The February 23rd Edition of City & State Magazine

February 23, 2015

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very year, hundreds of thousands of students choose The City University of New York for a multitude of reasons that can be summed up as one: opportunity. Providing quality, accessible education has been CUNY’s mission since 1847, a commitment that is a source of enormous pride. The powerful combination of quality academics, remarkable affordability, financial support and 24 modern campuses spanning the five boroughs of New York – the world’s most exciting city – make CUNY a singular value in higher education.

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— James B. Milliken, Chancellor

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very year, hundreds of thousands of students choose The City University of New York for a multitude of reasons that can be summed up as one: opportunity.

Providing quality, accessible education has been CUNY’s mission since 1847, a commitment that is a source of enormous pride. The powerful combination of quality academics, remarkable affordability, financial support and 24 modern campuses spanning the five boroughs of New York – the world’s most exciting city – makes CUNY a singular value in higher education.

— James B. Milliken, Chancellor

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FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

CONTENTS February 23, 2015

Michael Gareth Johnson Executive Editor

I CITY

By Seth Barron

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Rooms for regulation

By Wilder Fleming

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Best color for business

A tale of two State of the City speeches

Assemblywoman Latoya Joyner on fixing NYCHA

By Sarina Trangle

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Nicole Gelinas on the mayor’s affordable

By Kate Pastor

housing plan

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STATE

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BUFFALO

How pensions fuel the Western New York economy

By Bruce Fisher

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A FAIR SHARE

Lawmakers push to regulate the sharing economy as new competitors emerge

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STATE OF OUR CITY

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The universal pre-K space race

By Sarina Trangle

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How transparent is surge pricing?

By Jon Lentz

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GRADUATE SCHOOLS SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

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SPOTLIGHT: ENERGY

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PERSPECTIVES

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BACK & FORTH

February 23, 2015

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Cover: Illustration

by Guilliame Federighi

A Q&A with the Rent Stabilization Association’s Joseph Strasburg

The Dean of the Senate

By Wayne Barrett

FULL COURT MESS

A Bronx housing court crisis

The bridge to renewable energy…banking on microgrids…Q&As with Chris Gibson, Joseph Griffo, Amy Paulin, Audrey Zibelman and Gil Quiniones

Alexis Grenell on Cathy Nolan’s speaker bid

A Q&A with NY1 anchor Pat Kiernan

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city & state — February 23, 2015

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took a trip to Italy last year with my wife and used Airbnb for the first time. We spent two nights in Florence and two nights in Venice. As a customer, my experience was exceptional. The rooms were clean. The hosts were kind and responsive. The price was much less than at nearby hotels.

I write this in part in the interest of full disclosure.

I also mention it because the experience opened my eyes to the possible pitfalls and legal struggles this growing industry could face. Plenty of reasonable concerns have been raised, such as the safety of other tenants or trusting complete strangers in your apartment. Digging deeper, the answers to these problems are not simple and balancing the advantages and setbacks of the new industry is—for a lack of a better word—complicated.

The complexities and nuances are amplified in New York City, where housing is more controlled and planned than pretty much anywhere else. In this issue, we do our best to explain the systems at work in the city and at the state level and to give our readers a sense of where this fight is going. We focus on Airbnb, which has been painted by members of the City Council and other lawmakers as the primary driver of illegal hotel use. We also explore why the outcome of this battle could impact policy and legislation going forward.

And we take a look at another “sharing” economy upstart—Uber. The company’s unique business model is disrupting the current car service market by attracting drivers with its lucrative surge pricing feature. Attempts to further regulate the industry seem inevitable. But so do changes to the way we hail cabs going forward. We give that a closer look.

With all eyes on the shake-up in the state Assembly, veteran journalist Wayne Barrett writes a probing piece about potential problems for the leadership in the state Senate, which he is quick to point out has a much longer history of corruption with four of the last five Senate majority leaders ending up indicted. The piece weaves humor and perspective into solid reporting in the way only Barrett can do. I encourage all to give it a read.

Finally, another highlight in this issue is our contest to add a title to our recent magazine cover about the decline of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. We received a lot of great entries, and you can see the winner in just a few pages.

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Letters to the

Editor

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

swapping places with de Blasio, the mayor has “been effective in solidifying his power on the city level,” according to the magazine, which adds: “One area where he excels is in his affordable housing deals through partnerships with developers who get more market-rate space in return. The strategy of building higher has won over the real estate industry, the prospect of more jobs has kept labor happy, and progressive advocates are looking forward to a more affordable city.

It seems like that is a win, win, win.”

It’s a win also because many “progressive advocates” are too scared to call him out on the deals.

—Norman Oder, Atlantic Yards Report blogger Michael Johnson, executive editor of City & State, responds:

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In a special edition published on Feb. 17, City & State unveiled its latest New York City Power 100, a list of the most powerful figures in city politics and government.

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Bruce Ratner, executive vice president and director, Forest City Enterprises, nudges up to 42 from 43, with this description: “As Mayor Bill de Blasio continues his high-profile push to create or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing in the city, Ratner has become a key ally. A supporter of the mayor during the mayoral race, Ratner’s development group—Forest City Enterprises—has established itself as a model for how to execute the 80/20 agreements (80 percent market rate/20 percent affordable) that the administration has been touting.”

That’s an odd summary. After all, outside of the 80 DeKalb tower, I don’t think Forest City has built any 80/20 buildings. Rather, it is building—with new partner/overseer Greenland—Atlantic Yards (aka Pacific Park Brooklyn), which is about 35 percent subsidized housing, with 50 percent of the 4,500 rentals “affordable.”

Ratner’s company Forest City Ratner, a division of Forest City Enterprises, has established itself as a model for, well, negotiating deals that seem to work, giving politicians like Mayor Bill de Blasio groundbreakings to tout but also pulling back from promises of affordability.

Among developers, Ratner is third on the list, after Rob Speyer of Tishman Speyer, who also chairs the Real Estate Board of New York, and Bill Rudin, CEO and vice chairman, Rudin Management Company, and chair of the Association for a Better New York. (Also high is Mort Zuckerman, a developer better known for his ownership of the New York Daily News.)

Ratner is one notch above Vicki Been, commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and one below the Rev. Al Sharpton, who actually saw his slot slip from 33 in the wake of the controversy involving his former spokeswoman Rachel Noerdlinger, who left her job as chief of staff to First Lady Chirlane McCray.

Though Gov. Andrew Cuomo leads the pack,

We welcome and appreciate the debate that has come from the release of our New York City Power 100 list.

After talking with dozens of political insiders, listening to much spin, our editorially team concluded that real estate and development were a top priority in city government and we feel our list accurately reflects that.

As for the specific profiles, they were intended to reflect our discussions and overall thinking, and not to serve as full description of each person’s importance.

61 Broadway, Suite 2825 New York, NY 10006 Editorial (212) 894-5417 General (646) 517-2740 Advertising (212) 284-9712 advertising@cityandstateny.com CITY AND STATE, LLC Chairman Steve Farbman President/CEO Tom Allon tallon@cityandstateny.com

PUBLISHING Publisher Andrew A. Holt aholt@cityandstateny.com Vice President of Advertising Jim Katocin jkatocin@cityandstateny.com Events Director Jasmin Freeman jfreeman@cityandstateny.com Business Development Scott Augustine saugustine@cityandstateny.com Director of Marketing Samantha Diliberti sdiliberti@cityandstateny.com Office Administrator Jeff Stein jstein@cityandstateny.com

Question @MMViverito & @emmawolfe not breaking top ten @TweetBenMax: Top 11 all men

Distribution Czar Dylan Forsberg

—New York City Councilman Rory Lancman (via Twitter)

EDITORIAL

Hoping to make #1 most influential parent! Maybe 2016!

Executive Editor Michael Johnson mjohnson@cityandstateny.com

—Maya Wiley, counsel to the mayor and No. 83 on the list (via Twitter) Congrats to my colleagues who made the 100 list. … I must’ve been 101, well maybe 102....lol.

—New York City Councilman Jumaane Williams (via Twitter) Proud to share a list with so many talented folks, but its my ranking with Mongo Nation that brings a tear to the eye.

—Staten Island Borough President Jimmy Oddo (via Twitter) Kathy Wylde dropped 65 places in @CityAndStateNY Power 100, biggest +/- I saw in skim.

—Ben Max, Gotham Gazette executive editor (via Twitter) #61 of @CityAndStateNY ‘s 100 most powerful politicos in NYC is still avail!

—Annie Karni, New York Daily News reporter

To have your letter to the editor considered for publication, leave a comment at www.cityandstateny.com, tweet us @CityAndStateNY, email editor@cityandstateny.com or write to 61 Broadway, Suite 2825, New York, NY 10006.

Letters may be edited for clarity or length.

Senior Correspondent Jon Lentz jlentz@cityandstateny.com Web Editor/Reporter Wilder Fleming wfleming@cityandstateny.com Albany Reporter Ashley Hupfl ahupfl@cityandstateny.com Staff Reporter Sarina Trangle strangle@cityandstateny.com Editor-at-large Gerson Borrero gborrero@cityandstateny.com Columnists Alexis Grenell, Nicole Gelinas, Michael Benjamin, Seth Barron, Susan Arbetter

PRODUCTION Art Director Guillaume Federighi gfederighi@cityandstateny.com Graphic Designer Michelle Yang myang@cityandstateny.com Marketing Graphic Designer Charles Flores, cflores@cityandstateny.com Web Manager Lydia Eck, leck@cityandstateny.com Illustrator Danilo Agutoli City & State is published twice monthly. Copyright ©2015, City and State NY, LLC

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The Foundation of the de Blasio Affordable Housing Plan:

Rent Freeze • 13% Increase in Real Estate Taxes • 3.6% Water Rate Hike • More Restrictive Rent Regulations

Feb. 3, 2015 State of the City Address, Mayor Bill de Blasio boasts: “…we’re already… making real progress toward a more affordable New York… our Rent Guidelines Board passed the smallest rent increase ever last year... And we need stronger rent regulations [in Albany] that reflect today’s New York…”

* Landlords of 1 million rent-stabilized apartments are the biggest providers of affordable housing in our Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and upper Manhattan neighborhoods. The “smallest rent increase ever” denies them the revenue they need to repair, improve and preserve existing affordable housing.

* Mayor de Blasio’s “affordable New York” makes for a good sound bite. But then he raises real estate and water taxes at the same time that he dictates rent freezes to his Rent Guidelines Board and presses Albany for more restrictive rent regulations. * Mayor de Blasio’s housing plan is a “game-changer” alright – but not for affordable housing, not for our neighborhoods, and not for poor and working families who depend on it. We’ve been down this road before, and we all know where it leads.

IT’S TIME FOR NEW SOLUTIONS TO AN OLD PROBLEM.

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STATE OF OUR CITY

Good jobs that pay decent wages are all too scarce.

Access to the best health care seems, to many, to be a privilege that cannot be earned. To countless New Yorkers, affordable housing is an oxymoron.

ARMAN DZIDZOVIC

-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio

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Baruch College, Mason Hall, Feb. 3, 2015

First Lady Chirlane McCray

Public Advocate Letitia James

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New York City Councilman Jumaane Williams

Former Mayor David Dinkins

NEW YORK STATE CONFERENCE OF BLACK AND PUERTO RICAN LEGISLATORS’ 44TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE WEEKEND Albany, Feb. 13-15, 2015

Caucus Weekend 2015

CITY & STATE — February 23, 2015

Assemblyman Karim Camara

State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli

State Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer

Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes

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NYSNA: Caring for ALL New Yorkers

Here in New York City and throughout our state, nurses are uniting to improve care for our patients.

We’re working together to end healthcare inequality and to raise standards so that every New Yorker has access to quality care. Through our union, the New York State Nurses Association, we’re creating a better future for nurses and our patients:

Æ Safe RN Staffing. Having enough nurses at the bedside is key to safe patient care.

In our union contracts and in the legislature, we’re working to ensure that every patient has access to the care of a nurse whenever they need it.

Æ Community Voices. We believe that our communities should have a voice in decisions that

impact their access to care. Healthcare decisions should be based on community needs, not on the bottom line. That’s why we’re advocating to strengthen community voices in care.

Æ Quality Care for ALL. Every patient deserves equal access to quality care regardless of

income, borough, or insurance coverage. We’re working with fellow healthcare unions, patients, community leaders, and elected allies to stop the devastating tide of hospital cuts and closures in underserved communities.

www.nysna.org

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@nynurses

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THE WINNER IS …

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ity & State’s last magazine cover featured former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver but had no headline, so we wanted to see what our readers would have done to fill the white space.

Here are the winning submissions.

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1

Submitted by Capitol Tonight

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Anonymous

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Submitted by Jay Mehta

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Let

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City & State Event Packages come with unique collateral advertising opportunities in City & State Newsmagazine, our First Read and Last Read e-newsletters and at www.cityandstateny.com

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COUNCIL WATCH: Rebuilding our Infrastructure the Right Way

By Mario Cilento, President, New York State AFL-CIO

The $5 billion state budget surplus has spurred an endless supply of creative ideas on how to spend New York’s newfound settlement windfall. Most of those proposals have centered on addressing physical infrastructure deficiencies, which is certainly a necessary and worthwhile proposal. But knowing what to spend money on is not enough, we must rebuild our infrastructure the right way.

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In investing public dollars into infrastructure – both settlement money and beyond, we must be sure to create good jobs with adequate labor protections tied to every dollar spent. From prevailing rate to project labor agreements, the public and workers alike need assurance that the best skilled and trained labor will be used.

We must also ensure there are protections beyond the construction phase. There should be Buy American requirements built into procurement, so that any iron and steel sourced from these projects creates jobs here at home. We must ensure the infrastructure our families take to school and work every day is built with quality American craftsmanship. We can never again allow a repeat of the Verrazano Bridge embarrassment, in which the MTA sent $34 million to China for steel used in the bridge’s repair.

Also, any permanent jobs created should be protected, by ensuring that public services are staffed through civil service, and that any non-construction, private sector jobs that may result are subject to adequate labor standards in terms of wages and benefits.

Finally, the focus on infrastructure should not distract us from the other budgetary needs. From education to public healthcare, New York must reinvest in strong public services, many of which have been cut to the bone in recent years. Public Services and those who provide them are an asset that strengthens our community.

city & state — February January 20, 23,2015 2015

A TALE OF TWO STATE OF THE CITY SPEECHES

For more information on the New York State AFL-CIO, visit www.nysaflcio.org

SETH BARRON

T

he pomp surrounding Mayor Bill de Blasio’s annual State of the City address belies the fact that the tradition is actually not very old. Ed Koch occasionally gave January speeches starting in 1979, but only when he had good news to report: he skipped 1981 to 1983. The codification of the “SOTC” speech into law came with the revision of the City Charter in 1989, and was meant to provide transparency to the New York City Council regarding the operations of the city. It also aligned the mayor with the governor and the president as executives informing the legislative body regarding the health of the body politic.

The pomp surrounding the New York City Council speaker’s State of the City address, on the other hand, has no constitutional provision, and was essentially invented by Peter Vallone, Sr., probably as a means of defining the new-fangled position in

the city’s political consciousness and promoting himself. But unlike the mayor’s address, the speaker’s speech is not required by law. In fact, not even the Council’s own internal rules say anything about the speaker making a special annual address.

It is also without precedent in the higher, parallel institutions. Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos don’t make State of the State speeches, and neither do John Boehner or Mitch McConnell.

When the city had Republican mayors, the speaker’s speech could seem like an “equal time” response, but when the mayor and speaker are in the same party, and basically have the same agenda, the double State of the City speeches are overkill.

Nonetheless, somehow the tradition persists. Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito appeared at the NYCHA Johnson Houses in her district (“the first time a State of the City address has been held in public housing,” we were informed breathlessly by the City Hall press office) in front of a series of flags. In front, as protocol dictates, stood Old Glory, and next to it, obscuring the flag of New York State, hung la bandera del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico.

Positioning the Puerto Rican flag in second place, in front of the state and city flags, is a bold statement on the part of Mark-Viverito, who after all is not a resident, much less an elected official, of the Commonwealth.

Neither de Blasio nor Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as a point of comparison, flew the state flag of Massachusetts at cit yandstateny.com

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New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito preparing for her State of the City address.

their State of the City speeches, even though they were both born there.

Elected officials hailing from out of state typically limit their statements of home state allegiance to rooting for the local sports team, but Mark-Viverito takes her Puerto Rican identity very seriously and is not shy about it. Recall that she pointedly did not recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag for her first seven years of service on the Council, and explained her abstention from the practice as rooted in her commitment to Puerto Rican national liberation.

The Speaker’s State of the City address was live-streamed via a new website called nycsotc.com, which was unveiled the day before the speech.

The site was designed and built by Council staff, according to the press office, and it extensively documents all of the Council’s achievements over the term of Mark-Viverito’s tenure as speaker. It has the look and feel of a campaign website, and is replete with large pictures of the Speaker, widely smiling while she embraces ironworker hardhats, police white shirts and tiny, wrinkled immigrants alike. The site is branded “Lift Every Voice,” the title and theme of Mark-Viverito’s speech.

Aside from the odd fact that an official Council website ends in “.com,” it almost seems like the domain name itself is a form of cybersquatting: after all, it is the Mayor, not the Speaker, who is required by law to give a State of the City speech.

The Speaker certified the broad sense of her mission in a postaddress NY1 interview in which she

began by speaking generally of “my government.” Indeed, the speech itself could be read as the second half of de Blasio’s speech, as though he had ceded authority to the leader of the constitutionally weaker legislative body. Mark-Viverito took on the question of public safety, which the Mayor skipped over as though the question of police-community relations hadn’t been the primary obsession of the city over the last six months. The Speaker proposed the establishment of several new city offices or agencies, including an Office of Labor to grapple with broad questions of labor relations, and a coordinator of civil justice to assist with the spending of millions of new dollars in legal aid for non-criminal legal matters.

These new divisions would most likely be charter-level designations, and it isn’t clear how Mark-Viverito’s “government” would establish such offices without a referendum.

However, the scope of the Speaker’s address likely matches the scope of her ambitions to raise her position and visibility to that of a kind of co-mayor.

And given de Blasio’s own ad hoc and scattershot approach to his own administration of the city, it seems increasingly likely that she has a fair shot at so doing.

Seth Barron (@NYCCouncilWatch on Twitter) runs City Council Watch, an investigative website focusing on local New York City politics.

By Stuart Appelbaum, President, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, By StuartUFCW Appelbaum, President, RWDSU, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, RWDSU, UFCW ar too many New Yorkers are struggling to survive, and are desperate for jobs so they ar many New Yorkersand are their struggling to cantoo support themselves families. survive, and are desperate for jobs so they But nowadays, applying for a job can mean an cancredit support themselves and theiremployment families. invasive check, and prospective But for acredit job can mean an can nowadays, hinge on anapplying applicant’s history. invasive credit check, and prospective employment can hinge applicant’s credit history.

It’s not onlyonananinvasion of privacy, it’s a form of discrimination that affects job-seekers in black and It’s notcommunities. only an invasion ofitprivacy, it’s a form of of Latino And, perpetuates a cycle discrimination that affects job-seekers in black and unemployment, poverty, and debt. By tying job applicants’ hopes to their Latino communities.

And, it perpetuates a cycle of credit history, those who need employment the most are being denied unemployment, poverty, and debt. the opportunity to build better lives.By tying job applicants’ hopes to their credit history, those who need employment the most are being denied the opportunity better lives.

