Cuomo, Mulgrew Patronage Stories Show How Nepotism, Corruption Runs Deep In The System

Two separate stories showed up in the newspapers today showing how big a problem nepotism remains in the political system.

The NY Times revealed that Governor Andrew Cuomo uses jobs at New York State’s economic development agency to pay off political friends, associates and donors for favors and/or contributions.

The NY Post revealed UFT President Michael Mulgrew's sister, Kathleen Mulgrew-Daretany, has been hired by the NYCDOE for a $75,828 a year management position after an 11 year absence from the DOE.

Mulgrew-Daretany had been in English teacher but left the DOE on child care leave and worked as the chief operating officer for "Brienza’s Academic Advantage, a Brooklyn-based company that sells teacher-training seminars and student tutoring."

The company went from making $5,109 from the DOE in 2002 to $10.9 million in 2012 when they received an after school tutoring contract with the city.

In both the Cuomo patronage story and the Mulgrew-Daretany DOE gig story, you see that connections and political favors, not experience or expertise, were the primary drivers for employment.

For example, the Times found:

the agency hired 23-year-old Andrew Moelis, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, for another new position, strategic planning associate, at a salary of $75,000 a year.

Shortly before Mr. Moelis’s first day of work, his father, Ron Moelis, a prominent real estate developer, gave $25,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s re-election campaign, according to the records.

Could it be coincidence that a 23 year old just out of UPenn receives a $75,000 a year gig at the New York State economic development agency a few days before his daddy gives Sheriff Andy Cuomo $25,000 so he can get re-elected governor and keep cleaning up the corruption in Albany?

Probably not.

And could it be coincidence that the company Michael Mulgrew's sister helps to run receives $10.9 million from the NYCDOE in 2012 just as Mulgrew is selling his membership out on APPR, Danielson and a host of other reforms the city and the state want?

Probably not.

The quid pro quo is built into the system and these are hardly the only people engaging in this kind of stuff.

But given how Sheriff Andy was busy accusing the Buffalo teachers union and district of "borderline ethical and legal fraud" for making a memo of understanding that no teacher would be fired under the APPR evaluation system for the first year because it is untested and unproven, I find it interesting that he is engaging in real fraud by soliciting campaign funds and favors from donors and handing out jobs to their family members in return.

Similarly, given how Mike Mulgrew plays in public like he's fighting the good fight against the DOE, I find it interesting that his sister's company received a $10.9 million dollar contract from that same DOE at the same time Mulgrew is agreeing to all kinds of reforms that the people at the DOE want.

Just two more indications of how corrupt and nepotistic this political system in NYC and NY State is and how selective the enforcement of rule- and law-breaking is.

Bloomberg Gives Pal's Girlfriend 110G Job While Threatening Layoffs For City Employees

To paraphrase Mel Brooks, it's good to be the Mayor of Money:

At the same time he was forecasting lay offs and issuing dire warnings that the city couldn't afford the size of its work force, Mayor Bloomberg was also nailing down a $110,000-a-year city job for the girlfriend of one of his closet political allies, The Post has learned.

Sources said City Hall arranged the hiring of Joan Cusack, the longtime companion of Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, right after she was bounced from the state payroll last year.

Now a manager at the Human Resources Administration, Cusack, 65, is making $19,200 more than she did as a member of the state Crime Victims Board, which went out of business last June.

The very month she was booted from the state payroll, Cusack landed an interview with HRA Commissioner Robert Doar, who promptly offered her a newly created position to manage procurement and commodity contracts.

HRA spokeswoman Connie Ress said Doar determined Cusack "had an appropriate background to do the job. Other staff interviewed her as well and agreed with this analysis."

The job was never posted, and no other candidates were interviewed.

Cusack started work on Sept. 20 -- one day before Bloomberg imposed a hiring freeze on all agencies.

Molinaro and Cusack declined comment.

Interesting - the mayor hired Cusack the same way he hired his own girlfriend's drinking buddy, Cathie Black, to replace Joel Klein.

There was no job opening posted.

No actual search for candidates was conducted.

And someone with connections but only oblique qualifications for the job was hired.

In Cusack's case, Bloomberg actually had the position created.

In Black's case, he had to declare Shael Polakow Suransky Black's Keeper of the Education Knowledge.

Either way, these boondoggle hirings cost the city money.

No worries though - Mayor Mike will just make sure he cuts $12,000 from NYPD and NYFD pensions and lay off a few more senior teachers.

And it will all be good.

Charter Schools: The Most Accountable Entities In The Western Hemisphere

The NY Post has been running a series the past few weeks called "War on Charters."

The gist of the series is that the valiant folks running charter schools are up against big, powerful, wealthy forces trying to destroy them.

Today's article is typical - charters are wonderful, they have smaller class sizes, the buildings and facilities are nicer than regular public schools, the kids are engaged in learning, parents are involved - why would anybody want to be opposed to the charter school movement?

Here's my favorite quotation:

"Anyiha goes to a school where classrooms are small, her parents are involved in her homework, she studies violin and piano -- she's engaged, and she wants to learn. This is what we all should have, and it's needed, especially in black communities," Mcbean said.

Indeed, it is what we should have in every school, especially in the black community, and yet we don't.

Of course charter advocates say it is the big bad teachers unions that are the problem - just bust the unions and destroy their stranglehold on public education and every school will be just like the one little Anyiha attends.

