Chris Christie Could Care Less About The Mess He's Made Of Public Transportation In New Jersey

Hey, America, vote for Chris Christie so you can have this problem too:

Facing growing anger from commuters over systemic and lengthy delays on New Jersey Transit trains, Gov. Chris Christie refused to answer a question on Thursday about the state’s rail service before he left for a campaign trip to Iowa.

Asked by a New York Times reporter whether he cared about New Jersey Transit riders, Mr. Christie did not reply or acknowledge the question. 

Electrical problems under the Hudson River have caused three days of delays for commuters this week, raising fresh questions about the region’s languishing infrastructure and Mr. Christie’s move to abort plans for a new rail tunnel under the river. Critics have accused Mr. Christie of abandoning the tunnel partly to solve the state’s budget woes and to earn more credibility with fiscal conservatives as he prepared for a presidential run.

Mr. Christie, along with state and local officials, spoke at a small gathering in front of the Spring Lake Fire Company No. 1 in Spring Lake, N.J., to announce a grant toward flood and storm resilience efforts in the area.

As soon as the governor closed the event by thanking everyone for coming, he headed toward the firehouse while the audience applauded. Once the applause quieted down he was asked by a reporter, “Do you care about New Jersey Transit riders?” The governor did not respond or turn to see where the question had come from as he continued walking into the firehouse.

For a campaign that is based on Mr. Christie’s penchant for candor, his silence on the issue is somewhat contradictory.

So much for the "Tell It Like It Is" tour.

And here's the clincher:

After three days of delays on NJ Transit, Monday - Wednesday, there are delays again this morning:

After a one-day reprieve, New Jersey Transit train riders are dealing with delays again this morning.

Trains into and out of New York Penn Station are running 30 minute behind schedule as of 7:20 a.m. due to power problems, NJ Transit said on its website and via Twitter.

Rail passes will be honored on NJ Transit and private buses as well as on PATH trains.

"We have a problem again with the overhead power system in the NY terminal area," said Craig Schulz, an Amtrak spokesman. "We"re restricted to operating three trains at a time through the Hudson River Tunnel, which will mean some delays (up to about 30 minutes) for Amtrak and NJT customers."

The overhead wire system on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor through New Jersey and into New York is about 80-years old. The cash starved railroad doesn't have the funds to replace aging wires and signals.

"Our engineering folks are working to isolate and rectify the problem as we speak," Schulz said.

Christie of course killed the ARC tunnel project when he became governor:

In 2009, Chris Christie’s predecessor broke ground on a fully funded, $8.7-billion project that would have created a new tunnel under the Hudson River to connect the commuter-rich suburbs of northern New Jersey with job-rich midtown Manhattan.

There were strong arguments in favor of the tunnel's necessity. The two existing rail tubes connecting north Jersey to Midtown were nearing capacity—they comprise the most serious bottleneck on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. The corridor provides 260 million trips a year, and that number is growing.

"The importance of the connection to New York City to the state of New Jersey is almost impossible to overstate," said Tom Wright, executive director of the Regional Plan Association. "Literally the most important industry for the state of New Jersey is commuting to New York City."

But Christie, in an early assertion of his intention to redefine the relationship between New Jersey and New York, argued that the project was too risky and cancelled it, and redirected much of its funding to road repairs within his own state.

New York senator Chuck Schumer—who had worked to line up federal funding for the project which the region was now going to lose—called Christie's decision "one of the worst decisions that any governmental leader has made in the 20th century, or the 21st century."

If Amtrak’s century-old tunnels were decrepit and nearing capacity then, they’re in worse shape now.

Indeed they are.

As New Jersey residents trying to get to New York City all this week have discovered.

Want this kind of "truth-telling" for yourself, America?

Vote for Chris Christie for president.

Pearson Sells Financial Times

Pearson's having an eventful summer so far, getting passed over for testing contracts, selling newspapers, that sort of thing:

Japanese media group Nikkei has agreed to buy the Financial Times from Britain's Pearson (PSON.L) for $1.3 billion, putting one of the world's premier business newspapers in the hands of a company influential at home but little known outside Japan.

The deal, struck after Nikkei beat Germany's Axel Springer (SPRGn.DE) to the prize, marks the biggest acquisition by a Japanese media organization and is a coup for the employee-owned firm which lends its name to the main Japanese stock market index.

In the Financial Times it has acquired an authoritative global newspaper that commands strong loyalty from its readers and has coped better than others with the shift to online publishing. It was one of the first newspapers to successfully charge for access to its website.

...


Reporters at the paper told Reuters there was some apprehension, as they knew very little about their new owner, but there was also relief they had not been bought by Bloomberg - another potential buyer - which could have resulted in duplication of staff roles and more potential job cuts.

