BALCONY JOINS RESTORING AMERICA’s PROMISE

Concerned About Attacks on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security

Albany – June 29 As Congressional negotiations over the federal debt ceiling go down to the wire this week, Restoring American Promise which includes the Business and Labor Coalition of New York today opposed attacks on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and domestic programs. At the same time, the coalition called for the creation of a substantial jobs program, opposed the preservation of tax cuts for the wealthy and tax deals for big corporations.

“We cannot sacrifice the social compact our nation has with its citizens in order extend the deficit ceiling,” stated BALCONY Director Lou Gordon, “We believe in the concept of Shared Sacrifice, for all Americans and we are bringing that message to all of our business and labor members.”

BALCONY members of the Restoring America’s Promise include the Medicare Rights Center, The New York State United Teachers, Metro New York Health Care for All, and Teamsters Local 237.

“Our supporters are mad as hell, because the new members of Congress didn’t tell the truth about their real program when they were candidates,” said Mary Clark, Binghamton Regional Director of Citizen Action of New York and the coordinator of the new Restoring the American Progress network. “As candidates, the new Republicans promised to create jobs and fix the economy, but instead, they’re proposing to take apart programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that built prosperity in America. We’re not going to let a small minority undermine the American promise for the majority any longer.”

Groups in the new campaign will be mobilizing this month at meetings and public events throughout New York, including Cortland, Manhattan, Manlius, Mt. Kisco, Norwich, Saratoga Springs, Staten Island, and White Plains. Later this summer, a statewide caravan will be held that will travel from one end of the state to the other to demand that New York Congressmembers do the right thing and take proposals to cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps, WIC, Head Start, and other bedrock programs off the table during negotiations over raising the federal debt ceiling.

“The economic crisis – and the Wall Street excesses and corporate abuses that drove it – have unfairly jeopardized the livelihoods of ordinary working people,” said Antonella Pechtel, Capital/Hudson Political Director of 1199 SEIU, Fight For A Fair Economy. “Now, during these tough economic times, the last thing we need is further job loss and the slashing of our safety net. Balancing the federal budget on the backs of hard working Americans is not an option. Our members will be mobilizing their community against corporate greed, creating good paying jobs with benefits and ensuring that everyone pays their fair share.”

“There are various proposals on Medicaid, one more confusing than the next, as far as justifying how such changes would actually sustain the Medicaid program,” said Lara Kassel, Coordinator of Medicaid Matters New York. “Congress must do no harm to the people who rely on Medicaid for their health and well-being, and none of the major proposals aim to do that.”

The Republican budget plan, developed by House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI), proposes to: 1) “block grant” Medicaid; 2) privatize Medicare by replacing it with vouchers that will result in thousands of dollars in additional out of pocket costs for seniors and the disabled; 3) cut spending by $4.3 trillion over 10 years (two-thirds from low-income programs) but cut taxes by $4.2 trillion, essentially not touching the deficit; and 4) cut vital programs like education, health care and Head Start.

“The Alliance for Retired Americans is opposed to cuts in Social Security benefits – we always have been, we always will be. Our organization’s strong, clear position on this issue has been at the core of our grassroots advocacy mission from the day the Alliance was established 10 years ago,” said Dennis Tracey, President, New York State Alliance for Retired Americans.

“The House GOP Budget is a moral disaster with its reverse-Robin Hood plan which makes seniors and the disabled pay $6000 more for Medicare every year while giving even more tax breaks for the wealthy; it is quite clear that instead of adjusting and tweaking Medicare to make it stronger, the House GOP is using the deficit as an excuse to dismantle Medicare as a social insurance program and turn it into a capped subsidy that will pay only 32% of health costs,” said Michael Burgess, Public Policy Consultant for the StateWide Senior Action Council.

“Starting this week and continuing throughout the summer, groups all across New York will be creating events and attending town meetings to hold their Congressmembers accountable for moves to eviscerate our nation’s decades-old social contract and safety net programs,” said Mark Hannay, Director of the Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign. “Together, we are fired up, and we won’t be silent.”

