Cuomo Teamed Up With Republicans Against Democrats On Rent Regulations, Charter School Policy, Money For Private Schools

Fred Dicker in the Post:

Despite public claims to the contrary, Gov. Cuomo worked behind-the-scenes with the Republican-led Senate to defeat Assembly Democrats on such key “progressive” initiatives as tenant rights and a minimum-wage hike, knowledgeable insiders have told The Post.

Cuomo, the de facto head of the state Democratic Party, defeated a range of Democrat-sponsored proposals supposedly on his agenda through a “two-against-one” strategy in which he allied with Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan (R-Suffolk) against Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx), leaving Heastie no choice but to fold, the sources said.

“Throughout the negotiations, there was never any real difference between the positions of Cuomo and Flanagan. It was two against one with Cuomo pulling Flanagan’s strings to corner Heastie,” said a source with direct knowledge of the secret end-of-session deal-making.

The source said Cuomo and the Senate GOP also worked to force Heastie to accept an expansion of charter schools for New York City and additional state aid to parochial schools, proposals Heastie and the Assembly’s other leaders repeatedly opposed.

“Not that there should have been, but if there was any doubt that Senate Republicans are nothing but a tool of Cuomo to use against his fellow Democrats, there isn’t anymore,’’ the source complained.

This isn't a surprise - anyone watching closely over the past few years knew this was what Cuomo was doing and what he was going to do in the final days of the legislative session.

But it's good to get this in print, even if it's anonymously sourced in Fred Dicker's column.

I'll have more on this story later because Dicker reports that one of Cuomo's primary motivations to work with Republicans against Democrats was to screw de Blasio - just cuz', you know?

Says an awful lot about Andrew Cuomo, alpha male, that a primary motivation in policy-making is remaining top dog.

In any case, if Cuomo still harbors any national political ambitions as a Democrat, his work with Republicans against his fellow Democrats, becoming more and more naked as his governorship goes on, ought to dispel them.

He literally now is seen as "New York's Republican governor," as one tenant activist put it last week after Cuomo screwed NYC residents by siding with Senate Republicans over Assembly Dems on rent regulation.

As Expected, Cuomo Screws NYC Renters And Schools

The inevitable Cuomo screw job on rent regulation came today:

New York City loses tens of thousands of affordable apartments each year to deregulation. Under the "framework" of an agreement to extend rent laws announced today by Governor Cuomo and the two leaders of the state legislature, the city will keep on losing them.

At a press conference this afternoon, the "Three Men In A Room," told reporters that the city's recently expired rent laws would be renewed for four more years.

Earlier this month, the Assembly passed a bill that would repeal the state's vacancy decontrol law, which allows landlords to jack up the rent on regulated apartments as soon as a tenant leaves and perpetuates a system of inequality.

That change was eliminated.

Instead, the leaders promised to do what they did in 2011: modestly increase the rent at which a rent-regulated apartment could be deregulated, from $2,500 to $2,700.

Reaction from Alliance for Tenant Power's Katie Goldstein:

Our worst fears about Governor Cuomo have been confirmed. He took no action at all to strengthen the rent laws. Cuomo made empty promises and lied repeatedly while helping the Senate Republicans advance a bill that is a massive giveaway to landlords. Cuomo’s Republican deal on rent will harm and endanger countless low-income and working-class households. Up to 100,000 rent-regulated apartments will be lost over the next four years because of Cuomo’s Republican deal. This four-year extender does nothing to empower tenants. In fact, it leaves the most vulnerable even more susceptible to landlord harassment and skyrocketing rents. Cuomo should change his party registration to Republican because he is not worthy of the Democratic Party and its most basic values. Cuomo will suffer big political consequences for his betrayal of tenants and Democrats and for solidifying his status as a Republican Governor.

We were right to challenge Cuomo at every turn and not trust him throughout our campaign for stronger rent laws. Cuomo never had any intention of introducing his own pro-tenant bill. We will now lose many more rent-regulated units because of Cuomo’s failure to deliver for tenants and for working families. Today Cuomo alienated and angered millions of New Yorkers. We look forward to helping a strong Democrat defeat Cuomo if he foolishly tries to run for a third term as Governor.