That’s why theretoisbuild legislation Credit checks on job currently being considered by the That’s whyCity there is legislation applicants are an invasion New York Council that would ban Credit checks job a currently beingonconsidered by the of privacy and on often credit checks job applicants by applicants are an invasion New York City Council that would ban form of discrimination. employers. It has strong support in the of privacy and often a credit checks on job applicants by City Council, and it has our support as form of discrimination. employers.

It has strong support in the well. Banning credit checks across all City Council,without and it exemptions has our support as where required by law, would industries, except well.

Banning checks across all communities and reducing be a key movecredit in helping build stronger industries, without exemptions except where required by law, would unemployment. be a key move in helping build stronger communities and reducing unemployment.

Credit history doesn’t determine job performance, and it isn’t a true arbiter Denying people who are Credit history determine joba on whether ordoesn’t not someone will be trying to repay their performance, and it isn’t a true arbiter Denying who are good or trustworthy employee. Just debts thepeople opportunity on whether notlower someone will becredit a trying todefies repay logic. their having debt or can someone’s to work good or trustworthy employee. debts the opportunity score – whether it was accruedJust to pay having debt can lower someone’s to work defies logic. for an education, medical bills, or credit score – whether it was accrued to pay unforeseen events. Debt is a part of life for many of us, and it’s not fair for an education, medical bills, or to hold that against people who are trying to get a job. Denying people unforeseen events.

Debttheir is adebts part ofthe lifeopportunity for many oftous, anddefies it’s not fair who are trying to repay work logic. to hold that against people who are trying to get a job. Denying people who are to crisis repayoftheir debtsinequality the opportunity worktodefies With the trying current income and thetoneed makelogic. our economy work again for working people, the last thing working people With the crisis ofbyincome inequality and the need to make our need is tocurrent be slammed credit checks from potential employers. economy work again for working people, the last thing working people needYork is tohas be slammed by credit checks from potential employers.

New been a place of opportunity, hope and upward mobility for generations. By passing credit check legislation, we can help keep New it thatYork way.has been a place of opportunity, hope and upward mobility for generations. By passing credit check legislation, we can help keep it that way.

CIT Y

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For more information, visit www.rwdsu.org For more information, visit

www.rwdsu.org

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city & state — February January 20, 23,2015 2015

NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL

Our Perspective Our Perspective Workers Need Workers Need Opportunity, Opportunity, Not Credit Check Not Credit Check Roadblocks Roadblocks

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PERSPEC TIVES

HOW NEW YORK CAN FIX NYCHA’S DECAY

LATOYA JOYNER

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ew York City’s largest landlord is failing to adequately house and repair its decaying buildings. But there is a solution¬—even during this time of federal and public housing budget cuts.

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s settlement proceeds can help restore the New York City Housing Authority.

At the state level, there is a surplus of funds thanks to record

financial settlements from major New York players in the nation’s capital markets industry. Meanwhile, there is only $25 million earmarked for NYCHA capital repair funding in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 2015-16 executive budget. With over 179,000 apartments, NYCHA has more than 330 developments across the five boroughs—and many are in desperate need of repair and maintenance.

In the Bronx, there are nearly 38,000 Section 8 units under lease— the largest percentage of such units in New York City. For the 77th Assembly District, this includes thousands of my constituents and nearly 10 NYCHA developments. And these buildings are in bad shape. The authority notes that more than 75 percent of its buildings are over three decades old.

Since 2001, NYCHA says it has lost about $900 million in funding for capital improvements, and reductions in federal funding cuts have also led the city’s largest landlord to hold off on accepting or processing any new Section 8 voucher applications.

The closure of this essential housing program to new applicants has only served to worsen the shortage of affordable housing in New York and is plainly unacceptable.

According to the Community

Service Society, a group focused on fighting poverty and strengthening New York, NYCHA’s shortfall is not new—sadly it has lasted for 14 years.

In 2011, even before Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc and federal funding was cut due to sequestration, the public housing authority’s funding gap was more than $60 million—and this does not include the more than $6 billion needed to repair deteriorating infrastructure. Even NYCHA admits that the state of repair and response times at developments have been dismal. For instance, repair requests for compactors, doors, intercoms, leaks, mildew and roof fans have all seen longer wait times.

Meanwhile, NYCHA Chair and CEO Shola Olatoye has acknowledged that there needs to be a revolution in how funding and proper maintenance are achieved. According to Olatoye, “It’s time to make innovative, practical, difficult choices about how we operate, how we are financed and the ways we rebuild and rehabilitate our 2,500 properties. Creating clean, safe and connected communities has to start from the ground up.”

Funding at the state level may be more readily available to help jumpstart these communities. Early last year, Cuomo and Schneiderman

broached this idea when additional deposits into the state’s general fund were proposed from a landmark $613 million securities settlement with JPMorgan Chase. It was ultimately allocated for housing-related programs: Schneiderman’s office took a piece in order to create programs aimed at preventing avoidable home foreclosures and future financial fraud. Up to 15 percent of the record settlement was slated for deposit into the state treasury, according to multiple media accounts.

Bronx families that live in NYCHA buildings should not have to accept their current situations when there is readily available funding to help rectify these problems. In Albany, I will work with my Assembly colleagues to push for solutions, and I will urge the attorney general to put money from his office’s settlement proceeds toward the Housing Authority and Cuomo to prioritize NYCHA properties when divvying up state funding. Community members and families need this influx of cash to help repair and maintain their homes.

Assemblywoman Latoya Joyner represents the 77th District in the Bronx.

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city & state — February 23, 2015

HOW TO GROW A BUSINESS IN BROOKLYN By Gabe Ponce de León At a time when the standard business model is rapidly transforming, how does a business advocacy organization succeed in representing the needs of its members? With such a wide spectrum of services to choose from, why should a company partner with a chamber of commerce to grow its business?

The key, according to Carlo A. Scissura, President and CEO of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, is not just a resolute commitment to innovation—but a readiness to evolve.

“We’ve proven that the old model of a chamber of commerce can be retrofitted for today’s world,” Scissura said. “We’ve adapted it for new companies, new industries, new visions.”

In this day and age, a local chamber has to serve as more than just a vehicle for networking, which is why in Brooklyn they have evolved into a direct-service chamber, offering healthcare, financial, recruitment and legal services. If you are drawing up plans for a new business, or thinking of relocating an existing one to Brooklyn, Scissura’s team can help with that as well.

“One of our central tenets is that we’re not just a chamber of commerce,” he said, “but an economic development agency.”

Home to nearly 50,000 businesses, and a choice destination among the cool set, it’s no secret that Brooklyn is bubbling. From collaborating on community BIDs to launching tourism websites and providing “Brooklyn-Made” certification to local manufacturers, the chamber has launched countless programs designed to raise the borough’s burgeoning food, design, tech and real estate industries to new heights.

“The Brooklyn Chamber has moved well beyond the ‘traditional’ role of a local chamber,” said Heather Briccetti, president & CEO of the Business Council of New York State. “As a result, the voices of Brooklyn businesses and non-profits are being heard on every level of government and the chamber has become one of the most active and successful economic development engines in the state.”

Despite boasting one of the state’s most dynamic economies, there are pockets of the most populous borough still in need of a boost. To serve this need, Scissura spearheaded the launch of “Chamber on the Go”—a mobile van that enters into communities to provide local businesses services they need,

from legal consultation to employee hiring. An outgrowth of that program, “Go Digital,” is designed to aid immigrant and low-income communities in bringing their businesses online. To help convert this vision into reality, Scissura turned to perhaps the most innovative company in the world.

Google had already launched a similar nationwide program with the aim of educating owners of smalland medium-sized businesses on the potential of digital platforms. Now the Silicon Valley pioneer had a like-minded partner with the ability to reach pockets of businesses that could benefit from additional digital advertising and social media awareness.

“Their knowledge of the community, I knew, would really help get our message out,” said William Floyd, head of external affairs at Google.

Before long, vans full of CUNY students were rolling into lesser-known sections of the borough, sharing digital information with the owners of momand-pop shops.

“Anyone can send an email,” Floyd said, “but if you want to make a real impact you have to go out in person. The Brooklyn Chamber understands that balance—and, I think, really embodies it.”

Presented by

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PERSPECTIVES

AFFORDABLE FOR WHOM?

NICOLE GELINAS

aren’t aiming at the super-rich. Their tenants earn in the low six figures, hardly in the stratosphere.

On the other end, the 403,120 people who live in public housing make on average $23,150—and pay an average of $445 in rent.

So what, exactly, is the problem?

A big part of it is obvious: you get less square feet in New York than you do elsewhere in the country—and yes, it’s expensive compared to anywhere else. Our housing is crowded. The kitchens and bathrooms are old.

But let’s not forget: by definition— because they are here—New Yorkers of all income levels are choosing to live in crowded, dirty, old, expensive apartments. People come here and plunk down a good deal of their money on rent here because they have chosen to live here over Iowa and Indonesia, Virginia and Mexico.

They are going to keep doing this— and keep our housing prices high.

Another problem is definition— exactly who is de Blasio’s “affordable” housing for?

It’s not really for poorer people.

Only 20 percent of de Blasio’s new or “preserved” housing—40,000 apartments—will go toward people making below $41,950 for a family of four.

Creating 40,000 “affordable” housing units for poorer people won’t do much harm, and, yes, it will help 40,000 poorer families. But it is no different than simply taking 40,000 poorer families of the more than one million New York families that would qualify and awarding them, say, $500,000 each in taxpayer money.

To act as if this somehow solves a systemic problem is to act under a delusion.

Sure, we could also double our public-housing supply—and another 400,000 poor people would soon fill the new towers.

But we’d also be asking everyone else—including other poor people—

to subsidize it forever, as we do with existing public housing.

The rest of de Blasio’s new and “preserved” housing is, well, for almost everyone else in New York— people making from the low six figures up to the city’s middle income limit of $138,435.

Here, too, all the city is doing is taking a few lucky people and bestowing them with apartments with new kitchens and bathrooms. This is nice, but it’s not a systemic policy.

What should the city do instead?

Simple. Use tax policy to encourage as much rental-housing construction

as possible, all over the city—and make sure we have the transit to support it.

If people don’t want new housing in their neighborhoods, that’s fine, but then they can never complain about their rent—or their kids’ rent—again.

In the meantime, we can all hope we’ll be among the lucky winners.

Nicole Gelinas (@nicolegelinas on Twitter) is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

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CITY & STATE — February 23, 2015

N

ow that pre-K is over, Mayor Bill de Blasio is homing in on housing.

“Nothing more clearly expresses the inequality gap, the opportunity gap, than the soaring cost of housing,” the mayor said in his second State of the City speech. He promised again to build or “preserve” 200,000 affordable housing units over a decade.

There’s nothing wrong with the mayor’s sentiment, and his housing plan is probably harmless enough. But he’ll never fix the housing “crisis.”

New York has a lot of people—and a lot of housing.

As of 2011, the city had nearly 3.4 million homes, according to a survey the federal government does for the city every three years. Of the 8.3 million or so people who live in those homes, 5.4 million are renters.

And for the most part, these renters are not rich. The median income of people living in rental apartments was $38,500. Even in apartments not subject to rent regulation, the median income of renters was $52,260— higher, yes, but well within New York’s middle class.

By definition, New York is an affordable-housing success story— millions of people who are not millionaires or even thousand-aires are already affording to live here. People who have rent-regulated apartments are paying, on average, $1,160 a month. People who pay “market” rent, often in two- and three-family buildings in the outer boroughs, are paying an average of $1,510.

And contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to have lived here decades and decades to have a decent rent.

Of the 67,818 apartments that were vacant and for rent in 2011, 84 percent—or 57,256—were going for rents between $1,000 and $1,500 a month.

Even “luxury” rental buildings that charge $3,500 for one-bedrooms CIT YANDSTATENY.COM

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S TAT E

THE DEAN OF THE SENATE SILVER UNDER SCRUTINY, BUT DON’T OVERLOOK THE SENATE LEADERSHIP

By WAYNE BARRETT

city & state — February 23, 2015

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Shelly Silver and his Assembly apparatchiks, let’s not forget New York’s state Senate, where four of the last five majority leaders have been indicted and the fifth, Dean Skelos, is reportedly under investigation.

The first, Joe Bruno, got his conviction overturned because the U.S. Supreme Court significantly narrowed the “honest services” he owed his constituents, excluding the $3.2 million in conflict-of-interest consulting fees he collected from clients with public business before him. Pedro Espada was forced to resign as leader the same day he was indicted for embezzling hundreds of thousands from a state-funded nonprofit, using $49,000, for example, to make a down payment on a Bentley. Malcolm Smith, who thought cash bribes were the quickest way to buy himself a ballot line for mayor, is now facing 45 years in prison. And John Sampson, who succeeded Smith, will soon go to trial for stealing $400,000 from foreclosure accounts and trying to get a list of the witnesses against him so he could, as he put it, “take them out.”

He wasn’t looking for dates.

As one measure of how interlocked this two-house degeneration is, Frank Seddio, the former assemblyman who’s now the boss of the Brooklyn Democratic party and played a pivotal role in the elevation of new speaker Carl Heastie, took credit for Sampson’s 2014 re-election, running the indicted senator’s campaign out of his own Canarsie club.

The swamp is so deeply bipartisan that Democrat Smith was bribing Republican county leaders to get the Republican line, Democrat Espada was initially installed as leader by Republicans, and Bruno, who claimed years ago that Silver’s outside income

inspired his own consulting career, just derided Silver’s prosecutors as “out of control.”

In fact, the partner in Skelos’ law firm that runs its lobbying operation is Arthur Kremer, the former Democratic chair of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee who ran for speaker in the ‘80s, lost to Mel Miller and quit.

Miller was subsequently convicted of stealing $300,000 from his law clients but, like Bruno, got his conviction overturned on a re-interpretation of a statute. Within minutes of the 1991 conviction that automatically cost him the speakership, Miller told reporters in the hallway of the courthouse that

“maybe I’ll make some real money now.” Prophetically anticipating his new career as a lobbyist, Miller now works at the firm headed by former Republican U.S. Sen. Al D’Amato, a tawdry pillar of the insider commercial party that actually rules New York.

Criminal charges have become so routine in Albany that the Senate Republicans just re-elected Tom Libous as deputy majority leader without so much as a word of public criticism. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has already indicted Libous and just convicted his son. After both of those indictments were announced, Bharara raided Libous’ house to get his wife’s

computer and records. Grandchildren might be next. Yet Libous got the judge to postpone his trial until July, so he could complete the ongoing legislative session (how could we do it without him?). While the Democrats actually stripped Sampson of his committees and barred him from their caucus, Skelos anointed Libous once again as their second most powerful leader.

Of course numerous other senators have been nailed in recent years, including Carl Kruger, who chaired the Senate budget committee, where billions are bartered.

It is comforting to note that local comedian Al Sharpton hosted new

DARREN MCGEE/OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR

W

ith all the focus on

Then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (left) in 2012 with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.

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2/23/15 11:16 AM

Honoring Women of Public and Civic Mind March 26, 2015 • 6:00pm – 9:00pm • Broad Street Ballroom • 41 Broad Street • New York, NY 10004

City & State is proud to present the 4th annual Above & Beyond Ceremony honoring a diverse selection of women who take a leading role in the public and civic life of New York.

City & State will also announce which of the 25 honorees will receive the 2015 Chairperson’s Award, assigned for their exemplary contributions within the calendar year of 2014, during an evening gala hosted by City & State.

A portion of the gala proceeds will be donated to a charity of the Chairperson’s choice.

6:00PM: REGISTRATION 6:35PM: WELCOMING REMARKS 6:45PM: KEYNOTE SPEAKER 7:00PM: DINNER IS SERVED & AWARD CEREMONY BEGINS 7:45PM: PANEL DISCUSSION

REGISTER TODAY:

events.cityandstateny.com For more information on programming and sponsorship opportunities please contact Jasmin Freeman at jfreeman@cityandstateny.com or call 646-442-1662.

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STATE

ALLOW ME TO SHARE SOME NUMBERS WITH YOU

By James Merriman CEO, NYC Charter School Center

If you are a student between grades 3 and 8 in New York City and are born in a neighborhood of high poverty with a majority of the population Black or Hispanic, like the South Bronx, you have a one in two chance of attending a school that fails more than 90% of its students.

Let’s pause for a second to consider that number: half of the children in the South Bronx will go to a school that will almost certainly fail them.

It is tantamount to criminal negligence for a school district to trap kids in failing schools year after year. We can almost guarantee hardship in life for a person without a high school diploma. According to the National Education Association, this person is 72% more likely to be unemployed - and let’s not forget that almost 80% of individuals in prison did not graduate high school. I could continue, but the statistics just get more depressing.

The Governor has identified the problem clearly in his proposed budget, and it is not limited to NYC. A quarter of a million students have gone through failing schools in the past decade in New York State. Think about where they are now, or where they will end up.

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Children from high poverty urban areas are not impossible to educate.

Too many people have come to believe the opposite is true, and we need to dispel that notion once and for all. Let’s consider some different numbers: in NYC - and the same holds true in other large urban areas across the nation - among the poorest schools that serve students in primary grades, where a majority of the population is Black or Hispanic, charter schools are 12 times more likely to have at least 50% of students on grade level. Last year in NYC, of the schools that fit that demographic and actually educated their children (aka, more than half tested proficient in math and English), 75% were charters.

These numbers are as relevant as the failure figures.

We need creative solutions to ensure that children from high-risk backgrounds receive the high quality education they need and deserve.

The Governor calls for receivership of perpetually failing schools and for the possibility of turning them into charters, among other solutions. Seeing the performance rates within the most vulnerable communities makes this a logical option. Charters are neither perfect nor the answer for everyone, but they are a viable solution within the system and have proved their worth to the tens of thousands of students who have attended them.

city & state — February 23, 2015

If the Governor’s budget is passed, we will be able to give more students who are currently doomed to failure a chance at a better life. We can also look forward to turning around the abysmal statistics that have defined New York’s schools for far too long.

Visit CharterNYC.org

speaker Heastie at his National Action Network and declared that any attempt to change the three-men-ina-room nirvana in Albany would now be seen as racist. Along with a prayer blessing for Heastie, Sharpton issued a threat: “If you mess with Carl, you’re messing with us.”

“Don’t talk about breaking up the trio now. We just got into the trio,” Sharpton said, forgetting that Smith, Sampson and ex-governor David Paterson were recently part of the three, actually outnumbering white men at one point. It’s hard to believe Sharpton might’ve forgotten Paterson, Smith and Sampson, since all were involved with him in the Aqueduct scandal, with Sharpton collecting $100,000 in NAN contributions from bidders on the $3 billion, 30-year racino contract, the richest in state history.

W

e haven’t heard from

the Greeks yet about what they will do if they lose their man in the room, Dean Skelos, the state senator from Rockville Centre in Long Island who succeeded Bruno. Jonathan Dienst, the EmmyAward winning WNBC reporter who broke the Skelos story, says Bharara is investigating the majority leader’s ties to the real estate industry. The Real Deal says that the law firm that pays Skelos up to $250,000 a year, Ruskin Moscou, “is not part of the investigation,” which, if true, gives the probe an air of mystery.

The only known conflict of interest involving Skelos and the Ruskin firm occurred in 2006 when Skelos, as deputy majority leader, fought an Assembly bill that sought to legalize whistleblower suits against the health care providers that Ruskin represents. Skelos was described as “the most outspoken opponent” of the whistleblower provision, denouncing them and their lawyers as “bounty hunters,” and he successfully blocked it until the Democrats took over the Senate in 2009.

