainty of where electric demand is going, and it’s been more uncertain in the last couple years.” Over a decade ago, building new plants

who supports NRG’s project. “You need an anchor tenant before you can get financing. You could say to the bank, ‘Lend me the money and I’ll get you tenants.’ And the bank will say, ‘Show me some tenants before I lend you some money.’ ” One reason energy buyers are leery

“It’s foolish that we haven’t been aggressively promoting this, because it both deals with our energy needs by creating more megawattage, and also reduces pollution dramatically.” in New York City was easier because Con Edison was in the business of both generating and distributing power, and could build new plants whenever they were needed, said Ashok Gupta, director of energy policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Because of deregulation, Con Edison was required to sell off its power plants, and multiple players came in and purchased them. The smaller power companies have trouble paying for new plants without a five- or 10-year contract from a major customer like Con Edison or the New York Power Authority. That’s where government can step in. At the request of the governor, the Public Service Commission could direct Con Edison to find a repowering project at the best price and sign a long-term contract with its operators. “It’s like in real estate,” said Gupta,

of such arrangements is that long-term contracts pose a risk: If the agreedupon prices end up being higher than the market price, the buyer loses money. Uncertainty about where prices will go, especially in a weak economic recovery, increases those risks. “But in order to get new things built, and to get the environmental benefits and displace Indian Point, the fact that Con Ed should have a couple thousand megawatts in long-term contracts is not a problem,” Gupta said. “If you have a particular societal and policy objective to achieve, which is you want older, inefficient generation replaced by newer, efficient generation, and you want to shut down Indian Point, then having Con Ed sign a contract for 500 megawatts, even with some potential risk, is worth doing.” In fact, Cuomo’s desire to shut down Indian Point for safety reasons could

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be the boost that NRG is looking for. In an online chat last month, the governor raised repowering projects as one option that would help the state meet its power needs if Indian Point were shut down. “We can retrofit old plants, we can site new plants, we can improve transmission lines,” Cuomo wrote. “So if we want to find replacement power, we can.” He did not, however, commit to intervening on NRG’s behalf. NRG’s repowering project would add 440 new megawatts to the plant, resulting in a total of 1,040 megawatts. Indian Point has over 2,000 megawatts of capacity. “It’s foolish that we haven’t been aggressively promoting this, because it both deals with our energy needs by creating more megawattage and also reduces pollution dramatically,” said State Sen. Michael Gianaris, a Democrat from Queens. “That’s the one gaping hole that could have a real, significant impact on the environment that we are not pursuing aggressively enough.” Even the passage this year of a new Article X law, which streamlines the permitting process for new or retrofitted power plants, will have less impact than if government intervenes directly in calling for a repowering project, Gianaris added. “What can be more significant is when the arms of government, whether it’s the utilities or the authorities, go out to contract—which helps with the financing question—that they require the bidders to be repowering projects,” he said. “That would have a very direct and quick impact on getting these projects moving.” jlentz@nycapitolnews.com

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On the morning of Thursday, October 6, 2011 FBI agents arrested Wendell Walters for allegedly accepting $600,000 in bribes. Despite the fact that Mr. Walters was a senior official in New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, few in the construction world were surprised by this turn of events. As the charges of bribery, conspiracy and racketeering were unveiled, all of New York was hoping that this event will ultimately serve as a wake-up call to HPD officials to open their eyes and end the corruption that this agency has been accommodating for years.

Commissioned to Help the Middle Class

Using Taxpayer Dollars to Line Their Pockets

Mr. Walters’ scheme involved extracting kickbacks from developers looking to secure lucrative contracts with the City of New York. The developers, six of whom were arrested along with Mr. Walters, received their own kickbacks from contractors who worked on the projects. New York City’s taxpayers would then be handed the bill for the developers lining their pockets through inflated bills for contracts garnered by HPD. One contractor, who received more than $10 million worth of work from Mr. Walters, allegedly paid him more than $400,000 in bribes over a six-month period. This was a hefty addition to the $135,000 salary that HPD paid him annually.

Cheating Workers in the Process

The kickback process in HPD isn’t the only problem rampant at HPD. Corruption runs throughout the agency and it has been brought to HPD’s attention for years that workers are forced to pay kickbacks to keep their jobs, while being cheated out of their rightful pay by contractors thumbing their noses at prevailing wage laws. Workers are routinely paid in cash while their employers avoid their financial obligations by not contributing to the unemployment system, worker’s compensation, or City, State and Federal taxes. Contractors would bill HPD as if the workers were being paid $60 per hour (as required by federal law) but would only pay them $12 to $15 per hour.