In addition to the screw job to tenants, Cuomo stuck it to public schools too - raising the charter cap by 180 (50 for the city, but since the statewide cap is nowhere near full, expect that some or all of those rest-of-the-state slots end up in NYC in the end), giving $250 million to private schools and extending the property tax cap for 4 years.

Another end-of-the-session screw job from Cuomo.

When do "liberals" in NYC finally abandon Andrew Cuomo and make him pay politically for screwing them?

John Flanagan Looks To Stick It To Schools, Make Tax Cap Permanent

From Joseph Spector at Politics on the Hudson:

The state’s property-tax cap expires next year, and new Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan introduced legislation Friday to make it permanent and decouple it from rent-control laws in New York City.

The move by Flanagan, R-Suffolk County, and Senate Republicans is their latest attempt to make the tax cap, put into effect in 2011, a permanent law amid protests from schools, unions and local governments.

Flanagan said in a statement Sunday that the Senate would act as early as this week to approve the bill.

More mandates on schools, less money to carry those resources out.

That's the neoliberal game here.

Flanagan's game.

U.S. Department Of Education To Investigate NYSED, Board of Regents Over Funding Inequity

From Dan Clark at State of Politics:

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will be investigating complaints brought forth by two New York school districts that say the state’s funding structure for public schools discriminates against districts with high concentrations of people of color, students whose first language is not English, and students with disabilities.

...

The complaints were originally brought forth almost a year ago by the superintendents of Middletown City School District and Schenectady City School District.

The OCR first responded that they could not go forward with an investigation because it did not have jurisdiction over some of the parties involved in the complaint. The complaint is against New York state, the state legislature, Governor Andrew Cuomo, Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, the state Board of Regents and the state Education Department.

Now, the investigation will move forward, focusing on the Board of Regents and the Education Department, since the OCR has jurisdiction in those areas.

The Schenectady City complaint is here.

The Schenectady City superintendent says he can't believe any independent entity could look into the funding in New York State and see it as anything other than a problem:

"Yes, I'd say it's ground-breaking," Superintendent for Schenectady City Schools Larry Spring said. "I was cautiously optimistic that OCR would open it and investigate. It's the right thing to do. Hopefully, change will result from it."

According to a press release from the Schenectady School District, when Spring and Middletown Superintendant Kenneth Eastwood met with the Department of Education, the federal agency told them these complaints will be the first of their kind the Office for Civil Rights has investigated. A similar complaint was filed in Texas but was withdrawn to pursue the issue in court.

The release states that Schenectady and Middletown schools are among the 8 percent of schools in the state with minority-as majority student populations and are also shorted funding they are owed through the Foundation Aid Formula, which is funding required under the Campaign for Fiscal Equity court decision, which states that schools must be funded sufficiently to provide a sound basic education.

"It's a fact that school districts with higher concentrations of minority students are systemically underfunded," Spring said. "I can't see how any agency will investigate this and find it acceptable."

It's a shame that Cuomo and the legislature aren't a target of the investigation, since they're really the people behind the funding problems, but we'll have to take the investigation into NYSED and the Board of Regents for now.

GOP Majority In State Senate, With Help Of IDC, Will Push For More Charter Schools, Vouchers, Social Program Cuts

Ken Lovett in the Daily News:

Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos said his conference in the upcoming year will aggressively push for new tax cuts, reduced business regulations, and education alternatives.

Skelos, during a Sunday morning radio appearance on supermarket mogul and and former mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis' AM 970 radio show, made it clear he believes voters this past week rejected much of the progressive agenda the Democrats had pushed.

...

He spoke of the need to adequately fund the traditional public school system while at the same time making clear that charter schools need to be part of the solution, particularly in minority communities.

Skelos also said he will push to help parochial schools. While he didn't specifically reference it, the Senate GOP and Catholic Church last year pushed for enactment of an education investment tax credit that was blocked by the Assembly Democrats.

