NYC Budget Cuts Damage Our Children

Our guest writer this week is Richard Buery, Jr., President and CEO of The Children's Aid Society.

On Thursday, Mayor Bloomberg announced his $68.7 billion budget proposal, and for the fifth straight year, his budget slashes early childhood and after school programs.   

Nonsensical Cuts

 

With Wall Street tax revenues lower than predicted and our city still recovering from the economic downtown, I understand that the city has difficult choices to make.  But decimating these critical programs for children is just the wrong choice to make.

From his Young Men's Initiative to improve outcomes for young people of color, to his plans to serve juveniles in supportive programs here in New York City rather than upstate juvenile jails, to the groundbreaking poverty-fighting initiatives of his Center for Economic Opportunity, the Mayor has demonstrated his sincere commitment to the poor and working-class children of New York City.   And while I haven't agreed with every element of his education reform policies, he has bravely asked to be judged as the "education mayor."   Our expectations of what a public education system can and should be expected to deliver for poor children have been changed forever.

That is why the mayor's proposed cuts to early childhood education and after-school programs make absolutely no sense.  We all understand how important it is to keep kids engaged and on track beginning at a very early age.  Every $1 spent on high-quality early childhood programs for a disadvantaged child creates up to$9 in future benefits -- in new taxes collected and more productive workers, and fewer dollars spent on publicly subsidized health care, prisons and the like.  A great early childhood program prepares students for school - any kindergarten teacher can tell you about the importance of these resources.

Quality after-school and summer programs are similarly critical for children's development.  A study by Fight Crime:Invest in Kids New York found that the majority of juvenile crime occurs between the hours of 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.  Children who are consistently involved in stimulating, educational activities grow up to be smart, safe and productive members of society. They are more likely to go to college, get jobs, support their families and less likely to end up on the streets, involved in gangs or in prison. After-school programs not only help children succeed in school, but they also keep them off of the streets.

Once upon a time, the Mayor understood this.  He has said, "Teaching doesn't stop when the last school bell rings." He created the city's Out-of-School Time initiative, a nationally recognized effort to bring high-quality after-school and summer programs to kids, declaring that what happens after school is as important as what happens during the school day.

Impact of the Cuts

The combined effects of the mayor's proposed budget and structural changes to both the early childhood and after-school systems will eliminate programs for an additional 47,000 children. This is the latest in a series of reductions. Come September, a total of 90,000 kids will have lost their early childhood or after-school programs since 2009 -- a 2/3 reduction. Every city agency has faced cuts, but I am not aware of any other program that has been forced to absorb cuts at that scale.  The city recently announced the winners of the newest round of Out-of-School Time contracts, and nearly half of programs city wide will be closing their doors.

In Central Harlem, only 5.7% of eligible families will have access to early childhood education.

And the impact goes beyond education and safety -- it's an economic tragedy as well.  For the working parents we serve, these programs are a life line to the workforce.  Consider Lilibet.  For her, raising two sons alone, working full-time and living paycheck to paycheck, The Children's Aid Society's after school programs mean the difference between going to work and supporting her family or staying home and relying on public benefits. How could it possibly benefit us as a city to drive her, and thousands like her, from the workforce?

As the New York Times said in a recent editorial, "Mr. Bloomberg and the Council need to do a lot more for the city’s neediest children." We cannot balance our budgets on the backs of these, our neediest New Yorkers.

The cuts will be particularly devastating to low-income children and their families. One in three children in New York, and two in three public school children, live in poverty.  These have been difficult years for those New Yorkers at the bottom of the economic ladder.  We have already cut their services to the bone, and our waiting lists are the longest they have ever been.  Further reductions will devastate the very children who the mayor has championed in both his philanthropy and public service.

When he was asked about these cuts, the Mayor responded "We can't do everything we want in the size and frequency that you would like, but the objective is to try to balance and make choices and we will try to do that and do it responsibly like we've been doing for 10 years." 