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The Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is a municipal public agency created to provide affordable housing in New York City and is the largest provider of affordable housing in the country. Mr. Walters served as the Assistant Commissioner for New Construction, leading a division within HPD that manages vacant and under-utilized New York City property holdings for the purpose of rebuilding them for residential and mixed-use development. Mr. Walters had the power to find and select “sponsors,” i.e. real estate developers, to renovate existing housing units, as well as financing new construction.

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Giti Bensinger MD, FACOG Director of Urogynecology

FORTUNES BY WAY OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

Despite the fact that these projects are recipients of Federal funds and these supervised by Federal prevailing wage laws, these contractors keep underpaid employees working under unsafe conditions while costing New Yorkers millions in taxes (Fiscal Policy Report, 2007). Many of the exploited workers are undocumented and those who are brave enough to speak out confirm that workers are frequently forced to work without hardhats, gloves and other basic safety equipment.

An Expected Revelation

For years, leaders of the unionized construction industry have been asking HPD to pay closer attention to contractors sourced to handle their projects. Consistently hiring contractors who are debarred, accused of bad business practices or who have countless violations was bound to end badly; few were surprised when Mr. Walters’ dealings were exposed. There has been a great deal of concern regarding HPD’s willful ignorance of the quality and integrity of the contractors on their jobsites. Previous HPD contractors include: • Lettire Construction Corp. - Cited in an order seeking debarment for alleged prevailing wage violations • Reliant Electrical Contracting (subcontractor to Lettire) - Cited in an order seeking three-year debarment for willful violations • C.J.L. Construction Inc. (subcontractor to Lettire) – Cited for Failure to pay prevailing wages • Artec Construction & Development - Hired Reliant and C.J.L. Construction Inc. as subcontractors for its HPD projects

Over a Decade of Hefty Profits

Mr. Walters’ reign at HPD started in 1998. By 2011, he had received kickbacks from developers on nearly $22 million worth of affordable housing projects. Mr. Walters’ scheme was simple: he would allegedly write the amount that he wanted kicked-back on a slip of paper and hand it over to the developer paying the bribe. Although it suspended Mr. Walters and disqualified the contractors who paid the bribes, HPD will need to do better than that. For years, as taxpayers have done their job by contributing to build housing for New York City’s middle class, HPD has refused to do their due diligence in sourcing honest, qualified contractors and labor. It is time for HPD to stop turning its back on those same people they should be helping. New York City’s taxpayers and residents deserve to have affordable housing built by quality contractors who contribute to New York’s tax base and who provide fair wages, benefits and long-term, stable careers for their employees. HPD needs to learn a lesson from other city agencies and develop a less arbitrary method of awarding projects. The solution to this problem is procurement reform. HPD should be required to use the VENDEX system, as well as required to vet all contractors and subcontractors on the jobsite. New York City residents and taxpayers deserve a total audit and review of HPD programs to weed out corruption and waste. We have paid enough.

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TECHNOLOGY

Andrew Schwartz

ISSUESPOTLIGHT

The Boom Is Back A maturing tech industry becomes a pillar of New York City’s economy

By Adam Lisberg

hen New York’s first technology boom exploded, it took down an industry—but not much else. The city’s “Silicon Alley” of downtown Internet developers, puffed up in an atmosphere where putting up a website or tacking “.com” on a company name qualified as a business model, deflated along with the rest of the high-tech bubble in 2000, leaving nothing but empty offices in its wake. Yet after a decade of value destroyed and lessons learned, New York once again finds itself at the forefront of the latest technology boom—and this time the maturing sector is becoming a pillar of the city’s economy. More venture capital money pours into New York City deals than anywhere in America except Silicon Valley, surpassing even the Boston area. The balance has shifted so much that the New England Venture Capital Association is holding a luncheon this week in Cambridge, Mass., titled “Can New England benefit from the New York innovation boom?” The city is prepared to pour $100 million into a new applied-sciences campus, in part to attract even more talented developers, engineers and entrepreneurs to come to the five boroughs. And the other key sectors of New York City’s economy— finance, fashion, pharmaceuticals, media and so many more—find their fates inextricably tied to high tech. “Back in the ’90s, we were a sector. Now it’s integrated—tech is in everything, including small local products,” said Dawn Barber, a cofounder of the NY Tech Meetup, a central forum for new start-ups and new ideas. “Every business

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has to have a tech strategy. It’s not just maintaining a website.” The Meetup’s monthly gatherings attract hundreds of enthusiasts to watch start-ups, students and smart thinkers demonstrate new programs, products and ideas. They

media companies such as foursquare and Tumblr are headquartered in New York City, while established firms such as Google, Yelp and Twitter have established major offices. “The companies that are getting all

