Wasting Our Money

Andrew Friedman

Wasting Our Money

The Community Service Society recently published a report on The Concerns of the Working Poor that shows New Yorkers biggest concern is the lack of affordable housing. This is an issue that Mayor Bloomberg could certainly do something about. While he has laid out an ambitious plan to build affordable housing, the Mayor has failed to even approach the amount of affordable housing needed by New Yorkers.

Typically, the government would cry poverty and explain that although they'd love to build more affordable housing, they have to balance the need for housing against other important needs. That's a hard argument to make when the City has close to a 3 billion dollar budget surplus. The Mayor should announce a number of bold initiatives to expand affordable housing, expand access to English as a Second Language classes, and reduce class size at public schools.

Instead, we can expect more of the same. More of the same insensitivity to the pressing needs of low-income New Yorkers. This attitude, and the fact that the City can only find tiny amounts of money for crucial initiatives like the Immigrant Opportunities Initiative (IOI) to provide ESL classes and legal services to millions of New Yorkers, is galling. It is particularly galling that broad-based programs like the IOI must fight for crumbs from our 50+ billion dollar budget table, while the City pays out close to half a billion dollars a year for its negligence.

Today's New York Post reports that in 2006, our government paid out 477 million dollars in response to legitimate personal injury lawsuits. As you mull this outrage, consider the particulars of the case of Maria Tipaldo. Keep this in mind, next time you hear that City government lacks the resource to do some important program.

The largest settlement went to Maria Tipaldo, who was driving on Brooklyn's Mill Basin Bridge in 2000 when she was hit by a car and pushed onto the wrong side of the road.
The city was previously warned that the roadway's median had a gap - there were five crossover accidents before Tipaldo's crash.

Tipaldo, 35 at the time of the wreck, was hit by two other cars and thrown from her Jeep. She is now a paraplegic with limited use of both arms, and settled for $9.5 million.

What an outrage!

Posted at 8:31 AM, Jan 29, 2007 in Government Accountability | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Can't we stop these people from suing the city? DMI is always fighting against laws to rein in these suits, now you admit they are outrageous.

"Can't we stop these people from suing the city? DMI is always fighting against laws to rein in these suits, now you admit they are outrageous."

A careful reading makes clear that Andrew is not criticizing the lawsuits that amounted to this 477 million in personal injury lawsuits. Andrew is criticizing that these lawsuits ever had to take place at all.

The point that Andrew is making is that these payout were avoidable. They were avoidable not because we could have denied access to justice and the courts to the severely injured victims of the city's negligence by completely immunizing the city from all lawsuits, but because the city could have taken simple safety steps and avoided the injuries altogether.

Nobody wants the city to have to may any money in personal injury lawsuits. However, just as much, nobody wants people to be unnecessarily injured because the city's employees are being careless with our lives.

Indeed, if you don't like lawyers or lawsuits, or for that matter if you don't like unnecessary deaths or injuries, the best way to get rid of all these things is to reduce the amount of unnecessary negligent injuries that occur by giving real attention to safety.

As has been discussed a great deal on DMI Blog's companion blog Tort Deform: The Civil Justice defense Blog, no example better elucidates this point than the city's efforts towards the attempts of our Ground Zero heroes to get support and compensation for their Ground Zero related injuries after the city did not provide effective protection at the site in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

If you're interested in these issues you should also take a look at Tort Deform for daily analysis of the unfolding issues and challenges of access to justice.

The outrage here is the fact that Maria Tipaldo is paralyzed because of the city's gross negligence, not that she strove to hold the city accountable for the oversight that led to her injury.