Chief Executive John Fallon told reporters he believed that like Pearson, the new owner had a commitment to the "fairness and accuracy of its reporting, and to the integrity and independence of its journalism".

Pearson still has 50% of The Economist and 47% of Penguin Random House.

Here's their public strategy around the sale:

Pearson will now be 100% focused on our global education strategy. The world of education is changing profoundly and we see huge opportunity to grow our business through increasing access to high quality education globally.

Interesting that they see this "huge opportunity" to grow the business as the anger and hostility many parents and educators feel toward Pearson has been growing to a crescendo.

NYSED Commissioner Elia Should Have Been "Intimately Involved" After Students Died During Her Tenure In Hillsborough

Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY reporting on NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia's "I'm Not Listening" tour:

Often referring to her own experience as a 45-year teacher and administrator, New York’s new education commissioner delivered a simultaneously supportive and tough message to district leaders and parents from some of New York’s worst schools on Wednesday: Fix the schools, or the state will step in and do it.

...

“One of the things that we can’t do is ignore the situation,” Elia said during a speech at the conference Wednesday evening. “We can’t go any longer—and I won't go any longer—and ignore the situation in New York, where we have persistently struggling schools or struggling schools without making the kinds of necessary changes that are allowed under this legislation.”

...


“I am going to be intimately involved in saying, I believe schools and districts are legitimately working on making these necessary changes,” she said. “But in the converse, if I don’t see that, I will be intimately involved in your school districts. Because we can’t allow students to move forward without the supports they need for success.”

This tough talk stuff is meant to make her come across as competent and in charge, it's meant to scare local districts into going to the max with what the receivership law allows, it's meant to let districts know that an activist commissioner is in Albany.

Alas, if only MaryEllen Elia had been so competent, in charge and activist when children died under her watch in the Hillsborough school district and Elia did nothing to fix the problems except try and hide them.

As such, I'm going to run a previous post from May 28 about Elia's complicity in and cover-up of the deaths of three children in the Hillsborough school district and ask our intrepid new NYSED Commissioner why she wasn't "intimately involved" in fixing the problems that led to the first student's death so that subsequent students didn't have to die too:

Complicity And Cover-Up: MaryEllen Elia's Failure Of Leadership In The Deaths Of Hillsborough Students

The tragic stories of Isabella Herrera, a 7 year old who died in 2012 while on a Hillsborough school bus, and Keith Logan Coty, a 6 year old who died of a brain hemorrhage in 2014 after getting sick at his school, suggest the kind of leadership we'll get from new NYSED commissioner MaryEllen Elia.

Then Hillsborough superintendent, Elia never took responsibility for the failure of district personnel to call 911 in a timely manner when Isabellea Herrera was found unresponsive on a Hillsborough school bus.

In fact, Elia did all she could to deflect responsibility from herself and the district and cover-up district complicity in the child's death because of an outdated policy that had school bus drivers call dispatchers instead of 911 in an emergency.

As Joe Henderson of the Tampa Tribune wrote, if not for a lawsuit from the Herrera family, the circumstances of the girl's death - a direct consequence of school district policy continued under Elia - would not have come to light:

For all the community outrage over circumstances that contributed to the death of 7-year-old special-needs student Isabella Herrera, consider this: If her parents hadn't filed a federal lawsuit over the way her case was handled, the public still wouldn't know there was ever a problem.

There wouldn't be a task force to study ongoing problems with how issues with special-needs students are addressed.

School bus drivers would continue to follow the 21-year-old policy of calling dispatchers instead of 911 in an emergency such as the one that led to Isabella's death.

Six of seven members of the Hillsborough County School Board would still be in the dark about what happened that January day on the bus taking Isabella home from classes.

Life would go on just always. Except, of course, for Isabella and her family.

She had a neuromuscular disease that made her neck muscles weak. She was supposed to have her head back as she sat in her wheelchair, but she tilted forward and it blocked her airway. When it was discovered, the driver called dispatch and the aide on board called Isabella's mother.

By the time Lisa Herrera arrived and dialed 911 herself, her daughter was blue and unresponsive. She was pronounced dead the next day.

But Superintendent MaryEllen Elia didn't make the news public. She relied on a sheriff's office investigation that she said found no criminal wrongdoing, and appeared to let it go at that. During an interview last week, I asked why she didn't release the news. She fell back on the sheriff's report.

If you're the parent of a special-needs student, though, you would have liked to know there was a problem. I should say, is a problem. There have been three other issues with special-needs kids just this year, including the recent death of a student with Down syndrome who wandered away unnoticed and drowned.