Skelos also hinted his conference might take aim at various state-funded social programs, saying they should only be available to those who "truly" need them in order to give them a "helping hand up, not a hand down."

He reiterated he believes his conference will work closely with Sen. Jeffrey Klein and his group of breakaway Democrats. He didn't say exactly what form that would take. The past two years, with the Republicans lacking enough members to make up its own majority, the GOP and Independent Democratic Conference formed an unprecedented bipartisan governing coalition to run the chamber.

The blueprint is being laid out for all to see:

The State Senate GOP majority, with the help of the Independent Democratic Conference, will push for an increase or complete elimination of the charter cap, they will push for a voucher program to further undercut the public school system, and they will look to cut social programs to people in need in order to fund more tax cuts for the wealthy.

Yesterday Jimmy Vielkind reported that Independent Democratic Conference head Jeff Klein said it's time to rethink what it means to be a Democrat:

“I think we have to take a step back, also, and maybe redefine what it means to be a Democrat.”

Since Klein and his fellow Democrats in the IDC plan on joining with the State Senate Republican majority in order to push through pro-charter school proposals, voucher programs, and social program cuts for people in need in order to fund tax cuts for rich people, we do indeed need to "redefine what it means to be a Democrat."

It seems to me that since Klein, Governor Cuomo and so many other Democrats push Republican programs and policies these days, the redefinition of "Democrat" is "Republican."

Andrew Cuomo's Budget Causes SUNY Tuition Increases

From Newsday:

Students at Suffolk County Community College will face a tuition increase of $250 this fall, bringing the annual charges to $4,390 at the two-year school.

The tuition hike is part of the $208.4 million 2014-15 operating budget that college trustees sent to county officials Friday.

The increase comes even though the Bellone administration agreed after two days of talks with college officials to a 2 percent increase in the county share of college costs -- or $780,000. College trustees, in the budget vote Thursday night, also included a one-shot use of $4.3 million from the college's $24.9 million reserve fund to keep tuition from rising further.

"Two hundred and fifty dollars may not sound like much unless you don't have it," said trustee Jim Morgo, head of the trustee budget committee, noting the college's mission is to provide affordable education where many students come from "very challenging economic backgrounds."

...

College officials blamed the increased tuition on the state, which increased operating aid for each full-time student by only $75. College presidents had sought $250 and the State Senate had proposed $125. The Assembly, which had sought a $50 increase, compromised with the Senate on $75, to make the per student aid $2,497. In all, the state share is 25.9 percent of college costs.

County aid has remained flat over the past six years with just a 1% increase in aid to SCCC in that time frame, another contributing factor to the cost of SCCC tuition going up next year.

Tax breaks for rich people, tuition hikes for community college students - that should be an Andrew Cuomo campaign ad.

The Assembly and Senate are to blame too.

But this is Cuomo's budget, the one he's bragging about every chance he gets, so the buck and the responsibility for it lie with him.

Cuomo To Be Honored In Washington D.C. As "Champion Of Charters"

May's going to be a banner month for Andrew Cuomo and the charter entrepreneurs.

First he's hosting a ritzy education reform vacation getaway/conference in Lake Placid for charter entrepreneurs and other reformy types and now we learn that he's to be honored by the National Alliance for Public (sic) Charter Schools in D.C. alongside other charter heroes like sex criminal/Sacramento mayor Kevin "KJ" Johnson and for-profit college shill George Miller:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s support of charter schools in New York City and across the state has earned him the honor as a “Champion for Charters” from a national group at a event next month in Washington.

Cuomo was able to overstep New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in the state budget approved March 31 by allowing charter schools to co-locate at public schools, and he secured continued aid for the schools in the city and across the state.

“This year Governor Cuomo stepped in to support the charter school community in New York City at a critical time,” the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools said in a news release yesterday. “He negotiated a budget deal with state lawmakers that guarantees future New York City charter schools rent-free space in under-used public school buildings or funding to offset the cost of renting a building.”

The event will be May 6 at the U.S. Capitol. It’s unclear whether Cuomo will attend; he rarely leaves the state.

