Neil deMause

Now that New York City’s comptroller has charged that the city’s development arm illegally withheld $125 million in revenues from the city treasury, does he actually have a shot at getting it back?

Comptroller John Liu’s finding that the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) had shortchanged the city treasury by $125 million raises the question of whether the comptroller can force the EDC to return the monies.

Asked at a telephone press briefing on Wednesday if he’d use his power to refuse to sign off on city contracts to compel EDC to pass the money along (EDC, though effectively a branch of the mayor’s office, is technically a non-profit corporation that contracts with the city to do economic development), Liu replied: “I hope it doesn’t need to get any further beyond this point,” adding: “We will use every authority we have in this office, and I imagine the mayor will do the same thing, to get that $125 million.”

It seems unlikely, however, that the mayor will have Liu’s back, since two mayoral agencies have already signed off on the EDC’s practice… [read more]

Can Mikhail Prokhorov’s business dealings with Zimbabwe derail his plan to buy the New Jersey Nets and move them to Brooklyn? Well, maybe:

It’s Day Three of the Great Zimbabwe Flap, and the rhetoric over a New Jersey Congressman’s challenge to Russian bazillionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s purchase of the Nets is heating up. Prokhorov fired back at Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-My-Constituents-Don’t-Want-to-Drive-Through-Two-Tunnels-to-Watch-the-Nets-Lose) yesterday, calling the charges that he’d violated economic sanctions against Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe “erroneous,” and saying that “we have no dealings whatsoever with companies or individuals on the sanctions list.”[read more]

My adventures with the forces of demographic tabulation:

Unlike my colleague Jen Doll, I have not filled out my census form yet, for the simple reason that I haven’t received it. It’s possible that my upstairs neighbors have it, or that the local stray cats are using it as a litter box — since the Census Bureau helpfully addresses all mail to “Resident,” it’s not like anyone in a multiple-household dwelling can really lay claim to their own form.

If you, like me, awoke this morning with visions of landing in the Census hoosegow, rest assured: Just because today is the deadline for handing in census forms does not mean that today is actually the deadline for handing in census forms… [read more]

My first article for the relaunched City Limits, about the doomsday budgets proposed for New York city and state, is up. (It’s actually the second article I wrote for them, but is running first — I blame the suits at Fox.)

Economists say the nation’s recession is technically over, but whether or not the economy is actually on the mend, the recession’s impact on New York City and state budgets is only just beginning. Over the last three months, Gov. Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg have mapped out a set of austerity budgets that would slash billions in spending – with many of the reductions coming from education and social services.

This year marks a watershed for both City Hall and Albany, but for different reasons, says James Parrott, chief economist at the left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute, which earlier this month issued extensive briefings on both the state and city budgets… [read more]

Why public schools need their own bailout. And pay no attention to that other guy who ripped off my topic today.

At my son’s elementary school, the news that Gov. Paterson is proposing $223 million in midyear cuts to city schools sparked about the same reaction you’d expect from telling a laid-off autoworker how the ice cap is melting: I’ve already got one crisis to worry about.

Last year’s cuts already cost our school its drama classes, a music teacher, and numerous aides. Library hours have evaporated. And the list of supplies that parents are asked to send in keeps getting longer… [read more]

Also pay no attention to the word “meltinger,” which was an editing error. If you want to read the original, slightly longer version, you can find it here.

I just received my hot-off-the-presses copy of the new issue of City Limits Investigates, with a report by CLI editor Jarrett Murphy and myself on how one New York City zip code — 11237, which covers most of the neighborhood of Bushwick, and also happens to be the geographic center of the city — has fared the last eight years under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. You can read Jarrett’s short summary online, but to see my section (which is focused on housing) you’ll have to order a physical copy. A sample of my housing chapter:

At a meeting of tenant volunteers for the Bushwich Housing Independence Project, the stories pour out, in both English and Spanish. All the volunteers are themselves tenants in Bushwick’s many rent-regulated apartments, mostly in the century-old six- or eight-family row houses that remain the neighborhood’s signature housing stock. All described similar tales of landlord harassment with the goal of getting them out in order to slip the units to market-rent status.

“I have no cooking gas and no hot water,” says Luz Varela, a board member and volunteer tenant advocate. “He’s doing everything in his power to get me to up and move. But I’m not gonna budge.” Finally, after she took her landlord to court, his lawyer claimed that the shutoff of services was a mistake stemming from a renumbering of apartments in her building.

Another BHIP volunteer, Hector Vazquez, says his landlord renovated his bathroom but made it too small to be usable. “You can’t go inside. You have to go outside and back in, like you’re walking backward,” he says. “You can’t even put your clothes on in there.”

There’s another 9,500 words or so on this and how 11237 is faring in terms of crime, jobs, schools, and other measures. So really, pick up a copy.

Of all the inane chatter flying around about Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize win, the award for the inanest has got to go to the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, who first opines that this will make up for Obama’s devastating loss of the 2016 Olympics (sadly, no mention of Leno’s ratings), then proceeds to this conclusion:

Winning the Nobel Prize will allow Obama to go to his divided Democratic caucus and make the case far more forcefully that the time is now to stay united behind him on Afghanistan.

As my spouse noted on hearing this: “Oh, I see. Winning the Nobel Peace Prize is a justification for going to war.”

UPDATE: At least one former Nobel Peace Prize winner agrees.

Geared toward small-business owners, but a worthwhile overview of coming legislation for the general public as well. I tackle health care, taxes, and credit cards:

Health care: Still on the critical list

Last year: The cost of providing health insurance to employees continued to skyrocket, jumping by an average of 5.7% per employee after a 6.1% hike in 2007, according to a study by consulting firm Mercer. A survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses found that health care was the number-one concern of small business owners, prompting the NFIB to become a major backer of an advertising campaign calling on the presidential candidates to make health reform a priority.

This year: President-elect Obama has endorsed a sweeping reform plan that would create a new National Health Insurance Exchange to allow more businesses access to insurance pools…[read more]

Paul Krugman has an excellent column in today’s New York Times, making some of the same points I made last week about how education and other social services (food stamps, anyone?) are just as deserving as “stimulus” spending as, say, highway construction. Krugman says it better than me, of course, being a Nobel Prize winner in Op-Ed Column Writing and all:

As a nation, we don’t believe that our fellow citizens should go without essential health care. Why, then, does a large share of funding for Medicaid come from state governments, which are forced to cut the program precisely when it’s needed most?

An educated population is a national resource. Why, then, is basic education mainly paid for by local governments, which are forced to neglect the next generation every time the economy hits a rough patch?

Krugman also notes that Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland is calling for any federal stimulus plan to include increased funding for education, food stamps, and Medicaid along with infrastructure spending. Maybe Strickland can be the Fiorello LaGuardia of the Obama era.

New York is looking at massive cuts in school spending – should an education bailout be part of Obama’s economic rescue package?

Anyone reading headlines of late has to feel like we’re on the fast track to apocalypse: Unprecedented bus and subway fare hikes; a slash of more than $2 billion from state education funding; and that’s before even getting into the indignity of paying $1.06 a song on iTunes.

The trick, as always, is figuring out which of the harbingers of doom are real, and which are scare tactics meant to shock the populace into finding other ways to stave off disaster… [read more]