http://www.dmiblog.com/ View our comment policy here.]]> 2010-02-05T15:41:36-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/02/on_the_census_its_rubio_v_real.html This week, Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio voiced his opposition to including undocumented immigrants in 2010 Census figures used to distribute federal funding and seats in the House of Representatives. On this issue, Rubio takes a principled stand against common sense. Immigration afton branche 2010-02-05T15:41:36-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/02/garbage_in_garbage_out.html Cities throughout the country are imposing spending cuts to deal with yawning budget deficits created by decreased tax revenue. But Colorado Springs has taken a particularly blunt ax to its budget (via T4A): More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops -- dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled. The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter. Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that...City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need. The impact of such city service cuts is often noted in newspaper articles and blog items about the degradation in quality of life that ensues for households already cutting back on basic necessities. First, no more movies and restaurants. Now, no more museums and, well, weekend transportation. But these budget-balancing measures are not just cuts to "perks" that come with living in a city. In many cases, they are the very foundations of prosperity - or recovery - in cities. Conservatives emphasize the need for public safety to keep cities crime-free, but when trash is not picked up, pools aren't opened, and buses don't run, costs - from trash removal to daycare to gasoline - are shifted to the families already coping with the effects of the Great Recession. When city governments employ fewer individuals, fewer people contribute to the health of the local economy and require more state and city services. Cities Harry Moroz 2010-02-05T11:58:38-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/02/unrequited_transit_love_1.html Los Angeles feels jilted. So jilted they decided to produce a nifty map showing the areas that received transit funding in the 2011 budget in blue and the areas that didn't in black. They're in the black. The map, though a little misleading in its comparison of population and federal transit funds, provides a good look at all that black space where some new starts for transit will probably have to wait. The L.A. County MTA accepts some of the blame, saying the projects it proposed were behind in the planning process. And the city did receive $500 million in New Starts funding last year. Nevertheless, they seem pretty unhappy that places with smaller populations like Aspen, Colorado, got a piece for a bus rapid transit project. Transit advocates in Atlanta are also feeling burned, but the blame there has fallen on Governor Sonny Perdue and the state legislature, who according to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, failed to get their act together. And though Seattle walked away with $110 million in New Starts funding for its light rail, their Governor Chris Gregoire has stepped in to block the Mayor's plan to turn two lanes of a planned bridge into bus rapid transit. Honolulu won a $55 million grant for its light rail plan, after Gov. Linda Lingle had said she couldn't sign off on the project because the federal government thought the plan shaky. Woops. Local governments keep calling out for more transit, but state governments and a federal budget partial to highways keep getting in the way. Even the transit-happy Obama administration has proposed a 4-to-1 ratio of highway-to-transit funds in its budget for a National Infrastructure Fund. And so cities like L.A. and Atlanta get the brush-off this time around--not to mention Rep. Jim Oberstar, who has acknowledged that his plan to streamline the process and send money to metro areas is "dead in the water." Cities Karin Dryhurst 2010-02-05T09:02:55-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/02/your_mailman_didnt_make_the_ec.html Forget about the too-big-to-fail banks: the real economic menace comes from the officer directing traffic downtown. That's the message of yesterday's preposterous Wall Street Journal editorial arguing that public employees - and their unions - "may be the single biggest problem" for the nation's economy. It's part of a mounting conservative effort to direct populist rage against public sector workers and build political will to slash public services, prevent tax increases on the wealthy, and deflect attention from the real causes of our economic decline. After all, why regulate risk-taking bankers when you can stick it to the guy who picks up the trash? Conservatives' crusade against public employees is decades old, but it's received fresh momentum now that the recession is causing tax shortfalls that have strained public budgets. And the latest impetus comes from a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report finding that a slim majority of the nation's union members now work in the public sector. The reasons for the shift in union membership are clear: for years private sector employers have been permitted to wage vicious anti-union campaigns whenever their employees dared to organize. Public employers were less likely to violate their employees' rights on the job, so public workplaces were organized more quickly. More recently, the economic downturn hit the most heavily-unionized sectors of the private economy, from construction to the auto industry, particularly hard. Private sector union members lost their jobs. Yet to the extent that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act succeeded in preserving vital public services, many of the teachers, bus drivers, and police officers American