“It’s not just a flash in the pan. What these companies are doing is changing the way we think of the world.” are a social catalyst for the tech field, and hint at the depth of talent working now to develop new technologies. “We’re finally getting some talent in the engineering sector,” said Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, which studies the city’s long-term business climate. “Every major company that we have, their competitive edge is how they can slice and dice data.” A symbol of that change is on visible display in lower Manhattan, where a windowless white tower next to police headquarters is being transformed into a data center to handle the torrents of digital information flowing in and out of the city—especially on Wall Street. Much of the 32-story tower, recognizable by a giant Verizon sign overlooking the East River, was purchased in 2007 for $172 million and slated to be turned into glass-walled office space. But Sabey Data Center Properties bought it this year for $120 million and plans to keep it full of fiber optics and digital switches. “We looked at the building and said, ‘It’s a data center—let’s keep it a data center!’ ” said John Sabey, president of the company. “The amount of data that is being created and analyzed and transferred is continuing to grow exponentially.” Farther uptown, booming social

the press are of course the sexy Silicon Alley start-ups, but there are so many other companies that are plugging away toward profitability,” said Bob Johnston, spokesman for the New York Venture Capital Association. “This is a foundational shift. It’s not a trend. It’s a foundation that is being constructed within every industry in town.” Elected leaders from Mayor Michael Bloomberg on down agree the boom is real this time, with more than 100,000 tech jobs in the city and a seemingly unquenchable thirst for more talent. The city is trying to support the industry, as opposed to offering special incentives to particular companies, by boosting the tech culture and funding incubator spaces so that small firms can blossom into big ones. “There’s sort of natural incubating influences at work in the New York City economy,” said James Parrott, chief economist at the labor-backed Fiscal Policy Institute. “The city doesn’t have to give away the store on this.” Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, said Bloomberg’s personal enthusiasm for high tech and his aggressiveness in courting the industry has paid dividends in convincing the smart money to follow young talent to New York.

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“Young people want to live in the city of New York,” Heesen said. “Venture capitalists are followers, not leaders. We follow where the entrepreneur is.” And with so many technology workers packed into concentrated neighborhoods on a small island, the industry’s physical footprint is making itself felt. “In Midtown South, Union Square, Chelsea area, it is a big impact. And that’s where the future is heading,” said Colin Yasukochi, research director of Jones Lang LaSalle, who tracks the industry’s real estate needs. “It’s the concentration of the tech employees, more than the raw numbers, that really makes the difference.” While start-ups are often attracted to the area because they need small and affordable space, not the larger floor plates of midtown’s Class A towers, developers are taking notice of the demand. Midtown South has the lowest office vacancy rate of any neighborhood in Manhattan. Chelsea Market, which hosts many tech and media firms on its fully leased upper floors, is seeking city approval for an addition it says will generate $1.6 billion in economic benefits for New York City. Earlier this year Google paid almost $2 billion for the building across the street, which takes up the full block, putting more real money into tech’s footprint. “It’s not just a flash in the pan. What these companies are doing is changing the way we think of the world,” said Michael Phillips, managing director of Jamestown Properties, which owns Chelsea Market. “It’s for real, and I think it’s here to stay. Lots of companies have committed to New York. Google making a commitment to a headquarters in New York is a very serious signal.” alisberg@cityhallnews.com NOVEMBER 14, 2011

TECHNOLOGY

SCORECARD

KEY PLAYERS

TOP ISSUES

ANDREW RASIEJ

TALENT

Founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, onetime candidate for public advocate and a ubiquitous presence on the city’s tech scene, Rasiej has become a clearinghouse for new ideas in technology, social media and open government. As an investor in many start-ups, he also has a hands-on role in New York City’s tech business world.

Finding enough good engineers and developers is the single biggest challenge for New York City technology firms. Bringing more young tech standouts to New York, where they can feed that talent engine, is a key purpose of the city’s plan for an applied-sciences campus in conjunction with a major university. In cantrast with what happened in the city’s first tech boom, many of the open positions now require advanced programming, math and science skills.

SPACE

NY TECH MEETUP

Technology companies in New York like to cluster together, but they are squeezed for space. They prefer older buildings near Chelsea, the Flatiron District, Union Square and points farther downtown, helping drive the office vacancy rate in Midtown South down for six straight quarters to 6.7 percent, the lowest in Manhattan. While incubator spaces help the smallest start-ups, the owners of Chelsea Market hope to win approval for an expansion they say would generate loads of new tech office space.

The long-standing showcase for developers and inventors to show off their ideas is a standing-room-only hit, with hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors, developers and fans crowding into monthly meetings to see the latest new ideas burbling up from New York’s smartest. Vimeo and Tumblr, to take two examples, were first shown to the public at the NY Tech Meetup. Bloomberg recently made an unannounced appearance at a meet-up, sending a signal that the city supports their efforts.

