New York City's fight to shield emails about the appointment of former schools Chancellor Cathie Black cost taxpayers about $160,000 in legal fees.
The city agreed Friday to reimburse a former Village Voice intern's lawyers about $134,500 in legal fees, on top of at least $25,000 the city spent internally defending the case.
Sergio Hernandez, now an editor at the Week magazine, had requested emails between the Bloomberg administration and Ms. Black in the lead-up to her nomination in November 2010 as chancellor.
The emails showed aides to Mayor Michael Bloomberg coordinating support for the high-profile, surprise hire, trying to solicit endorsements from Oprah Winfrey, Caroline Kennedy and others. Ms. Black, the former Hearst Magazines chairwoman, resigned in April 2011 after about three months on the job, amid criticism over her lack of education experience and some remarks that were seen as blunders.
$160,000 to shield the emails from public scrutiny.
To be frank, there wasn't anything in those emails that we didn't already know.
Cathie Black was clueless.
The Bloomberg administration was desperately scrambling to push back against opposition to her being named chancellor.
They used all the contacts and associations they had to try and ratchet up support for her (this is, btw, exactly what they did to get term limits overturned too - it's an M.O. with Bloomberg.)
Yet they spent $160,000 trying to shield the emails from scrutiny even as they worked to make sure the public saw the Teacher Data Reports with the 52% media margins of error (75% maximum MOE for math; 87% maximum MOE for ELA.)
Shows you their priorities, doesn't it?
The memory you have for these details and ability to connect them into a narrative is something that doesn't exist anywhere ob the internet!!
ReplyDeleteI got lazy and didn't put links in. I'll do it later - the 87% and 75% MOE's stick in my head because they were so outrageously large. Can you imagine Bloomberg trusting a political poll with that kind of MOE? Or a company with that kind of MOE when it reports its finances. I cannot - and yet, he "trusted" the public to have the TDR's with those kinds of MOE's. And just wait until the state and city VAM's and growth measures. There will be large MOE's there too. But Cuomo and Tisch and King will stand behind these formulas like they actually signify something, when of course they do not.
DeleteI would love an expose on why the UFT has consorted with reformers, so much that they are still silent of backing deBlasio. What are their greatest fears in all this??? They already given away the store, so what are they afraid of losing? They are still in power...mostly because teachers are apathetic or pathetic and did not vote in the last UFT election. DFER has a great quote in Politico saying in 30 years the UFT has not had a solid win. Well they backed Pataki and gave Bloomberg a 3rd term. They gave into each and every reform and are still selling them like hotcakes. So why are they suddenly anti-teacher and anti-public school???
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point - they've had "wins" if you frame their fights from the perspective of giving away the store to the corporatists while maintaining power and privilege for themselves.
DeleteYES. What they are doing is only understandable in the context of which side they are on. That is why I often use the Vichy analogy - not to call them Nazi sympathizers but to make an analogy to the kind of thinking that was behind Vichyites. That you can gain some measure of privilege for your little oligarchy by working with the devil as opposed to resisting. Thus the French resistance took their lives in their hands every day and there was Nazi retaliation. So Vichy said -"see, what you get when you resist?" Reminds me of the back door comments we hear about the Chicago resistance --"see what they got?" which ignores the fact that the previous administration cooperated and saw the loss of thousands of teachers being led to slaughter and all the same kinds of attacks. The CTU - and the French Resistance - choose to fight back and go down fighting if it comes to that. But at least they have a chance to win. We have no chance in the long run (though in the short run their overseers will find ways to give them just enough crumbs to try to keep them in power.)
ReplyDeleteWithout a fight the rank and file will go down anyway so why not try to fight back? OF course Karen Lewis and pals are not getting invited onto the 1% private planes and fancy dinners and being welcomed into the halls of power where they would get to sit at that tiny stool reserved for them at the table.