Though Skelos said then that he had nothing to do with the firm’s representation of the health care companies, he headlined a dinner panel at the firm’s offices for the leaders of 70 providers a few months after the whistleblower section of the bill was killed. The Ruskin website said he discussed the “road to the new legislation,” detailing the other new compliance requirements, which were prompted by a scathing federal

report about the lack of Medicaid monitoring in the state. Of course, the ethics question was not whether he personally represented the providers.

It was the transparent fact that his obstruction of the whistleblower provision served his firm’s interests.

Beyond the law firm, Skelos does have one other known connection to real estate. His son Adam has been selling title insurance for years, a business rooted in connections that went utterly unregulated in New York until 2014. A month before Bruno announced he’d step aside for Skelos in 2008, a Long Island-based title company, Liberty Title, gave the young Skelos his first job as an agent.

As part of the budget deal last April that closed the Moreland Commission, the governor got the recalcitrant Senate to finally pass a bill requiring the licensing and vetting of title agents, leaving Kentucky as the only state left that doesn’t license them. The Senate’s insurance committee had long favored such a bill, but couldn’t get it to the floor. New Yorkers pay more for title insurance than anyone else in the country.

Liberty’s President Bruce Madden was arrested a year after Adam Skelos was hired, and the company shut down. Adam’s job history prior to his Liberty hiring included stints in Gov. George Pataki’s regional office and the Long Island Power Authority, as well as a gig as an executive assistant with lobbying firm Davidoff Malito and an event coordinator at the Bridgeview Yacht Club, where super-lobbyist Al D’Amato proposed to his second wife at a birthday party he’d organized.

It’s not hard to see the helpful hand of his father in one job after another.

The Davidoff firm, for example, is so close to Skelos it regularly donates to him and hosted a major fundraiser for the senator’s brother Peter, an appellate division judge re-elected in 2012. In last year’s Senate races, the firm filed an exquisitely timed and damning lawsuit against a former partner who was also a Democratic Senate candidate, delivering the seat to Skelos’ majority. Even when Liberty closed in 2009, Adam picked up some part-time work on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s re-election campaign, another patriarchal dividend.

Adam is now with East Coast Abstract (ECA), another Long Island firm that handles title insurance for such Manhattan giants as The Feil Organization. A $7 billion developer, cit yandstateny.com

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DANIEL DROMM

March 10, 2014

30

MARK LEVINE

MERRYL TISCH

Chair, New York City Council Education Committee

New York City Councilman, former teacher

Chancellor, New York State Board of Regents

Q: What is the biggest flaw of the Common Core standards?

DD: The biggest problem with the Common Core is its implementation. They did testing of the students based on the Common Core before they actually even gave the curriculum to the teachers. Then the complaint I was getting from teachers, starting in September, was that they hadn’t seen the full curriculum; they got it month by month, never knowing what it was all going to lead up to. Having a Common Core curriculum is important so that everybody is getting the same base of knowledge.

The problem here has been the expectations, and then the use of the testing to determine how it’s been implemented. Standardized tests can tell you fairly accurately about where a kid stands at a certain moment in time. But what has happened is the tests have been used for other things—teacher salaries are based on it, school ratings are based on it—that was never the way that these tests were intended to be used. It’s one picture of where a child is at, not the complete picture.

Q: As a former teacher and teacher trainer, what is your opinion on the new teacher evaluation system imposed by the city?

ML: The new teacher evaluations are a step forward.

Moving from simple pass/fail to more nuanced grading systems can make evaluation a more useful tool for teachers themselves. Test scores should only be one component of how students and teachers are evaluated, with classroom observations, portfolios of work and other measures factored in as well. We also need to be careful that the process doesn’t become too burdensome to score. We need to make sure that we are keeping our teachers in the classroom giving instruction rather than grading tests. A good teacher is able to take the Common Core curriculum and creatively tailor it to the needs of each of the students.

However, there are many factors in a student’s life that are out of the control of a teacher.

Q: Aside from the issues related to the Common Core standards, what is the biggest education issue facing the state?

MT: There is a large question to be asked about how districts use their resources. The governor often says that we spend $54–55 billion a year on education, and yet our outcomes are not what we hope they would be. It’s not only a question of more resources but it’s a question of how we allocate our resources, how we take the money that we’re spending and use it directly in classrooms to enhance academic outcomes for students, to enhance professional development for teachers, to enhance the whole academy of K–12 education. That is a very big challenge. How do we have that conversation about how resources are deployed to get best results?

Q: Mayor de Blasio claims his universal pre-K program would be ready by September. Do you think this is an ambitious timeline?

DD: It is an ambitious program, but it is something that the city desperately needs, and it is the one thing that we know works with kids to get them out of poverty and to get them an adequate education. The question then becomes: In districts like mine, where we don’t have the space available or the seats, are the CBOs going to be able to handle it? I know a number of CBOs that have found space and are ready to move forward.

It is my hope and expectation that we will be able to implement fully by September.

CITYANDSTATENY.COM

THE SCORECARD THE PLAYERS

Q: What is your priority as education chair?

DD: I was proud to co-sponsor with the Speaker the recent UPK resolution that we did in the Council, supporting the mayor’s objectives and the ways in which to get the funding for the UPK stuff. I also have some legislation I’m looking at in terms of trying to reduce class size and overcrowding in our schools. Then there are several other pieces about arts in education, looking at how we can ensure that we get arts education included in the curriculum, because that’s the one thing that has been cut out over the last 12 years, and there’s less emphasis on it.

Q: You are trilingual—should New York City schools place more emphasis on language proficiency?

ML: Our city is uniquely positioned with a densely populated diverse demographic that should be leveraged in our children’s education. [More than] 150,000 of our public school students are English Language Learners (ELL) and [more than] 100,000 of them are Spanish speakers. This is an enormous opportunity for a cross-cultural immersion where ELL students can learn English and native English speakers could learn Spanish, which is necessary for our students to compete in a global economy.

As a part of the Common Core, each of our public schools should have to include a bilingual component that’s based on the needs of the community and the viability of that language in the global market.

Schools should have the option of choosing from Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish or French to incorporate into their curriculum.

Q: With the state dealing with pre-existing issues like funding gaps and the Common Core standards implementation, in what ways can lawmakers effectively focus on adding statewide universal prekindergarten?

MT: As I go through the state, I often hear a pushback about pre-K. A lot of it has to do with districts that don’t even have full-day kindergarten.

But from our perspective, there is no question that high quality pre-K yields real results, especially as it becomes a bridge to high-quality kindergarten and K-12 education. For the past 10 years we’ve been advocating for pre-K, and our advocacy has always been around quality programs. I just don’t want programs to open for the sake of saying “We opened a pre-K program.” The quality of what happens in those environments on a daily basis, having to do with the safety of the kids, having to do with what materials are there, having to do with what happens during the time that the youngsters are there—these are all very important ingredients. So our emphasis should be on quality, quality, quality.

Q: De Blasio also wants to expand after-school programs. Is there enough demand?

ML: Among the 1.1 million students in New York City, we can certainly find some interest to fill the 11,000 extra slots for middle school children. There is a huge waiting list for middle school programs all over the city.

The challenge with the middle school age bracket is that they have a choice, so the program needs to be created to entice the student to attend.

THE CITY Education is a top issue for many, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has made expanding prekindergarten and after-school programs—to be funded by a tax hike on the wealthy—a key part of his agenda. The schools chancellor is Carmen Fariña, who briefly served as a deputy chancellor under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, though her appointment reflects de Blasio’s departure from his predecessor’s policies. De Blasio is expected to have a more cordial relationship than Bloomberg did with the United Federation of Teachers, headed by Michael Mulgrew. City Councilman Daniel Dromm took over as chair of the Education Committee this year. StudentsFirstNY, Families for Excellent Schools and the New York City Charter School Center, led by James Merriman, advocate for charter schools. Eva Moskowitz, founder of the Success Academy charter schools, has been a lighting rod on the issue.

THE STATE Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s New NY Education Reform Commission, headed by retired Citigroup chairman Dick Parsons, released a report that serves as the governor’s template for education reforms. Merryl Tisch is the chancellor of the state Board of Regents, which supervises education all across New York, and the state’s education commissioner is John King, who has been under fire for the rollout of new Common Core standards. Key lawmakers include Senate Education Chair John Flanagan, who has drawn attention to concerns about Common Core, and Assembly Education Chair Cathy Nolan. Richard Iannuzzi is president of New York State United Teachers, which represents school and college employees across the state. The Alliance for Quality Education is a leading education advocacy group in Albany.

THE ISSUES CHARTER SCHOOLS Charter schools took off in New York City during the Bloomberg years, and although they still educate only a small fraction of the city’s students, the privately run schools have been facing an aggressive backlash from some parents, unions and civic groups. Mayor Bill de Blasio has called for some charter schools to pay rent for city space, and he recently blocked three charter schools entirely, although he allowed a number of co-locations to move forward. But many charter networks have powerful allies, impressive fundraising networks, and the approval of newspaper editorial boards—and they recently found a new ally in Gov. Cuomo, who defended charter schools at a major rally in Albany this month.

EDUCATION STANDARDS While some state education officials, lawmakers and advocates still support the new Common Core standards, there has been a growing chorus of complaints about how they were introduced, prompting the governor to call for a commission to improve their implementation and spurring some lawmakers to consider a moratorium. The long-term impact is unclear, especially if student test scores do not improve over time and the state sticks to holding school districts and teachers accountable to the more challenging tests. But if scores eventually start to go up, the new standards could have the effect of improving students’ college readiness in later grades.

STUDENT PRIVACY One issue that has been linked to Common Core is the collection of student data. The state Education Department has been moving student information to inBloom, a nonprofit data collection service, but some parents and advocates fear that the system could be breached or that information could be misused.

State officials note that affluent districts already use such third-party providers to store data, which makes it more accessible to teachers and parents, and that a statewide system would bring equity to districts with fewer resources.

cityandstateny.com

STATE

E D U C AT I O N

THE ROUNDTABLE

“We know that too many public schools are failing. Over 200 failing schools—6 percent grade level for reading, 5 percent grade level for math. We need new ideas. Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result.”

—Gov. Andrew Cuomo

BY THE NUMBERS

Gov. Cuomo’s executive budget includes a distribution of $21.9 billion in state aid to school districts around the state.

An analysis of per-pupil spending by the Citizens Budget Commission shows some variation in how individual districts made out.

New York City Department of Education Total aid per student, FY 2014: $7,982 Total aid per student, FY 2015: $8,099 Change: +1.45 percent

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Buffalo City School District Total aid per student, FY 2014: $16,924 Total aid per student, FY 2015: $16,696 Change: -1.34 percent Rochester City School District Total aid per student, FY 2014: $14,862 Total aid per student, FY 2015: $15,730 Change: +5.84 percent Syracuse City School District Total aid per student, FY 2014: $13,268 Total aid per student, FY 2015: $12,967 Change: -2.26 percent Yonkers City School District Total aid per student, FY 2014: $8,888 Total aid per student, FY 2015: $9,055 Change: +1.87 percent Source: Citizens Budget Commission

city & state — March 10, 2014

E D U C AT I O N

New York City’s Top Ten Lobbyists Revealed

cityandstateny.com

FEATURED ROUNDTABLE:

• Carmen Farina, NYC Schools Chancellor • Cathy Nolan, Assembly Education Chair • John Flanagan, Senate Education Chair • Elizabeth Berlin, Acting Education Commissioner • Rep. Elise Stefanik, House Committee on Education and Workforce • Merryl Tisch, State Regents Chancellor

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Confirmation Pending

FEATURED EDITORIAL:

• One of Mayor de Blasio’s campaign pledges was to provide communities more say in education decisions. But some say they are slacking and have slapped the administration with a lawsuit challenging the city’s School Leadership Teams. City & State explores the issue.

• Back in 2013 Pearson failed to supply teacher certification testing books to colleges on time. As a result, critics argue, the failure rate for the teacher certification tests aligned with the new Common Core standards went up dramatically. Though Cuomo allowed a delay of the consequences for the 3-12 state tests because of the flawed implementation of Common Core, the prospective students never received the same. City & State looks at what, if anything, the state doing to fix this problem?

Please contact Andrew Holt for information regarding advertising in this special issue at AHolt@CityandStateNY.com or 212.894.5422.

city & state — February 23, 2015

Wayne Barrett has covered New York politics for decades, primarily at the Village Voice.

Educate and Influence Public Officials with City & State’s Annual Education Print ISSUE SPOTLIGHT.

city & state — March 10, 2014

Feil owns 26 million square feet of office space, and recently signed a headquarters lease with the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles at a rate exceeding the advertised $46 per square foot for the midtown building.

The ECA website says that account executive Skelos has been a “major success in delivering multi-million dollar commercial and residential closings to the firm.”

Perhaps the most intriguing part of this bio is that Adam was with Liberty when one of its biggest clients was Extell, the Manhattan colossus that just sold the most expensive apartment in city history for $100 million. It has also been recently reported that Bharara is probing Extell, which managed to get state tax credits for its 1,000-foot-tall tower, One57, that’s already sold a billion dollars worth of condos and is only half sold. Liberty’s Madden in fact pleaded guilty to stealing a half million of escrow funds on this tower, and another $2 million on a second Extell building. In 2011, Madden was sentenced to 20 months in jail and required by Bharara to pay $5.7 million in restitution.

Madden and Liberty contributed $4,000 to Skelos’ Senate committee in 2007 and 2008, and $25,000 to the Senate Republican Campaign Committee shortly after Skelos ascended to majority leader. Gary Barnett, the CEO of Extell, kicked in another $10,000 to SRCC. Barnett’s was the largest contribution the committee received in that cycle, and Madden’s was one of the largest in the earlier cycle.

While there’s no indication that these overlapping relationships are part of the Skelos investigation, they raise questions like those posed by the

E N LI D 5 EA H D RC AD M A

State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Tom Libous

Libous indictment, which involved the senator’s efforts to land his son Matthew a job (the Silver case as well includes a job he got for the son of the doctor who was referring asbestos cases to his firm). Libous is charged with lying to the FBI about his own role in securing a job with a Westchester law firm for Matthew, including efforts to get a lobbyist to pay the firm $50,000 to boost his son’s salary. The raid for the computer and records of Frances Libous, the senator’s wife and member of the Workers Compensation Board until recently, appear connected to her ties to a real estate company that at one point included her and her husband as partners.

The company owns 230 acres near Albany that it’s leasing to a hydrofracking firm and Libous has been fracking’s top champion in the Senate, blocking an Assembly two-year ban on it. Partnering with the contractor that built their upstate lakefront house and is a substantial donor to the senator, Frances Libous incorporated the real estate firm, though it’s unclear how long she and her husband were tied to it. The FBI has questioned another contractor who worked on the Libous home. “It was something about corruption,” the contractor told a reporter.

With Matthew Libous convicted and facing sentencing, the senator awaiting a July trial and the threat of a case against his wife, Libous is presumably feeling the heat to cooperate. He and his wife have cancer.

He’s drained his campaign committee, paying four criminal attorneys, and only has a $527,000 balance, down almost $200,000 from a year ago.

But his lawyer, Paul DerOhannesian, says “there’s no likelihood” of his cooperating, “no reason to believe otherwise,” and “no pressure.”

Combine the circumstances of Libous’s predicament with the fact that no one in the Senate has worked as closely with Skelos as Libous and you have to wonder if the always grim Skelos is now sweating. Should Skelos be indicted and Libous convicted, the Senate Republican leadership itself will be up for grabs.

It’s a job with the highest prosecution rate in the state.

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B U F FA LO

MONEY FROM YESTERDAY

By BRUCE FISHER from THE PUBLIC

O

city & state — February 23, 2015

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f the $50.2 billion in personal income that came to people in Erie and Niagara Counties in 2013, a little over $10.4 billion came in the from the government—mainly Social Security and Medicare for elderly people, plus Medicaid for the very poor, plus an alphabet soup of income-support programs, including disability payments, veterans’ benefits, the Earned Income Tax Credit, unemployment insurance and more.

Over the past 20 years, the data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis show that normally about a fifth of all income here comes from federal and state government programs.

These government transfers are not gifts: Workers pay into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and, after 45 years or so of paying, they and their spouses become eligible to make withdrawals from those accounts. And Medicare and Medicaid don’t actually arrive as cash income to the covered, but as reimbursements to the $4.5 billion local healthcare industry.

What we’re talking about is that most complex of issues: the long-term effect of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s most enduring policy enactment—the plan that prevented old people from slipping into the abject poverty that was the norm, before 1935, for those who had aged out of the workforce.

Around Buffalo, where the conversation today is mainly about how bright our economic future is due to the Buffalo Billion and all the new publicly funded construction downtown, there isn’t much mention of the established patterns of our economy.

Surveys by various think tanks find, again and again, that Millennials don’t think about Social Security or private pensions. But as the economic development inputs here come on line, it’s time to take notice: Will the jobs of tomorrow carry the same enduring weight for the region that yesterday’s jobs did?

PENSIONS KEEPING US AFLOAT Adding to the $10 billion in transfer payments from government is another, more direct government

saloons, boutique eateries, fromageries, artisanal olive oil shops, farmers markets and high-ticket restaurants are going to be doing good business. Look around you at the next play, symphony concert, jazz festival or rock concert: The people with the money for tickets have a certain grayish tinge about them.

Retiree money is critical to several sectors here, because for current workers and the not-yet retired, there are tectonic shifts underway.

SOURCES OF INCOME CHANGING

input: the wages and salaries of current government employees. About 24 percent of the total income derived from work in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area is paid to teachers, public safety officers, college professors, social workers, weather forecasters, snowplow drivers and other workers whose employers are the federal, state and local governments. All told, they comprise about 100,000 of the 550,000 workers in the two-county area.

And, being public employees, they have an economic relevance beyond their current paychecks: They are all contributing to pension systems that will pay out when they leave active duty.

The problem for the rest of this area’s workforce is that a smaller and smaller number of employees has what public employees today have, and what industrial employees used to have: pensions that will augment their Social Security retirement income.

It’s hard to come up with the numbers on how much money former steelworkers, auto workers, nurses and other unionized private-sector workers are contributing to the regional economy. It’s a dynamic situation: Some of those retirees were stripped of their private pensions, some kept them.

Public sector pensions remain, with lists available of who is drawing exactly what. (Newsday published a listing of more than 350,000 public pensioners’

annual draw from the various New York State systems.) We can track Social Security payments to the nickel.

What we do know is this: Without private pensions, the profile of discretionary disposable income around here will change radically in the next 10 years as the Boomers, the last of the workforce to have private pensions in any significant numbers, start to go the way of all flesh.

RESTAURANTS GALORE !

The Buffalo economy of the industrial age is gone … except that its legacy continues to pay our collective bills through transfer payments, pensions and the marvel of high ratios of discretionary, disposable income thanks to the low cost of housing here.

That’s why Buffalo and other Rust Belt cities enjoy such a robust entertainment sector, as various national and major-market media seem to have just discovered. Restaurateurs, cultural venues and other marketconscious business types are wise to track the supply of elderly and nearelderly people here and in other places where big factories once pumped out retirees with nice pensions, and where public employment guarantees 20 percent of the workforce a very secure retirement. To widespread pension security add the phenomenon of the paid-off house, and voilà: Even without an uptick of child-free, urbantrending Millennials, the coffee shops,

The biggest private-sector sources of income here these days are quite different than just a decade ago. In the year of the 9/11 attack, manufacturing jobs provided 20 percent of all the wages paid to working people here.