communities rely on have so far remained at their posts. That's good news if you care about safe streets and educating the next generation. It's also good for the private sector: when public employees spend their paychecks local stores and services get much-needed business. But if conservatives have their way, more public servants will be in the unemployment line before long. Labor Amy Traub 2010-02-04T10:21:32-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/02/cities_in_crisis_mode.html Voters in an exurban community 25 miles outside of Cincinnati must decide between higher property taxes or a state takeover of its school district. According to the Wall Street Journal, the community has already closed two elementary schools, eliminated 82 staff, and "slashed art, music and physical-education classes for kindergarten through fourth grade." Voters have rejected three proposals in the past 15 months to raise taxes in order to prevent these cuts. An algebra teacher discusses how he has had to cope with the cuts: Math teacher Roger Levo's algebra class, with 38 students, is more crowded than ever. "I didn't think it was going to work," he said of the biggest class he has taught in his 27 years in the district. He pointed to five chairs he brought in to supplement the 33 desks. "They rotate," he said. Beyond issues like overcrowding and reduced class choices, what are the consequences for communities like this one that fail to raise revenues to support education, or more generally, basic city services? Will residents begin to move away, frustrated with a lack of services and resulting in plummeting property values? Cities big and small across the country are facing the most sever fiscal crisis in recent history. San Francisco's budget deficit for next year is half a billion dollars, or nearly half of the city's discretionary spending! Cities can't expect any help from state governments--the states are broke too. And as my colleague Harry points out, federal assistance from AARA largely bypassed cities and went to fill state budget gaps. It is interesting that these issues are playing out not just in the nation's urban cores, but in suburban and exurban districts as well. A similar cycle of an eroding tax base followed by a collapse of city services led the flight of families from inner cities to the suburbs following World War II. But given that these crises are so widespread, there is nowhere to flee to. Urban Affairs John Petro 2010-02-03T17:24:48-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/02/the_state_of_fiscal_aid.html The President's FY2011 budget includes $25.5 billion to continue increased federal Medicaid payments to states first included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The original funds, which will total $87 billion, along with the $54 billion State Fiscal Stabilization Fund were designed to offset deep cuts to state and local government services as revenues plummeted and demand for services skyrocketed. By all accounts, the money has served its purpose, helping prevent layoffs for hundreds of thousands of teachers and, anecdotally at least, plugging gaps that otherwise would have been eliminated with measures that would have exacerbated pain during a time when the federal government is trying to alleviate it. The funds were not, however, large enough to deal with state budget deficits. And the new funds, in fact, are a drop in the bucket compared to gaps in state budgets that may reach $180 billion in 2011 plus shortfalls in city budgets of at least $50 billion between now and 2012. Cities Harry Moroz 2010-02-03T12:28:16-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/02/immigration_reform_is_part_of.html President Obama's proposed budget, unveiled yesterday, projects that the deficit will peak at nearly $1.6 trillion this year and eventually decline but remain at "troublesome levels over the remainder of the decade." The deficit is expected to grow due to fast-rising costs of health care and retirement programs. As reported by New York Times: Unless miraculous growth... creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. These projections are not only a good reminder of the urgent need for health care reform but also of how immigration reform would help generate part of the economic growth we need. While immigration reform would benefit immigrants themselves, the fact that it would strengthen the economy and the nation at large is too often left out of the equation. So here's the reality check: Immigration Cristina Jimenez 2010-02-02T15:28:35-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/02/the_mta_can_not_afford_any_mor.html By failing to find a sustainable, long-term source of funding for the MTA, elected officials in Albany and City Hall are putting the region's future economic growth in jeopardy. Instead of short-term fixes that will do nothing to address the root causes of the MTA's financial stability, leaders at the state and city level must implement the most responsible, equitable, and sustainable solution to the MTA's budget woes: charging automobile drivers to enter the Manhattan central business district. At stake is a series of service cuts that will hamper the region's ability to rebound from economic recession. But even these service cuts won't provide any long-term financial security for the nation's largest mass transit system. The MTA's next five-year program of repairs and replacements is already about $10 billion short of the amount needed to bring the system up to a state of good repair and to plan for future growth. The MTA's budget troubles are the direct result of declining contributions from the state and the city, which forced the MTA to turn to costly borrowing to fund its capital needs--the replacement and repair of the tracks, trains and buses that keep the system running. Last year's ceiling collapse at the 181st Street station was a pertinent