Reform from Bruno?

From the Albany Times Union ("Bruno cuts ties to firm"):

Almost exactly a year after revealing the FBI was looking into some of his "outside business interests," Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno severed one of those relationships this week.

Bruno also recommended a serious debate about lawmakers' becoming full-time employees of the state.

I'm speechless.

Top legal advice?

More evidence that the MTA needs a serious independent audit from NY1 ("Report: MTA Spending Millions On Consulting Fees"):

As city commuters prepare to see their tolls and MetroCard fares increase, the MTA is reportedly paying lawyers tens of millions of dollars in consulting fees.

...

More than a quarter of [the] money has reportedly gone to a prestigious law firm that once employed Governor Eliot Spitzer. The firm charges $668 an hour.

By contrast, the agency's 32 in-house lawyers only make an average of less than $100,000 a year.

Officials tell the paper that getting top legal advice actually saves money in the long run.

Then perhaps the agency needs fewer in-house lawyers?

Sunday funday at the NY Times: this time, an op-ed about parking spaces and why they should be eliminated

From "The High Price of Parking" by Alex Garvin and Nick Peterson:

AFTER years of traffic jams and air pollution, New Yorkers are finally starting to rethink the role of cars in our city. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC initiative has suggested programs like congestion pricing, new bike lanes and expanded mass transit. But city policy has not yet addressed a confusing tangle of off-street parking rules that still quietly encourage automobile use. These requirements not only add to congestion and pollution, they also make life in the city more expensive for every New Yorker.

In most of New York City, a developer who puts up a new building is required to provide a minimum number of parking spaces. These requirements were first put in place in 1950, when the prevailing wisdom was that the automobile would be the transportation mode of the future.

Planners and civic leaders believed that New York had to make itself car-friendly if the city was to grow and prosper. So it responded by requiring developers to build off-street parking for their tenants. These new rules, which varied according to the uses and location of the buildings, seemed like sound planning at the time: force the parking onto private property and solve the public’s problem.

Read more.

MTA: no more free rides!

From NY1 ("Mayor Not Happy That MTA Offers Free Ride To Board Members"):

The MTA board members who voted this week to raise fares are eligible for free rides when they need them – a perk that's not sitting well with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Under the agreement, members can ride subways, buses, MetroNorth and Long Island Rail Road trains for free and drive on MTA bridges and tunnels without paying the tolls.

The mayor says no one should be exempt from paying their fair share.

It's really time for a full-on, third party audit of all the MTA's activities. Before fares get increased again, all waste should be eliminated and the entire organization streamlined.

An age-old, yet illegal, solution to the rat problem

"To Dismay of Inspectors, Prowling Cats Keep Rodents on the Run at City Delis" in The New York Times today.

Fascinating article. This is one of those cases where you can see how overzealous regulation of small business is never quite a good idea.

Mandatory sentences

In an editorial today, The New York Times goes after mandatory sentences demanded by the Rockefeller Drug Laws again ("An Idea Whose Time Should Be Past"):

Nowhere is repeal of mandatory-sentencing policies more urgently needed than in New York, which sparked an unfortunate national trend when it passed its draconian Rockefeller drug laws in the 1970s. Local prosecutors tend to love this law because it allows them to bypass judges and decide unilaterally who goes to jail and for how long.

But the general public is increasingly skeptical of a system that railroads young, first-time offenders straight to prison with no hope of treatment or reprieve. In an often-cited 2002 poll by The New York Times, for example, 79 percent of respondents favored changing the law to give judges control over sentencing. And 83 percent said that judges should be allowed to send low-level drug offenders to treatment instead of prison.

The State Legislature has tinkered at the margins of these horrific laws, but stopped short of restoring judicial discretions. The time is clearly right for that crucial next step. The Legislature needs to gear up for the change, and Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who has thus far tiptoed around the subject, needs to set the stage when he delivers his State of the State message early next month.

Spitzer gets one right: higher education

A few articles about the future of SUNY and CUNY. The New York Sun is the most critical article, I think. I was surprised Upstate papers didn't provide more coverage.