He is absolutely right.  A budget is, at the end of the day, a series of choices.  It tells you what is critical and what is expendable.  It tells you who matters and who does not.

The Mayor's budget says that needy children and working families don't matter.  Several of my colleagues in the fields of early childhood and afterschool have launched the Campaign for Children to remind him otherwise.  I urge you to join us -- our children need all the support they can get.  

200th Blog - Thank You

This is the 200th blog of Manhattan Viewpoint. Thank you for reading.

What is Manhattan Viewpoint?

Manhattan Viewpoint is focused on local issues, local activities, and local perspectives. Some national or international issues have a major impact locally and should be addressed with respect to that local impact. Many local issues are overlooked as we focus more broadly. Manhattan Viewpoint is here to help us see what is happening to us in our neighborhood.

Most Read Blog

The most read blog entry of the first 200 was a blog reflecting the local connection to a national issue. On May 30, 2011, Manhattan Viewpoint addressed the decline numbers of Board members of color at our nation's largest companies.

Though people of color represent 34% of the US population, people of color are only 10% of the population of Boards of Directors of Fortune 500 companies.Perhaps more troubling is the trend. The Boards of the largest 100 US companies lost nearly half of their Black male Board members between 2004 and 2010, going from 93 Board seats in 2004 to 51 Board seats in 2010. The combined male and female numbers for Black Board members dropped from 120 in 2004 to 77 in 2010. In 2010, Black Board members represented less than five percent of all Board seats.

In that same blog, Manhattan Viewpoint addressed the differing views of racial discrimination coming from different racial groups.

Perhaps a sign of the challenges our country faces in curing its race-oriented realities is a new study that shows that white US residents believe that the primary victims of racism are white Americans and that racism against white Americans in the US today is more severe than racism against Black Americans. While these findings are shocking, they may help explain why Boards of Directors of US companies are aggressively reducing their Black populations in recent years.

Prescient Blog

As Caroline Kennedy sought to be appointed to the US Senate by Governor David Paterson, we wrote that Paterson would be smarter to pick a young Congress member named Kirsten Gillibrand.


Senator Gillibrand has made us very proud. We told you so.

Mayor Bloomberg

Manhattan Viewpoint has consistently been critical of the Mayor's support for the racist stop-and-frisk policing of the NYPD, the Mayor's refusal to support racial integration of the NYC Fire Department, and the Mayor's exclusion of people of color from leading positions in his administration. The criticism has extended to his handling of education in our city, where only 28% of Black male students graduate high school.


We have not been unwilling to praise the Mayor when he deserved praise. He has improved the health of our residents with aggressive anti-smoking rules, improved information regarding calorie content provided by restaurant chains, led the opposition the proliferation of guns, and other undertaken other praise-worthy initiatives. Mayor Bloomberg was outspoken in support of the building of an Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan, even as polls showed that NYC residents opposed such a center. We praised him for being right about that center.


In the end, the Mayor's unwavering defense of intensely racist policies is not outweighed by the good that he's done. He has not been held accountable by voters for his support of those policies, but, Manhattan Viewpoint will continue to attempt to illuminate how unacceptable the Mayor's approach is.

What Next?

We hope that Manhattan Viewpoint does not end at 200 blog entries. The goal is to continue this effort to illuminate, educate, inspire, and mobilize.

Black Radio Merger in NYC

Two of New York City's leading Black radio stations are merging to become one.

KISS and WBLS

WRKS ("KISS") and WBLS have competed for supremacy in the Black radio market in New York City for more than 30 years. They divided up the leading Black voices from the syndication market and divided up the listener base of lovers of Black music (Hot 97 and Power 105.1 continue to compete for portions of the audience as well).

Both WBLS and WRKS have been the top-rated station in the city at various times, and even in low periods they have routinely averaged well over a million listeners apiece per week.

This morning, KISS changed its format to sports talk in a takeover by Disney's ESPN Radio. WBLS lives on as a leading Black radio station and takes on many of the voices and history of KISS.