reminder that unless we continue to fund this program of replacement and repair, the mass transit system will literally fall apart. But for more than fifteen years, New York State has not contributed any direct funding towards the MTA's capital program. And despite Mayor Bloomberg's campaign promises to fix mass transit the city has actually taken the opposite approach and reduced its contributions to the MTA by tens of millions of dollars annually. As a result, the MTA paid $1.4 billion to cover its borrowing in 2009. By 2013, that amount is projected to grow to $2.4 billion. Unfortunately, elected officials in Albany and in City Hall seem unwilling to make the tough choices that will allow the MTA to operate on sound financial footing. Governor Paterson flatly refused to contribute more state funds to keep the system from deteriorating. Calling the MTA's capital program "simply unaffordable," Paterson told the transit agency to come back with a cheaper plan. But because of decades of disinvestment in the transit system, the MTA has backlogged billions of dollars in vital repairs. Urban Affairs John Petro 2010-02-01T17:41:47-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/01/the_government_that_governs_be.html In his response to President Obama's State of the Union address, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell revived a classic GOP sentiment that has been absent from the Republican lexicon in recent years as the party now relies on the federal government to undermine stricter state consumer and financial regulations: As our Founders clearly stated, and we Governors understand, government closest to the people governs best. To which Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein immediately snarked via Twitter: If governors really believed that government closest to the people is best, wouldn't they be mayors? New York Governor David Paterson demonstrated the truth in this quip last week when he unveiled his $134 billion budget, which included a $700 million reduction in aid to New York City that would force the city to layoff thousands of workers. As The New York Times editorialized on Friday: The mayor and his aides are understandably galled that Gov. David Paterson of New York is not talking about any serious cuts to the state work force... The new pension plan was needed, but Mayor Bloomberg is right that it is unfair for city workers to bear the burden now for Governor Paterson's deal. New York City's budget shortfall is estimated at around $5 billion, which is similar in magnitude to that of the state, which reaches $7.4 billion. Yet, the Governor exerts authority over his budget as if his was the only budget in the state with a (enormous) deficit. This leaves Mayor Bloomberg to raise hell by warning that 8,500 teachers and 3,150 police would be laid off if the Governor's cuts go through, granted that there is little reason to believe that the Mayor's first cuts would be to such vital - and influential - members of the city's workforce. Cities Harry Moroz 2010-01-30T14:58:05-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/01/new_yorks_hidden_crime_wave.html And we thought crime in New York City was low. According to the NYPD just 418 robberies were reported in New York last week, along with 695 incidents of grand larceny. Not bad for a city of more than 8 million people. But the rosy numbers overlook a devastating series of thefts that never make it into the police statistics: last week the city may have experienced just 375 burglaries but it also saw an estimated 317,263 cases of employer wage theft from their own low wage workers. More than $18.4 million were stolen from wages in that week alone. And because the wage violations are systematic and ongoing, the crimes recur every week throughout the year. The shocking new wage theft data come from research [pdf] unveiled this morning by the National Employment Law Project. After a rigorous study involving thousands of front-line workers in New York's low wage industries, researchers documented the prevalence of New York City's workplace violations for the first time. The study reveals a crime wage centered on the city's most vulnerable workers. More than one in five workers in the city's low-wage industries was paid less than the minimum wage. More than three in four were denied the overtime pay they were legally owed. When workers tried to stand up for themselves (for example, by filing a complaint with a government agency or attempting to organize a union) they faced a high risk of illegal employer retaliation: being fired, getting their hours cut, or having the boss threaten to call immigration authorities. Not surprisingly, many workers decided to remain silent, even as they continued to work in dangerous conditions or saw their earnings stolen. New York Amy Traub 2010-01-29T15:05:09-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/01/cities_running_on_fumes_where.html In his State of the Union address, President Obama missed an opportunity to explain how his plans for economic growth, job creation, and the middle class can truly succeed: not by freezing spending, but by aggressively reinvesting in the places where most Americans live and work, the places that provide the vast majority of economic opportunities and services people need: cities. Cities and their surrounding metro areas are engines of the national economy. But these engines are now running on fumes. Without reinvestment, cities will face deteriorating economic conditions for years and could drag down the rest of the country and jeopardize recovery. City budget shortfalls will total $50 to $80 billion between now and 2012, leading to massive services cuts, cancelled infrastructure projects, and increased fees. Cuts from cities own falling revenues will be exacerbated by deep reductions in state aid to cities. Perhaps worst, in these conditions, the metro