From The New York Sun ("Spitzer May Hire 2,500 More Professors"):*

Governor Spitzer's Commission on Higher Education is poised to recommend to the governor on Monday that the State and City Universities of New York hire between 2,000 and 2,500 additional full-time faculty by 2013.

As the state faces a $4.3 billion budget gap, the commission, appointed by Mr. Spitzer in May, is also expected to recommend spending billions of dollars to fix crumbling infrastructure at state schools and creating an "innovation fund" to subsidize scientific research it says would boost economic development and New York's status as a research capital.

...

During an economic downturn, New York is one of the only states in the country seeking to expand its public university system, education experts said.

...

"These blithe demands for ever more government funds and tuition hikes must be challenged in light of the prediction that student enrollment in the near future will decrease, faculty members are now getting paid more to teach fewer hours, and there are currently twice as many campus administrators as there were in the 1970s," a former SUNY trustee, Candace de Russy, said in an e-mail. Online education could also undercut the demands for new full-time faculty members, Ms. de Russy said.

The state currently contributes about $1.2 billion to CUNY's budget, and $3.36 billion to SUNY. The commission is slated to release its final recommendations in June, but university officials are putting more stock in the preliminary report, which can affect the state budget.

"So How Do We Get to Berkeley? Spend Big on SUNY, Panel Says" (The New York Times, 2007-12-16):

“For this area to be viable,” he said in an interview in his art-filled office, “the best thing they can do, the only thing they can do, is develop great research universities.”

As the largest and most comprehensive university of the State University of New York’s 64 campuses, Buffalo is a good yardstick for measuring just how far New York has traveled — yet how short it has fallen from Nelson A. Rockefeller’s vision of creating a premier public university system.

With specialties in biomedical sciences and earthquake engineering, it is one of only two SUNY campuses, along with Stony Brook, that belong to the Association of American Universities, an elite group of 62 research universities. But even its national reputation, buzz and research dollars put it nowhere near the ranks of the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

...

“We certainly don’t have a Berkeley,” said Lloyd Constantine, Mr. Spitzer’s senior adviser, who worked with the commission and visited all the SUNY campuses. “California has more than one. In a state like ours, we could certainly have a couple. Their importance is that they are great schools, and they also lift the entire system.”

California and some other states have invested heavily in public research universities for decades and are not stopping for New York to catch up. Still other states, like Georgia and Arizona, have been pouring money into their public systems to try to rise in the rankings.

...

SUNY has grown substantially since the system was cobbled together from teachers’ colleges, agricultural schools, and swamps and farmland. Today it has more than 400,000 students at its research campuses, comprehensive colleges and community colleges.

Still, only 55 percent of college students in New York are in public institutions, compared with 79 percent nationally. Higher education draws less than 7 percent of the state budget in New York, compared with a national average of 11 percent.

...

“Typically, the SUNY board of trustees doesn’t understand what a research university is,” said Stephen B. Sample, who was the president of Buffalo for nine years before taking the same post at the University of Southern California in 1991. “One of the challenges I had as president of Buffalo was to help the board of trustees understand how different these institutions were, that Buffalo was not just bigger, but that it was a different animal, a different kind of institution.”

...

“President Simpson has done a great deal about making his plan visible,” Mr. Niejadlik said. “Things are happening.” Dr. Simpson, recruited from the University of California Santa Cruz four years ago, has an ambitious expansion plan, with the goal of creating a world-class research center that would help rebuild the region’s economy. The plan calls for new construction, and for growing to 35,000 students by 2020.

...

His ideas have won critical backing from business. “Until very recently, if you listed the most important priorities for business, the advancement of SUNY would not have been on the list,” said Andrew J. Rudnick, president of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, which represents 2,500 employers. Now, he said, there is a recognition that the university “can be part of an economic transformation of this region.”

(The article also expounds that the university system could be seen as a catalyst for revitalizing western New York.)

"Report to Urge Sweeping Change for SUNY System" (The New York Times, 2007-12-15):

Warning that New York has “slipped in stature” and that its once-powerful position in national research has “faded,” a commission set up by Gov. Eliot Spitzer is recommending that the state free its public colleges and universities to raise tuition without the Legislature’s approval and to charge different prices from campus to campus.