ENVIRONMENT Starting any new business in New York City is difficult, but red tape and archaic rules are particularly galling for start-ups running lean on Internet time. Some new companies incorporate in other states rather than run the New York gauntlet. However, tech entrepreneurs put up with the hassles to be part of a dense pool of talented people creating the future, and say major firms like Google, Twitter, Tumblr and foursquare, with major New York offices, help set the tone for the entire technology sector.

RACHEL STERNE Appointed by Bloomberg as the city’s first chief digital officer, the social media entrepreneur has become the chief connection between City Hall and New York City’s tech scene. Working on a first-name basis with many of the most influential voices in the industry, she has been able to communicate their concerns to city government, while also serving within the city bureaucracy as an evangelist for adopting social media and the latest tech standards as a baseline for serving the public.

FUNDING After surpassing Massachusetts last year, New York has become the country’s second-largest recipient of high-tech venture capital funding, behind Silicon Valley. Venture capital firms are also setting up shop in the city, which is important because hands-on tech investors like to be close to the companies they nurture. Analysts say the on-the-ground presence of venture funds is a sign of a maturing tech sector.

GOVERNMENT

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORP.

New York City is trying to spur the industry without picking individual winners and losers. It has funded start-up incubators, where small companies work together in a common space to crosspollinate their ideas, and is offering free city land and up to $100 million worth of funding to help set up a new applied-sciences university. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who made his fortune in information technology, has been a visible supporter of the start-up community and has encouraged city government to set the tone for making digital operations a priority.

The city’s economic development arm is at the center of much of the tech renaissance, using its quasi-independent status to quickly fund services that help start-ups and provide networking space. It is running the competition for a new applied-sciences campus, though Bloomberg will make the final decision.

BY THE NUMBERS

New York tech employment rises

New York overtakes Massachusetts in high-tech venture capital deals

130,000

100

125,000

80 70 60 50 40

MASSACHUSETTS DEALS 48 41 39

105,000

100,000

95,000

NEW YORK DEALS 2009 Q4

Source: CB Insights

2010 Q1

2010 Q2

Venture Capital:

2010 Q3

2010 Q4

2011 Q1

2011 Q2

2011 Q3

93,071

95,003

2005

2006

Number of tech jobs

90,000 85,000

2007

2008

9,697,099,100

2009

2010

Source: NYS Department of Labor

After early boom and bust, venture firms find steady opportunity in New York

$10

119,219 114,913

110,000

30 20

115,444

115,000

120,283

120,000

Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association

$9 $8 BILLIONS

$7 Annual venture investment in New York

$6 $5

4,370,051,500

3,410,381,300

2,135,730,700

1,267,462,200

$1 428,370,600 $0

1995

1,481,825,000

1,683,191,900

1,330,194,500

707,140,200

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2,043,617,800

1,618,150,000

2003

2004

1,942,958,400

2005

2006

1,827,676,600

2007

2008

2,191,902,600 1,980,779,400

1,691,343,500

2009

2010

2011*

* Jan.–Sept. only

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

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AT&T salutes those who paint outside the lines.

AT&T is proud to give back to New Yorkers by supporting community events across the city.

ÂŠ2011 AT&T Intellectual Property. Service provided by AT&T Mobility. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property. All other marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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EXPERT ROUNDTABLE Technology

SETH PINSKY

President and CEO, New York City Economic Development Corporation Q: Is technology really going to be a big part of the city’s economy going forward, or is it a fad? SP: The mayor’s view, which I think is spot-on, is that there should be no one industry upon which New York entirely relies. And that’s the case whether it be technology or financial services or any of the other sectors in which New York is strong. And the good news is that under the mayor, there has been a lot of success in continuing to diversify the economy. We today have over 10 industries that have at least 100,000 people employed in them, and one of them

now is technology. Between 2005 and 2010, the employment in the technology sector grew by nearly 30 percent, and today represents about 119,000 jobs in the city. Increasingly, technology is becoming critical to every industry in the economy. It used to be that there was a technology sector separate from the rest of the economy. But more and more, the technology sector is the economy. Everything that we do touches technology, and if you want to be a leader in almost any industry going forward, you have to be a leader in technology. Q: Does boosting the tech industry lead to job growth in other sectors? SP: Absolutely. If you look at the segments of many of our industries that are growing, those segments frequently have technological aspects to them. When you hear about the growth of digital media, it’s not just small digital media start-ups. It’s our large media companies as well that have very significant presences in digital media that are benefiting from the growth of that sector. Making these connections, ensuring that both the large companies and the small companies have access to the

on the part of the administration to become a tech center. It’s a good strategic move, because that’s going to attract a pool of those who are going to be truly prepared to face the challenges of innovation. The whole technology world’s really about innovation. The last century was about information. The winners are going to be those who truly have innovation.