In 2013, manufacturing provided only 12.4 percent. But bank employees, managers, administrators and hospital and healthcare workers have seen their pay grow, slightly, to be more important in the region. Construction work, IT, transportation and both wholesale and retail have all inched downward in importance. Earnings from work in scientific and technical jobs are up overall and also as a share of total compensation. And though hospitality and food service jobs are more numerous than they were, the pay in those trades is small; in the aggregate, the share of income paid to servers looks even lower when compared to the pay of construction workers, whom servers now outnumber by a lot.

The gist: So long as there is a decent supply of elderly people bringing Social Security and Medicare benefits in, and so long as there is some steady pay for civil servants, the Western New York economy has a baseline of income stability.

But what’s happening in faraway Albany and in ever-more-distant Washington is putting regional economic stability at risk.

PRIVATE PENSIONS? At its height as a manufacturing center in the mid-1950s, Buffalo alone had more than 225,000 people (out of a workforce of 600,000-plus) working cit yandstateny.com

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BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR The great stability that public pensions provide for public employees, plus Social Security and other transfer payments for private-sector employees, is a fragile thing.

The income statistics for 20082010, the years of greatest dislocation during the Great Recession, tell the story. As private-sector incomes evaporated, the overall share of total income attributable to pensions and other transfer payments spiked.

From around 19.9 percent of total compensation before Lehman Brothers fell in September 2008, pension and other transfer payments jumped to more than 22.4 percent of total income.

This was not a big jump in absolute dollars—but as the rest of income fell, and as more than 30,000 people in Western New York left the workforce, suddenly the importance of those retirement transfer payments soared.

We’re talking billions and billions of dollars here. If retirees tomorrow don’t have the funds that today’s do, then our regional economy will suffer.

But let’s not lose sight of the other trends, either, the biggest of which is income polarization regardless of age. Once again, the waters are muddying because of a brand-new, widely publicized study purporting to show that the richest among us are not actually getting rich. A George Washington University economist is arguing, against all evidence, that income inequality isn’t rising.

Nonsense. Income inequality has been and continues to rise on a 40-year upward trendline, notwithstanding blips due to the pace of cash-ins of stocks and fluctuations in the valuations of portfolios. Wealth inequality is rising without blips. The key reason is that the very slim sliver of the American population that owns financial assets gets to decide when to cash investments in, without the pressure of having to pay for groceries or heat or medicine out of savings or capital gains.

Luckily for us, we get to enjoy the endowments that previous generations of well-off, savings-oriented, investment-minded industrial workers bequeathed. Without continued robust public employment that includes pensions, plus a renewal of the retirement benefits of private sector workers, the only place to get the economy-sustaining, culture-building, institution-preserving money we’re used to seeing will be from the very, very rich.

Good luck with that.

Bruce Fisher is visiting professor at SUNY Buffalo State and director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies.

This commentary was originally published by The Public (www. dailypublic.com), a weekly Western New York news publication and web site.

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city & state — February 23, 2015

in what the economists bloodlessly refer to as the “goods-producing” sector.

Today, manufacturing here is small and shrinking fast, and wages are under pressure. Benefits? Post-employment benefits especially are in short supply.

The norm for employers today is not to provide pensions.

And now, even the State of New York is balking at budgeting all the money needed to keep public employee pensions fully funded, notwithstanding the scary-big numbers coming out of Wall Street since the Obama recovery picked up steam last year. The state is on the hook to pay the pensioners, but would prefer not to pay it all forward just now.

But that’s not the policy change that’s underway.

The move to create a Tier 6 for new state and municipal employees makes sense from a budget-preparer’s perspective, but within it lies peril for New York’s smaller and medium-sized cities and metros that rely heavily on retiree income. It’s simple, really: If retired people have less money, then they’ll have less to spend, and then poof!

There goes your streetscape renaissance and your restaurant flowering.

Worse, the State of New York is also pushing hard, very hard, with elected officials as distant as Andrew Cuomo joining Carl Paladino in urging more, more, even more charter schools to come into being—even in Buffalo, where over $1.4 billion in New York’s money was invested in aging Buffalo school structures, such that today, they are palaces of techno-sophistication and new functionality. What does a charter school have that the newly refreshed old BPS building lacks? Simply this: A charter school employs people who have smaller, less generous, or even non-existent pensions than do the teachers who get all those benefits— government benefits—that they turn around and put back into the regional economy.

2/20/15

BUFFALO

REV_CitynState_Ad_halfV_PRTcrops:Layout 1

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A FAIR SHARE

AS THE TECH-BASED SHARING ECONOMY GROWS, LAWMAKERS FIGHT TO REGULATE INDUSTRIES

By WILDER FLEMING

city & state — February 23, 2015

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London-based universities, have described this market as an “access economy.” In the Harvard Business Review the pair argued that it has “disrupted mature industries, such as hotels and automotives, by providing consumers with convenient and cost efficient access to resources without the financial, emotional, or social burdens of ownership.”

With a service like Zipcar, they point out, users don’t have any interest in knowing the other people who have also used the car—there’s none of the camaraderie you would find in a traditional sharing situation. No social exchange is taking place, which Eckhardt and Bardhi write is essential to the concept of sharing.

“Consumers are paying to access someone else’s goods or services for a particular period of time,” they write.

“It is an economic exchange, and consumers are after utilitarian, rather than social, value.”

Other similar models, sometimes referred to as “peer-to-peer” or “collaborative consumption,” do not always involve the exchange of services for money. The website couchsurfing. com, for example, hosts a worldwide community of travelers who stay with hosts in foreign places, free of charge.

In these cases there is some expectation of hosts and guests spending time together, however. The host may take the guest out to experience the local culture, and in return, users usually open their own homes to other travelers.

Academics trace the rise of this concept back to the mid-1990s, when thousands of people began contributing open-source software to the free

computer operating system Linux.

In 2002, a Harvard law professor named Yochai Benkler was the first to prominently articulate the philosophy of “commons-based peer production.”

In idealistic terms, proponents of the sharing economy point out that the world’s resources are finite and that the value of an asset is wasted when it isn’t being used. Benkler’s article “Sharing Nicely” extends the idea of commons-based peer production to sharing the resources we have when they are not in use, so as to get the maximum benefit out them. For example, when hosts rents out their homes or a room, they turn an unused resource into cash to help pay the bills.

Many residents who use websites like Airbnb offer that exact justification.

Helping the working class is something elected officials usually jump

at the chance to celebrate. But a bevy of New York lawmakers say this is not the case when it comes to companies masking larger commercial operations that undercut those who play by the traditional rules in the hotel and car service industries.

Still, many perceive the clamor for new regulations as an attempt to protect special interests from disruptive companies that have yet to curry the favor of elected officials. This is a concept that state Sen. Liz Krueger—a leading voice for regulating the emerging industries—pushes back on strongly.

“I want these companies to follow our laws. That’s the history of capitalism,” Krueger said. “Companies want to do anything they can to maximize their profits, and the job of government is to make sure that it’s done within the boundaries of the impact on the broader community.”

Yet following the law is not always as simple as it sounds. Many of the statutes governing the industries shaken up by the sharing economy were written long before the Internet was even conceived. While companies want to maximize profits, they can also fail if navigating federal, state and local laws becomes so burdensome and costly that they cannot turn a profit.

Finding that balance is the struggle facing both the government and the industry. Posturing and public opinion can have a dramatic impact on the outcome, and right now both sides fight are battling for that advantage in two key industries—hotels and car services. And two multi-billion dollar companies have become the faces of their respective industries—Airbnb for hotels and Uber for car service.

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T

hese days most of us are at least peripherally aware of the so-called “sharing economy.”

What was, less than a decade ago, the domain of tech hippies and couch surfers has since mushroomed into a popular cultural phenomenon with an increasing share of the market.

Pioneering startups like Airbnb, Lyft and Uber are now big businesses used by millions on a daily basis. And as with all subcultural trends that break into the mainstream, there inevitably will be growing pains.

In New York City, those growing pains are already being felt: Questions over whether short-term home rentals and a wider array of taxi options are good or bad for the city have prompted a high-profile tug-of-war between government officials and the companies profiting from the disruptive trend.

While this clash of attitudes fails to cut neatly along generational or ideological lines, it does reflect a very real divide between a newer, idealistic outlook and business as usual in the city. Proponents of the sharing economy argue that their goals of a more affordable and productive city are in fact aligned with the very lawmakers who are incensed with them, and that the two sides are talking past each other. Some lawmakers, by contrast, seem convinced that these new players are nothing more than traditional capitalists looking to cloak themselves in—and cash in on—the sharing economy philosophy at the expense of city residents. As is often the case, the truth lies somewhere in between. But to find that truth, it is important to understand the nuance and complexities of the sharing economy.

As it is most commonly defined, the sharing economy involves people or companies allowing others to make use of their own physical assets when they aren’t using them themselves.

Usually this is in exchange for a fee and is facilitated by a third party, typically a company that handles the logistics and attempts to control for quality in exchange for a cut of the transaction.

So it isn’t really sharing in the traditional sense, if sharing is strictly defined as dividing something into parts and freely distributing those parts among companions. When it comes down to it, it is really just another niche in the free market. Some even criticize the term “sharing” as deceptive.

Giana Eckhardt and Fleura Bardhi, both professors of marketing at

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A FAIR SHARE

ROOMS FOR REGULATION LAWMAKERS TARGET AIRBNB IN FIGHT AGAINST ILLEGAL HOTELS

By WILDER FLEMING

city & state — February 23, 2015

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A

s Airbnb’s business has grown, so to have its problems in New York. In 2010 the state Legislature passed a law aiming to bar landlords and tenants from converting apartments into illegal hotels, a practice long decried by

lawmakers and housing advocates as a safety hazard, a nuisance for neighbors and a practice that siphons affordable housing off the market at a time when vacancy rates in the city are low enough as to constitute a crisis. Airbnb’s website, which some

operators of illegal hotels use to book guests, has been accused of making little effort to stop them. But the company’s proponents say the law is overly broad in that it also condemns regular New Yorkers who just want to occasionally rent out their living space

while they are away.

A 2012 update to New York City law also made it unquestionably illegal “to use, occupy, convert, or offer or permit the use of a permanent residential apartment space for other than permanent residence purposes.”

But use of Airbnb has continued to skyrocket—there are currently over 27,000 listings in the city, up from roughly 3,000 in 2010. An October report from the state Attorney General’s office estimated that 72 percent of these listings are for entire apartments for a span of fewer than 30 days while the host is away, making them illegal.

While most of the thousands of Airbnb hosts in New York City have avoided legal problems over the years, others have not. Even some who have simply rented out their place while out of town for a week have been snagged in the city’s enforcement net: In 2012, The New York Times reported on a man whose landlord potentially faced $40,000 in fines after the tenant rented out his East Village apartment during a three-night trip to Colorado.

The violations were eventually dismissed, but only after the city failed to file the proper paper work.

One of the reasons most hosts have steered clear of trouble is that the city agency charged with enforcing the law is a complaint-driven office. The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement (OSE) does not proactively ferret out illegal hotels, but rather responds to complaints from neighbors, which are usually called in via 311. With a staff of 12 from various city agencies, the office received 1,150 complaints in 2014 reporting a suspected illegal hotel operation. It conducted 883 inspections and issued 495 environmental control violations and 391 Department of Buildings violation notices, according to testimony given at a recent City Council hearing. Violations are cit yandstateny.com

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once.

Airbnb counters that Cox is working from incomplete records.

“We do not comment on public scrapes of our information, because, like here, these scrapes use inaccurate information to make misleading assumptions about our community.

Thousands of regular New Yorkers are using Airbnb everyday to help make ends meet. That’s why it is so important that we fix local laws to allow people to share the home in which they live,” the company said in a statement.

Airbnb has already gone through a protracted legal fight with state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, resulting in the company’s release of anonymized data to Schneiderman’s office late last year. While the Attorney General will not comment on ongoing investigations, it has been reported elsewhere that the office has sought further details from Airbnb in some 120 instances, based on findings in the data.

According to Schneiderman’s October report, just 6 percent of the hosts analyzed accounted for a whopping 36 percent of private shortterm bookings, and $168 million—37 percent—of all host revenue. Some of these hosts were responsible for hundreds of units. (The other 94

percent were responsible for no more than two units apiece during the period under review.) It isn’t hard to imagine that the Attorney General’s office is targeting this tiny slice of questionable hosts.

Numbers aside, Airbnb officials say their interests are actually in line with New York City’s and that they want to work together going forward.

“We as a company also don’t like big, illegal hotels,” said David Hantman, head of global public policy at Airbnb. “We’ve taken many of them off our site for quality reasons and will continue to do that. And we’re not advocating for a law that allows them.

We are just focused on trying to get a law passed to exempt people who are doing this in their primary homes.”

But New York City Councilman Jumaane Williams, who chairs the Council Committee on Housing and Buildings, isn’t buying this line.

Quality and legality are not one in the same, he points out, and he has challenged Airbnb to do more to ban lawbreakers, considering the reams of internal use data they have access too.

After the OSE’s testimony at a January City Council hearing, the proceedings devolved into an interrogation of Hantman and Airbnb about the company’s purported lack of cooperation.

“You’ve explained a lot of things, and it just seems strange that one of those things, and research that you would try to do, is not to make sure that the business model that you’ve presented is actually a legal business model,” Williams told Hantman.

“What was most distressing to me was that they did not seem to care about the laws that govern the business that they’re in in this city,” Williams later told City & State.

Hantman argues that with listings in 34,000 cities worldwide, it would be impossible for Airbnb to sort through all the statutes. And in New York City at least, Airbnb does provide a disclaimer to all prospective hosts outlining city laws that could impact the transaction, along with a warning that the tenant or homeowner could be in violation of their lease or condo bylaws should they choose to rent out their home. However, the company is independently taking it upon itself to research tax codes in many major cities in order to make it easier for their users to pay hotel taxes to local governments.

While Airbnb has pitched New York City on charging renters a hotel tax, as numerous other cities have already done both in the U.S. and globally, state Sen. Liz Krueger says she wants none of it. As the sponsor

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer speaks at a press conference outside New York City Hall before a Jan. 20 City Council hearing on short-term rentals in the city.

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WILDER FLEMING

handed down to property owners, and since the fines can range into the five figures, landlords have in turn started to seek ways to crack down on their tenants. The OSE reported a 62 percent increase in complaints about transient lodgers from 2013 to 2014.

But some lawmakers say the OSE’s activities are too limited, given the number of illegal listings are in the thousands and not the hundreds. And in recent months there have been early signs of a more concerted crackdown.

In February, a Manhattan Housing Court judge ruled that tenants living in rent-stabilized apartments are not allowed to profit by charging tourists more to stay in their homes. The case involved a tenant who was evicted after regularly renting out his Hell’s Kitchen apartment while he actually lived in Queens, according to neighbors. The judge, who ruled that his actions undermined “the purpose of the Rent Stabilization Code,” is reportedly the first in the city to evict someone outright without giving them a second chance—and the ruling may set an example for other landlords to follow.

This decision supports the contention of some city lawmakers that many hosts are behaving unscrupulously—even ones who aren’t necessarily running illegal hotel operations with dozens or even hundreds of listings. By occupying a house in Queens while simultaneously making money on his rent regulated apartment, the former tenant was effectively removing a unit from the residential market.

Lawmakers also point to research posted online by Murray Cox, a selfdescribed community activist who claims no affiliation to the government or the traditional hotel industry. Cox mapped Airbnb’s listings in the city using data gleaned from Airbnb’s website, and found that 58.3 percent of listings are for entire homes or apartments. While it may be legal for one- or two-family homeowners to do this, it is illegal for tenants.

Cox’s website also found that 86.3 percent of all listings in the city are available, on average, for more than 60 days out of the year, further bolstering the claim that many if not most are being run more like a real business than a source of supplemental income.

Additionally, around 29 percent of New York City’s Airbnb hosts have multiple listings—stronger evidence of an illegal operation, since no host could feasibly live in multiple units at cit yandstateny.com

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CITY & STATE — February 23, 2015

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of the 2010 state law barring landlords from turning vacant apartments into illegal hotels, she argues that collecting the tax would tacitly demonstrate the city’s approval of an activity that can get tenants evicted.

“If you look at the leases for apartments in New York City, or coop/condo bylaws, it will explicitly say ‘These units are for residential purposes, not business purposes,’ ” Krueger said in an interview with City & State. “The act of paying a business tax would provide evidence in a court of law that you have violated your lease or condo bylaw. Why would I want to put people in harm’s way?”

Hantman scoffs at this attitude. “It gives people so little credit,” he said.

Airbnb has already started collecting and remitting hotel taxes and transient occupancy taxes in U.S. cities like San Francisco and Portland, Ore. Both cities have also legalized the activity of short-term rental websites, and now require that hosts obtain a permit to continue to rent out their homes.

In Portland, that permit costs $178 and includes a safety inspection. City officials acknowledge that some residents’ leases may prohibit shortterm rentals, but claim this is not the city’s responsibility.

“It is not an issue that the city is going to take on,” said Mike Liefeld, enforcement program manager for the Bureau of Development Services in Portland, which carries out the permitting process. “It is not unlike any other type of development process. When folks come in and they try to apply for permits, we do not review, or have any authority or jurisdiction to review any sort of civil contract.”

Portland has been touted as a prime example of a place where city officials are more optimistic about the benefits of the sharing economy than they are skeptical of its pitfalls. “[City lawmakers] looked at all the issues and had lots of public involvement about the pros and the cons and ultimately found that they believed the right policy direction was to create the right standards and directions for allowing short-term rentals in our city,” Liefeld said.

But that doesn’t mean Portland and Airbnb are tension-free. As of Feb. 20, short-term rental companies in the city are also subject to a $500 fine for each unpermitted host listing on their websites. Currently only around 10 percent of the city’s estimated 1,600 hosts have applied

for permits. It remains to be seen if the city will follow through with penalizing the companies, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Last year, Barcelona fined Airbnb 30,000 euros, or roughly $34,000, for breaching local law.

In New York City, where the Attorney General has estimated that Airbnb made over $282 million in 2014, local law would need to be changed in order for hotel taxes to be levied on users. For Hantman, this constitutes the second part of his wish list for the city.

“We need the tax law changed to allow us to pay taxes, and we need the short-term rental law changed to allow regular people to rent out their own home,” Hantman said.

But lawmakers do not currently seem interested in allowing such rentals while residents are not there.

They are instead preoccupied with ramping up efforts to go after the multitude of hosts who appear to be breaking the law as it currently stands.

City Council members, including Helen Rosenthal, Jumaane Williams

and Liz Crowley, want to increase funding for the Office of Special Enforcement in order to enable the agency to take a more proactive approach in identifying illegal rentals.

However, at the recent City Council hearing, Thomas Jensen, the FDNY’s fire prevention chief, testified that funding for more bodies at the OSE (which already includes one inspector from the fire department) would not necessarily allow the agency to fundamentally change its approach.

“You have to realize that enforcement in this area is quite difficult,” Jensen testified. “My inspectors enforce the fire code … this goes beyond the fire code at this time.

Jensen added, “We need the tools, the specific laws to do that. And enforcement, and that has to be a cooperative effort between our legal, City Hall, buildings department, HPD, to all get together to do this.”

In the meantime, the recent swirl of activity and publicity around the issue has more and more landlords paying attention. If enough of them

take matters into their own hands, more hosts may decide the risks simply aren’t worth it.