The Herrera family filed its lawsuit a few days after that — about nine months after Isabella died. Now we have a task force, and a policy change allowing bus drivers to call 911 if the situation warrants. As school board Vice Chairwoman April Griffin told The Tampa Tribune though, "It goes way, way deeper than that. But I think it's a start."

This would be a better start: Expand the task force to probe the circumstances of why it took a lawsuit to bring this to a head. This isn't a witch hunt, but there has to be accountability.

What happened in the aftermath of this tragedy was at best a case of bureaucratic bungling.

When a child dies, a leader doesn't fall back on official reports and policy excuses. A leader gets to the bottom of things and then lets everyone know what went wrong so it doesn't happen again. A leader asks uncomfortable questions about the culture in a school system that values policy and procedure over good judgment and common sense.

That didn't happen here. And if not for a lawsuit, no one would have known.

Two years later, another child died after Hillsborough school staff failed to call 911 in a timely manner:

TAMPA — Keith Logan Coty played baseball, soccer and football. He was a principal's honor roll student in the first grade at Seminole Heights Elementary School, his mother said.

He'd had a heart murmur, but the doctor had cleared him, his mother said.

He died a year ago at age 6 of a brain hemorrhage, and a lawsuit filed Friday blames staff at his school for failing to call for help quickly enough. The lapse is especially unfathomable, lawyers say, as the issue of timely 911 calls was cited in another high-profile student death in a Hillsborough public school.

"How many kids under the care of this school district must die before the district gets it right?" lawyer Steven Maher asked, announcing the federal suit in a news conference Friday.

Exactly a year ago — Jan. 17, 2014 — Keith began feeling sick after lunch, the suit says. He went back to his classroom about 12:24 p.m., complaining to his teacher about a severe headache. She told him to lie down. He did. Then he started vomiting.

About 12:51, the teacher called Keith's mother, Kaycee Teets. There was no sense of urgency in the voice mail message she left, which Maher played at the news conference. It simply asked Teets to pick up her son because he was throwing up.

Before Teets could arrive, another school employee entered the room and found Keith lying on his side, making a gurgling sound with foam streaming from his nose. "His lips were blue," the suit said. The school nurse was summoned. Although Keith was unresponsive, the suit alleges the nurse did not perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation; nor did she use the defibrillator at the school.

About 12:58 p.m., a worker in the front office called 911. The information given to the 911 operator was confusing, the suit alleges. At one point the caller said Keith was breathing. His mother insists he was not.

When an emergency vehicle arrived at 1:03 p.m., Keith was "in the corner, visibly blue, not breathing, and unresponsive." Paramedics were able to resuscitate the child, and they took him to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa.

A scan revealed he had a brain hemorrhage. But, according to the suit, no one told the doctors about his headache, information Teets learned hours later when she spoke with Keith's teacher. Not suspecting a neurological problem, doctors focused on possible cardiac issues instead.

Keith "went without oxygen for at least 10 minutes as a result of the delay in commencing CPR," the suit alleges. He stayed on life support long enough for his organs to be taken for donation, and he was pronounced dead later in the day.

The suit, filed days before Superintendent MaryEllen Elia could face a School Board vote on terminating her contract, is reminiscent of a suit the same firm filed in 2012, also involving a child alleged to have died after emergency treatment was delayed.

Isabella Herrera suffered a neuromuscular disability and was on a school bus when she stopped breathing. No one called 911 until Isabella's mother arrived. The school district ultimately settled that lawsuit for $800,000.

The Herrera suit was filed in federal court, alleging a civil rights violation; rather than a negligence suit in state court, where the award would have been limited under sovereign immunity. Maher was trying to prove a districtwide lack of training and care so severe, it amounted to a level of indifference toward disabled students that qualified as discrimination.

This time, Maher said, the 911 policy and procedures amount to discrimination toward all of Hillsborough's 200,000 students.

The district argued in the 2012 suit that there was no pattern of indifference. And, after the drowning death of a second special-needs child that same year, Hillsborough revamped its training of staff, particularly those who care for disabled children.

But 911 calls have remained a source of confusion. While Elia quickly stated there is no prohibition against calling 911, administrators sometimes advise staff to let the front office make the calls. Phone service is not always reliable in the classrooms, they say, and it's easier for emergency workers to find the office than a particular classroom.

Maher and Teets said that makes no sense to them.

"I would call 911. There would be no question," Teets said. "Any person would do that. I walked into a classroom and found my child, blue on the ground."

Stephen Hegarty, the district's spokesman, said, "I cannot comment on pending litigation."

Maher said his firm is asking for monetary damages, but did not specify the amount.

Where are the great leadership qualities Elia supposedly has in the aftermath of these tragedies involving Hillsborough students?

If one student dies as a result of the failure of staff to call 911 in a timely manner, wouldn't you think a "great leader" would put together an effective protocol so that such a tragedy wouldn't happen a second time?