Mourning

The coming weeks will be a time of mourning for KISS rather than a period of celebrating the combination of these two great stations.

It's a sad day for urban radio.  

The leadership of WBLS deserves praise for spending last weekend celebrating the 30 year history of KISS and for sounding the alarm regarding the contraction of Black radio rather than praising itself for outlasting KISS.

"I think it's sad," says WBLS spokesperson Deon Livingston. "A station that serviced our community for 30 years is gone, their voice is gone."

Let us all commit to support Black radio in NYC. KISS is gone. Let us preserve what remains.

Yale Offers an Alternative to Stop and Frisk

Mayor Bloomberg's brutally racist stop-and-frisk approach to law enforcement in NYC has not reduced crime. Now, a Yale professor and his student propose that NYC use an approach that has worked elsewhere.

Stop and Frisk Is a Failure

We know that Stop and Frisk does not work. Looking at murder rates and stop and frisk incidents shows that crime has not declined during the era of intense stopping and frisking of young men of color in our city. In fact, the Bloomberg approach, and its Apartheid-based vision in which all young men of color are investigated as criminals on a daily basis with probable cause being merely their combination of youth and skin color, has caused great pain and suffering in communities of color while not improving the safety in those communities.

[A]lthough the stop-and-frisk rate increased six fold, the murder rate continued the same slight rate of decline during the last decade as it has since 1997.

Mayor Bloomberg and his police chief Ray Kelly defend stop and frisk tactics by using the "big lie" that stop and frisk reduces crime. They know it does not reduce crime, yet they increase the number of young men of color who are stopped each year. They vocally and forcefully defend the practice as if their minds have been replaced by the mind of Bull Connor.

Many New Yorkers have given up on attempting to "talk sense into" Bloomberg and Kelly, and the conventional wisdom is that people of color will continue to suffer until a new Mayor takes office in 2014.

We should not give up so easily. Bloomberg undoubtedly wants to have a positive legacy, and he likely could be convinced that having a legacy of being more racist than Rudy Giuliani will be less and less attractive as the years pass. Bull Connor was controversial in his time. Today, he is the epitome of race-hatred. Years from now, Bloomberg will be viewed as the staunchest defender and promoter of institutionalized racism in the United States in the early years of the 21st Century. He must have moments when he'd rather be viewed as a positive force. Also, there is no guarantee that Bloomberg will not seek to be Mayor for at least another four years. He might try to stay in office to position himself for new opportunities, and he might decide that only he will keep stop and frisk in place. Bloomberg has changed the term limits in the past, and his wealth allows him to scare off potential challengers. Bloomberg might be the Mayor for the rest of his life, and young men of color should assume that Bloomberg's life will be long - far too long to wait for the end the of the Apartheid approach that he brought with him.

So, we need to keep telling the truth. We need to keep up the pressure. Mayor Bloomberg must end his racist approach to policing or resign. There is no middle ground, and we cannot assume that the Bloomberg nightmare ends in 2014. There is no firm expiration date for stop and frisk. It will end only when we raise our voices and make Mayor Bloomberg, Ray Kelly, and their Bull Connor brains choose a new direction.

Yale Professors Offer an Alternative

A new direction is what is offered by a Yale professor and his student.

It would be new for Bloomberg, but it is what worked to reduce crime in NYC previously. It was brought to New York City by Mayor Dinkins. It has worked in Boston and Seattle as well as in may other parts of the United States.

What the Yale professor and his student call "focused deterrents" relies on the community and the police force developing a positive relationship. In NYC, Bloomberg and Kelly have turned police and the community into enemies. They have demanded that the police abuse the innocent people in the community when the police should have been protecting the innocent and building trust in the process.

Developed by the criminologist David M. Kennedy, focused deterrence is in many ways the opposite of stopping and frisking large sections of the population. Beginning with the recognition that a small cohort of young men are responsible for most of the violent crime in minority neighborhoods, it targets the worst culprits for intensive investigation and criminal prosecution.

