New York State of Mind

Now that the March flood waters have receded, the sun is shining, and the Cherry Blossoms are blooming at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens [see photo]. Spring has sprung in New York City.  It’s been a few weeks since my last report so let’s just dive right in…

Sports – Okay, baseball season started again. The Yankees first home game is Tuesday.  They've played three games and are well on their way of winning the World Series, Just remember you heard it here first!

Local – Our transit system is the best in the world and also the most expensive to run. The MTA Board of Trustees (which includes former Beatles Paul McCartney’s millionairess girlfriend Nancy Shevell) cross-our-hearts-and-hope-to-die-promised in early 2009 that if we let them raised the transit fares with no fuss just this one more time, that all of the budget shortfalls will be met for years to come or at least until 2011. Well, they must have had their fingers crossed behind their backs because in March, the Board announced that they would have to make major cuts in bus/subway routes and service and raise fares again to close a $378 million budget deficit.  The deficit has just been exacerbated by a 4% raise in wages that our Transit workers negotiated after their last strike in 2005 and state funds the Board was counting on that haven't materialized because of major state budget deficits.

Of course, the Board can’t possibly rescind the pay raises nor is the Transit Workers’ Union willing to make any concessions to  the wage increases or the nearly $500 million worth of ridiculous overtime rules. For example, if a transit worker is assigned a duty outside their normal paid function they get paid overtime. So, if a bus driver is assigned to shovel snow or put snow chains on tires for an hour, they get paid time and half for the whole day plus their regular time for driving the bus that day!

So what’s new? The bottom line is that, once again, the tax payers are caught in the middle. We have not choice, but to submit to whatever the Board and the Unions decide.  Though personally, I say let the Board cut wages and let the Union strike.  Neither will get any sympathy from the rest of us.

State - The State of New York just blew a chance to bring in $700 million from Obama’s contest for Race to the Top funds. Applications for these education funds needed to be submitted with a detailed proposal of how each dollar would be spent by the end of February. Each application was evaluated by a group of judges and awarded points for Obama friendly policies and achievements. There were a few qualifications that had to be met to win those some of the highest points awarded.

As only our famously dysfunctional Legislature could do, they failed to vote in legislation to meet some of the major qualifications - raise the cap on the number of charter school allowed in the state and tying teacher evaluations to student performance - and missed the deadline. The very influential Teacher’s Union was dead set against either of the changes, so no changes.

As a result, when the list of recipients was published at the end of March, New York was embarrassingly second to last. Fortunately, the state has a second chance to reapply by June 1, but the Legislature is noncommittal. Though the cap and the merit evaluations are just one of many points of evaluation that lost the bid, we, the tax paying public, later learned that we had points deducted for  fund allocations to buy administrators new fancy $500 desk chairs and $3000 desks –Oops! The State Education Commissioner David Steiner has promised to fix the "office furniture blunder the next time around”.

Federal – I can’t have an update without some reference to Charlie Rangel. Our esteemed former House Way and Means chairman had the ways and the means to make a pretty penny off of the healthcare bill. For his efforts to bring ObamaCare to a doctor near you, Mr. Rangel was allegedly awarded almost $4 million from the healthcare industry for which to enrich his already bloated coffers. No wonder, San Fran Nan has been dragging her heels on those “alleged” ethics violation investigations against Charlie!

New York Politicians Under Investigation – Remember in my installment in early March , I reported on a host of New York politicians in crisis. Well, it just keeps getting worse for them. As I reported, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D/Queens), former Rep Rev. Flloyd Flake, and State Senate Malcolm Smith (D a/Queens) along with Governor Patterson were under investigation for a shady state contract deal which included a lucrative slot machine contract at Aqueduct Raceway.

Well, now two of the cast members are under investigation for another alleged misdeed. Meeks and Smith unselfishly raised almost $31,000 for victims of Hurricane Katrina and pledged every dime would go for those poor unfortunate victims. After a recent internal audit, it seems they can only account for only $1,391 of those dollars being disbursed to any Katrina victims. Quoted in the NY Post, Meeks was “shocked, just shocked” and stated that “I, like you, want a full accounting of those funds.”  I, on the otherhand, am not “shocked” at all. I’ve said this before, but at the rate our elected officials are going to prison, we’ll have to open up a new branch of government at Sing Sing prison. Here’s more if your interested ...

New York Tax Payers Who Are Not Under Investigation – A sweet, elderly Brooklyn couple has been raided by the police 50 times since 2002. Because of a “computer glitch” that flagged their address as a hotbed of criminal activity when in reality, their address was used as a random address the IT department used to test a new program when they set up the computers. So for the last eight years, this poor octogenarian couple has been rousted out of their bed in the middle of the night to armed police officers screaming at them. The couple had been guaranteed that the problem had been solved in 2007, but they were soon raided again. Police Commissioner Ray Kelley went personally to apologize to the couple and swears it won't happen again. Let’s hope so.

For those interested - The New York City Tax Day Tea Party will be held  on 4/15/10 at 31st Street and 8th Avenue.  For more information go to http://www.teaparty365.org/