Elia instead did her best to cover up the circumstances surrounding Isabella Herrera's death - something that was noted when Elia was feted with a commendation by the Tampa Bay City Council after she was fired as Hillsborough superintendent.

Mary Mulhern, a council member who voted against the commendation for Elia, told the Tampa Tribune:

"MaryEllen Elia was fired by her employers — by her boss, the School Board," she said. "I can't think of another case where someone gets lauded and celebrated after they've been fired from a job that is a public responsibility. … When you are responsible for the lives of children, I think one strike is too many."

Elaborating, Mulhern cited the deaths of three students:

• 7-year-old disabled student Isabella Herrera, who died in January 2012 after suffering respiratory failure aboard a school bus. A bus video show that the driver and an aide did not call 911, but used a radio to try to reach their supervisor, as was protocol, then called Herrera's mother, who arrived and called 911. The School Board, most of whose members were unaware of the death until the girl's parents sued, agreed to pay $800,000 last year to settle a federal lawsuit.

• 11-year-old Jennifer Caballero, who had Down syndrome and drowned in a pond behind Rodgers Middle School after wandering away from a crowded gym class in October 2012. The school district agreed to pay a negotiated settlement estimated at more than $500,000. Investigations led to three firings and several resignations at the school. The district also took steps after the deaths to improve safety for special-needs students on buses and in school.

• 6-year-old Keith Logan Coty, who died a day after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage in January 2014 at Seminole Heights Elementary School. In a lawsuit, his parents accuse the school district of being indifferent to student safety and of discouraging staffers from calling 911 in emergencies. The district denies the allegations.

"If somebody dies, it goes to the top," Mulhern said. In the Herrera case, she said, "her employers didn't know this happened for nine months. … For me, that's enough. That's three strikes."

Mulhern said she didn't "disagree that (Elia has) done very good work over 10 years," but the concerns about student safety were overriding for her.

"The powers that be in Tampa and Hillsborough County just circled the wagons around this powerful person," who, Mulhern noted, had the authority to give out contracts. 

Say what you will about former NYSED commissioner John King's flaws as a leader - covering up district complicity in the death of a student and a failure to fix emergency protocol for 911 calls involving students weren't on the list.

The more you learn about MaryEllen Elia and her "leadership," the more you see the big mistake the Board of Regents made by hiring her as NYSED commissioner.

Also, the more you learn about Elia as a person, the more you see how appropriate her nickname - MaryEllen EVILia - is.

MaryEllen Elia should have been "intimately involved" in fixing the 911 protocol after the Herrera death.

Alas, she covered up the death instead, keeping the news from six of the seven school board members, and tried to evade responsibility for the matter by relying on the sheriff's report that there was no criminal wrongdoing in the case.

Elia didn't change the protocols for how Hillsborough staff took care of the safety of special needs students until after the death of a second child, Jennifer Caballero, in the wading pool.

It took the death of a third child, Keith Logan Coty, before she finally addressed the 911 protocols.

Considering her failure of leadership and humanity in the deaths of these three children while she was superintendent of Hillsborough, how dare MaryEllen Elia lecture anybody about anything?

There were plenty of opportunities for her to be "intimately involved" in changing the way Hillsborough staff handled safety issues for special needs students or 911 protocols and Elia did nothing but hide the district's complicity in these deaths and try and evade responsibility for herself.

Finally, how dare the Board of Regents hire somebody with this kind of track record on safety issues for children under her care - not just the incompetence and bungling of the safety issues but the willful covering-up of district complicity afterwards?

New York's Rogue's Gallery Of Criminal Politicians

A commenter at Capitol Confidential runs down the Rogue's Gallery of criminal politicians we've had (or currently have) running our state:

For those keeping score of the Rogue’s Gallery:
Pedro Espada – arrested, found guilty, serving 5 years
Malcolm Smith – arrested, found guilty, serving 7 years
Tom Libous – arrested, found guilty, sentence pending
John Sampson – arrested, on trial
Sheldon Silver – arrested, trial pending
Dean Skelos – arrested, trial pending
Andrew Cuomo – pending
“New York is Open For Business”

The Samspon jury is in the fourth day of deliberations in Sampson's trial.

Quite a Rogue's Gallery in New York.

Certainly looks like Bharara's working his way up the depth chart, doesn't it?

NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia Says Money Not The Issue For Struggling Schools

NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia continued her "I'm Not Listening To You" tour today, showing some "tough love" for administrators and officials of struggling schools: 

New state Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia met with school adminstrators from around the state Wednesday who had gathered to discuss the new and controversial receivership program that raises the possibility that some of the state’s lowest-performing schools could end up being taken out of local district control and turned over to groups like non-profits or charter operators.