“New York State’s public higher education institutions face a chronic problem — they have too little revenue and too little investment,” said the report.

...

The 30-member commission is calling for the state to create its own low-cost student loan program, to clear up a $5 billion backlog in maintenance and construction at its public universities and to hire 2,000 new full-time professors — including 250 academic stars who could bring in research dollars and prestige.

* The Sun article also provides some other interesting stats: "The number of full-time faculty at CUNY is about 6,100, down from 11,300 in 1975, when the university had 250,784 enrolled students, as compared to 225,962 in 2006." Concerning SUNY: "SUNY currently employs 30,916 full-time professors, which account for about 48% of their faculty, and teach about 75% of credit hours, according to the university's Web site."

Where's the urban candidate?

Clyde Haberman wrote in The New York Times ("So Many Presidential Debates, So Little Concern Shown for Cities," 2007-12-14):

In mid-October, I noted that the Democrats and Republicans had held 17 or so presidential debates (the number can vary, depending on who’s counting), but that with all the gabbing they managed not to focus on America’s cities.

Well, two months have passed, and that observation is no longer valid.

The candidates have now held 25 or so debates without talking about urban issues.

Someone ought to alert the Guinness people. For sidestepping matters of direct concern to more than 30 percent of the population — people living in urban areas — this has to be some kind of record.

Read the rest here.

I have to agree—it's quite tragic that urban issues aren't trotted out in campaigns. The interests of the rural Midwest, and tiny New Hampshire, are elevated well beyond their importance. That's not to say these are bad places, but they don't reflect the needs of most of the country.

Amtrak and New York State settle; high-speed rail upgrades a possibility in Capital Corridor?

From The Albany Times-Union (by Cathy Woodruff, "Amtrak, state settle suit," 2007-12-12):

Amtrak and the state Department of Transportation have settled a three-year legal feud over a plan to speed rail service between New York City and the Capital Region by overhauling seven old Amtrak Turboliner trains.

...

The state sued Amtrak in August 2004, claiming the railroad had failed to deliver on its promise to bring high-speed rail service to New York as part of an agreement crafted with the state's Pataki Administration in the 1990s. The state sought $477.3 million from Amtrak.

From Buffalo Business First ("Amtrak deal ticket for high-speed upgrades," 2007-12-12):

About $22 million in state funds was approved in the 2006-07 fiscal year budget for the high-speed rail initiatives, designed to reduce travel times and increase safety along the tracks.

Half of that funding will be used to add a fourth track and extend platforms at the Albany-Rensselaer station, Bruno said at the time.

"This agreement puts to rest a long-standing dispute and enables the state and Amtrak to move forward cooperatively to improve passenger rail service," Gov. Eliot Spitzer said in a statement.

There were 734,187 riders on the Albany to New York City route in 2005.

Chimes in NY1 ("Settlement Revives Hopes Of High Speed Rail Upstate," 2007-12-12):

The plan has been kicked around Albany since the ‘80s but not much has been done with it because of scheduling delays and cost overruns.

The original idea was to run trains that go 200 miles an hour, which would make the trip from New York to the capital less than an hour.

Subway financing woes?

While the authority will end the current year with a $500 million surplus, it forecasts red ink for the foreseeable future and needs to find money now. It’s no mystery why Mr. Spitzer, at the end of a rocky first year and facing red ink of more than $4 billion, would want to put off the day of reckoning. It is puzzling, though, that he is holding off a promise of new transit money to 2010 — when he’ll be seeking re-election.

In the meantime, he should not be rejecting offers for help. The city comptroller, Bill Thompson, produced a study two months ago that found $728 million in potential revenue, more than enough to offset the need for immediate fare increases. And in Albany, scores of lawmakers have vowed to fight for extra money for transportation in the budget due before April 1.

If the increase is approved, the fare would not rise for the 14 percent of passengers who buy single-ride tickets. But the 86 percent who enjoy discounts will pay significantly more. New York passengers already bear more of mass transit’s costs than riders in other major cities. They should be squeezed harder only after every option has been tried.