“We want our dignity back. We want our American promise: restore our jobs, and protect our Medicare, our Medicaid and our Social Security.”

Restoring the American Promise

New York State Alliance for Retired Americans ● New York State AFL-CIO

● Citizen Action of New York

1199 SEIU, Fight for a Fair Economy ● New York Statewide Senior Action Council

New York Association on Independent Living ● BALCONY

Click here for the link to: RAP Participant List

Click here for the link to: RAP June-July Events

PEF statement on prison closings

Albany – The governor announced today he is closing seven state prisons. The closings come at a time when staff reductions and crowded conditions have resulted in an increase in violence at these facilities.

“Inmate-on-inmate assaults, inmate-on-staff assaults, inmate suicides and contraband all increased from 2009
to 2010,” said PEF President Ken Brynien. “Inmate-on-inmate assaults were up more than 12 percent and
inmate suicides doubled.”

The announcement includes the closing of four minimum-security facilities for men: Buffalo Work Release in
Erie County, Camp Georgetown in Madison County, Summit Shock in Schoharie County and Fulton Work
Release in Bronx County. Three medium-security facilities for men also will close: Arthur Kill in Richmond
County, Mid-Orange in Orange County and Oneida in Oneida County.

“The closings of these facilities not only will force “double bunking,” which puts two dangerous criminals in a
space designed for one, it will greatly reduce the “step-down” treatment of inmates.

“The minimum and medium-security facilities targeted for closing, should be more widely used to better
transition inmates out of maximum-security facilities and into our communities,” Brynien said.

The governor included prison closings in the state budget, but did not reveal until now which facilities would
close. The lack of adequate notice prevented any opportunity for debate over the impact the closings would
have on the inmates, the communities and the employees.

PEF represents the professional staff at state prison facilities, including correctional counselors, doctors,
nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, chaplains and teachers among others.

PEF is the state’s second-largest state-employee union, representing 56,000 professional, scientific and
technical employees including approximately 4,500 members at the state Department of Correctional Services.

Union Challenges State on Use of Tests in Teacher Evaluations

By ANNA M. PHILLIPS

The usually friendly relationship between the state teachers union and the State Department of Education fissured on Tuesday with the union’s announcement that it was taking the state to court over new teacher evaluation rules.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the State Supreme Court in Albany on Monday, accuses the Board of Regents — the state’s policy making body on education — of giving districts more power to use test scores in teacher evaluations than the law allows.

The law in question was passed last year, with the union’s support, as part of New York’s successful effort to win a $700 million federal Race to the Top grant.
Using a 100-point scale, the law dictated that 20 points of a teacher’s evaluation come from students’ progress on the state exams and that another 20 points come from local assessments that would be negotiated with the unions. The remaining 60 percent would come from subjective measures like principals’ evaluations.

In May, responding to criticism from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the Board of Regents voted to give school districts the option of weighing the state tests more heavily so they would count for 40 points. Proponents of this plan said that asking financially struggling districts to create their own local tests was unrealistic.

But Richard C. Iannuzzi, president of the New York State United Teachers union, said that the state’s guidelines were more about evaluating teachers “quickly and cheaply, instead of doing it right.”

He said the guidelines would encourage poorer districts to save money by using the state tests, effectively diminishing the quality of their teacher evaluations.

“For a school district to opt to count a state test twice, the cost to it is close to zero,” he said. “But for a school district to provide professional development, it’s going to cost more. The wealthy school districts can provide that, but the poorer school districts will find that they have no choice.”

Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the Board of Regents, said that the state teachers union had made no secret of its plans to sue once the regulations were passed. The union’s suit has little basis, she said, because districts still have to reach a deal with their unions on whether to create local assessments or use the state exams.

“I am hoping the court will make a quick decision to allow the implementation of the teacher evaluation system to move forward,” she said.

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A Union Plan for Financing Construction

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. said it would announce on Wednesday that it intends to work with pension fund managers to ensure that at least $10 billion in union pension money is made available in the next five years to finance infrastructure projects.