Focused deterrence also builds up community trust in the police, who are now going after the real bad guys instead of harassing innocent bystanders in an effort to score easy arrests. . .

Rather than sweep through and stop large numbers of young black men, the police built strong relationships with residents, promising greater responsiveness if they took back the reins of their community and told their sons, nephews and grandsons that the violence and the overt dealing must end.

"Going after the real bad guys" is what we seek.

We found that the NYPD was setting records for stopping innocent people of color while ignoring real criminals and encouraging victims of crime to ignore their victimization.

If the NYPD will end its terrorizing of innocent people and collaborate with the community to "go after the real bad guys", we can reduce crime and save Bloomberg from a Bull Connor legacy at the same time.

Bloomberg Takes on Guns

Last week, Mayor Bloomberg was on the attack against "stand your ground" laws and was shown to be under attack by the National Rifle Association.

NRA Spends Heavily to Defeat Microstamping 

The New York Daily News reported that the National Rifle Association donated more money to members of the New York State Legislature than to any other state in our country. Since 2003, the NRA has donated more than $200,000 to New York politicians in order to oppose Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to bring microstamping requirements to New York State. We have endorsed the push for microstamping.

Microstamping would reduce crime, enhance crime solving, and would not undermine the lawful use of firearms for hunting. In fact, microstamping is expected to add only $12 to the cost of the average firearm, which has a total cost of $450.

Unfortunately, the Republican Party in New York State is focused on maintaining its relationships with the gun manufacturers who do not want their products to cost $12 more. The Republicans are willing to trade lives for the support of the gun manufacturers. The Republicans in the State Senate voted against the legislation and killed it. Only one Republican supported the legislation, and even a former law enforcement officer who is now a Republican State Senator failed to support the legislation and disappeared from the floor of the State Senate during a key moment in the effort to enact this life-saving measure.

With the NRA spending heavily to defeat microstamping, we must all rally behind the measure with greater focus. California adopted microstamping legislation in 2007, and the NRA views blocking the spread of that smart approach to New York State as a high priority. Countering the NRA requires all of us to stand up and be counted.

Stand Your Ground

The "stand your ground" laws that have become associated with the tragic February 2012 death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida came under attack by Mayor Bloomberg last week. The NRA promotes these laws because they give ordinary residents that self-defense protection typically provided to law enforcement. If a killer feels threatened, his killing is justified, and he is immune from prosecution.

In states that have passed a "stand your ground" statute, justifiable homicides have skyrocketed. In a sense, these are invitations for residents to murder other residents without consequences for the murder.These laws undermine law enforcement attempts to keep our communities safe, and they promote vigilante behavior in our society.

The increased loss of life is tragic, and the support of the NRA for this increased loss of life shows how morally bankrupt the NRA is.

As the Mayor has stated:

These laws have not made our country safer; they have made us less safe. And that's why so many law enforcement leaders oppose these laws. It's why some legislators who voted for these laws are having second thoughts. And it's why today, we're launching a nationwide campaign urging legislators to take these steps: Reform or repeal these laws where they have been passed, or defeat them in states where they have been introduced.

We, as vocal critics of the Bloomberg Administration, are well aware that Bloomberg is taking on powerful critics by being on the right side of the gun issues we face.

NYC 911 System Debacle

New York City's 911 emergency system will be 7 years late and $1 billion over budget, and the Mayor of NYC is focused on ensuring that the public does not have the opportunity to read the report that explains what went wrong.

911 System - $1 billion of Additional Costs

Our city already faces the burden and the embarrassment of the City Time Scandal in which the Mayor ignored warnings from his subordinates and allowed the City to suffer a $740 million loss on what was supposed to be a $60 million project to improve payroll management for city employees. In one of the strangest moments of the Mayor's 10 years in office, he stated that the $740 million loss represented a "pretty good job" by his administration.