FERNANDO CABRERA

Chair, New York City Council Technology Committee Q: Is technology really a significant part of the New York City economy, or do we just notice it because it’s new and fun? FC: There’s definitely a serious effort

Q: Does the city’s technology focus have any risks? FC: I have some concerns. This five-star university we’re about to have, those jobs can follow. And I have a big concern about jobs. Where are these jobs going to go? Who is going to have access to those jobs? And you know, being the co-chair of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, I’m very concerned about minorities and women having access to those jobs. The second

CAROLE POST

Commissioner, Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication Q: Why is technology becoming such a big industry in New York, and why now? CP: New York City is the mecca. If you want to do something interesting and exciting, regardless of what subject matter it is, New York is the place.

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

best technology, have access to the best talent, is really the only way that we can keep this unique ecosystem that we have in New York thriving and growing. Q: How does the quality of tech jobs stack up against those in other sectors? SP: You need to look at the whole tech ecosystem. And the tech ecosystem includes the private companies—but also includes the academic centers that are spinning out these ideas, and the new research and development that’s creating these businesses and growing the businesses that exist. If you look at both higher education and the technology sector, what’s generally true is that they don’t just tend to pay higher wages for the types of jobs that you associate with them, whether it’s professors or research assistants or engineers. They also tend to pay higher wages for support positions, as well. Q: What are the biggest challenges for the technology sector? SP: We actually asked that question about two years ago. We went to venture capitalists, we went to entrepreneurs, we went to

thing I’d like to see is a specialized middle school and a high school that would be attached to this school that would guarantee that our students from New York City would have a crack at this university. Q: How can the city make sure its own young people can have access to those jobs? FC: Everything is pointing to being specialized. And if you’re not specialized in a particular area, you’re not going to be recruited. So we have to have our students prepared for that. I don’t know if you saw the report the other day, but we are the only state in the nation where math scores for fourth graders went down. Now that’s scary. Because research also shows if they can’t do well by the fourth grade, our students will tend not to do great going forward. What I don’t want to see is a whole bunch of kids from all

New York City is where everyone wants to be, across the globe. And so from a tech-sector perspective, I think that the fact there is an incredibly rich academic environment here and an incredibly rich base of opportunity we are fostering, it is kind of a perfect storm in bringing all of those factors together. New York is the place to be, and tech is the emerging business sector that is sort of taking the world by storm and is very heavily promoted

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business leaders, we went to academics. And we said to them, “If there were one thing that you could change about New York City that you think would have the most significant impact on our economy, what would it be?” And the answer that we heard very consistently was that we have great engineering and appliedsciences schools here in New York City, and we have great universities here in New York City, but given the scale of our city’s economy—with a metropolitan area with an economy that’s roughly the size of India—and given the scope of our ambitions, we really want to be not just the leader in innovation in the country but in the world. We just don’t have enough raw talent and enough basic research and development taking place here in order to achieve our goals. And so that’s really where our Applied Sciences NYC initiative came from. We need to ensure that we’re producing the scale of talent and the scale of new ideas here in the city that some of our competitor regions are producing. The mayor always says businesses follow talent, and if you can make New York the center of talent, you will make New York the center of the businesses that need that talent.

over the nation coming here, and we only have a couple of kids in there. And I want to make sure our minority kids have that opportunity. Q: Is the city putting too many resources into technology initiatives like the applied-sciences campus? FC: It’s a tricky balance. We have to prepare for the future, and overall I think it’s a wise investment. If we’re going to become a Silicon Valley, if we’re going to attract the pool of people that we need locally and abroad, we need to have the intellectual think tanks. It was wise of the mayor to do that. What I don’t want to see is funding for senior centers and youth centers cut. In a year’s cut, we lost half the slots for an after-school program, from 80,000 to 40,000. And so what I don’t want to see is taking from Peter to pay Paul.

and advanced by the host, the city of New York. Q: Is your agency an example of the kind of big technology user that is looking for innovations? CP: We’re running a technology shop here in New York City. Our customer is the city of New York, but certainly almost everything we do has direct or indirect spillover and benefits to New York City at large. I’d like to think that we play a significant role

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in both enabling the tech community to proliferate as well as participating in that thriving community as a voice.

New York community, without running afoul of having there be a fair and equal opportunity for all providers.