Richard L. Trumka, president of the labor federation, will present the plan at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in Chicago as part of organized labor’s effort to get the federal government, banks and money managers to do more to issue bonds or create other mechanisms to finance infrastructure projects.

A.F.L.-C.I.O. officials said they planned to work with Deutsche Bank and other financial institutions in the hope of coming up with hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit large commercial buildings. Many building owners are hesitating to do such retrofits because they are highly leveraged and do not have the cash to make the investments. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. hopes its $10 billion will provide an incentive for banks and hedge funds to develop financing vehicles to make such projects happen.

“America’s construction workers need work and want to work,” Mr. Trumka will say, according to his prepared remarks, noting that unemployment is 16 percent in the industry. “Never in modern times has so much construction work needed to be done.”

A.F.L.-C.I.O. officials said they also hoped their plan would help persuade Congress to create a National Infrastructure Bank or a program similar to the expired Build America Bonds program, in which the federal government subsidized bonds issued by states and municipalities to finance bridges, airports or other infrastructure. While labor unions and many Democrats support such measures to create jobs, many Republicans oppose them because they will increase federal spending.

Mr. Trumka also will announce that labor unions plan to invest at least $20 million in the next year in energy-efficient retrofits of commercial, industrial and public buildings. That should not be difficult, federation officials have said, because union funds invested $97 million last year in energy retrofits for public housing.

Mr. Trumka also will say that the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and building trades unions will work with community colleges and the government to train 40,000 new apprentices in specialty welding and other skills for energy-efficient projects. They will also seek to train 100,000 midcareer construction workers in new skills.

“The nation has over $2 trillion in infrastructure and social needs, and there is over $3 trillion in public sector pension funds,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and the leader of a group of public sector unions in the A.F.L.-C.I.O. that is studying the issue. “The question is, are there financially prudent ways to invest working men’s and women’s capital to create jobs and rebuild America’s infrastructure?”

The power bill

by Jimmy Vielkind
Here’s a copy of the bill and its memo to resurrect Article X, which governs power plant siting in New York.

It also provides for on-bill financing, which is a corollary to the Green Jobs legislation passed two years ago. It allows homeowners who have benefited from subsidized retrofitting to pay for it — through the savings it causes — on their electrical bills. This is a big priority of the Working Families Party.

Legislators are expected to pass this sometime this evening.

Read the entire bill: Article X

Budget deal removes teacher layoff threat

An agreement reached by New York City and the UFT will ensure that no New York City public school teacher will be laid off in the next year, Mayor Bloomberg, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and UFT President Michael Mulgrew announced on June 24.

The agreement with the UFT includes financial savings to the city generated by redeployment of teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve pool and a one-year suspension of study sabbaticals, along with additional resources from the City Council and the Department of Education.

The agreement forestalls the possibility – raised by Mayor Bloomberg in both the January Financial Plan and the Executive Budget in May – that the city budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2011 would require the layoffs of more than 4,000 teachers.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew said: “I want to thank all the parties involved in this agreement for their willingness to come together to prevent the harm that would come to our students from a massive loss of public school teachers. In particular I’d like to cite the key role played by Council Speaker Christine Quinn and her members and staff, along with Chancellor Dennis Walcott and the DOE officials who worked with us to find ways to prevent what could have been a disaster for our schools.”

The UFT has agreed to procedures that will make it possible for the 1,200 teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) pool to be used more efficiently to fill long and short-term vacancies in their school districts. Such use is designed to save much of the money the DOE now spends on “per diem” substitutes to fill these vacancies.

The one-year suspension of study sabbaticals – which will take effect in the 2012-13 school year – will save the DOE the cost of teachers on these academic leaves. Teachers on one-year approved study sabbaticals receive 70 percent of their regular salaries.

New York Allows Same-Sex Marriage, Becoming Largest State to Pass Law

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL BARBARO

ALBANY — Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born.

The marriage bill, whose fate was uncertain until moments before the vote, was approved 33 to 29 in a packed but hushed Senate chamber. Four members of the Republican majority joined all but one Democrat in the Senate in supporting the measure after an intense and emotional campaign aimed at the handful of lawmakers wrestling with a decision that divided their friends, their constituents and sometimes their own homes.

