Government

Government Integrity Is Charter Panel's Focus

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Mayor Bloomberg, at left, speaks in front of a giant Mayor Bloomberg, at right, during the 2009 campaign. Some public testimony to the Charter Revision Commission held that the mayor’s influence looms too large of the Conflict of Interest Board and other entities. Photo by: Jarrett Murphy

The charter commission hears from experts as it considers whether the city’s ethics monitors are sufficiently independent. By: Jarrett Murphy

During its first round of public hearings, the city’s Charter Revision Commission heard more than one speaker suggest that it was inappropriate for the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board—which largely regulates the mayor and his appointees—to be composed entirely of mayoral appointees. On Wednesday evening, the commission will take up that concern, and hear from experts.

News

Worries About E-Voting Persist As Primary Looms

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Throughout New York State, county legislatures and election authorities have raised serious concerns about state and federal laws requiring them to replace lever machines with electronic systems before the September primaries. The advocacy group Election Transparency Coalition has a map showing over 20 counties that have passed resolutions or sent letters to the State Board of Elections opposing the transition. The election commissioners of Nassau County have filed a lawsuit to stop the transition to computerized machines on the grounds that the new machines are untested, faulty, owned by a corporate giant and prone to fraud. In New York City, however, the major concern is that changing the machines properly is going to be too expensive for the Board of Elections to afford amid budget cuts. George Gonzalez, the deputy executive director of the New York City Board of Elections, last month told a state Assembly committee that state and federal legislation is forcing the city to switch voting machines without providing “adequate financial and human resources” to implement the change.

Bronx

Tenants & Pols Protest Handling of Housing Vouchers

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It’s been six months since the New York City Housing Authority went back on a promise to help 2,600 low-income New Yorkers pay the rent. In that time 27 families that left the city’s shelters for homes of their own have returned to the shelters, homeless again, according to Judith Goldiner of the Legal Aid Society. And thousands who thought they had a life line are still waiting for help.Nilsa Melendez is one of them. The 44-year-old receptionist fled an abusive marriage and has been living in a shelter with her 14-year-old daughter since November 2008. In August 2009 she finally got a Section 8 rental assistance voucher.

Bronx

New York’s Eccentric Road Signs

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Every time a new mayor or borough president gets elected, the city pays around $350 to update each of the affected signs. Photo by: Cody Lyon

A city with as much gall as ours doesn’t wimp out, even at road signs. By: Cody Lyon

Drivers, cyclists or pedestrians traveling New York City roads, bridges and tunnels face a bewildering array of signs – 1.3 million of them in fact. There are greeting signs between the boroughs, like the one – along a Brooklyn border – saying goodbye with a dialect: “Leaving Brooklyn ‘Fuhgeddaboutit.’”

News

The Whitest City Agencies

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A federal judge’s decision to appoint a special master to oversee the New York City Fire Department’s compliance with a court-mandated revision of hiring practices has once again put the FDNY’s racial makeup in the headlines.But New York’s Bravest aren’t the only city workers with a disproportionate racial skew. According to figures obtained by City Limits about the municipal workforce as of the end of 2009, several other departments are notably white. At the same time, other agencies are disproportionately black. (See chart below.)The Census Bureau, which treats race and Latino origin separately (meaning Latinos can be of any race), estimates that New York City is about 35 percent non-Latino white, 28 percent Latino, 23 percent non-Latino black and 12 percent non-Latino Asian. Overall, the city workforce is 38 percent white, 36 percent black, 18 percent Latino and 6 percent Asian, according to statistics from the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (which, unlike the Census, considers race and Latino origin to be mutually exclusive).