Q: For products your agency uses, are you finding suppliers in New York now who weren’t here previously? CP: In terms of the origins of the providers we do business with, we’re limited—we’re prohibited, in fact—from sort of being geographically biased. And so, you know, our business is open to anyone. That being said, I think things like the BigApps competition and some of the by-products of that, which we’re really seeing the benefits of, have definitely had a New York-based thrust to them, and we’re trying to parlay that and kind of foster that even more by somewhat tailoring how we do business to the

Q: Can technology really be a big driver of the city’s economy, or is it just the one we’re paying attention to now? CP: I have to believe that Mayor Bloomberg, as one of the smartest technologists I’ve ever known, is really onto something in terms of identifying what the needs are that can support the foundation of the technology sector, and going full bore out there to make that happen in New York City. I don’t think we’d be making those sorts of investments and those sorts of commitments if we didn’t think it was real, tangible and realistic.

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Chair, City Council Committee on Governmental Operations Q: When you chaired the Technology Committee, you held a hearing about the growing technology industry in New York. Did you ever think it would grow the way it has? GB: I would not have predicted this. I think Google coming here, Twitter and this campus notion are changing it. When we met with the EDC people to talk about the campus concept, they said high-tech payroll is about 6 percent of the city’s economy. I guess Boston is 13 percent and San Francisco is 13 percent. So we’ve got a ways to go. I feel very optimistic, based on some of these numbers. The sector feels more loved, and this is a sector that needs to feel loved. They’re very passionate about what they do, which I think is different than working in a bank. Q: What are their big challenges? GB: The same issues that came up in December 2009, which have not changed. Included in the cost of doing business is the law governing the incorporation of a [limited liability company]. New York State requires that LLCs publish information about what they’re applying for in print media publications. It’s very expensive, and so obviously they take that and go incorporate in another state. Believe it or not, that comes up all the time because

there are so many start-ups. The second issue is, I think, just space. Most of them are in the Union Square area. There’s only so much room for incubators. I don’t hear them clamoring for some kind of [tax] abatement. But you do hear them clamoring for engineers.

easier for organizations to thrive and in turn serve their

Q: What does New York have to offer that other places don’t? GB: Here’s something very interesting. I always think of 311 as a service for New Yorkers and visitors—how do you fix a pothole, where do you find alternate-side-of the-street parking? The data that’s coming out of this information is another reason why New York City has arrived in the tech world—having nothing to do with constituent services, which is what I think of 311 as. What I learned is that in Silicon Valley, the rich data is not there—how many potholes, how many trees, whatever people can develop, all the material that is there for these apps. I would not have thought about that. And yet that is a selling point for programmers and developers. They are coming here just to get the 311 data. I’m working really hard on an open-data bill. I want all databases to be open to the public. That’s huge. I feel like that’s a real legacy item. It’s not done yet, but we’re working hard on it.

As technology has changed, we’ve continued to change. I am

Q: Does the tech sector have as much potential as its boosters say? GB: I’ve always been somebody who just loves that world, and there’s a little history here. At the NY Tech Meetup the other night, I heard the top talent who used to go to New Haven because of Yale, or to California because of Stanford, or to Boston because of the universities there, are coming to New York. They also stated that the fact that Google is here has made a huge difference, because there’s so much talent going to Google and there’s overflow. The same thing is happening with Twitter. — Adam Lisberg alisberg@cityhallnews.com

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Amid high unemployment, New York tech jobs go begging

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Until November 18th we are accepting nominations to recognize a selection of woman who are achieving greatly in their communities, at their workplace, for the public and everything in between.There are five categories for which you can nominate a woman of public and civic mind who has achieved above and beyond: Organized Labor, Government and Public Service, Journalism/Media, Business/PublicPrivate Partnerships, Community Organizing and Non-Profits.

Visit www.cityhallnews.com to submit your nomination. EVENT TO ALSO INCLUDE A SPECIAL PANEL DISCUSSION City Hall will be hosting a panel of dynamic woman from in and around public and private industry to impart their unique knowledge on best practices, lessons-learned and how to excel. The discussion will be focusing on how woman in the public and civic space can achieve successes above and beyond the rest and other important lessons on leadership. Moderated By: CHLOE DREW

Executive Director of New York Council of Urban Professionals CATHERINE ABATE CEO Community Healthcare of New York, Former New York State Senator JENNIFER CUNNINGHAM Managing Director SKD Knickerbocker CECILIA CLARK Executive Director of Sadie Nash Partnership ELSIE MCCABE THOMPSON

Executive Director of The Museum of African Art CARMEN WONG Former Host of CNBC ‘On the Money’ and award winning journalist FOR MORE INFORMATION or sponsorship opportunities call 646.442.1623 or email Jasmine Freeman at jfreeman@manhattanmedia.com. www.cityhallnews.com