With his position still undeclared, Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for months before concluding he had been wrong.

“I apologize for those who feel offended,” Mr. Grisanti said, adding, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.”

Senate approval was the final hurdle for the same-sex marriage legislation, which was approved last week by the Assembly. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the measure at 11:55 p.m., and the law will go into effect in 30 days, meaning that same-sex couples could begin marrying in New York by late July.

Passage of same-sex marriage here followed a daunting run of defeats in other states where voters barred same-sex marriage by legislative action, constitutional amendment or referendum. Just five states currently permit same-sex marriage: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia.

At around 10:30 p.m., moments after the vote was announced, Mr. Cuomo strode onto the Senate floor to wave at cheering supporters who had crowded into the galleries to watch. Trailed by two of his daughters, the governor greeted lawmakers, and paused to single out those Republicans who had defied the majority of their party to support the marriage bill.

“How do you feel?” he asked Senator James S. Alesi, a suburban Rochester Republican who voted against the measure in 2009 and was the first to break party ranks this year. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

The approval of same-sex marriage represented a reversal of fortune for gay-rights advocates, who just two years ago suffered a humiliating defeat when a same-sex marriage bill was easily rejected by the Senate, which was then controlled by Democrats. This year, with the Senate controlled by Republicans, the odds against passage of same-sex marriage appeared long.

But the unexpected victory had a clear champion: Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who pledged last year to support same-sex marriage but whose early months in office were dominated by intense battles with lawmakers and some labor unions over spending cuts.

Mr. Cuomo made same-sex marriage one of his top priorities for the year and deployed his top aide to coordinate the efforts of a half-dozen local gay-rights organizations whose feuding and disorganization had in part been blamed for the defeat two years ago.

The new coalition of same-sex marriage supporters brought in one of Mr. Cuomo’s trusted campaign operatives to supervise a $3 million television and radio campaign aimed at persuading several Republican and Democratic senators to drop their opposition.

For Senate Republicans, even bringing the measure to the floor was a freighted decision. Most of the Republicans firmly oppose same-sex marriage on moral grounds, and many of them also had political concerns, fearing that allowing same-sex marriage to pass on their watch would embitter conservative voters and cost the Republicans their one-seat majority in the Senate.

Leaders of the state’s Conservative Party, whose support many Republican lawmakers depend on to win election, warned that they would oppose in legislative elections next year any Republican senator who voted for same-sex marriage.

But after days of contentious discussion capped by a marathon nine-hour closed-door debate on Friday, Republicans came to a fateful decision: The full Senate would be allowed to vote on the bill, the majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, said Friday afternoon, and each member would be left to vote according to his or her conscience.

“The days of just bottling up things, and using these as excuses not to have votes — as far as I’m concerned as leader, it’s over with,” said Mr. Skelos, a Long Island Republican who voted against the bill.
Just before the marriage vote, lawmakers in the Senate and Assembly approved a broad package of major legislation that constituted the remainder of their agenda for the year. The bills included a cap on local property tax increases and a strengthening of New York’s rent regulation laws, as well as a five-year tuition increase at the State University of New York and the City University of New York.

But Republican lawmakers spent much of the week negotiating changes to the marriage bill to protect religious institutions, especially those that oppose same-sex weddings. On Friday, the Assembly and the Senate approved those changes. But they were not enough to satisfy the measure’s staunchest opponents. In a joint statement, New York’s Catholic bishops assailed the vote.

“The passage by the Legislature of a bill to alter radically and forever humanity’s historic understanding of marriage leaves us deeply disappointed and troubled,” the bishops said.

Besides Mr. Alesi and Mr. Grisanti, the four Republicans who voted for the measure included Senators Stephen M. Saland from the Hudson Valley area and Roy J. McDonald of the capital region.

Just one lawmaker rose to speak against the bill: Rubén Díaz Sr. of the Bronx, the only Democratic senator to cast a no vote. Mr. Díaz, saying he was offended by the two-minute restrictions set on speeches, repeatedly interrupted the presiding officer who tried to limit the senator’s remarks, shouting, “You don’t want to hear me.”