Her remarks to the at-times skeptical local officials were part pep talk and part tough love.

...

Responding to the oft-voiced complaint that the state’s poor performing schools need more money, she said that she didn’t devise the funding formulas and that school improvement is about more than dollars and cents.

“Money is not the whole deal here,” she said, adding that schools need to look at, tap and coordinate all of the resources in their community including volunteer groups and others not formally part of the education system.

“There have been millions of dollars put into these schools and they are still on that list,” she said of the lowest performing schools, which are dubbed ”struggling” or “persistently struggling.”

Elia may not have devised the funding formulas for school districts but that doesn't mean they're not a huge problem.

Take this 2010 study by Rutgers about school funding in New York:

New York State ranks near the bottom of the country in how fairly it funds its schools, asserts a new Rutgers University report released Tuesday.

Only four other states have a bigger gap between how much money they send to their poorest schools compared with their wealthiest ones, researchers at Rutgers and the Education Law Center in New Jersey found.

"It really gives us pause," said Geri Palast, head of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the group that filed a successful lawsuit in the 1990s to force the state to fund poor schools more equitably.
New York spends more on education overall than most other states, but researchers call its funding methods "regressive."

Wealthy districts rely on high property taxes to fund their schools - a luxury many poor districts do not have.

As a result, in 2008, a New York school district with no poor kids received about $17,000 per student in local and state aid, while one with at least 30% of the students living in poverty got about $14,000 per student.

 Or this more recent report from January 2015:

ALBANY — In the opening salvo of what promises to be a heated battle this year over education reform, a new report says funding inequities between poor and rich school districts across the state has reached record levels under Gov. Cuomo - and has soared 43% in New York City.

Overall, schools in poorer districts spent $8,733 per pupil less in 2012 than those from wealthier ones, an inequity that grew by nearly 9% from before Cuomo took office in 2011, according to the study by a coalition of education advocacy groups opposing many of the reforms pushed by Cuomo.

While the 100 wealthiest districts spent on average more than $28,000 in state and local funding per kid in 2012, the 100 poorest districts in the state spent closer to $20,000 per student, the report found.

The report, obtained by the Daily News, is set to be released Monday. The coalition includes the Alliance for Quality Education, which is backed by the powerful teachers unions, the Public Policy and Education Fund of New York, Opportunity Action, and National Opportunity to Learn.

...


The inequity gaps were made worse by nearly $400 per pupil, the report says, after Cuomo won a 2% cap on local property tax increases that made it more difficult for needy districts to raise needed money, the report says.

...

The inequality has made it tougher to attack poor education results in high-need districts, where graduation rates dramatically lag behind those in richer districts, the report says.

But MaryEllen Elia says money isn't the issue with struggling schools.

You know, all the problems can be solved with a little tough love, some volunteers from the community and the firing of entire school staffs.

Hey, NYSUT, how's that collaboration and consensus thing going with MaryEllen Elia?

Preet Bharara Gets Felony Conviction On Second Ranking Republican In The State Senate

Coming a day after US Attorney Preet Bharara added two more counts to the indictment against former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (making it a total eight counts) comes this news for Deputy Majority Leader Tom Libous:

Sen. Thomas Libous, the state Senate’s second-ranking Republican and a Southern Tier political institution for more than two decades, was convicted Wednesday of lying to the FBI, a felony that will force his removal from office.

A jury found Libous, 62, guilty of lying to federal investigators during a 2010 interview at his State Capitol office, where he was quizzed about an alleged scheme to use his influence to get his son at the politically connected Westchester County law firm of Santangelo Randazzo & Mangone.

The verdict was announced Wednesday in White Plains federal court.

“Today, a jury unanimously found that Tom Libous, the second highest ranking New York Senator, told lie after lie to hide the truth from federal agents investigating corruption in Albany,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. “Libous’s lies have been exposed, his crime has been proven, and Albany will be the better for it.”

If Skelos was feeling squeezed by the added two criminal counts, better bet he's feeling even more squeezed now that Bharara got a conviction on Libous.

Albany Project thinks the added two counts make it even more likely that Skelos eventually agrees to a plea deal with Bharara and tell what he knows about a certain someone above him on the depth chart.

The Libous conviction increases the pressure on Skelos even more because it means if Skelos goes to trial, he's likely to be convicted - the Skelos charges seem a lot more solid than the one against Libous (and yet Bharara got the conviction.)
 
But the criminal justice fallout to the conviction is for the near future.

There is some immediate political fallout right now because Libous has been expelled from the state Senate:

His expulsion from the Legislature’s upper chamber leaves Republicans with 31 seats in the 63-seat chamber, one seat short of a majority. But Sen. Simcha Felder, D-Brooklyn, sits with the GOP, which maintains the party’s last grasp on power at the state level.