But on the face of it, that's laughable. If the powers that be wanted every public school to look like the one little Anyiha attends, they would actually FUND them.

But they don't. Because they're not looking to actually improve the quality of education, they're looking to bust the union and privatize public education (as they have privatized and deregulated every other major part of American life since the Reagan 80's - from the way we fight our wars with Halliburton running things to the way quarterly results on Wall Street seem to be the only gauge of success these days.)

So let's bust some of those myths the Post has been running with the past few weeks and in the process explain just why Rupert Murdoch and other charter advocates are so scared by any outside accountability of the charter school movement (and they must be terrified, actually, because Murdoch ran 8 pro-charter, anti-union stories on the same day State Senator Bill Perkins held hearings on charters.)

First off, charter schools are not tiny powerless entities up against big powerful wealthy forces. Quite the opposite - they are the big powerful wealthy forces, backed by the hedge fund industry and Wall Street, with access to hundreds of millions of investment dollars across the country.

Next, they have some very powerful political advocates looking out for their needs (unlike the regular public schools.) Here in NYC, charter school managers like Eva Moskowitz have direct access to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and can get him to do things like close other public schools to give the charters more room or invite him to poker tournament fund raisers with all the hedge fund managers and Wall Street execs taking some time off from shorting the mortgage market to help raise some cash for charter schools.

Let us also not forget that the mayor, the governor, the president and the secretary of education are all huge fans of charter schools and have been doing all they can to spread the movement far and wide while also doing all they can to hurt unionized teachers (think Central Falls, Rhode Island.)

Finally, let us remember that the reason charters have so many motivated children with motivated parents or guardians is because the movement ONLY accepts motivated children with motivated parents. Show yourself to NOT be motivated and you get counseled out of your charter school really, really quickly (and you disappear from the state stas on schools too.)The same goes for scoring well on tests - score low consistently and the charter school will counsel you out (or have enough non-motivated students with low test scores - like one year at the Harlem Children's Zone - and they may just close down an entire grade. Helps with the overall statistics, you know.)

So the Post can say war has been declared on charter schools and the big bad teachers unions are out to destroy the tiny powerless intrepids just trying to give small classes, good teachers and state of the art facilities to underprivileged kids of color all they want.

But of course it is all jive. What they really want to do is bust the unions and open up public education to private enterprise and for-profit school management companies like Imagine Schools.

The Times ran a four page article on Imagine Schools and found that the charter management company

has elbowed the charter holders out of virtually all school decision making — hiring and firing principals and staff members, controlling and profiting from school real estate, and retaining fees under contracts that often guarantee Imagine’s management in perpetuity.

The arrangements, they say, allow Imagine to use public money with little oversight. “Under either charter law or traditional nonprofit law, there really is no way an entity should end up on both sides of business transactions,” said Marc Dean Millot, publisher of the report K-12 Leads and a former president of the National Charter Schools Alliance, a trade association, now defunct, for the charter school movement.

“Imagine works to dominate the board of the charter holder, and then it does a deal with the board it dominates — and that cannot be an arm’s length transaction,” he said.

Imagine is a private for-profit company that calls itself non-profit and runs schools with public money - making millions in the process.

Imagine charges exorbitant rates to its schools for "rent" - according to the Times article, a charter school in Nevada called 100 Academy pays 40% of the $3.6 million it receives from the state to Imagine Schools for rent.

That's an awful lot of rent money, isn't it?

In addition, they charge a fee to "manage" the school, leaving very little left over to actual run the school and educate the children.

How's that for leaving no for-profit charter school management company behind?

In Philadelphia, a city controller's report found after a year-long investigation

repeated examples of complex real estate arrangements in which charters leased or rented facilities from related nonprofit organizations, excessive salaries for chief executive officers, compliant boards whose members are handpicked by school chiefs, and rampant conflicts of interest.

The controller also concluded that the Philadelphia School District had failed to monitor charter schools, leaving it and taxpayers "extremely vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse."

Here is New York City, politicians found charter schools and move them to land owned by political donors, even if that means sticking the kids in trailers on barren, undeveloped land near the ocean.

Or charter operators pay themselves close to $400,000 dollars to "manage" three charter schools with fewer than 1000 students - a much higher salary than principals in regular public schools make. In fact, it is a higher salary than the schools chancellor makes or the secretary of education makes.

Or charter operators dole out the nepotism and conflicts of interest to family and friends as the Daily News reported on this week:

At some New York City charter schools, it's a family affair.

A Daily News investigation has found some charters hiring wives, husbands and children of school officials and board trustees as vendors, teachers aides and consultants.

Employees of public schools face penalties and suspension for even minor conflicts of interest, such as the teacher fined $1,250 last week for lending her parking permit to her husband.

But at some charters - which are publicly funded but privately run - there's little worry about bringing family members on board.

At the hearing on charter school financing held by Bill Perkins this week, charter advocate and New York Charter Schools Association Policy Director Peter Murphy said that charter schools are the "most accountable entities in the Western hemisphere."

Given the financial improprieties found in charters all across the nation, the test score manipulation schools like the Harlem Children's Zone engage in by getting rid of an entire class of students when the test scores aren't high enough, the financial predation of the charter school management companies, and the nepotism and conflicts of interest so many charter operators engage in, charter schools are actually the LEAST accountable entities in the Western Hemisphere.

Only the derivatives markets and hedge fund industry seem to be less accountable than charter schools these days.

And look at the mess they've created.