unemployment rate will exceed 10 percent in many metro areas for several years. Cities Harry Moroz 2010-01-27T22:54:25-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/01/just_what_we_need_another_brid.html In his State of the Union address, President Obama is expected to touch on immigration and say that he'll turn to Congress for new leadership on this issue. But several members of Congress recently renewed their support for the immigration status quo and don't plan to embrace anything resembling reform. Immigration afton branche 2010-01-27T16:22:43-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/01/an_illegitimate_response_to_yo.html The issue of youth violence in Chicago gained national attention last fall after 16 year old Derrion Albert was beaten to death in a brawl involving dozens of teenage boys while walking home from school. The horrible incident was caught on video and broadcast online. Unfortunately, Albert's death was far from an isolated incident. During the 2008-2009 school year 36 Chicago public school students were killed, up from 31 during the 2007-2008 school year and 27 during the previous school year. These murders tend to happen on the way to or from school and are turf or gang related. At the same time, Chicago's overall crime rate continues to decline--the Chicago police department reported a "historic" drop in violent crime over the decade and a ten percent drop in homicide in 2009 over 2008 levels. Statistics from the CPD about youth violence also seem to contradict those being reported in the press. The CPD reported that homicides in which the victim is 17 years of age or younger dropped by 24 percent in 2009 over 2008 levels, recording 17 fewer victims under 17 years of age (a request for clarification by the CPD on these contradicting statistics is currently being processed by CPD staff). Regardless of whether youth violence is trending upward, downward, or holding steady, one child murdered at the hands of another is clearly one too many. A culture of violence in Chicago's schools completely undermines the ability of students to achieve at school, creating the conditions for future generations of individuals unprepared to participate in the workforce and as citizens. These murders not only end the future prospects of the victim, but also of the perpetrators. What, then, is the appropriate response to Chicago's youth violence problem? For the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald, we as a society should not even attempt to muster a collective response to Chicago's woes. Mac Donald argues that any money spend on social service responses will be wasted until poor African American Chicagoans learn personal responsibility, and most importantly stop the prevalence of "unwed pregnancy" and the "culture of illegitimacy." Using the rate of African American children born out of wedlock in Cook County--79 percent of all black children in 2003 compared with 15 percent of white children--Mac Donald concludes, "Until that gap closes, the crime gap won't close, either." But Mac Donald's conclusion has a fatal flaw: there is no evidence that a being born in a single-parent home causes a child to become violent (there is evidence that the two are related, but this does not mean that the one causes the other). In addition, analysis by the New York Times found that young victims of violence are just as likely to come from an unstable home as those in the general school population. Urban Affairs John Petro 2010-01-27T14:32:36-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/01/is_scott_brown_an_immigration_1.html Patrick Young, Long Island Wins blogger, explains Scott Brown's position on immigration policy. Young says: Is Scott Brown an immigration moderate in the mold of other Northeastern Republicans? Based on the record, the answer is likely No. Brown had little to say about immigration before it became clear that Ted Kennedy's seat would be up for grabs. But since then, he has been in the tea-steam of immigration politics. Read the rest of this post here Immigration Cristina Jimenez 2010-01-26T14:00:00-05:00 http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/01/building_owners_surrender_afte.html Renters might finally be seeing some justice in New York City. First, Tishman Speyer will surrender Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village to its creditors. The company famously bought these properties and their 11,200 rental apartment four years ago for $5.4 billion. Tishman Speyer knew that the rents collected from the buildings, in which a large number of apartments are rent-regulated, would not cover the massive mortgage payments. But the company had a plan: aggressively deregulate apartments and introduce dramatic rent increases. Basically, Tishman Speyer planned on running families out of their homes. Luckily for New York City, the company was not able to displace as many residents as it had projected and the company faced default on its loans. Now we can only hope that a responsible real estate company will step forward and keep these apartments affordable. Across the city other buildings have experienced a similar fate. Investors bought buildings with hopes of turning out long-time rent-regulated tenants, increasing the rent, and making a handsome profit. However, as this business model turned out to be untenable, building owners have neglected their properties and tenants have suffered from deteriorating building conditions. But the city has come up with some innovative solutions for stabilizing these buildings. Under the guidance of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Rafael Cestero, the city will leverage $750 million in capital to lend to responsible real estate companies to gain ownership of distressed properties across the city. Properties would then be maintained as affordable housing. Urban Affairs John Petro 2010-01-25T18:14:11-05:00