- New York Times editorial "Express Track to a Fare Increase," 2007-12-13

What I'm disappointed about is I rarely ever see The New York Times attacking corruption at the MTA.

NY Times NY/Region Section: "Teenagers and Cars: A Deadly Mix"

[A]s adults, don’t we know enough — and do enough — to save them from themselves? Clearly not, according to national death and injury statistics that have shown virtually no improvement over the last decade. Each year, nearly 6,000 American teenagers die in car accidents involving teenage drivers, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; more than 300,000 are injured. The cost, in property damage and health care expenses, is $14 billion. The economic fallout will come as no surprise to anyone who has had to insure a male driver under 21.

- Gerri Hirshey, writing in the NY Times, December 9, 2007 (link)
Driving is one of the greatest perils of modern American society, it seems. In many suburbs, you have no choice but to drive everywhere.

People often underestimate how dangerous driving is. Streetsblog used a rather interesting way of putting it into perspective ("The ‘Burbs: Extremely Safe or Especially Dangerous?") for the N.Y. metropolitan area:

A decade ago, Northwest Environment Watch (now the Sightline Institute) published a memorable report showing that violent deaths were less common in Seattle than in the surrounding suburbs. The author of this myth-buster, Alan Durning, took the novel but logical step of combining traffic fatalities with homicides and found fewer violent deaths (per million people) in the central city. It wasn't that city drivers were saner. Rather, city dwellers spent less time driving than suburbanites, giving them fewer opportunities to kill themselves or other Seattle residents on the roads, which more than offset the city's higher homicide rate.

A similar calculation for New York City and Long Island, using 2005 data, likewise upends the conventional wisdom. Per million people, Long Island had 51 fewer homicides (16 vs. 67), but 50 more traffic fatalities (89 vs. 39), than New York City. In terms of total violent deaths, the difference between the Big Apple and Long Island - 105 deaths per million people in the City, 104 on the Island - is statistical noise.

New York City is widely believed to be the safest big city in the U.S., and Long Island is probably the safest suburb.

I'd be interested to see the numbers on how many of those fatalities and major accidents are young people in the suburbs—given the high insurance rates for young males, I'd guess a lot.

So, ironically, could it be possible that parents moving their kids to the suburbs weren't making an optimal choice concerning their safety?

The conclusion to draw from this, perhaps, is that it might not hurt to look into organizing lifestyles into a more town-like environment again, where driving could be minimized.

Links:

• Sightline Institute: "The Car and the City"
  

NY1: "Lawmakers Call For Mayor To Put More Money Into City Transit"

This is from December 3rd:

Lawmakers and advocates are pushing Mayor Michael Bloomberg to put the brakes on the MTA's proposed fare hike and pour more money into the transit system.

They say the city could keep the fares down if it contributed more to the MTA's annual budget. Critics say the city's funding only accounts for about four percent of the $5.7 billion annual budget for running subways and buses.

They want the city to give more.

"You can build a world class transit system, or you can nickel and dime it to death. You can't do both,” said TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint. “Mayor Bloomberg can be helpful to millions of New Yorkers who rely on mass transit and to the local economy that it powers – all he has to do is speak up.”

Not that I necessarily disagree, but isn't this the same Roger Toussaint who cost the city's economy probably around a billion dollars by frivolously (and illegally) striking in late 2005? Nickel and diming indeed! I'd be curious to know what could be done to cut the fat in the New York City Transit workforce.

Of course, there is one thing the city probably could, and maybe should, do to bring down costs over the long run: pay down some MTA debt.* Failing to pay down this debt is going to mean interest on it keeps piling up. Under Giuliani and Pataki, the MTA borrowed heavily to meet its operating costs, which is dangerous and moronic. Such a thing might circumvent future fare hikes; maybe not the next one, but perhaps one in 2030.

* I know, it's sort of like what the anti-New York New York Post wanted when it said the city should use its surplus to "DO THE RIGHT THING." However, the difference is that we actually gain more by paying down MTA debt; in the long-run, we'll be paying the state debt down anyway (we do send more to Albany than we get back, afterall).