He will be honored along with Nevada governor Brian Sandoval, a Republican, and Illinois senator Mark Kirk, a Republican, as well as Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star.

Within the Beltway, the kind of support Cuomo has shown for charters and disdain he's shown for traditional public schools is hip and cool.

But of course back in NY State, where Cuomo is facing a state-wide rebellion over his education reform policies, anger over his support for the Common Core and the Endless Testing regime, outrage over his tax cap that starves public school districts of needed funds even as he throws more and more state mandates onto them and rage over his budget that steals funds from public schools and hands them off to the already-wealthy charter entrepreneurs like Eva Moskowitz, that support is not such a slam dunk.

It wil be interesting to see if Cuomo attends his honor ceremony in the same month that he chairs the education reform conference in Lake Placid.

Given his suddenly shaky re-election prospects, with a US attorney bearing down on him for what he did (or didn't) do in the Moreland Commission investigations, with his "liberal" base pissed at him for the budget, the tax cap and his education policies, the unions pissed at him for his anti-union stances, and upstaters pissed at him over the SAFE Act and other things, I bet he'll think twice about doing two pro-charter/pro-reform events in the same month, especially considering those folks are already supporting him politically and financially.

But we'll see - Sheriff Andy has been floundering a bit of late, ever since US Attorney for the Southern District took him on publicly over the Moreland mess, so he may just decide he needs the bask and glow of the charter folks to salve his wounded ego.

New York Goes From 8th To 20th In Education Performance Under Andrew Cuomo

Interesting piece of data in Pedro Noguera's Time-Union opinion piece decrying the Cuomo budget:

With Gov. Andrew Cuomo emerging as a champion of charter schools, what does it mean for the 97 percent of students in New York who attend public schools?

Outside major cities, most people have never heard of a charter school. They are focused instead on their local public school, where the situation is often quite disturbing.

There are a lot of problems, including the botched rollout of the common core standards, but the key problem is funding. More than 90 percent of school districts now receive less operating aid from the state than they did five years ago. Some wealthy school districts are able to cope with less funding, but most districts have had to increase class size and make cuts to cuts to art, music and foreign language, as well as advanced placement and honors courses.

We now have two systems of education in New York: In prosperous communities, we have well-funded, high-performing schools; and in less prosperous communities all across the state, we have under-funded schools and struggling students.

This widening gap is the main reason New York's ranking for overall education performance has dropped from 8th in the nation when Cuomo took office to 20th today.

No one in Albany has a plan to address the funding inequality that is the root of this problem. Instead, the governor has chosen to focus on charter schools as if they were the answer to all problems.

In fact, Cuomo is exacerbating the problem with budget after budget, sticking districts with more and more mandates even as he starves them of more and more money.

And don't think this is a mistake on Cuomo's part - he is quite literally the governor of charter schools only and his plan is to make as many traditional public schools fail as he possibly can and hand them off to his charter school operator buddies and his Wall Street/hedge fundie buddies.

I think this is the piece that some people are missing with Cuomo's budgets and mandates - they're part of an intentional strategy to undermine and destroy the public school system in the state and bring privatization to areas outside of NYC.

Fighting Cuomo's Budget Proposals

It's important progressive people and groups take Governor Cuomo on over his budget giveaways to Wall Street and the 1%:

A coalition of progressive groups announced Wednesday afternoon that it would launch grassroots efforts to knock out what it described as giveaways to the wealthy in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive budget proposal.

“Right now, we cannot afford to spend a $2 billion surplus on tax cuts for the wealthiest New Yorkers,” said Ron Deutsch of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness.

He singled out proposed changes to the estate tax and reduced business taxes as “a misguided effort” in a state with what advocates says is the nation’s most profound income inequality.

That dubious superlative “is killing our economy,” said Michael Kink of the Strong Economy for All Coalition.

“Our state can’t afford a billion dollars a year in new tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires and Wall Street,” he added, indicating that the groups backing the effort “have proven over the last several years that people power can beat money power when it comes to big tax and budget issues.”

