Recent examples of government incompetence/corruption chronicled by the Post and involving inspectors general include a probe of the city's top traffic judge for pitching a rental property at work, a Queens nursing home exec billing Medicaid for the use of a Lexus, revelations that construction workers at the World Trade Center were smoking and dealing pot on site, and failures by then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geither to restrict executive pay at corporations bailed out by federal taxpayers.
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Outside the NYPD, Inspectors General Are Everywhere
The New York Post's outrage at Council Speaker Christine Quinn's support for an NYPD inspector general may have reached biblical proportions ("JUDAS!" screamed its Thursday headline), but the newspaper has found inspectors general pretty useful in the past. Over the past five years, the newspaper has mentioned "inspector general"—in contexts not involving the NYPD—some 450 times.
Watch Us On MetroFocus
The 2013 races are well underway, and so is our unique take on covering them. In partnership with City & State and Channel 13's MetroFocus, we're tracking opinions about the campaign at five locations over the next several months.
Below, watch City & State's editor Morgan Pehme and I discuss our findings so far with MetroFocus anchor Rafael Pi Roman.
See the full episode tonight at 7:30 p.m. tonight on WLIW 21, 8 p.m. tomorrow on Thirteen or 10 p.m. tomorrow on NJTV. Or click here to watch the current and past episodes.
Report On Troubled High School Wins Award
Gail Robinson's story about a Brooklyn high school facing closure won first prize in the annual awards of the Education Writers Association.
"Who Killed John Dewey High?" recounted the history of the once-heralded Gravesend school and investigated potential causes for its performance problems.
It was named the best article in the general coverage, small newsroom, single topic category.
Watch the Mayoral Debate on Low-Income Issues
The crowded field of candidates running for mayor have taken the stage at more than a few forums and debates in the opening months of the 2013 campaign.
Some have focused on business or education or housing. Two weeks ago seven of the candidates running for mayor came to the First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem for a debate on issues affecting low-income New Yorkers.
The debate was sponsored by the Community Service Society, 32BJ-SEIU, the Center for Popular Democracy, UnitedNY.com and City Limits.
Sandy Surge Covered A Sixth of the City
Even five months after it rolled away up the East Coast, Sandy's impact continues to inspire a dark awe. The surge from Sandy—which was not even a Category 1 hurricane by the time it struck—covered 16. 6 percent, or one-sixth, of the city's land, according to a report out this week from NYU's Furman Center.
That surge damaged 62,300 properties. More properties had flooding in their living area than those who found water just in a basement (although basements were living areas for many people displaced by the storm). In all, more than 9,000 properties, 15 percent of the total damaged, had more than four feet of water in living spaces.
Report Faults How City Spends Ad Dollars
Perhaps it's not surprising given that the mayor is a billionaire media magnate, but over the past several years the City of New York has become an incredibly visible advertiser. From that gruesome photo of the stub-fingered smoker to the mound of fat oozing from a soda, the administration has shown a lot of imagination in how it frames its message.
What it hasn't shown—according to a report out this week from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism's Center for Community and Ethnic Media—is a lot of imagination in who it pays to project that message.
What Mayoral Candidates Say About the Disabled: Not Much
Two weeks ago City Limits published an investigation by Ben Adler of Mayor Bloomberg's record on disability policy, which included harsh criticism from many advocates who think the administration (and non-mayoral agencies, like the MTA) have been cavalier toward the needs of the disabled when it comes to taxis, transit, schools, workforce development and emergency evacuation.
Quinn, Liu, de Blasio Clash on Sick Leave
Somewhere out there there's a number that will tell New York City when it's time to impose mandatory sick leave on businesses without crippling the economy, according to Council Speaker Christine Quinn. But, she told a Thursday night debate focusing on issues affecting low-income New Yorkers, she can't say what it is yet.
“There are a number of triggers you could look at: unemployment rates, closure rates, growth rates. We're trying to figure out all of those in different ways,” she told the crowd at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem. As moderator Brian Lehrer noted, Quinn has said she opposes imposing sick leave now because of weaknesses in the economy.
Mayoral Debate: How High Should the Minimum Wage Be?
Hector Gomez works at a car wash. He makes $5.50 an hour, he says. He's supposed to get tips, he told the Thursday night mayoral debate at First Corinthian Baptist Church. Yesterday, he got $3 in tips.
This prompted a discussion on the city's minimum wage, with most candidates backing President Obama's call for a $9 minimum wage.
Comptroller John Liu, playing to a friendly crowd that sounded like it was booing but was really chanting his name, aimed higher. “$9 buys you a lot more in Buffalo than it does here or in Brooklyn or the Bronx. In New York we need a minimum wage to $11.50 an hour.” The crowd grew friendlier.
A Housing Problem … Or an Income Problem?
Last week a housing advocacy group released a report showing that many of the apartments built under Mayor Bloomberg's New Housing Marketplace Plan are not affordable to people living in the neighborhoods where the housing is located.
What's interesting is that this is so even though the mayor's initiative is serving more people at low incomes than his administration planned.
In its report, the Association of Neighborhood Housing Developers found that a third of units produced under the Bloomberg plan "have an upper income limit above the actual New York City median income"