As was reported in the Post, the Manhattan attorney who recently won the groundbreaking case against the Hell’s Kitchen host accused of living in Queens while profiting from his rent stabilized apartment said that he received over two dozen emails and calls from landlords in the hours after the decision. If they weren’t sure about their chances of winning such cases before, landlords are now a lot more confident that the government is in their camp in these situations.

“I do think at the same time there is a growth in the activity itself, there is also a growth in the understanding of what’s going on,” Krueger said of short-term rentals in the city. “And therefore more action is being taken by the real estate community to stop this from happening. The more advertising Airbnb does, the more landlords go, ‘Hey, I can look on their website and see if they’re doing this in my buildings and go after the folks.’ ”

27,392

out of 27,392 listings (100%)

ROOM TYPE Airbnb hosts can list entire homes/apartments, private or shared rooms.

Depending on the room type, availability, and activity, an airbnb listing could be more like a hotel, disruptive for neighbors, taking away housing for New Yorkers, and illegal. entire home

58.3%

entire homes/apartments private room

$171

price/night shared room

15,977 (58.3%) entire home/apartments

10,586 (38.6%) private rooms

829 (3%) shared rooms

InsideAirbnb.com, an interactive map designed by Murray Cox, uses data gleaned from Airbnb’s website to detail listings in New York City by type and availability.

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A FAIR SHARE

BEST COLOR FOR BUSINESS IS UBER A BLACK CAR, A YELLOW TAXI OR SOMETHING ELSE?

By SARINA TRANGLE

than Uber.

But Woloz and other proponents of stricter regulations argue that Uber, which operates five black car bases and one livery car base in the city, is hardly the traditional black car operation that has contracts with large companies to provide pre-arranged rides for employees. Instead, Uber is a service for people looking to hail rides at the last minute—just like the medallion drivers’ street hail system works.

“Uber is basically a yellow taxi that has exploited a loophole in current regulation, and it is regulated as a black car,” Woloz said. “Yellow cabs are not going to have the ability to attract and retain drivers if another entity is doing essentially the same thing, but they can offer their drivers surge price rates and say, ‘On a Saturday night you can make $200.’ ” Yellow taxis have been governed by a medallion system since 1937, when the city government issued a limited number of medallions and required that drivers own or lease one before accepting street hails. Medallion

on city streets anytime soon.

“You’re not allowed to have a meter in a non-medallion cab in New York.

You’re not allowed to have a roof light,” Rogoff said. “These are all thing that the medallion industry wanted for itself exclusively over the years that regulators have given them.”

Decades under this system have made medallion taxis function as a public utility, according to Graham Hodges, a Colgate University professor and former taxi driver who wrote a history book on the city’s industry.

Hodges said Uber’s current classification makes sense, provided it abides by rules imposed on black and livery cabs. Uber delayed handing over trip data to the city earlier this year, and consequently, had five of its six bases briefly suspended.

During testimony for a Taxi and Limousine Commission hearing earlier this month, Uber officials said the company fits in the for-hire black and livery cab structure, but suggested the city should consider requiring an additional license when such bases use apps.

“Figuring out how to balance supporting the benefits of the tech industry to New York City while ensuring tech companies operate within the existing regulatory framework is key for Uber and City Government,” the company said in its written testimony. “The TLC has an opportunity to strike this balance by building on the existing FHV base license structure and requiring that all bases that utilize apps be required to obtain a separate license.”

The Taxi and Limousine Commission is considering some changes after holding hearings and experts on both sides say change of some kind is inevitable. But what striking the balance means is still up for debate.

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CITY & STATE — February 23, 2015

N

ew York City has just under 14,000 yellow cabs with medallions allowed to pick up residents for a metered fare. But some argue that number is much higher because of the disruptive app-based service that Uber provides.

While technically a black car under city statutes, some say Uber operates more like the yellow cabs whose business it is cutting into.

So what is Uber’s true color? That depends on which New York City car service sector is telling it.

Michael Woloz, an adviser for the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade that represents medallion fleet owners, contends Uber’s service is a misclassification that has exacerbated the city Taxi and Limousine Commission’s struggles to ensure its regulations keep pace with the evolving industry.

Some experts disagree, arguing that the current medallion system that governs yellow cabs has created a nearmonopoly on street hails and merits a separate and stricter regulatory system

drivers must use a standard, regulated meter fare system and cannot use radios to pre-arrange rides.

Livery cabs, by definition, work out of bases that arrange rides with customers ahead of time. They can charge fares based on zones, time or distance, but they cannot use meters, and traditionally have been barred from accepting street hails.

In 2013, however, the government authorized a select number of livery drivers to use new green cars and pick up passengers off the street when outside of the downtown Manhattan core. When doing so, the drivers must use a meter.

Black cars are a sub-set of this forhire vehicle sector and are organized in franchise or cooperative bases. Most of their clientele—at least 90 percent— must pay with a method other than cash.

But many experts disagree with the argument that Uber should be grouped with the regulations surrounding medallion taxis.

Bruce Schaller, a former deputy traffic commissioner now running a consulting firm, said medallion fleets require more oversight because they are not operating in the more competitive and self-regulating universe of livery cabs.

“There’s a certain sort of market regulation of the industry. Right, if you don’t like Eastern Car Service, you can call Brownstone. If you don’t like Uber, you can check out Lyft,” Schaller said.

“When you hail a cab, you just hail a cab, you take the next one.”

Edward Rogoff, a management professor at Baruch College who specializes in the study of entrepreneurship, agreed that medallion drivers’ near monopoly on street hails separates them from other professional car services. He said it also meant yellow taxis won’t face extinction

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HOUSING

FULL COURT MESS

A DEEPENING HOUSING CRISIS IS PLAYING OUT IN A BRONX COURTHOUSE

By KATE PASTOR from CITY LIMITS

26

city & state — February 23, 2015

T

he line to get into Bronx Housing Court zig-zagged three blocks to Carroll Place—a steady replenishing stream of about 100 people marching toward the glass doors, even an hour past the 9:30 a.m. calendar call.

It was Halloween morning, and moving against the foot traffic was Charles Alexander, who had been engaged in an animated discussion with his lawyer near the entrance before turning and walking briskly south down the Grand Concourse. He was agitated. His disability benefits, he said, could not cover his rent and he was sick with full-blown AIDS and unable to work. After leaving The Brook shelter in the Bronx, he had finally “got me a one bedroom” on St. Ann’s Avenue. Now he was losing his Section 8 benefits because a thirdparty subsidizer failed to pay their share of the rent.

Still waiting to get inside was

Esmerlin Valdez, there for her third appearance on what started as a non-payment case. With help from Bronx Works, a nonprofit occupying the white, castle-like building looming beside the court, she had applied for what’s called a “one shot deal” loan from the Human Resource Administration to pay back what she owed. She was rejected twice, she said, based on a salary she no longer earned, but had reapplied and needed more time to hear back. She was afraid that by the time she went back to work full-time, she would no longer qualify for the deal, or that by the time she got help she would already be evicted. Her knees shook constantly.

Landlord attorneys and tenants alike tell tales like these, of tangled bureaucracies that fuel gratuitous litigation even when they are meant to help. But the catchphrase echoing through the crowded courthouse is always “more time.” It’s the best

most tenants are hoping to leave with, and for too many it is a first stop to homelessness.

A three-month City Limits investigation found that tenants in the Bronx are at a severe disadvantage when facing their landlords in court, not just because legal advice and basic instruction remain elusive for most, but also because the system is overburdened with a flood of housing needs in a borough where rent levels and tenants’ incomes are increasingly mismatched.

AN UNEVEN FIELD The power differential is often exacerbated, rather than equalized, by a civil court that serves as a de facto debt collection agency and which processes tenants rather than treating them as equals to the landlords’ attorneys. The attorneys are the ones who regulate

the flow of court transactions. And even the most astute pro se litigants get few chances to wage a solid defense.

From the landlord perspective, it can seem nearly impossible to get a tenant out of a rent-regulated apartment.

(Full disclosure: This reporter was in housing court recently over a case which was dismissed.)

Reflecting their Bronx neighborhoods, the tenants are predominantly women of color, often with children, and disproportionately elderly or suffering from serious health problems. Consumer and healthcare debt, childcare costs, low-wage jobs, unemployment and rising rents all show up on the doorstep of the courthouse, which falls under the jurisdiction of the New York State judiciary. Those at the mercy of a glitch with their disability check or other benefits, or who live on a fixed income and find their rent rising, come to Housing Court clutching canes and

ADI TALWAR

The line outside Bronx Housing Court on a typical morning.

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pushing baby strollers.

The court’s challenge is immense: It is no less than keeping above the tide of human need that the city’s economic evolution is spilling onto its sidewalk every weekday morning.

“Clearly, I think that the system, the housing court system, is flawed in many ways,” said Mitchell Posilkin, general counsel for the Rent Stabilization Association, a trade group for landlords. “The system is flawed because cases are in housing court that shouldn’t be in housing court. The system is flawed in the sheer number of cases.”

CASELOAD LEADS THE CITY According to reports compiled by court clerks, more petitions were filed in Bronx Housing Court than in any other borough in 2013—more than 33 percent of the 248,732 filed citywide, though Bronx residents make up less than 20 percent of the city’s population.

The number of non-payment cases

in the five boroughs had been on a fairly steady decline since 1998, according to New York City Civil Court and city Department of Investigations data compiled by Housing Court Answers, a nonprofit with a desk in the lobbies of Bronx and Brooklyn Housing courts that provides an array of useful information about the system.

But those cases spiked again from 217,914 in 2012 to 218,400 in 2013, the last full year for which data is available. And out of the non-payment cases filed citywide in 2013, 28,849 led to evictions performed by a marshal, either by default or other judgment.

The number of cases resulting in actual evictions by marshals have been steadily increasing across the city since 2006, but the Bronx has ranked highest of any borough for evictions every year from 2006 to 2013.

In 2012, 10,966 evictions were ordered in Bronx Housing Court, the highest number of any year since 1997 in any borough. While the numbers dipped slightly in 2013, the Bronx still led the city—it was home to roughly a third of evictions citywide—and the borough is on pace to see its eviction

numbers climb again when the 2014 data is released.

AN ECONOMY OF PLIGHT Not every court-ordered eviction actually occurs. Organizations such as Bronx Works and Legal Aid routinely intervene and are able to get people back in their homes. But records on how many evictions remain permanent are organized in a way that makes them difficult to track.

Evictions account for about one third of homeless intakes, according to the Department of Homeless Services, a growing number that includes a disproportionate share of Bronx families.

While the courthouse serves the entire borough, many who pass through its doors do not come from afar. Home Base, a Department of Homeless Services homelessness prevention program, targets Bronx Community District 4 and Community District 1. Housing Court sits in Board 4; Board 1 is just to the south.

Perhaps it is oddly convenient

then, that those facing a high risk of homelessness and eviction live in the vicinity of the borough’s only standalone housing court, which—situated in the shadow of some of the borough’s shiniest beacons, like Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Museum of Art—is the center of its own local economy.

Men peddling cell phone plans spread out pamphlets on plastic tables near the curb. And a guy handing out flyers for free moving and storage service from a company that accepts public assistance views the line as a targeted marketing opportunity. The firm’s ad is also featured on the food truck right outside the courthouse. It reads: “Evictions. Homeless families.

Emergency storage. Public assistance.

Domestic violence. Shelter residents.

Court orders. Fire victims. Marshal notices.” All watchwords of the crisis that Housing Court oversees daily.

This story was published by City Limits, which City & State is partnering with to cover crucial housing policy stories in 2015.

28

THE LANDLORDS’ VIEW

city & state — February 23, 2015

O

n June 15, rent regulations restricting annual increases on the homes of 2.5 million New York City residents are set to expire. While most all believe they will be renewed, tenant advocates and landlord groups have already begun the fight to strengthen or weaken the laws, respectively.

Earlier this month Rent Stabilization Association President Joseph Strasburg spoke with City Limits’ Jarrett Murphy about where his 25,000-member landlord group stands on the issues, whether the election of Carl Heastie as Assembly speaker alters the equation and what he thinks of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s affordable housing policies.

ON THE IMPACT OF ASSEMBLY SPEAKER CARL HEASTIE REPLACING SHELDON SILVER

“I see [no impact] whatsoever. It’s clear that when you have a downstate speaker, that rent regulation, especially when you have a million rent-stabilized tenants, it’s an issue they have to deal with. Clearly when we recognized that there was going to be a downstate speaker, by the name of Carl Heastie from the Bronx, we recognized that the policy consideration of keeping rent stabilization was going to happen.

Especially since you also have a governor who supports the concept of the continuation of rent stabilization.”

ON MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO TARGETING “SLUMLORDS” AND “PREDATORY LANDLORDS” “You do have people who have come to New York to invest who

are not committed to preserving affordable housing but are looking for a quick buck in terms of return on their investment and those are the ones who are most problematic. But they don’t represent the majority of owners in the City of New York. It’s very easy to demonize the entire industry and I think the mayor has to be very careful how he pinpoints and goes after those who are in fact the most egregious in terms of how they deal with their tenants.”

very clear that owners don’t deserve increases, he wanted to do a rent freeze, when in fact the cost of operating these buildings, at least last year, was [rising] in excess of 3 percent, and water and sewer rates were increased under this administration. You can’t ignore the fact that to operate a building, you need a cash flow.”

ON DE BLASIO’S AFFORDABLE HOUSING PLAN

“Right now the practices of doing dispositions in the corridors really doesn’t help justice for both sides because what happens is the tenant comes in and says, ‘I didn’t really know what I was saying,’ and they reopen the case and then you have a further backlog.”

“Our problem with the way he’s doing it is that as you attempt to preserve rather than create affordable housing—his position on the Rent Guidelines Board, where he made it

ON PROVIDING COUNSEL FOR TENANTS IN HOUSING COURT

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The challenges and opportunities facing New York City in 2015 City & State hosted its 5th annual State of Our City conference on Tuesday, Feb. 17, an event featuring panel discussions with officials and experts on key issues including technology and the sharing economy; education; and affordable housing and development.

city & state — February 23, 2015

30

Hundreds of people attended the event’s three panel discussions.

City Limits Editor Jarrett Murphy

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer

New York City Economic Development Corporation President Kyle Kimball

The Brooklyn Chamber’s Carlo Scissura

City Councilman Jumaane Williams

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STATE OF OUR CIT Y

SPACE RACE CHARTER SCHOOLS LOOK TO OFFER PRE-KINDERGARTEN, BUT SPACE IS LIMITED.

By SARINA TRANGLE

ARMAN DZIDZOVIC

32

CITY & STATE — February 23, 2015

N

www.HotelWorkers.org

ew York City Deputy Mayor Richard Buery said that while he hopes the charter school sector plays a larger role in the city’s universal pre-kindergarten program, relatively few have applied so far because the expansion, a top de Blasio administration priority, does not “meet with their current plans.”

Charter schools, which are privately-run public schools, did not get word that they would be eligible for city pre-kindergarten funding until spring of last year, when the state earmarked $300 million for Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature initiative of free, full-day pre-kindergarten for all New Yorkers. The tight timeline likely limited the number of charters that applied to offer so-called UPK classes.

This year, Buery said he believed

charters were applying in lower numbers because they had already committed to organization-wide plans that focused on other initiatives, such as adding schools or working on curricula.

Some figures in the charter sector, however, said that one issue is whether they would even have access to space in traditional public schools for pre-kindergarten classes.

Buery said at City & State’s State of Our City event this month that he envisions charter schools eventually playing a larger role in universal pre-kindergarten.

“We did have a number of charters apply, and of course we have a number of charters participating this year—not as much as I would like,” said Buery, whose role as deputy mayor for strategic policy initiatives

ARMAN DZIDZOVIC

New York City Deputy Mayor Richard Buery (left) and Josh Wallack from the city Education Department

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2/23/15 2:36 PM

STATE OF OUR CIT Y

includes overseeing the launch of pre-kindergarten and community schools. “The feedback that I get from charter providers … is that they absolutely do intend to apply for pre-kindergarten down the road, but for whatever reason pre-kindergarten does not meet with their current plans.”

The city Department of Education entered into six contracts out of the ten charter school applicants last year.

The department did not disclose how many charter schools have applied to offer pre-kindergarten so far for the fall of 2015.

The Success Academy Charter

Schools, whose founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz has clashed with de Blasio over space in district schools, is applying to provide pre-kindergarten at three schools, according to Ann Powell, the entity’s senior managing director of public affairs.

Powell said Success Academy has space in its Harlem 1 school for pre-kindergarten, but would need additional room in district schools to offer the early education at its Cobble Hill and Williamsburg schools, which are co-located on traditional school campuses.

She said the city has not agreed

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33

Charters Open Doors

to help Success Academy find space for any future UPK programs. Powell said if district space is sought, it is unclear how that would proceed or whether it would go to the city Panel for Educational Policy for a vote, as most major school utilization change proposals do.

“For us space is a very important consideration,” Powell said. Without it, she said, “It wouldn’t be feasible, academically speaking, from an educational point of view, from a financial point of view.”

PAVE Academy Charter School, which operates a school in Red Hook that serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade, is applying to run a pre-kindergarten program so it can give preference to those graduating from pre-pave, a

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Westendarp said means its ability to offer pre-kindergarten hinges on having access to space in a city facility to meet demand.

He, too, said the city seemed to be doing its best to accommodate PAVE. The DOE did not respond when asked whether the Panel for Educational Policy will have a say on arrangements with charters that need district school space to offer pre-kindergarten.

city & state — February 23, 2015

NY1 Education Reporter Lindsey Christ

New York City’s public charter schools are open to all The Charter Center needs your help to spread the word children, regardless of special learning needs or English to all of NYC’s proficiency. many diverse communities: New York City’s public charter schools are open to all The Charter Center needs your help to spread the word children, regardless of special learning needs or English Charters Open Doors for success to all of NYC’s many diverse communities: non-profit pre-kindergarten program proficiency. in college and career! it partners with, according to Cooper Charters Open Doors for success Westendarp, the chief operating and in college and career!

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2/23/15 4:31 PM

STATE OF OUR CIT Y

SURGE PROTECTOR

TRADITIONAL TAXIS SAY UBER’S SURGE PRICING IS UNFAIR. IS TRANSPARENCY THE ANSWER?

By JON LENTZ

F

34

or all the ways that Uber benefits New Yorkers, from hailing rides online to finding drivers when no other taxis are nearby, the service has come increasingly under attack for its controversial surge pricing model.

A key feature of the app-based service is a fare system with rates that can rise during periods of high demand, such as during a major storm or blizzard. Company representatives argue that the flexibility to raise rates provides an incentive to drivers to

be available to meet the heightened demand.

Uber’s use of surge pricing has prompted outcry from New York City’s traditional taxi industry, which has fixed rates, but the city’s top taxi official suggests that the answer is not to regulate Uber exactly the same way it does yellow and green taxis.

Instead, solving the problem involves mandating more transparency, Meera Joshi, commissioner of the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission, said.

“Consumers should not get sticker shock at the end of the ride,” Joshi said after a panel discussion on technology and the “sharing economy” at City & State’s recent State of Our City conference. “We’re in the midst of proposing rules that would govern licensing apps, and a key part of that is going to be price transparency on the app for the consumer, so they know up front in dollars and cents exactly what that ride is going to be.”

Joshi said that the commission has heard concerns that riders didn’t

understand how much more they would be paying until they arrived at the end of a trip. She suggested that simply informing customers more clearly of their options could help level the playing field.