The Immigration Picture

In The New York Sun ("Reports Add Depth To Illegal Immigration Picture" by Sarah Garland, 2007-11-29):

More of New York City's illegal immigrants hail from Mexico, China, and the Dominican Republic than from any other countries, and they make significantly less money than native New Yorkers, according to two new reports released this week that together paint a clearer picture of this elusive group than has previously existed.

Other top countries bolstering the city's illegal population include Ecuador, Poland, and Pakistan. While many work in the service industries, it is also possible to find many undocumented Chinese, Central American, and Polish professionals along with Dominican and Columbian office workers, according to new data from the Fiscal Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank that released a report this week lauding the economic benefits immigrants have brought to the city.

Project Sunlight?

This is from Albany?

A Subway to Staten Island? And other rail proposals on the forgotten borough.

It seems that The Brooklyn Paper looks at the idea of a Subway to Staten Island with contempt ("Fiddler's Folly: Let's Tunnel to SI!," by Gersh Kuntzman, 2007-11-10):

Here’s an idea whose time has come — again: How about a subway to Staten Island?

This back-to-the-future bombshell was dropped by Councilman Lew Fidler (D–Canarsie) last week as one of the points in his “Nine-CARAT STONE Plan” (the awkward acronym stands for “Clean our Air, Reduce All Traffic, Support Transportation Operations in New York’s Environs”).

The tunnel, which would allow for an extension of the subway system to Staten Island from the critical 59th Street station just north of Bay Ridge, was first proposed back in the 1920s — and workers even started digging it — but the project was abandoned due to opposition of Staten Islanders and disputes between then-Mayor Hylan and the then-independent subway operators.

...

Fidler called the Nine CARAT STONE Plan his “alternative to congestion pricing,” which he believes does not share the burden fairly. All told, Fidler’s follies would cost well more than $10 billion, he estimated, but the payroll tax would generate $1-2 billion.

An editorial from Nov. 30th in the Staten Island Advance ("Pretty Subways?"):

The first phase of the new subway line, which will cover about 30 blocks on the Upper East Side, will cost about $4 billion -- and that's at today's prices. The final cost is likely to be much higher. Even at the current 4-billion pricetag, that first phase will cost about $50,000 a foot to construct.

Perhaps we're not as sympathetic as we should be about the plight of hard-pressed Upper East Side residents, but from where we sit, there are much better things the Metropolitan Transportation Authority could spend its money on.

Mass transit on Staten Island, for one.

...

Staten Islanders would happily take a North Shore passenger rail line, even if it wasn't underground and even if it didn't have pretty stations.

More info:

• Daniel Convissor's "A Tunnel from Staten Island to Brooklyn?"
• Second Avenue Sagas' "A subway tunnel to Staten Island, 80 years in the making"
  

Vanity Fair on Spitzer

Vanity Fair has a long article on Spitzer's first year. It talks about his fall from grace.

People like to compare him to Michael Bloomberg, but I wonder if he's actually functioning very much like Bloomberg did early in his first term. He spent a lot of political capital fighting for unpopular proposals, but has some time to try to endear himself to the electorate again before it's time for his next election race.

I think he made some critical miscalculations, sometimes even with his heart in the right place. First of all, ejecting Joseph Bruno from power would be about the best thing that could happen to Albany (and to not sound partisan, I feel the same way about Sheldon Silver). Of course, it looks like Spitzer may have put at risk any chances of the Democrats taking over the state Senate in the next election.

Spitzer's driver license proposal wasn't all that bad an idea; illegal immigrants aren't going away, and it would be safer if they had driver licenses, insurance, etc.—the alternative is not knowing how to drive properly, even when they drive commercially (which means not always understanding that some roads aren't big truck-friendly because of low bridges and the like).

On the other hand, some areas of concern are barely even touched upon: New York State still loses more people than any other state. Most of the state has seen little to no job growth. Energy expenses are too high. Manufacturing is still declining, with nothing on the horizon to replace it. And, as long as Joseph Bruno and Sheldon Silver have jobs, I don't think they're going to care.