The coalition includes the Working Families Party, labor unions including New York State United Teachers, the state AFL-CIO and the Communications Workers of America, plus advocacy groups such as MoveOn, the Hunger Action Network and Community Voices Heard.

Legalized gambling proceeds to pay for education programs while tax cuts go out to millionaires and billionaires.

More mandates on school districts when so many are already underfunded and on the brink of fiscal disaster.

It's an election year and Governor Cuomo does not want a fight over the budget.

But if ever there is a year to have that fight with the governor, it's this year.

Not just over the budget, of course.

There's so much more to fight him over - like Common Core, APPR, inBloom, etc.

But the budget too.

Tax Cap Is Meant To Put Districts Into Crisis

From a commentary by Fred LeBrun in the Times-Union:

It is irrefutable that the effect of the incomplete tax cap passed in June 2011, while politically popular and a contributor to the governor's high standing, has been disastrous for school districts and local governments. School districts have two sources of revenue: state aid and local taxes. The share of school budgets that is state aid has declined nearly 10 percent over the last decade, and the tax cap makes it far more difficult, especially in poorer districts, for localities to make up the difference from property tax levies. One of the arguments in the lawsuit is that because 60 percent of voters are needed to override the tax cap in a local school budget election, 41 percent of the voters saying no have more power than 59 percent who want to spend more. That totally distorts local control.

Sadly, we are watching a catastrophe unfold that will deeply affect many of our children at their most vulnerable ages, and which will have consequences for the rest of their lives.

The State Education Department has warned that between 100 and 200 school districts will be insolvent within two years.

That's up to a quarter of the state's school districts, with more predicted to follow. That means those schools won't be able to meet their obligations and will very likely be broken as teaching institutions as well. The multi-year highway to insolvency for many of them will be already littered with discarded teachers and administrators, dropped programs and advanced placement courses required for college admission, and cuts, cuts and more cuts impacting the core teaching mission.

I think the tax cap has been devised, in part, not just to keep taxes down, but to bring about the destruction of many schools districts.

Even as Cuomo and the state (and the feds) are ratcheting up the mandates, the state is cutting the aid to districts and keeping localities from increasing funding by raising taxes.

In the end, once they go belly-up financially, some of these districts look ripe for the kinds of takeovers we've seen in Michigan, where entire districts are put into receivership and handed over to some state-appointed administrator who brings in the education management organization to run the thing.

 

Just another example of neo-liberalism at work from our Wall Street-funded governor - and just another example of disaster capitalism at work.

Create the disaster, declare the disaster, sell the pieces off.

The same thing is happening in city after city across this nation - from Detroit to Philadelphia.

And of course Barack Obama's former right hand man, Rahm Emanuel, is trying to pull the same thing off in Chicago.

Shelly Calls Cuomo's Bluff

You have to admire Sheldon Silver's tactical skills in politics. Look at the way he has framed the debate over a property tax cap, which Governor Little Andy Cuomo insists must be passed as part of his "reforms":

ALBANY — Democratic leaders in the State Assembly are signaling that they are ready to embrace a cap on local property taxes, which could clear the way for its passage this year.

The cap, popular with voters in New York’s suburbs, who pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation, is one of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s top priorities and already has support from the Republican-led State Senate.

But in what will very likely be one of the defining legislative battles of the year, Assembly leaders are indicating they want something else for their mostly urban constituents: stricter rent regulations for New York City, a measure strongly opposed by Republicans and the real estate interests that helped Mr. Cuomo capture the governor’s office in November.

“In a day and age when we’re talking about giving people the ability to live in their homes and not be priced out of their homes, we should not forget people who have rent protections,” the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, said, adding, “I just think the philosophy behind the tax cap is the same as the philosophy behind rent regulation.”

Now of course Cuomo doesn't actually give a shit about homeowners. He is promoting a property tax cap so that he can starve government and claim the state employees union must be destroyed in order for the state to survive, not to save people money on their taxes.

That has been the real rationale behind his entire campaign.