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

BY ADAM LISBERG In offices across New York City, technology entrepreneurs hunt for developers, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pushes for more visas for foreign engineers and city officials plot a massive science campus to attract smart technical students. Yet in schools across the city, a potential talent pool of 51,000 high school students graduated this year—even if only 17,500 of them were college-ready. In a city where the black unemployment rate is three times higher than the rate for whites, the mismatch between potential workers and potential employers is stunning. “New York City has not provided the kind of support systems that we need,” said Gail Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College and an expert on preparing students for the workforce. “No matter whether they just came out of high school or they’ve been out of high school for a long time, lots of times they are not prepared to do the kind of work to be an engineer.” To date, the city’s biggest attempt to address that gap is a small high school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, called P-Tech. On the third floor of the building that houses Paul Robeson High School—a failing technologyoriented school slated for closure—104 students and nine enthusiastic teachers try to build their skills to reach the future. Collaborating with IBM and the City University of New York, P-Tech offers students real-world mentoring, a technical focus and a six-year curriculum that ends with an associates’ degree. But the freshmen in the school’s first year are spending their time simply learning the basics of math and English. “You have to academically meet them where they are,” Principal Rashid Davis said, as he led a tour of classrooms where students learned graphing calculators and worked on Apple laptops. “Some parents will say, ‘My child has been a C student all his life.’ So we’re trying to change a paradigm for a child who is already stigmatized at home.” The open-admissions school was not

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Daniel S. Burnstein

BRIDGING THE SKILLS GAP

the first choice of many in the student body, which is 75 percent black and 20 percent Hispanic. But several students said they have grown to love the school, as much for its small class sizes and attentive teachers as for the prospect of a free college diploma. “Now it’s a better choice,” said Cierra Copeland, a freshman and aspiring cardiac surgeon from Brooklyn. “Growing up where I grew up, it’s not every day that someone goes to college. So it’s like a scholarship for me.” Added Roman Brito, who takes three subways to get to school from his home in the Bronx: “In other schools, I don’t think they try. In this school, everybody tries.” The Bloomberg administration hopes to unveil another major public-private educational initiative soon, several sources said, to try to bridge the skills gap and provide more talent for New York City’s tech firms. “You speak to industry, and they would definitely prefer homegrown talent,” said Josh Thomases, deputy chief academic officer for the city Education Department. “We see P-Tech as the leading edge of our push to marry private industry, CUNY and the K–12 educational system.” New York City needs that push, said Lazar Treschan, director of youth policy at the Community Service Society, because traditional strategies in the educational system have not worked. “Our high schools are having a tough time to even graduate people at the minimum standards,” he said. “Until we can get people reading and performing math at a good skills level, adding engineering is going to be a problem.” Outside of the city’s educational system, though, other programs attempt to bridge the skills gap and show talented high schoolers that they can break into high-tech fields. Startup Summer, operated by the NY Tech Meetup, links up students with paid six-week internships at city technology firms. It works with CampInteractive, which gives urban teens outdoor training as well as a sense of possibilities about technical paths they can take with their futures. “It was such a great opportunity,” said Donnette Newyear, 18, of the Fordham section of the Bronx, who interned at the start-up Magnify.net this summer. “A lot of kids don’t know there are opportunities out there for people like them.” alisberg@cityhallnews.com

CITY HALL

BACK & F O R T H

Child Protector

s the new commissioner of the NYC Administration for Children’s Services, Ronald Richter is taking over an embattled agency tasked with protecting thousands of children all across the city. The death of 4-year-old Marchella Pierce last year raised doubts about the ACS’ effectiveness and prompted an investigation of the child welfare agency, which had a caseworker assigned to monitor the girl. Richter, a former Family Court judge with a wealth of experience in and out of government, spoke with City Hall about preventing such incidents in the future, the challenges of child protective work and how to better support his agency’s frontline workers. What follows is an edited transcript. City Hall: Why did you take this job? Ronald Richter: I spent my career working in juvenile justice and child welfare in New York City. The opportunity to lead New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, especially after Mayor Bloomberg [merged] our juvenile justice and child welfare systems, is the opportunity of a lifetime. So I never would’ve turned this opportunity down. CH: What are your top priorities? RR: Implementing EarlyLearn NYC is going to be a key priority. We are going to work with New York State and the Cuomo administration to ensure our young people placed upstate on delinquency cases are going to be closer to home in New York City, so that we can plan for their rehabilitation with their families to make them productive members of our society. We are going to make sure all of our frontline workers have good, solid supervision, so when they come to work each day someone is looking out for them and making sure their professional development matters. If they are invested, our children will be protected. We are going to ensure child safety continues to be a priority. CH: ACS has been scrutinized following the deaths of Nixzmary Brown and, more recently, Marchella Pierce. How will you prevent these kinds of incidents? RR: As a Family Court judge, I was very moved by the commitment, tenacity and mettle of the child-protective specialists that appeared before me each day, including their investigative skills and the resources that they brought to bear on their cases. Each child appeared to matter to them, and each protective investigation is unique and difficult. We need to get each of those 60,000 investigations right. The way to do that is to make sure our frontline workers are being supervised well, and that supervisors are being managed well. You do that by making sure that managers and supervisors have the tools and skills available to them to do their jobs. CH: You became deputy commissioner in 2005 and put in reforms after the death of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown. What worked? RR: The use of the Family Court, not just