Matt Wing, a spokesman for Uber, said that the company already goes out of its way to inform its customers of the fares they will pay.

“It’s hard to find a business that more aggressively warns customers of pricing changes than Uber,” Wing said in an email. “Uber users not only

city & state — February 23, 2015

LOOK WHO’S READING

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2/24/15 12:30 PM

STATE OF OUR CIT Y New York City Taxi & Limousine Commissioner Meera Joshi (left) and Michael Woloz, who advises the city’s taxi fleets.

said, but he argued that they operate more like yellow taxis while taking advantage of less restrictive black car regulations—especially when it comes to surge pricing.

“Uber has the ability to hike their rates up or take the rates lower, at their whim, whenever they want,” Woloz said. “They have what’s called a virtual meter that is not regulated

by anybody. You take their word for it that it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing. Yellow taxis have no ability to do that. They have a metered fare.

It is what it is. It’s a good thing that it’s a metered fare, because it protects passengers and consumers. But right now it’s not a sustainable model. You can’t have one sector that doesn’t have that kind of regulation, let’s just take

pricing controls, and another one that does.”

City and state lawmakers have also been scrutinizing services like Uber.

In Albany, Assemblyman Felix Ortiz has introduced legislation to ban surge pricing entirely. In New York City, Councilman David Greenfield has proposed limiting increases to double the base rate.

35

CITY & STATE — February 23, 2015

ARMAN DZIDZOVIC

receive multiple notifications when dynamic pricing is in effect but can also easily get a fare estimate for any ride they take using Uber. We agree with the TLC that riders are entitled to advance fare estimates and we urge them to apply this standard to the entire industry.”

Joshi also said it is important to have a cap on how high Uber can raise fares.

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman last year established a cap on Uber’s surge pricing during states of emergency, such as major snowstorms or hurricanes.

But Michael Woloz, an adviser for the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which represents large taxi fleets, insisted that more still needs to be done to ensure that traditional taxis are not at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to competing with Uber and similar online, app-based ride services.

“There used to be a clear line between yellow taxis and black cars, which offer prearranged pickups and did not compete for street hails,” Woloz said during the City & State panel discussion. Uber has entered the market under the regulatory framework for black cars, Woloz

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2/23/15 2:37 PM

GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT

GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT

city & state — February 23, 2015

36

C

ity & State magazine presents its Graduate and Continuing Education Series in an effort to inform our readers, the leaders and future leaders of New York, about the many educational opportunities the state has to offer. Whether a government staffer, business executive or nonprofit advocate, graduate and continuing education programs abound to assist you in attaining applicable training and knowledge. The articles featured in this section outline the benefits of continuing education programs as well as what to look out for when applying. This series features four installments throughout the year, so stay tuned for additional helpful information in future editions. cit yandstateny.com

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2/23/15 5:29 PM

By LOGAN HARPER from CAREEREALISM

B

ecause both a Master of Public Administration (MPA) and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) focus on organizational management, students who want to work in the public sector are sometimes unsure about which professional degree to choose.

Although there is some overlap in the coursework for these two degrees, there is a key difference in program focus. An MBA program provides training in private sector management.

The success of a private business is primarily measured by its profitably, so business schools are geared toward training future managers to make as much money as possible. The emphasis is on economics, finance, and marketing, preparing students

to lead business organizations where profit generation is the goal.

In contrast, an MPA program concentrates on management of nonprofit and public sector organizations. The mission of these organizations is to serve humanity and improve the social condition. Managers in public sector organizations need to understand that the success of their organization is difficult to measure.

They also must be prepared to make trade-offs between the demands of competing groups of citizens and government agencies.

Another key difference between private businesses and public sector organizations is how they obtain funding for their continued operation.

In the case of private businesses, funding

is a component of profit generation.

Public sector organizations are usually funded by donations, foundations, and government grants. An MPA program will provide the skills needed to obtain this specific funding.

In the end, MBA programs concentrate on the economic market while MPA programs are concerned with working toward social solutions.

If you’re determined to make positive changes in the world, an MPA degree provides the skills and knowledge to make your idealism a reality. An MPA will provide the training needed to navigate through the complex nonprofit environment, as well as provide opportunities to think about solving problems with immeasurable outcomes that are faced by public sector

organizations.

An MPA degree may also provide more career flexibility. Most business school graduates stay in the private sector for their entire career, while MPA graduates can move between public, nonprofit and private sector employment. In addition, MBA graduates who want to work in the public sector may have a harder time finding employment since their academic background provided limited exposure to public policy subjects.

GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT

MPA VS. MBA PROGRAMS

This article originally appeared on Careeralism.com, an education technology company.

37

Earn Your Law Degree in a 2-Year Accelerated Program Brooklyn Law School’s 2-year J.D. program is designed for select students seeking a rigorous legal education in an abbreviated timeframe. Highly qualified candidates with a demonstrated ability to handle a challenging workload are encouraged to apply.

Students in the 2-year program are able to take advantage of the full range of activities such as participating in extra and co-curricular activities, including clinics, externships, moot court, journals, and student organizations.

Limited seats are still available for the incoming May 2015 class.

Visit www.brooklaw.edu/2year to learn more.

city & state — February 23, 2015

The 2-year J.D. involves the same amount of work as our 3- and 4-year programs, but in a concentrated 24 months. To complete the degree requirements, students take courses during the summers before and after their first year, over spring and winter intersessions, and during the fall and spring semesters.

cit yandstateny.com

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2/23/15 2:44 PM

GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT

UPWARD MOBILITY

MPA PROGRAMS PROVIDING ROUTE TO SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

By SEB MURRAY from BUSINESSBECAUSE

A

s managers turn to careers with a social impact, and global development organizations hire more private sector executives, business students are looking to Master of Public Administration programs.

“Management skills are the top priority [in the public sector], even more than public policy expertise,” says Ian Macdonald, director of the public management specialization in the MBA program at Schulich School of Business in Canada.

There are a growing number of top business schools to offer Master of Public Administration (MPA) degrees.

In the U.S., master and undergraduate degrees in public administration have grown from

17,000 in 2010 to almost 21,000 in 2013, says Kathy Gamboa, dean of operations for the College of Criminal Justice and Security at the University of Phoenix.

This is in response to increased applicant demand. The number of international applications for the MPA program at USC’s Price School of Public Policy, for instance, has surged from 78 in 2009 to 340 in 2014, says Peter J. Robertson, associate professor.

He says there is “more interest on the part of the younger generation to want to make a difference in the world, to help address the issues they see as challenging the human race.”

Research recently published by international business school INSEAD found that millennials – those born

between the early 1980s and late 1990s, who populate most MPA and MBA programs – value work-life balance and personal development over money and status.

Of 16,000 people surveyed, 73 percent chose work-life balance over a higher salary, and 82 percent value work-life balance over their position in a company.

“Students in the MPA program have stated overwhelmingly that they have a desire to help people,” says Kathy at the University of Phoenix.

These students are moving into careers in global organizations that increasingly are collaborating with the private sector.

This includes the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the

UN Capital Development Fund, as well as newer organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and even consultancy firms such as Accenture.

There are now a wider range of MPA programs to choose from. Many are at universities with top business schools, including the MPA program at UNC-Chapel Hill.

“We have experienced an increase in the number of applications we receive,” says Bill Rivenbark, director of the program, for both the online learning option and the campus course.

The MBA at UNC is popular but there are distinct differences. Bill says: “The goal [of MPA students] is to improve the quality of life for individuals across local, state, national,

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Urban Policy and Planning at HUnter college A SmArt ChoiCe

CITY & STATE — February 23, 2015

With 66% of the world’s population expected to be living in cities by 2050, there is no better time than now to study urban policy, leadership and planning. And no better place to do it than at Hunter College, located in the heart of New York, the most dynamic city in the world.

The hunter College Department of Urban Affairs offers an MS degree in Urban Policy and leadership, an MUP in Urban Planning, and an undergraduate major in Urban Studies. The department’s distinguished faculty are affiliated with the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter, one of New York City’s premier venues for public affairs discourse and debate. http://www.hunteruap.org

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or international boundaries.”

As the boundaries between public and private sector begin to crumble, development careers for its students have begun to change.

“The type of management required has changed, especially in terms of its ability to function effectively in a fast-paced and continually changing environment,” says Henrik P. Minassians, director of the school’s public sector partnerships.

Across the Atlantic in the UK, there are MPA degrees at Warwick Business School, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of York, to name a few.

Increasingly, many business schools are blending MBA and MPA programs together into dual degrees.

It is a similar story at elite US institutions including Harvard Business School and Wharton School.

While there is a demand for experienced private sector talent in the development world, social entrepreneurship is a popular route in both MBA and MPA programs.

“Many in our in master’s level classes state that when they finish their MBA, they would like to start their own business,” says Kathy at the

University of Phoenix.

Divya Dhar is the co-founder of Seratis, a start-up trying to bring about a digital age in healthcare.

The start-up offers a mobile communication platform which helps coordinate, track and analyze care across medical teams.

“Healthcare is a hard industry to understand,” says Divya, who studied both an MBA and MPA at Wharton’s business and government schools.

She previously trained as a doctor and worked for healthcare companies across New Zealand. “[But] often I had no idea how to communicate with my patients,” she says.

The start-up business is all about helping healthcare providers to improve patient care.

The management side of her time at Wharton helped her to grow the venture. It has been valuable to understand the “language of business” she says. “You can easily and with confidence talk to business leads, strategic partners and investors, and understand their viewpoints.”

This article originally appeared on BusinessBecause.com.

Experience your MPA at Cornell University

GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT

City and State 1/2 page ad — 4.875 x 12 inches

Samantha Cherney MPA 2014 Project Associate RAND Corporation Cornell University Photography

Prepare to become a public policy leader. Our dynamic program offers unparalleled flexibility.

Choose from a broad range of concentrations: • Economic & Financial Policy

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• Environmental Policy • Government, Politics & Policy Studies • Human Rights & Social Justice • International Development Studies • Public & Nonprofit Management • Science, Technology & Infrastructure Policy • Social Policy Take courses that tackle real world policy challenges. Spend a semester studying offcampus in Washington, DC, or at one of our international sites in India, Nepal or Italy.

Go online and learn more today: www.cipa.cornell.edu

Cornell Institute for Public Affairs 294 Caldwell Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-2602

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city & state — February 23, 2015

Or call us at: (607) 255-8018

GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT city & state — February 23, 2015

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APPLY TO LAW SCHOOL NOW!

THINGS ARE LOOKING ROSY FOR THE CLASS OF 2018

By JORDAN WEISSMANN from SLATE

T

his might sound weird, but here goes: Now might be a pretty good time to think about law school.

Earlier this month the National Association for Law Placement released its first look at how the J.D. class of 2013 fared on the job market.

Overall, it wasn’t pretty. For the sixth year running, the employment rate fell, as schools produced a record number of graduates for an industry without the room for them.

There was, however, a nugget of good news buried in the data. While the employment rate dropped, grads still found more jobs overall than in 2012. And as the Wall Street Journal noted earlier this week, big law firms—the kinds offering those fat, six-figure salaries that law schools like to advertise—continued to pick up their recruiting. Employers might not have been able to absorb the crush of lawyers who left campus, but hiring seems to have at least stabilized.

And that’s a huge deal. Thanks to the historic enrollment crash that has shrunk law school classes during the past few years, it means that graduates might soon be looking at a shockingly strong job market.

Here is the key number to keep in mind: 36,000. That is roughly the number of new J.D.s we should expect to graduate in 2016. Getting to that figure is pretty straightforward: In the fall of 2013, 39,700 students enrolled in law school. Given that about 10 percent of each law school class generally drops out, we should expect no more than 36,000 to reach commencement. (I’m actually rounding up the number a bit to be conservative.)

In comparison, 46,776 law students graduated in 2013. So we’re talking about a potential 23 percent plunge.

With less competition it should be

far easier for graduates to find decent work. Again, let’s assume the legal job market doesn’t grow at all in the next two years—that it simply stays flat.

What might that look like?

We can break down last year’s class, using data from the American Bar Association. Among all graduates who reported their job status, 32,775 found full-time, long-term work, meaning the job lasted at least a year. (Why is a year considered “long-term”? For one, many judicial clerkships run only that long.) Of those jobs, 26,337 required passing the bar, meaning they were typical legal jobs. An additional 4,714 were in fields that technically did not require law degrees, but where employers preferred to hire J.D.s anyway—think congressional staffers, labor organizers, or NGO workers.

Finally, 1,724 were in jobs completely unrelated to law, which sounds bad, but the reality is that a certain number of graduates always do something unconnected to their degree.

Let’s say those numbers hold. In that case, we can expect that about 91 percent of the class of 2016 will find long-term, full-time work, compared with about 72 percent last year.

About 73 percent would be in fulltime, long-term legal jobs, compared with 58 percent last year. Essentially, employment rates would look similar to those in 2007, when the mid-2000s legal hiring wave crested. That year, about 92 percent of graduates were employed, and 76.9 percent obtained legal jobs. (Both those figures included part-time and short-term positions).

Some would argue that I’m painting too rosy a picture, because law schools themselves have been pumping up their employment numbers by hiring their own graduates for yearlong jobs, for example, or funding fellowships for them at nonprofits. In 2013, schools funded 918 of these kinds of positions.

If we subtract them out, the picture is a bit less optimistic. About 88 percent of all grads would have full-time, longterm work, and 71 percent would be in legal jobs. Essentially, law grads would be partying like it was 1997.

Now, some caveats.

First and most importantly, just because law school might generally look like a better decision doesn’t meant that all programs are worthwhile.

Some lower-ranked schools will continue to deliver miserable job prospects for their students, just as they have for years.

Rather than hire from notoriously

problematic institutions like Golden Gate University or Thomas M. Cooley Law School, some employers might choose to hire underemployed attorneys who graduated into rougher job markets over the past couple of years.

Second, we’re still not heading back to the heady days of the Big Law hiring binge that ended with the recession. The era of mega-firms fighting tooth and nail for their pick of graduates and pushing entry-level salaries ever higher are dead and gone.

For 2013 grads who went to work at law firms, the median salary was just

Brooklyn Law School 2-Year J.D. Program Offers Fast Track to Career Success

B

rooklyn Law School’s inaugural 2-year J.D. class began the rigorous 24-month program last May— and students are already halfway to completing the degree requirements.

Two-year J.D. students take courses during the summers before and after their first year, over spring and winter intersessions, and during the fall and spring semesters to complete the full 85 credits required for a J.D. degree.

Brooklyn Law School’s 2-year J.D. students want to graduate faster and launch their legal careers sooner.

Zareen Iqbal ’16, a former Deputy U.S. Marshal who has worked in international development, says “as a mid-career professional, I wanted to

complete my graduate education as quickly as possible.”

Guy S. Regev, M.D., ’16 says “the accelerated program allows me to earn a J.D. at a faster pace, so I can return to my profession fully prepared to be a leader in the health care field.”

Ready to make a career change? Brooklyn Law School is accepting applications for the incoming May class. Learn more at www.brooklaw.edu/2year.

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GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT

6x9 Ideas Unbound ad_Layout 1 12/12/13 12:12 PM Page 1

Bar Passage Required J.D. Advantage Other Professional Position

1,694

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Class of 2013

$95,000, compared with $125,000 in 2008. Nobody should expect a return to bubble-era pay scales. Many of the jobs available now, meanwhile, are in less prestigious corners of the industry, like legal technology companies. It’s also always possible that the legal economy will suddenly crash again.

But right now there aren’t too many signs of impending doom, even if you’re deeply skeptical, as I am, of the industry’s business model.

Third, nothing I’ve written should be interpreted as a positive reflection on law schools as institutions. The only reason the class of 2016 is looking at a relatively upbeat future is that enough students gave up on the idea of becoming lawyers amid a market that was flooded with jobless young people.

But let’s end on a positive note. If things are looking good for the class of 2016, consider this: The class of 2017 is on pace to be even smaller. And there’s still plenty of time to apply for the class of 2018, of course.

Jordan Weissmann is SLATE’s senior business and economics correspondent.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND IN THE HEART OF THE CITY

24,149

IDEAS UNBOUND

3,556

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gc.cuny.edu

city & state — February 23, 2015

LONG-TERM, FULL-TIME EMPLOYMENT AMONG LAW SCHOOL GRADUATES

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SPOTLIGHT

SPOTLIGHT:

ENERGY

N

ew York’s power grid is aging and overloaded. Extreme storms are hammering New York with increasing frequency, making the question of man-made climate change harder to ignore. And environmentalists and the energy industry are squaring off over whether to invest more in wind power, solar panels and efficiency upgrades or to double down on natural gas, nuclear power or even coal.

Amid this backdrop, officials at the city, state and federal level are confronting tough policy questions about where we get our power, how clean it is and how to minimize harm to the environment.

At the state level, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has launched a number of energy programs that attempt to address those concerns, from an “Energy Highway” to fix up the grid to a state “Green Bank” to spur renewable energy investment to his latest and most ambitious proposal: the “Renewing Energy Vision” initiative, or REV, which is aimed at completely revamping the power system.

What has garnered the most attention, of course, is Cuomo’s long-awaited decision on hydraulic fracturing, which his administration banned late last year. But with that battle behind him, the focus is on REV, which seeks to improve system reliability through distributed generation, smart grid technology, more renewable power and more.

Yet it will take years before the state can transition to a green-friendly system that will meet the state’s energy demand.

In this special section on energy, City & State delves into these challenges that New York faces on the energy front.

city & state — February 23, 2015

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ENERGY

44...

46...

49...

THE CONTESTED PATHWAY TO RENEWABLE ENERGY

By Ashley Hupfl

MICROGRIDS LOOM LARGE IN CUOMO’S ENERGY VISION

By Gabe Ponce de León

Q&As with AUDREY ZIBELMAN, GIL QUINIONES, AMY PAULIN, JOSEPH GRIFFO and CHRIS GIBSON

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“Peekskill is my home, and keeping us safe is my job.”

Kaitlyn Corbett Nuclear Engineer Kaitlyn Corbett has always called New York home. Born and raised in Buffalo, she earned her degree in nuclear power engineering at SUNY College of Technology and moved to Peekskill to start her career at Indian Point. Safety is the single most important mission for Kaitlyn and her 1,000 colleagues at the plant, and it’s been the focus of her years of study and training in the nuclear power industry. Every day, engineers are graded on their performance by inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC recently gave Kaitlyn and the team at Indian Point its highest safety rating — for the fifth year in a row.

Discover more about Indian Point at SafeSecureVital.com

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SPOTLIGHT

ENERGY

PATHWAY TO A GREEN FUTURE

WHAT IS THE BEST BRIDGE TO A RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEM?

BY ASHLEY HUPFL

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city & state — February 23, 2015

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hen Gov. Andrew Cuomo outlined his latest budget proposal last month, his energy agenda laid out steps aimed at meeting the state’s goal of reducing carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050, largely through his “Reforming the Energy Vision” initiative.

But while many industry experts agree that the goal is a step in the right direction for a greener future, they also warn that a significant investment in the state’s energy infrastructure cannot wait until 2050—yet how the state should invest in energy in the meantime is still being debated.

Environmental advocates say the governor should invest more aggressively in green energy and push up the state’s carbon emission reduction goal. Conor Bambrick, air and energy director for Environmental Advocates of New York, said Cuomo’s plan doesn’t seem to have a clear “path of action.” Bambrick called for more investment in “clean, carbon-free” technologies.

“We have system in place where there are enough folks that are making money off of the current grid using traditional sources of power and it’s resulted in a system that is going to be unsustainable,” Bambrick said.