The traitors Dems in the Independent Democratic Conference are allied with the state Senate GOP too, so between the traitor Dems and Felder, the GOP should remain in control of the state Senate.

But you never know in Albany.

NYSUT Needs To Create No Show Jobs For The Deadbeat Sons Of New York's Political Leadership

Two stories about the leaders of our state government - one current, the other former - and their sons.

First, a story about the deputy majority leader in the state Senate, Tom Libous and his son, Matthew:

The only reason a Westchester law firm hired the son of the No. 2 man in the state Senate was because the politician was “an investment” who would “send them business,” federal prosecutors said in blistering closing arguments of the pol’s corruption trial Tuesday.

“Why would you hire anyone who got drunk at the holiday party and propositioned the senior partner’s wife?” assistant US attorney James McMahon asked the White Plains jury in the case of upstate Republican Sen. Tom Libous, who is charged with lying to FBI agents.

Libous’ son, Matthew, made a salary of $150,000 at the now-disbanded Santangelo Randazzo & Mangone — $60,000 more than senior attorneys at the firm — and leased a more expensive car on the company dime than his higher-ups.

“Why pay Matthew Libous so much? Because Thomas Libous demanded it. [And in exchange,] he would send them business. Anthony Mangone knew that Matthew Libous was an investment,” McMahon said, referring to a law firm partner.

More:

Libous could face up to five years behind bars if convicted of lying to FBI agents about getting his ne’er-do-well son a job with a Westchester law firm in exchange for favors.

Matthew, 37, has been disbarred and is set to head to prison for tax evasion.

The case against Tom Libous is similar to that brought against ex-state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, who resigned after he was indicted in a corruption scheme to peddle his influence for cash and work for his own son.

Which brings us to the former state Senate majority leader, Dean Skelos, and his son, Adam:

The spoiled-brat son of disgraced state Sen. Dean Skelos threatened to beat up his boss when he was asked why he didn’t show up for the no-show job his daddy scored for him, according to new court documents.

Adam Skelos said he’d “smash in” his boss’ head after he was asked why he didn’t turn up for more than an hour to the $78,000-a-year gig his dad won him at a medical-malpractice insurer, according to the rewritten indictment returned by a federal grand jury Tuesday at Manhattan federal court.

The eight-count superseding indictment against Skelos and his son tacks on two counts of corruption charges — extortion and soliciting bribes — to the six both already faced.

Adam, 33, got the cushy job at Long Island-based Physicians’ Reciprocal Insurers in 2013 after his dad pressured the company’s CEO, whom a source identified as Anthony Bonomo, to hand him the gig — even though he didn’t have a license to sell insurance.

“From the outset of his employment, Adam Skelos regularly failed to report for work,” the indictment reads.

A week after starting, his supervisor called him up for some face-time — because he hadn’t bothered to show up for more than an hour in four days.

“Shortly after that phone call, Adam Skelos called back [the supervisor] and threatened to ‘smash in’ [the supervisor’s] head,” documents state.

Adam ranted that his boss would “never amount to anything” and that guys like him “couldn’t shine his shoes,” according to the indictment.

The elder Skelos called up Bonomo the same day, demanding to know why his boy was being “harassed,” papers claim.

Bonomo explained Adam hadn’t been showing up and was boasting he was entitled to special treatment because “his father and the CEO had an arrangement,” the indictment reads.

But Bonomo kept Adam on his payroll, fearing the dad would retaliate against the company and he “could lose access” to the senator, the documents allege.

The sense of entitlement these politicians and their children display is breathtaking.

So is the corruption.

Want to know how to get your agenda pushed in Albany by state Senate Republicans?

It's not by giving the campaign arm of the state Senate GOP $7,000 the way NYSUT just did, that's for sure.

If you want access to the political leaders of this state, you need to show them the money - real money - you know, like the kind Matthew Libous got paid (i.e., $60,000 more a year than the senior lawyers at the law firm he got hired at, $150,000 a year in all, so that they would have access to his father.)

Perhaps NYSUT can create a special wing of the union just for no show jobs for the deadbeat sons of corrupt politicians?

Then we're talking real access to the political leadership of this state. 

Maybe then NYSUT will live up to its moniker in the press - the powerful state teachers union.

NYSUT Donates To State Senate Republicans

It's the political giving season:

Earlier this month records show the statewide teachers union donated $7,000 to the campaign arm of the same Senate Republicans.

....

In recent state elections, NYSUT's mission has been to flip the state Senate to Democrats. Last year, the 600,000-member organization went so far as to send out a controversial mailer charging that three Senate Republican candidates weren't protecting women from domestic violence. It drew bipartisan scorn.

