Crain’s Insider
Today’s News Tuesday, June 07, 2011
City Council Keeps Coming Up Short
The City Council’s latest proposals to avoid closing 20 fire stations and laying off thousands of teachers include cutting city contracts, canning parking-meter collectors and redirecting $75 million in Department of Education spending. But the numbers don’t add up to much. The council has now proposed $145 million in savings at best, while the cost of preventing teacher layoffs and keeping firehouses is almost $320 million. Replacing teaching positions lost through attrition would cost even more. Council Speaker Christine Quinn, nevertheless, has vowed to continue negotiating with the Bloomberg administration.
Retail Politics
Pat Purcell of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1500 said the Valley Stream Target store unionization campaign was initiated by employees, not the union. “It’s the first time in my 27 years [in organized labor] where the workers truly self-organized,” Purcell noted. Among the reasons, he said, are that employees are being assigned so few hours of work, and that some who came from union shops in other industries are new to retail and “are not used to getting 8-cent raises.” He added, “I’ve met a couple of workers who in their previous professions didn’t think so highly of unions. Now they’re thinking, ‘Retail’s tough.’ ”
Metro Area’s Next 30 Years
The Regional Plan Association will soon begin writing a new tristate regional plan, “disassembling the lessons of the last 30 years, then reassembling them as a new manual for the next,” according to RPA’s creative and technology director, Jeff Ferzoco. In a newsletter, he hinted at its premise: “Urbanism has long been about [population] density. But density alone won’t do it. It’s leveraging that density to make more connections among and between people” using “new technologies and new thinking.”
Do Liveries Stand A Chance?
Many yellow taxi and livery drivers were perfectly happy with the status quo until the mayor introduced his plan to allow legal street hails outside Manhattan. One benign and possibly effective proposal on the table is the creation of livery stands in high-density outer-borough neighborhoods. Building the stands would not require legislation and would serve a purpose similar to street hails. Having the stands would allow the Taxi and Limousine Commission to better regulate drivers, who would be charged for the right to make pickups there. The stands would have to be manned 24/7 by the liveries.
Weiner won’t resign, but may lose seat
A tearful Rep. Anthony Weiner vowed yesterday to remain in Congress, but one insider said, “If he doesn’t resign, he could be the next Steve Solarz.”
Solarz, a veteran Brooklyn congressman, was caught up in the House bank scandal in the early 1990s, leaving him vulnerable when House districts were redrawn by the state Legislature for the 1992 election. His district was obliterated, and rather than run against popular incumbent Chuck Schumer, Solarz competed in a new, three-borough Latino district. He lost to Nydia Velázquez.
“That’s probably the most likely scenario to occur [with Weiner],” the source said. “The district will end up in a number of pieces, none of which are Anthony Weiner’s.”
Working in Weiner’s favor is the fact that the six districts surrounding his are made up mostly of minority voters. It would be hard to shift Weiner’s white voters into minority districts without violating the Voting Rights Act.
“There’s a lot of politics going on and a lot of constraints,” said David Epstein, a political science professor at Columbia University.
A proponent of independent redistricting said Weiner’s problems would be irrelevant if parties could no longer gerrymander. “Without an impartial process, any criteria is fair game,” the source said.
Weiner has survived redistricting before. A lifelong Brooklynite, he was elected in 1998 (succeeding Schumer) to a district that was 70% in Brooklyn and 30% in Queens. In 2002, those percentages were reversed, and Weiner soon left his Sheepshead Bay apartment for one in Forest Hills. It was a politically astute move, but Weiner said at the time that he took the step in order to be closer to La Guardia Airport.
If Weiner resigns, a special election could bring a Republican into Weiner’s seat, just as Democrat Kathy Hochul won the seat vacated by another shirtless politician, Republican Chris Lee. The GOP could then sacrifice that seat in redistricting, just as Democrats might sacrifice Hochul’s.
Weiner’s troubles have given other white congressmen downstate, like Rep. Jerry Nadler, some breathing room, an insider said.
Said the congressman, “The first thing I need to do is make sure this never, ever happens again.” He did not rule out seeking psychiatric help.
At A Glance
MOVING IN: Chris Browne is the new deputy commissioner for policy and communications at New York State Homes and Community Renewal. Browne spent six years with the city Department of Finance, where he served as a director for government affairs until the end of April.
bdemployees 