“I think the governor’s initiatives to reform the utility sectors are positive as long as we get to a point where we are emphasizing carbon reductions.”

Along with promoting renewable energy, environmental advocates argue the state should focus on energy efficiency to revamp New York’s old, wasteful energy system. Instead of investing in new non-renewable energy sources during the transition period to a greener system, they advocate for a focus on reducing usage.

“The good thing about being a wasteful society is as we become more efficient we don’t have to produce more

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has set a goal of reducing carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050. energy,” Steven Cohen, executive director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, said. “Some people do believe that natural gas is one of those transition fuels and it might be to some degree, but I think the focus at this point should be on just trying to reduce.”

However, representatives of the traditional energy industry argue the state must make an immediate investment to be able to efficiently handle periods of peak demands, and that the cheapest, most effective way to meet immediate demand is through reinvesting in the state’s current energy sources.

“I think REV is looking to promote energy efficiency and increase existing energy resources—that is all in there to address your average daily load,” said Chris LaRoe, managing director of market policy and regulatory affairs at the Independent Power Producers of New York. “However, what the problem is is that it doesn’t address those peak demand periods. And that’s when you really need large-scale energy investment.”

Natural gas is seen by many as one of those transition resources. In December, Cuomo announced a state ban on hydraulic fracturing, a method of drilling for natural gas, but there are still two proposed natural gas pipelines to run through New York from other states: the Algonquin pipeline in the lower Hudson Valley and the Constitution pipeline in the Southern Tier.

The Cuomo administration has to sign off on water quality and air pollution permits for the two pipelines by the end of February for them to go forward.

“The backyards of New York are destined to become very dark and the houses inside if we do not do something dramatic,” said Jerry Kremer, the chairman of the Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance, an industry group. “More and more businesses are converting to gas. Businesses … homeowners are converting to gas and there’s no place that this increase in demand can come from unless we have these pipelines expanded.”

One thing both sides agree upon is the need to reinvest and restructure

the state’s electric grid to deliver the power, whether it be renewable or non-renewable energy.

“These transmission lines are incredibly old and inefficient,” Bambrick said. “We’re always going to need a mix going forward and if we want to be able to upgrade our generation and move on to cleaner energy, there has to be a way to deliver that power.”

Because of its age New York’s grid is overly centralized, with large central station power plants that deliver power all across the state. In 2012, Cuomo announced his $1 billion Energy Highway initiative to run transmission lines around the Hudson Valley to meet downstate energy demands.

However, community backlash has stalled the effort and its fate is unclear.

The Cuomo’s administration’s REV initiative is seen as an alternative to his original Energy Highway plan as it focuses on smaller power sources— such as solar and wind power plants— and more local use. That idea has also met with some skepticism.

“If we want to really maximize the state’s wind power, all the onshore wind sites are located throughout upstate New York. They’re not being developed because that power can’t be delivered where it is actually needed and it won’t be developed until we have these upgrades in the transmission,” Bambrick said.

The Cuomo administration has projected that it will have to invest about $30 billion in the future for the state’s energy grid to harden it and make sure it doesn’t fall apart. The goal is to spend that money not just patching up the current grid, but to spend it on new technology to spur innovation.

“Fossil fuels are the energy of the current era and of the past,” Cohen said. “It’s not the energy of the future.” cit yandstateny.com

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Connect21: Connecting the energy network for the next generation.

From Buffalo to Potsdam, and all across New York state, we’re beginning to realize the benefits of what happens when we link customers’ needs and policy goals with technology solutions. We call it Connect21, our response to the challenge to meet the demand of growing customer expectations and technological advances in the 21st century.

Last year, we introduced Connect21 and its three main principles: • Putting customers in charge Giving customers the best tools and information to take better control of their energy consumption.

• Changing regulation for utilities Working with our regulators to come up with a new paradigm for how we regulate and finance this industry.

• Innovation and technology Collaborating with other energy delivery companies, regulators, strategic partners and stakeholders to embrace and deliver innovation.

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Critical to the success of Connect 21 is listening to our stakeholders so that we invest in what the market needs tomorrow, not what it used yesterday. And we are off to a good start.

In Buffalo, RiverBend, the reclaimed site of a former steel mill, now stands ready to accept new tenants. And in Potsdam, a collaborative effort is leading to the development of a microgrid that can generate emergency power for critical community services for up to two weeks.

For more examples of our progress, please scan the QR code with your mobile device.

Learn more by visiting us.nationalgridconnecting.com

#Connect21

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SPOTLIGHT

ENERGY

MEGA MICROGRIDS

DECENTRALIZATION LOOMS LARGE AS STATE REVAMPS ENERGY SYSTEM

By GABE PONCE DE LEÓN

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city & state — February 23, 2015

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hat can be done to mitigate the cost, human and economic, of major power failures? And how can population centers cut the carbon emissions many scientists say are bringing about the same extreme weather knocking out the lights?

The answer to both questions may lie, at least partially, in microgrids.

Earlier this month, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a $40 million competition, NY Prize, intended to spur the development of several microgrids that may well become the first major brick-and-mortar demonstration of his Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) plan.

“This is an instrumental part of the broader REV vision, which is about more consumer choice, reliability, resiliency and cleaner energy,” said Micah Kotch, director of NY Prize and a strategic advisor for innovation at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

The governor’s REV plan calls for reconfiguring the state’s aging electric infrastructure and overhauling the regulatory framework. In pushing for decentralization of power distribution, the governor is banking on major efficiency, reliability and resiliency gains from consumer-sited generation and smart demand management. These technologies could also facilitate a transition to a cleaner energy portfolio.

The electric grid of 2015 is not all that different from the one conceived

by Thomas Edison a century ago, experts note. It is based on a one-way power flow from centralized generators to a dispersed consumer network.

With self-contained generation, transmission and storage, a microgrid

is essentially a miniature version of the larger electric system. While it remains tethered to the grid it has the critical ability to continue running as an “island” should the main network fail. Microgrids have been in use for decades, but while early models offered little more than backup generation, newer versions—many still in pilot stages—are capable of sophisticated operations, such as decreasing demand or providing additional power supply to the bulk system, a practice known as net metering.

Though the billions of dollars in post-Sandy funds spent on other resiliency measures dwarf the $40 million offered through NY Prize, NYSERDA hopes this latest initiative can produce at least a few models to replicate on a larger scale.

At present, microgrids tend to be sited around vital infrastructure, such as military installations, hospitals and institutions—research labs, for instance—that can ill afford power interruptions for any length of time.

NYU is a good example. During Superstorm Sandy, which left 8.5 million customers in the dark, the campus stood out among a few small islands of light.

John Bradley, assistant vice president for sustainability at New York University who served on the NY Prize advisory committee, also points out that the microgrid saves the school lots of money.

“We generate [electricity] cleaner and we generate it cheaper than Con Edison,” he said.

One reason is transmission costs can add up to half of electricity bills.

While this shows the microgrids’ environmental and economic potential,

it also highlights its potential to disrupt a century-old business model.

“If you start peeling off their largest customers, [utilities] still need to maintain their infrastructure,” Bradley said.

In addition to the decline in demand and utility revenue, there is also friction between independent and bulk grid operators when it comes to regulation and modifying the rate structure. Most microgrids cannot be a stand-alone island and therefore rely on the main grid as either a backup or supplement source of energy. What role microgrids play in covering the cost of maintaining the grid while also securing the reliability of the system is where problems arise.

“There are complexities around interconnection,” Kotch acknowledged.

NYSERDA is counting on NY Prize to help answer questions like how much microgrid users should contribute towards maintenance of the distribution network. The question of franchise rights, and where microgrid operators can string lines in the public domain, must also be addressed.

NYSERDA is also hoping the contest will incentivize further innovation in control technology, storage management, systems integration and consumer analytics.

Localized power generation not only allows for the penetration of renewable energy sources, but can also defer major capital investments in places where the bulk grid—much of which is 30 or 40 years old—has become stressed. Investor-owned utilities have identified six “opportunity zones” across the state deemed especially promising for NY Prize awards.

“For the past 80 to 100 years

utilities [have been] good investments.

They do well in capital markets because they get a regulated rate of return on the infrastructure that they install,” Ben Kellison, director of grid research at GTM Research, said. “That’s going to come from the rate payers. That’s going to be a rate increase.”

New Yorkers already pay some of the highest electricity rates in the nation. Microgrids are beginning to showcase their potential to produce cheap and reliable energy, potentially driving down those costs.

But cost is not the only concern.

Creating environmentally conscious microgrids is also a priority.

“You can design a microgrid that is very clean and includes renewable sources, but you can also design one that’s a break-even proposition from an emissions perspective,” Jackson Morris, an energy and climate analyst at the National Resources Defense Council, said. “Or you could potentially design a microgrid that incorporates resources that end up making it even dirtier than the bulk system.”

According to Jackson, NY Prize holds the potential to reduce emissions from the energy system, but not without overlaying requirements—or at least a mandatory analysis of the environmental impact of proposed project relative to the bulk system.

Over 90 percent of microgrids are currently powered by fossil fuels, but by transitioning to a decentralized distribution system the state could lay a foundation on which to deploy more renewable resources going forward.

“It’s not a given that [a microgrid] will be an environmental win,” Jackson said. “It’s going to depend on the details.” cit yandstateny.com

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SPOTLIGHT

Work For New York, Not Against It

ENERGY

By James Slevin

AUDREY ZIBELMAN Chair, New York State Public Service Commission Q: An order for “Track One” of the Renewing the Energy Vision (REV) proceeding is due this year. What does it entail, when will it be out and what’s in store for the next phase?

AZ: In the first quarter of 2015, the Commission expects to take a significant step when it adopts a policy framework for the REV regulatory proceeding and makes decisions on some critical REV issues. The Commission will provide guidance to the industry, set some changes in motion, and lay out REV’s implementation framework. This will be the next step in an evolving process that will result in changes affording New York’s electricity customers more control and more choice over their energy use. In the second quarter of 2015, the Commission expects to consider ratemaking reforms to secure equitable allocation of benefits and costs among customers and to align utilities’ financial interests with the objectives of reform. The direction taken by the Commission in this proceeding is entirely consistent with the terms of the draft State Energy Plan, which calls for the use of markets and reformed regulatory techniques to achieve increased system efficiency, greenhouse gas emission reductions and customer empowerment.

Q: Some state lawmakers have been pushing their own energy initiatives. What is their role when it comes to the REV? AZ: We strongly encourage the participation of state legislative officials, such as Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, in the development process of REV. In fact, we just completed a 12-city statewide public statement hearing tour which focused on REV and its Utility 2.0 counterpart on Long Island. During the tour, we directly interacted with nearly 1,000 New Yorkers, including numerous state and local lawmakers, community and advocacy organizations, making it the largest statewide energy public hearing process in PSC history. Given the fact that a critical component of the REV initiative is that presents opportunities for communities to incubate and take advantage of distributed generation projects, public participation is fundamentally important.

Q: What are the components of the state’s goal of transitioning to clean energy?

AZ: By animating markets, through statewide initiatives such as the Clean Energy Fund and $1 billion NY Green Bank, New York is moving to diversify its support of the clean-energy industry to address market barriers and attract private capital necessary to achieve the state’s economic development and environmental objectives.

President and CEO, New York Power Authority Q: What is the state’s ReCharge NY program and what are its accomplishments so far?

GQ: ReCharge NY provides low-cost power in exchange for retaining or creating jobs. It has been a tremendous success. Since the program went into effect in 2012, it has been linked to commitments for nearly 394,000 jobs and major capital investments by more than 700 enterprises receiving the power.

NYPA’s mission is to power the economic growth and competitiveness of the state by providing customers with affordable power that is both clean and reliable.

ReCharge NY is a great example of that.

Q: What role does NYPA play in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Reforming the Energy Vision initiative?

GQ: At the core of REV is clean-energy innovation that brings in new investments and improves consumer choice while also protecting the environment. To that end, we’re showing our customers how they can lower their power costs and reduce their carbon footprint by using non-centralized power generation.

We’re also playing a significant role in Cuomo’s push to bring about more local energy grids, known as microgrids, throughout New York. Clean, renewable energy has long been a NYPA priority. More than 70 percent of the electricity we generate comes from non-polluting hydropower. Another example is K-Solar, a new program we run with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to provide schools with the tools and expertise to bring solar energy into their facilities. Already, 30 percent of the state’s schools are signed up.

Q: What else is going on at NYPA? GQ: NYPA has developed a five-year strategic plan that spells out our vision for how we meet the needs of customers, upgrade our resources and manage our assets in an energy-driven economy. The latter includes high-voltage transmission lines. We own about one-third of the ones in New York. Some of these assets date back to the 1950s and need replacing.

We’re in the midst of a $726 million initiative to modernize and strengthen them. In addition, we’ve taken steps to implement an agreement that will provide $115 million in additional benefits to the communities that host our hydroelectric plant in the North Country, a region badly in need of economic development. We’re also spearheading the governor’s Five Cities Energy Plans, which could save Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers up to $400 million a year in energy costs.

When politicians and policymakers make these decisions, it is critical they understand our economy and job security must always be front and center. Plans to halt, even temporarily, New York’s clean in-state power production capabilities by favoring power and energy projects from other states and Canada, harms our future.

Recent alarming developments have shown leaders entrusted with our collective future in Albany appear to be in favor of subsidizing special interest projects, which hurt New York consumers, take jobs from the state, and degrade our energy infrastructure.

In February, a State Administrative Law Judge kept alive an absurd proposal from the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to turn off a major power plant during the hottest summer months. This defies economic and environmental realities, as well as common sense.

At issue is potentially shutting down one or both units of Indian Point Energy Center for weeks at a time in a misguided attempt to better facilitate fish mating. Despite numerous government and independent studies showing it’s a foolish idea, the agency is undeterred. Indian Point proposed to install wedgewire screen technology to help DEC’s objective and to do so without harming jobs or causing a spike in electricity prices.

DEC’s forced outage proposal stands out as a particularly bad government proposal. The proposal means layoffs at Indian Point, higher prices for consumers, more air pollution, and even less protection of fish than the wedgewire proposal ensures year-round.

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State regulators are also supporting the Canadian government backed Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE), to permanently take jobs from hard-working New Yorkers. The project undermines our economy by opening the door for New York to become highly dependent on foreign-produced power, thus threatening our own energy infrastructure.

CHPE means billions of dollars go to Canada annually, which also takes our electricity production jobs. New Yorkers get a high-voltage extension cord through the state. Special interests benefit, but New Yorkers do not.

New York’s highly skilled workforce deserves better from Albany.

Dimming our economic prospects shouldn’t be an objective of state agencies. Instead the focus should be on creating and supporting policies that increase in-state power generation and maintain existing clean and reliable sources of power, such as Indian Point. Let’s keep jobs in-state and stop outsourcing our energy production.

James Slevin is President of the Utility Workers Local 1-2 and a member of the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance advisory board.

S P E C I A L

S P O N S O R E D

S E C T I O N

The New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance (New York AREA) is a diverse group of business, labor, environmental, and community leaders working together for clean, low-cost and reliable electricity solutions that foster prosperity and jobs for the Empire State.

W W W. A R E A - A L L I A N C E . O R G

city & state — February 23, 2015

GIL QUINIONES

There is no shortage of challenges New York faces towards maintaining and strengthening its energy grid. The need for additional infrastructure and new in-state power generation is critical.

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SPOTLIGHT

New York Energy Reform:

ENERGY

Ushering In The Electric Grid’s New Age By: Edward Krapels Forces from two different directions are rearing a new age for the New York electric grid. First is the need for clean energy at affordable prices. Second is adapting advancements in technology that will help transform the energy industry and reshape the relationship between suppliers, consumers, and the entities in between.

Energy that is deemed too dirty is currently being eased out of the market by federal and state government action. For example, the Northeast states support renewable portfolio standards that, taken together, will soon require development of a huge amount of clean energy. Solar, wind and hydro are poised to be the energy future for the Northeast.

However, to unlock their potential, New York’s New Energy Age will require more transmission cables to bring this clean power to market in an affordable way.

The increased use of high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission cables in New York over the last decade has demonstrated how transmission can expand the state’s access to affordable renewable resources while saving ratepayers millions of dollars.

Transmission does so by functioning like an extension cord that injects clean energy into congested urban markets. Further making the case for transmission, this infrastructure is technically advanced, secured underground, and can be efficiently financed.

48

New York’s New Energy Age will also require better utilization of advances in technology. The aftermath of Superstorm Sandy revealed what industry experts have long known: utilities and their regulators have underinvested in the nation’s electricity infrastructure, creating a grid that is less reliable and technologically developed than what New York requires to maintain a competitive, growing economy.

While the grid has suffered from underinvestment, the technology sector has undergone revolutions in cellular communications, microprocessor capability, and Internet connectivity. This technology revolution has enabled the development of microgrids.

Most people think of microgrids as beacons of light during blackouts. Certainly, microgrids enable critical institutions like hospitals and schools to remain operational when the macrogrid goes down. However, at its core, the state-of-the-art technology embedded within microgrids allows these beacons of light to be so much more.

In a region rich in microgrids, renewables will be deployed with ease, overall emissions will decline, and distributed energy resources will be democratized and allowed to scale. At the same time, institutions that depend on microgrids will each become more efficient and more resilient. New York is ripe with sites that are ideal for microgrid development.

city & state — February 23, 2015

How do we create a reformed power grid in New York that brings reliable, renewable energy to market, enables distributed energy resource to scale, and achieves affordable rates? It begins with modernizing the way our electric grid functions – from the micro to the macrogrid. That is why Anbaric proposes a network of interconnected microgrids to develop distributed energy resources, complemented by a strategic expansion of transmission to integrate renewables with the macrogrid. Working together, microgrids and transmission promise to usher in a new age for New York’s electric system in line with the state’s energy goals.

Edward Krapels, Founder and CEO, Anbaric Anbaric is an independent transmission and microgrid development company with more than $5 billion in infrastructure projects currently under development throughout the United States. As one of the developers of the Neptune Cable, Anbaric maintains unique experience helping New York ratepayers access clean, affordable, and reliable electricity. In the microgrid arena, Anbaric has partnered with Exelon to develop a series of microgrids at strategic locations throughout New York State.

AMY PAULIN Chair, New York State Assembly Energy Committee Q: What did you think of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s energy proposals in his executive budget?

AP: The centerpiece of the governor’s budget as it relates to energy is the Public Service Commission’s Reforming the Energy Vision proceeding, commonly known as the “REV.” Many of the legislative initiatives in the area of energy reflect the same themes: ensuring that New York’s power supply will be safe, reliable and resilient in the face of extreme weather, as well as affordable, while also mitigating climate change.

In response to the challenge of an aging infrastructure, New York has decided to take the opportunity to put the state at the forefront of energy policy by creating a modern grid that will give consumers greater ability to make decisions about their own energy use.

Q: How will this initiative be implemented?

AP: The governor proposes to commit $5 billion over 10 years to a Clean Energy Fund. This will allow for full capitalization of the New York Green Bank and the New York-Sun initiative, among other programs that are intended to increase the use of energy efficiency strategies and renewables.

These strategies will encourage private investment as technologies mature and provide government support for low-income customers or others who cannot easily purchase efficiency upgrades or renewable generation, such as residents of multi-family housing.

Q: What key energy issues or initiatives would you like to confront during this year’s legislative session?