Besides the $7,000 donation this year to the Senate Republican campaign arm, the union has contributed to a number of Senate GOP candidates.

NYSUT also has given $54,000 to the campaign arm of its Senate Democratic allies.
Carl Korn, a spokesman for NYSUT, said the GOP donations were to "ensure that our voices are heard in both conferences. Politics is politics and governing is governing, and it's important that teachers' voices are heard because they know best for students."

$7,000 donation to the Senate Republican campaign arm ensures "our voice" is heard in the Senate Republican conference?

Doubtful.

Dean Skelos Hit With More Criminal Charges

Excellent:

The 6-count indictment against ex-Senate Leader Dean Skelos just became an 8-count indictment. Grand jury returns superceding indictment.

— Jon Campbell (@JonCampbellGAN) July 21, 2015

Story now posted: Feds expand case against Skelos, add new charges alleging extortion of malpractice insurer http://t.co/RB3BTVje4X

— Yancey Roy (@YanceyRoy) July 21, 2015

Superseding indictment against @SenatorSkelos and son has details pressure on malpractice insurer:hire son, send biz to son's wife's co.

— Yancey Roy (@YanceyRoy) July 21, 2015

New @SenatorSkelos indictment cites 2015 budget provision that benefited insurer. @Newsday story on that provision http://t.co/BcC2VhshSF

— Yancey Roy (@YanceyRoy) July 21, 2015

And just in case you didn't think Dean Skelos' kid was a moron, there's this:

Oh boy! From the new Skelos indictment... pic.twitter.com/UPjf0KQfLx

— Jon Campbell (@JonCampbellGAN) July 21, 2015

Isn't it swell we live in the great State of New York where we are ruled by criminals like Dean Skelos?

Merryl Tisch Tries To Humanize Herself And Rebrand The State's Endless Testing Regime

Regents Chancellor Tisch told parents yesterday that “I would say that if I was the mother of a student with a certain type of disability, I would think twice before I allowed my child to sit through an exam that was incomprehensible to them.”

This statement comes after the federal government denied the state's request to exempt some high-needs students from taking the state tests.

I'm not sure why state officials, including Merryl Tisch, would think the feds would okay a request to "loosen testing requirements" in any way, even for some high-needs students, since the modus operandi of the Obama USDOE has been "More And Constant Testing For Everyone!" for the last seven years.

In any case, now that the feds have done what they were always going to do and force the state to test every student no matter the circumstance, Merryl Tisch is trying to show some sympathy for parents with high-needs children who are upset their children have to take state tests they are guaranteed to fail.

This comes after Tisch said the following about the opt-out movement back during the 2014-2015 school year:

It used to be easy to ignore the most vulnerable students. Without assessments, it was easy to ignore the achievement gap for African-American and Latino students. Without an objective measure of their progress, it was easy to deny special education students and English Language Learners the extra resources they need. Without state tests, it was easy for a struggling 4th grader in a wealthy district to get lost. Obviously we still need to do more for those students, but now is not the time to put blinders back on. 

Gee, what happened between March of 2015, when we absolutely needed to test students or it would be easy to deny special education students the services they need to now when Tisch says she would think twice before allowing a child "with a certain type of disability...to sit through an exam that was incomprehensible to them”?

We are still waiting to get official opt out numbers for the state tests but it is expected that more than 200,000 students opted out of taking the state math and ELA tests for 3rd-8th grade this year.

With Governor Cuomo imposing an even more draconian teacher evaluation system that makes a teacher's rating 50% of the state test scores, next year is expected to be an even more test-centric school year for both students and teachers.

Tisch knows already what the opt-out numbers were this year and I'm sure she's worried about what those numbers are going to look like next year when the movement is expected to grow again.

So while I applaud her saying she would think twice about having a child with a certain type of disability from sitting for the tests, I'm not seeing this as much more than Tisch trying to humanize herself (which is difficult, considering how she often acts like a cartoon stereotype of a wealthy, out-of-touch socialite) and rebrand the state's Endless Testing regime so that it's seen as less severe and cruel.

This is part of the larger rebranding effort of their education reform agenda the Board of Regents and NYSED are engaged in, bringing in a new NYSED commissioner (though she's already seeming a lot like the old one) and replacing the hated Pearson with another testing company for the state tests (though that one seems as problematic as Pearson too.)

Given the increasing opposition to the state's education reform agenda, Tisch and her merry men and women in reform in Albany are attempted a rebrand of the whole mess.

But there isn't real substantive change to the reform agenda as a whole coming - it's about perception alone, as in, how are parents perceiving the state's education policies.

This is what new NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia meant when she said she wanted to "repaint" the Common Core standards so that parents like them better.