Now, we have learned that the Bloomberg administration's poor (or nonexistent) oversight of the implementation of a new emergency 911 system is going to cost an additional $1 billion and take 7 years more than original planned.

Mayor Bloomberg sought a third term based on an argument that he possessed superior management skills, yet his mismanagement of the city's funds is one of his clearest "accomplishments" of his 10 years. His failure to control the city's funds will create challenges for his successors and for our city's residents for many years to come.

Hiding the Report

Predictably, the report on the investigation into Mayor Bloomberg's $1 billion of mismanagement of the city's emergency system is being held captive by the Bloomberg Administration.

Bloomberg, talking to reporters Tuesday, defended response times to emergencies — though the unions and City Hall have long sparred over how the times are computed.
“Obviously, things are working. Can we always do it better? Sure. We’ll look at everything, and anybody that’s got suggestions, we'll be happy to take them in,” Bloomberg said, adding that the report will come out when the time is right.
“It’s a preliminary report and we’ll put it in when we get a final report that pulls together all the relevant data.”
The system has 911 operators handle most incoming emergency calls and dispatch them electronically into the police and fire response system. Callers used to have to talk to as many as three operators. The new framework also gives the operator a digital map of where the caller is located.

In February, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge ordered the report to be released, but the city recently made an 11th-hour appeal, charging that the document’s release would inhibit city bureaucrats from properly analyzing the system.

Bloomberg is once again opposing the judicial system as the judicial system attempts to hold him accountable.

New York State Budget Passed On-Time

Though some may complain that the New York State budget process is controlled by three people, the process produced an on-schedule and responsible budget for the second year in a row.

First Early Passage Since 1983

The budget was passed a day early, and that hasn't happened since 1983.
The euphoria over the passage was met by some dissent.

“It is a not a good bill and it is not a bill I can vote for,” said Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), during the debate over the Aid to Localities portion of the budget. Krueger argued the bill did not go far enough to aid struggling communities.
Senate Democrats have also tried -- and failed -- tried to attach several hostile amendments to the spending bills. Among the banished amendments were measures to create a statewide health insurance exchange, approved the state version of the Dream Act, and boost school aid for struggling school districts.

But, the budget and the process that brought it to early passage have many positive elements and is deservedly winning praise from both parties.

Why Are Both Parties Happy

What held together were Cuomo's top priorities including a massive New York Works job-creating program and just about every item in his budget proposal presented two months ago. The Legislature, however, amended nearly all and rejected some.
Silver got an increase in the welfare grant once rejected by Cuomo, reinstatement of early intervention procedures in pre-kindergarten for kids in need, an increase in community college aid, and the right of Medicaid patients to get prescriptions their physicians deem best even if they are more expensive brand-name drugs.
Skelos can claim a long-sought doubling of the DNA database for law enforcement, eliminating the Metropolitan Transportation Authority payroll tax for thousands of small businesses and schools, and keeping open the regional Department of Transportation offices slated to close.
The state's EPIC health care program was expanded to a fill the "donut hole" in Medicare, averting a spike in co-pays for seniors. Silver and Deputy Majority Leader Thomas Libous secured $100 million for upstate road repair to keep pace with downstate on transportation, a critical issue to salve upstate-downstate tensions in the Legislature.

The Future

Cuomo will propose two more budgets before he faces a vote on his re-election. Some worry that those budgets will be geared toward winning votes rather than responsibly preparing our state to thrive over the long term. Interestingly, Cuomo is expected to be a Presidential candidate in 2016. We can guess that Cuomo may begin to campaign for President with his 2013 and 2014 budget proposals. Those same budgets may draw more opposition from Republicans because of Cuomo's electoral goals.

Whether because of the re-election fight looming or because of a planned campaign for President of the United States, Cuomo may find that his two-year streak of on-time, respectable budgets becomes increasingly more difficult to extend.