“God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage, a long time ago,” Mr. Díaz said.

The legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States is a relatively recent goal of the gay-rights movement, but over the last few years, gay-rights organizers have placed it at the center of their agenda, steering money and muscle into dozens of state capitals in an often uphill effort to persuade lawmakers.

In New York, passage of the bill reflects rapidly evolving sentiment about same-sex unions. In 2004, according to a Quinnipiac poll, 37 percent of the state’s residents supported allowing same-sex couples to wed. This year, 58 percent of them did. Advocates moved aggressively this year to capitalize on that shift, flooding the district offices of wavering lawmakers with phone calls, e-mails and signed postcards from constituents who favored same-sex marriage, sometimes in bundles that numbered in the thousands.

Dozens more states have laws or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. Many of them were approved in the past few years, as same-sex marriage moved to the front line of the culture war and politicians deployed the issue as a tool for energizing their base.

But New York could be a shift: It is now by far the largest state to grant legal recognition to same-sex weddings, and one that is home to a large, visible and politically influential gay community. Supporters of the measure described the victory in New York as especially symbolic — and poignant — because of its rich place in the history of gay rights: the movement’s foundational moment, in June 1969, was a riot against police at the Stonewall Inn, a bar in the West Village.

In Albany, there was elation after the vote. But leading up to it, there were moments of tension and frustration. At one point, Senator Kevin S. Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat, erupted when he and other supporters learned they would not be allowed to make a floor speech.

“This is not right,” he yelled, before storming from the chamber.

During a brief recess during the voting, Senator Shirley L. Huntley, a Queens Democrat who had only recently come out in support of same sex marriage, strode from her seat to the back of the Senate chamber to congratulate Daniel J. O’Donnell, an openly gay Manhattan lawmaker who sponsored the legislation in the Assembly.

They hugged, and Assemblyman O’Donnell, standing with his longtime partner, began to tear up.

“We’re going to invite you to our wedding,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “Now we have to figure out how to pay for one.”

Small Business and Immigrant Entrepreneurship, Brooklyn Labor Market Review (BMLR), Spring 2011

Originally published June 22, 2011

Small Business and Immigrant Entrepreneurship, Brooklyn Labor Market Review (BMLR), Spring 2011.

Prepared by FPI for the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the latest issue of the BLMR looks at immigrant entrepreneurs in Brooklyn by sector. The report finds that there are nearly 14,500 Brooklyn immigrant small businesses across a range of sectors from construction to restaurants, grocery stores, child care services and doctors’ offices.

Read the full article: FPI

Posted under News From our Members, State Budget

Proposed New York property tax cap is much more restrictive than the Massachusetts cap

June 25th, 2011

Originally published June 22, 2011

Proposed New York property tax cap is much more restrictive than the Massachusetts cap after which it is supposedly modeled.

No lawmaker or taxpayer should be one bit reassured by the Massachusetts experience with a tax cap. New analysis from FPI’s Frank Mauro shows what a New York-style tax cap would mean if it had been in effect in Massachusetts over the last decades. The result: property tax revenues in Massachusetts would be less than half what they are today, with devastating implications for the entire array of locally-funded public services.

Read the full article: Tax Cap

Posted under News From our Members, State Budget

Governor Cuomo’s Fiscal Policies

June 25th, 2011

Originally published June 24, 2011

Governor Cuomo’s Fiscal Policies: How Will New York’s Economy Be Affected?

Governor Cuomo won a great political victory in getting his 2011-2012 budget adopted on time and with very few changes. And it now looks like the Legislature will be enacting – again with very few changes – the very tight cap on property tax levies that the Governor spelled out during his 2010 campaign. This brief examines how the New York economy fared, compared to other states, under the more balanced fiscal policies of recent years. But dramatic cuts in spending can easily derail fragile recoveries; it remains to be seen whether the state will do as well under Governor Cuomo’s new policy directions.

Read the full article: Fiscal Policies

Posted under News From our Members, State Budget

 

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