AP: In order to support those

strategies, I have introduced a bill that creates opportunities for customers, especially those in multi-family housing, to join in shared renewable energy facilities. By investing together with others, customers would be able to receive credit against their usage for the energy produced by the facility. This would open the door to the renewable energy sphere for individuals and families who are currently prevented from doing so due to where they live.

Q: Have you already proposed any legislation?

AP: Last session, I introduced a bill on community choice aggregation, which would allow municipalities to enter into contracts with suppliers of energy in order to get the best possible price for all customers in those municipalities. The Public Service Commission recognized this important work in December when it instituted a proceeding to investigate community choice aggregation. I have also introduced bills to expand the use of net metering, which permits customers to generate solar, wind or other renewable energy and sell what they cannot use back into the grid. This effort fits well with the recent decision by the Public Service Commission to increase the cap on net metering in order to allow even more customers to participate, which will help to reduce the need to build additional generating plants, transmission lines and other expensive infrastructure. Innovative financing techniques will enable residential and commercial customers to take advantage of opportunities to make their energy usage more efficient and clean. I have introduced bills to permit customers to repay loans for efficiency or renewable energy projects as part of their utility bills. Another bill I introduced would provide that installation of renewable energy would not lead to an increased tax assessment on the property where it is located.

C&S: What are your thoughts on the proposed gas pipelines—the Constitution and Algonquin— that would run through the state?

Does the recent decision to ban hydrofracking alter the equation?

AP: With respect to natural gas, the governor, the PSC and I have focused on safety issues in the wake of the tragic explosion in Harlem. Utilities will be required to accelerate the replacement of leak-prone pipes, and to identify and make public the locations of gas leaks. cit yandstateny.com

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SPOTLIGHT

Now Is The Time to Cut Electricity Taxes

ENERGY

By Arthur “Jerry” Kremer

Chair, New York State Senate Energy and Telecommunications Committee

Q: Last month you were appointed chairman of the state Senate Energy and Telecommunications Committee, replacing former state Sen. George Maziarz. What will be on the agenda and where will your top priorities be when it comes to state energy policy?

JG: This is an especially exciting and challenging time in the energy and telecommunications sector and I am ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work. Ensuring a reliable, resilient, safe, clean and affordable supply of electricity across the state is vital to New York’s economy and it improves our everyday lives. Likewise, the telecommunications industry is an integral part of our economy as the Internet and various new forms of communication have become essential to the way we do business, educate our youth and conduct our daily lives. As chairman for the Energy and Telecommunications Committee, I plan to focus on promoting competitive markets, supporting private enterprise, streamlining regulations, creating jobs and keeping consumer costs down. The future of energy generation, transmission and distribution is evolving and I support strategically upgrading and modernizing the “energy highway” through a public process.

That will allow us to free up constraints along the grid and allow for flexibility as we transition to a combination of clean base load generation and more localized distributed generation.

Q: What role will you play in the state’s Renewing Energy Vision (REV) initiative, which was launched by Gov. Andrew Cuomo?

JG: My priority is to simultaneously facilitate the expansion and deployment of a variety of renewable and other clean energy technologies, using a balanced approach that provides access to diverse sources of energy, while maintaining electric system reliability, and without overburdening ratepayers. Related to that effort, I will be closely monitoring the Public Service Commission’s REV proceeding, which would redesign the entire energy market system. This

is an enormous undertaking with wide-ranging consequences that requires transparency, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to steer policy that will have a lasting positive impact on the energy sector and economic development in New York for years to come.

Q: What will you bring to the Energy Committee, in terms of your background and experiences, as you deal with these policy issues on a state level?

JG: The issues that the Energy Committee will be dealing with are already familiar to me because my tenure as a member of the Senate Standing Committee on Energy and Telecommunications began during the 2009-10 legislative term when I served as the ranking minority member. The Senate Republicans regained the majority shortly thereafter, and I have remained on the Energy and Telecommunications Committee as a majority member ever since. Even before my election to the New York State Senate, I was working on a host of energy matters when I served as county executive in Oneida County. For example, at the time I was heavily involved with a successful effort to stop a controversial 200-mile power line project called “NYRI.” This line would have cut through the rural landscape in my region and all the way down to New York City rather than taking advantage of existing rights of way, which I believe is the preferred method of siting or upgrading power lines if underground siting is not possible or is cost prohibitive. Finally, there are a significant number of energy facilities in the 47th Senate District that I represent, including the New York Power Authority facilities in Massena and Marcy, numerous small hydro plants throughout the district and the Maple Ridge Wind Farm on Tug Hill in Lewis County, which is the second largest wind farm in New York State. I plan to draw from my experience with the energy and telecommunications sector and to continue to learn more because the committee has a full plate of issues that need attention. I am sincerely looking forward to it.

With the state experiencing a significant windfall from Wall Street settlements, now is the perfect time to match relief at the gas pump by also providing relief at the electricity outlet. This is best accomplished by cutting hidden or hard to identify electricity taxes that have become embedded in ratepayers’ bills which is estimated in the hundreds of millions annually.

Even taxes that were “temporary” to save the state during the financial crisis, such as the 18-a assessment, have taken on a life of their own and show no sign of ending. The 18-a assessment was increased to help the state climb out of a deep fiscal crisis in 2009; however, when it was set to expire in March 2014, it was extended. To date, it has redirected over $2.9 billion from ratepayers and away from higher priority needs such as correcting in-state transmission bottlenecks.

The 18-a assessment isn’t the only burdensome fee that appears on an electric bill. Last year, hundreds of millions was collected by the state from “off-budget environmental charges.” Those monies flow into ambiguous, short term “public policy objectives” or energy research programs operated by the state. As these experimental projects endeavor to prove their mettle, oversight over the use of funds requires evaluation to ensure benefits reach ratepayers.

49

The data is disconcerting as New Yorkers are paying billions in excess electricity taxes and fees with little to show for it. One example, the Empire State fell far short of its 2009 goal to reduce energy consumption by 15 percent by 2015 and derive over 30 percent from renewables. Meanwhile businesses and fixed income consumers are still required to pay the tab.

Albany has an opportunity in 2015 to relieve the squeeze by drastically reducing archaic and unnecessary taxes and surcharges on consumers’ utility bills.

Arthur “Jerry” Kremer is the former chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee and a principal author of the state's power plant siting law. He now is the chairman of the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance.

S P E C I A L

S P O N S O R E D

S E C T I O N

New York AREA’s membership includes some of the state’s most vital business, labor and community organizations including the New York State AFL-CIO, Business Council of New York State, Partnership for New York City, New York Building Congress, National Federation of Independent Business and many more.

W W W. A R E A - A L L I A N C E . O R G

city & state — February 23, 2015

JOSEPH GRIFFO

As state policymakers set next year’s budget, legislators have a unique opportunity to create real change and alleviate financial stress experienced by so many New Yorkers. It’s no secret that New York State perennially has among the highest electricity costs in the country and we often pay 50 percent more, on average, for electricity than those in other U.S. states. In fact, arcane taxes and obscure government fees are to blame and comprise over 25 percent of a typical utility bill.

cit yandstateny.com

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2/23/15 4:19 PM

SPOTLIGHT

A NEW YORK ENERGY SOLUTION

ENERGY

CHRIS GIBSON

West Point Transmission, a proposed 1000-MW underwater power cable, will bring power generated in northern and western New York to electricity consumers in the New York City area in the absence of Indian Point and strengthen New York’s existing power grid.

West Point Transmission would bring:

50

• New York energy for New Yorkers • More reliable energy infrastructure in New York State • More New York jobs • More power to fuel economic growth • Minimal land use and scenic impacts • Access to clean energy sources upstate

Warren

Niagara

ALBANY

ATHENS

BUCHANAN NEW YORK CITY

About PowerBridge: West Point is a project of PowerBridge, LLC, the

city & state — February 23, 2015

operates the Neptune Regional Transmission System and the Hudson Transmission Project, two high voltage underwater power cables, each providing 660 MW of transmission capacity respectively to Long Island and New York City.

Learn more about West Point Transmission by visiting:

www.westpointproject.com

www.powerbridge.us

Representative, 19th Congressional District

Q: How did you become interested in energy policy?

CB: I grew up in a working class family in Columbia County. My dad was a working class laborer with the trades.

I’m 50 years old this year, so when the gas and the home heating prices were spiking in the 1970s, that crushed my family. You see a lot in the political discourse about helping the middle class. Let me tell you—want to help a working class family? You have them pay less for energy. Right now we’re paying $1.60 less for gas and paying $1 less for home heating. I mean, some of the people in upstate New York drive 30 to 40 miles one way to get to work, so when you’re talking $1.60 less for gas, that’s real money! When you look at the GDP growth—and this last time it came in at 2.6 percent, but the quarter before at 5, and in the previous quarter above 4—that’s in part driven by the fact that middle class families pay 96 percent of their take home pay.

And when they get it in their pockets, historically, they spend it.

Q: How can the U.S. lower energy costs?

CB: Let me talk about some specifics: You talk about lowering energy costs now—that means I support expanded [oil] exploration. The President said two weeks ago that he wanted to do more exploration off the Atlantic coast. I support that. When we expand supply, generally speaking, that lowers price. I support the pipeline, not only because I think it will expand supply, but also when you look at risk, when you look at New York State, we take on a significant amount of risk with the Bakken crude oil moving through the state in the Mohawk Valley and the Hudson Valley. We need to attenuate that risk, and what’s more risky,

moving by vehicle and train, or by pipeline? I would argue that there’s more risk in the former. So the U.S. State Department talked about the fact that they’re looking at the pipeline as carbon-neutral, because when you add up all the CO2, moving it by truck and then by train, you’re at about a wash.

Q: What about renewable energy?

CG: I want to be clear that my policies are very pragmatic. I’m looking to lower energy costs today. But you know, this is a country that can do hard things. We’ve shown that— we’ve put a man on the moon. And we can be the country that perfects clean and renewable energy and when we do that it will democratize energy. We will transform the way we produce, convey and consume energy when we are able to drive down, for example, the total cost of photovoltaic for solar power. We have a program now called the SunShot program, and I have been working to try and plus up that account. It’s research and development and prototyping to drive the total cost of photovoltaics down to $0.06 per kilowatt-hour. It’s a very aggressive goal, but I’m optimistic that we’re going to make significant progress because we’re using some of the same approaches, and indeed some of the same engineers that we used for your iPhone and your iPad are now focused on renewable energy and solar power. That would be nanotechnology coatings and composites, and substitute materials, because you need the gold and silver now for manufacturing and of course you see the price of that. I think we’re going to see significant progress in driving down the total cost of solar power. And it’s not just solar.

I support wind power, geothermal, biomass—there’s room for even more improvement there in biomass. It will be good for the economy, it will be good for our foreign policy—less reliance on fossil fuels—and it will be good for the environment. We also need to look at means of conveyance, and it looks like the state is moving in the right direction with its focus on microgrids. Microgrids empower local communities: Look at the Oswego Electrical Co-op in Oswego County.

These electrical co-ops are already working. They actually vote on their budgets and they vote for their leaders and hold them accountable. So when people say that microgrids can’t work, I say “It’s already working!” And I know that the state is looking at maybe working to proliferate that and that that would be very helpful. cit yandstateny.com

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2/23/15 5:39 PM 12/27/13 5:48 PM

ALEXIS GRENELL

I

n the race to replace Sheldon Silver as speaker of the New York State Assembly, a rumor emerged that Cathy Nolan was a “stalking horse” for Queens County Democratic Chairman Joe Crowley. This implied she was a proxy, intended as a bargaining chip for someone more powerful. Absent any facts, it served only to undermine her candidacy. But why was it even plausible that a 30year veteran of the Assembly would feverishly phone bank members and

Print. Mail. Win.

excludes women from entrenched political and social networks, putting them at a structural disadvantage.

“Politics is very much monopolized by men, they’re always taking care of each other,” said one assemblywoman who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “You don’t have a certain interaction with them because it’s always inappropriate. I’m not going to go hang out at my married colleague’s house on a Friday night and drink.”

The situation is different in the New York City Council, where traditional machine politics are less relevant, replaced by organized labor and the WFP-backed Progressive Caucus. In the 2013 race for Council speaker, the Caucus used its 21-block vote to effectively sideline the party bosses and elect Melissa Mark-Viverito.

When the Kings County Chairman caved to the Caucus, he left Heastie and Crowley, who were supporting Dan Garodnick, out in the cold.

But the Progressive Caucus didn’t just defeat the machine. It defied the conventional wisdom, spouted after Tish James won the public advocate’s race, that there couldn’t be more than one woman in citywide office. This outdated idea was not only sexist, but failed to acknowledge a more straightforward logic: as multiple

female candidates run for city office, increasingly more of them will win.

Today women make up nearly a third of the body, and half of all citywide elected officials.

In contrast, Nolan ran for an office only ever held by men, in a body that’s about a quarter female. Just as importantly, the hastily formed Reform Coalition, which wobbled into existence like a newborn foal, didn’t have the institutional capacity to redefine the process.

Despite the outcome, Cathy Nolan made a crack in Albany’s glass gavel.

“When I first got to Albany people told me it was a fluke that I won. I think it’s one of the reasons I stayed so long, because I wanted to show people it wasn’t a fluke, I wanted to show people I had talent and ambition,” Nolan explained.

She did more than that.

The first woman to run for Assembly speaker will not be the last.

Alexis Grenell (@agrenell on Twitter) is a Democratic communications strategist based in New York. She handles nonprofit and political clients.

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PERSPECTIVES

publicly pitch herself for speaker if she wasn’t serious? The notion was easily debunked when Nolan remained in the race after Crowley threw his support behind Carl Heastie.

Submitting pleasantly to an insulting question, Nolan confirmed her motivation: “I chair one of the top committees in the Assembly. I’ve been here a long time. I felt that made me a contender.”

Cathy Nolan leaned in, but she couldn’t win a rigged game.

Albany is dominated by machine politics, and the patronage that comes with it. As party bosses, Heastie (Bronx), Joe Morelle (Monroe County) and Keith Wright (Manhattan) had a treasury of chits to cash in. Wright quickly bowed out with a suspected promise of support for an eventual run for Congress. Morelle couldn’t win in a conference dominated by New York City members, even though he was considered the Governor’s favorite (but notably not his pawn).

Lastly, the chairman of the powerful Codes Committee, Joe Lentol jumped ship when his own Brooklyn boss got behind Heastie.

That left Nolan with only her record to run on. Although she lost for many reasons not related to her gender, the male-dominated party system mostly

53

CITY & STATE — February 23, 2015

CATHY NOLAN LEANS IN

CIT YANDSTATENY.COM

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2/23/15 12:18 PM

IN THE PAPERS S

ince taking the role of

I would read it myself before actually delivering to my customers.

morning news anchor at NY1 in 1997, Pat Kiernan has become one of the city’s most familiar faces.

The Canada native has become a fixture in the daily routine for many New Yorkers, sifting through the headlines in his “In The Papers” segment and covering everything from the World Trade Center terrorist attacks to Superstorm Sandy.

In an interview with City & State Senior Correspondent Jon Lentz, Kiernan talked about his lifelong love of journalism, the string of public corruption scandals in the state and the radio show he launched last year.

The following is an edited transcript.

city & state — February 23, 2015

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City & State: I understand that you get up around 3 a.m., finish your morning shift around 10 a.m. and then it’s off to your afternoon nap.

Pat Kiernan: That’s pretty much the way things work here. We started early yesterday for storm coverage, so I shaved another hour off my sleep last night. But we were back to the regular 3 a.m. wakeup and 4 a.m. in the office yesterday.

C&S: About a year ago, you added a radio show, The Ride Home with Pat Kiernan and Rita Cosby, which airs at 5 p.m. How do you manage that?

PK: Actually, I’ve been scaling back my role at WABC for the last month here. I did the radio show full time for a year, and that was one of the factors in my decision. I felt like it was too much burning the candle at both ends.

There’s still a lot going on every day, but I’m not at the radio station every day in the afternoon, so that gives me a little more flexibility. My kids have a full slate of activities that still cut into my afternoon nap after I finish at NY1.

I’ve tried all approaches to dealing with the 3 a.m. wakeup over the last 17 years, and the afternoon nap is one that seems to work for me—although it still doesn’t make the 3 a.m. alarm clock any earlier.

C&S: How is the radio show different than TV news?

C&S: One of the biggest headlines has been the corruption allegations against then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, which is just the latest political scandal. Is it ever disillusioning?

PK: You can’t help but get jaded with the number of corruption cases involving politicians. You almost make the assumption that there’s going to be a headline of some sort of misbehavior.

That doesn’t change the fact that these are important stories and they’re making important decisions and that we need to cover it and that the audience is interested in it, but it does color your perception of all of this and you wish that you didn’t have to be as skeptical as you are. But there’s been nothing to indicate that it gets any better. It’s just one after another.

A Q&A WITH

PAT KIERNAN PK: The thing I enjoy in doing the radio show is you have the ability to be anywhere immediately, on the phone.

After all these years of doing TV, it’s heavy on logistics. You’ve got to get a camera into place, you’ve got to get a live truck into place, there’s a lot of coordination required to make things happen on TV. Thankfully with as big a team as we have at NY1 we can get those pieces into place fairly quickly.

An interesting thing when I was reintroduced to radio in January of last year was the feeling that anybody I wanted to book was only a phone call away.

C&S: Did you always want to be a TV anchor?

PK: From the time I was 7 or 8 years old, I was fascinated by the idea of broadcasting. There was a chance I had to go down to the local radio station on Saturdays and Sundays.

The announcers would go out and do

live commercials from some place, and they would make a big event out of how they were broadcasting live. I remember convincing my dad that we had to go to the Boutique of Leather store because the morning man, Howard Langdale, was there. He was this guy standing in the corner with a microphone and twice an hour he did a 60-second commercial and then he would shake hands and greet people the rest of the time. I’m not sure what I got out of that visit, but that was one of the signs of my early fascination with broadcast. I would draw pictures of TV trucks and think about that stuff.

I loved the news as well. I delivered the local afternoon paper at the time, The Calgary Herald, and the people of my paper route always criticized me for being too slow with the deliveries.

Part of the problem was I walk along inattentively reading the newspaper rather than just rushing it to the door.

C&S: You’re a fan of pop culture and you’ve even done cameos as yourself.

Do people recognize you around the city?

PK: To the point of my visit at 8 years old to Howard Langdale, if I was that fascinated by meeting my local radio personality, I’ve got to assume that if you reach a certain level of success in TV news people are going to recognize you. That doesn’t come as a surprise. It is very frequent that people recognize me on the streets or at an event. People across all demographics will come up and say, “Hey, I watch you every morning, I couldn’t live without you guys every morning, you’re part of my morning routine.” So that’s gratifying and it’s nice to know that what we do is meeting the needs of the audience, that they appreciate the fact that NY1 has an emphasis on the stories that really matter to New York, and that we’re not wasting a lot of time fluff. All of that is well received by people, and when they spot me on a subway or see me at a movie, the interactions are 99 percent positive. It’s good.

To read the full text of this interview, go to cityandstateny.com.

cit yandstateny.com

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City Hall News

Jan. 2014: magazine arrives!

The Way To Reach Elected Officials For advertising information, please contact Jim Katocin at 212.284.9714 or Jkatocin@cityandstateny.com 12:24 PM

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Albany: Stand Up for Workers and Protect the Scaffold Safety Law

COALITION

NORTHEASTERN ON OCCUPATIONAL NY COALITION SAFETY & HEALTH

For further information on what they’re saying, straight facts and the 12 things you need to know about the scaffold safety law, please visit:

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