Does his hatred of unions date back to the Carl McCall fiasco when the unions backed McCall over Cuomo in a hate-filled campaign that sent Cuomo down to a bitter defeat and left him tarnished as a racist?

Perhaps.

Perhaps he just wants to pay back his hedge fund buddies and Wall Street cronies for all their largess over the past few years.

More than likely it is a little bit of both.

Regardless, Shelly tying strengthened rent regulations to the property tax cap does force Cuomo to have to make a move he isn't going to want to make and expose himself as a landlord shill.

Here is what Shelly wants from the deal:

The position taken by Mr. Silver and other Assembly leaders is significant, because the Assembly has in recent years been the place in Albany where proposals to cap property taxes meet a quiet death. His Democratic caucus is dominated by New York City lawmakers whose constituents often do not own homes, and Mr. Silver is tightly allied with public employees’ unions worried over the cuts to local government spending that caps would require.

The Assembly is also a bastion of support for expanded rent regulations and has passed a package of such legislation several times in recent years — proposals that have gone nowhere in the Senate, even during the last two years, when it was controlled by Democrats.

Mr. Lopez said his committee was moving fast on an ambitious package of rent legislation, including a bill to abolish vacancy decontrol, a procedure that has allowed owners of rent-regulated apartments to move hundreds of thousands of units out of the rent-stabilization system, according to estimates by tenant advocates. He also said he hoped to pass a temporary extension of the tax break that would expire on the same day in June as the existing rent regulations.

“Those three issues have to be looked at and somehow thought of in an interrelated way,” Mr. Lopez said.

About one million apartments in the city’s five boroughs, roughly half of all rental units, are covered by the existing laws, which sharply limit landlords’ ability to raise rents and keep many apartments, particularly in Manhattan, renting at well below market value. Currently, apartments become deregulated when the rent reaches $2,000 and total household income of the tenants is at least $175,000 annually for two years.

Mr. Silver said he would like not only to preserve those protections, but also to expand them, by raising the income and rent thresholds.

“You want to preserve people making $210,000, $225,000 a year, living where they’re living,” Mr. Silver said.

One model could be a bill that has passed the Assembly twice in recent years: It would raise the thresholds for so-called high-income decontrol to $2,700 in monthly rent and $240,000 in annual income.

Cuomo has been noncommittal, issuing some boilerplate jive about wanting both rent protections for renters and a freed up market for landlords.

But here's what the real estate criminals think about the proposal:

But the notion of a three-issue deal was quickly criticized by real estate leaders, who argued that property-tax caps and rent regulation should be considered separately.

“That’s unacceptable to us; the cap on property taxes doesn’t apply to people in New York City,” said Steven Spinola, the president of the Real Estate Board of New York. “The game of the Legislature is to negotiate and to make connections, and that’s traditionally what Albany and Washington have done. We saw nothing happen in Washington because of that policy, and I’m not sure anything gets accomplished in New York.”

Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos of Long Island, declined to comment on the Assembly’s proposed rent regulation package, though Republicans have tended to oppose such measures. But he joined Mr. Spinola in arguing that a property tax cap should in no way be linked to rent regulation.

“The property-tax cap should stand on its own,” Mr. Reif said. “It was a centerpiece of the new governor’s agenda. There are many members on both sides of the aisle who ran in support of a property-tax cap. So we should get a result.”

Now if this is what the real estate criminals and Senate Republicans think, then of course this is what Cuomo thinks too.

So when he finally does get the courage to come out in the open and say the property tax cap must not be tied to strengthened rent regulations, Assembly Dems must nail him hard, fast, and often as a real estate industry shill who is happy to keep taxes low on millionaires and cut taxes for suburbanites but actively works against apartment dwellers in New York City.

And if I were the unions, I would go up with ads bashing Cuomo over the rent regulations sell-out in NYC.

Cuomo has already declared the unions Public Enemy #1.

They may as well dispense with the early term niceties and start working to lower his approval ratings now.

One way to do that is to expose him as corporate shill every time he screws working and middle class people for his rich Wall Street, corporate and real estate criminal friends.

This issue seems tailor made for that.