CITY HALL

than placing them upstate, where the cost is great and recidivism rates are high. CH: Will there be similar reforms following the Pierce case? RR: The agency’s priorities are always going to focus on ensuring that we’re making the best efforts we can to improve child safety and risk assessment. CH: How much of the criticism of ACS is warranted? RR: When you think about the fact that this agency knocks on the doors of our citizens in the city 60,000 times a year, and makes an assessment of whether parents or guardians have in fact abused or neglected their children or whether there is in fact some credible evidence of abuse or maltreatment, as the law requires… if you consider that in Daniel S. Burnstein about 35 percent of those cases for applications to have children placed we make such a finding, and then we as an in foster care but to have the court autho- agency have to make a determination as rize the agency to supervise children for to what kind of services to provide—and various periods of time while they’re then whether, based on further findings, the in their parents’ care and custody, is an government should intrude on a family’s life important tool to help us protect chil- further by seeking some sort of court interdren. We’ve also provided BlackBerrys vention—court-ordered supervision, or even to all our lawyers in the Family Court the removal of a child from a parent—you in an effort to help lawyers have easier, begin to think about the awesome responsifaster contact with the child-protective bility that New York City Children’s Services specialists, supervisors and managers in has. Each time we make that assessment, the borough field offices, so that deci- it’s our obligation to make it right. Our city sions could be made more expeditiously is entitled to the assurance that we’re doing on behalf of children and families and so the best job we can each day, each night, we would not create as much delay in the to make it right. And we are. But there’s no question that predicting human behavior is a Family Court. very challenging task. CH: What did you do in the juvenile CH: How has the merger with the justice arena? RR: While I was the deputy commis- Department of Juvenile Justice sioner, we developed the Children’s worked out? Services Juvenile Justice Initiative, RR: In New York if you are a juvenile delinwhich for the first time invested in quent, you are by definition 15 and under. evidence-based models as alternatives So Mayor Bloomberg was spot-on when he for young people at risk of placement on merged the two agencies, because his motidelinquency cases. Those models devel- vation was to say that Children’s Services oped in the past 35 years demonstrate was the right place for young people’s needs that with youth violent offenders, they and interests to be considered, so long as can be treated at home in their fami- we are careful to ensure that we are looking lies without being placed, and you can out for public safety and our public safety reduce recidivism at a much lower cost is secure. We are currently operating two

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secure detention facilities and nine nonsecure facilities. The merger has actually resulted in the closing of one secure facility. CH: Why is the number of children in foster care at record lows? RR: Fewer young people are coming into the foster-care system as we continue to use preventive services to have families address concerns while intact. There are jurisdictions across the country finding it makes more sense to avoid the need for separation and reunification, because that’s traumatic both for children and their families. That’s the better course whenever you can do so consistent with a child’s safety. The goal is not to reduce the foster-care census. The goal is to make sure children are safe. CH: How do you cope with the emotional toll of your work? RR: I have spent 20-some years in the child-welfare and juvenile-justice field. I think that for all the people who do this kind of work, it is important to balance the work with a healthy sense of humor and perspective. We will not be successful if our workforce is drained by sadness. Our supervisors and managers consistently have to take the temperature of our frontline workers and consider the fact that doing the frontline work with families that are traumatized is difficult. It takes a special person to do child-protective work, and it takes a special person to continue doing it, because beyond the endurance, just being able to absorb people’s pain and suffering is a particular skill. CH: Do you have to deal with this as commissioner? RR: A lot more so as a judge than as a commissioner. As a judge, you’re actually reading case records, and you’re hearing testimony that is very disturbing, and you’re seeing the faces of parents as you are telling them you are removing their children, and you’re actually seeing the face of a worker who has seen the child who has been burned, and you’re seeing the real effects right there before you in the courtroom. That has more of an effect than the work that I’m doing today. CH: How did you deal with the emotional toll before you became ACS commissioner? RR: I have the support of a great family. I have great friends. And I think that I try to take care of myself, which is very important. I think I have a pretty good sense of humor. I try to generally view things as “The glass is half-full.” I’m an optimist. I come from a background of really enduring people who are strivers. I think you can make things better. So I come to work each day thinking you can make systems improve if you work hard enough and are smart about how you approach problems. —Jon Lentz jlentz@cityhallnews.com NOVEMBER 14, 2011