This is why they replaced Pearson with Questar, the "fresh, innovative" testing company.

This is why Tisch now offers some soothing words to parents of special needs students.

Replacing Pearson and having the Regents Chancellor offer soothing words to parents of high needs students are definitely changes, but they don't affect the Endless Testing regime as a whole.

Whether parents of high-needs students opt their children out of the state tests or not next school year, their children's classroom experience will still be test-centric since so much is riding on the test scores for schools and teachers.

And that is the real damage that is done by the Endless Testing regime to all children - the tests and the test prep trump everything and suck all the air, life and creativity out of the classroom.

Jeb Bush Calls For Merit Pay For Federal Employees, Disruption For Federal Government

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush laid out a plan today to "disrupt" the federal government if he is elected president, saying that he will cut the federal workforce by 10% and institute merit pay for government workers:

In a speech on Monday in Florida, the Republican presidential candidate unveiled his plan for "disrupting" Washington by downsizing the federal government.

Bush's plan takes aim at the federal budget. He proposes cutting the number of federal employees by at least 10% and radically overhauling the budget process to require a balanced budget, a controversial prescription popular with the conservative base.

"It will not be my intention to preside over the establishment, but in every way I know to disrupt that establishment and make it accountable to the people," Bush said.

...

Bush says that he will institute a policy of hiring one employee for every three who leave when it comes to federal hiring, with the exception of national-security related jobs. Bush suggested that federal agencies shouldn't replace many workers who retire — according to the governor, 10% of the federal workforce will retire within the next five years, and "not everyone who leaves has to be replaced."

And then there's this:

• Merit pay. Bush claims too many mediocre federal employees are being paid the same as exemplary employees. Though he didn't delve too far into specifics on this point, the former Florida governor said that he'll make it easier to fire bad federal employees.

It seems both the rhetoric and policies of Jeb's education reform agenda will now be leveled at the federal government and federal workers too.

Can "turnarounds" for federal departments be far behind?

Maybe receivership for some federal departments, with goals to be hit or the whole thing gets turned over to a non-profit charter entity?

Oh, the ideas for bringing education reform ideas to Washington government are limitless.

How exciting! 

NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia Shows Contempt For Teachers, School Board

Sean Crowley at B-Lo-Ed Scene and James Eterno at ICEUFT blog have already covered the story of how new NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia's "I'm listening to you" tour has turned into a "I'm not listening to you" tour" as she met with the Buffalo school board to scapegoat teachers for the problems in "struggling" Buffalo public schools and declare she would fix the problems (i.e., close the schools and fire the teachers) if Buffalo didn't fix them first.

The one thing I want to get at here is the tone of contempt she had as she spoke with the Buffalo school board - here's the Buffalo News:

Some members on both sides of the usually bickering board attempted to explain the district’s past failures and plans for the future. She rejected each attempt.

The scenario that played out between the commissioner and the board members smacked of students sent to the principal’s office to explain their misbehavior. Elia’s tone became increasingly more direct as the meeting progressed.

Wearing a serious face with hands folded in front of her, Elia wasn’t buying excuses – from anyone on either side of the divided board.

At one point, board majority member Larry Quinn suggested the high schools on the receivership list were beyond repair and the district should focus its effort on elementary schools.

“Let’s be honest, you’re only looking at Buffalo,” Elia said, referring to possible solutions. “There are high schools in this nation that have been turned around. It’s going to be a huge sea change for this district and you’re the ones who are going to decide if you’re going to get there. You have a vote on a board to make the decision whether you’re going to do it.”

Quinn later suggested it could take a year to come up with plans for those schools.
“I can tell you, if you’re going to take a year to come up with a plan, you’re not going to have those schools any more,” she responded.

And when board member Sharon Belton-Cottman attempted to defend the district, Elia shared a similar exchange.

“I don’t want the impression to be given to you that this district cannot function,” Belton-Cottman said.

“For whatever reason,” Elia replied, “the Buffalo school system with the School Board has not gotten its act together at those schools.”

... 

“That someone’s going to come in here and wave a magic wand, and all of these kids who have severe problems will start doing well, that’s just not going to happen,” Buffalo Teachers Federation President Philip Rumore said.

Elia disagrees.

“It’s important for you to understand there will be consequences if you can’t move those schools forward,” she said. “It’s handing you a tool and giving you an option to use it. If you don’t use it, I will.”

I'm not here to defend the Buffalo school board or their track record overseeing Buffalo schools.

I am here to point out the contempt Elia showed for the school board as she, in the Buffalo News reporter's words, treated the school board members like misbehaving children.

The talk from the Board of Regents when Elia, who was fired from her previous gig for being a divisive leader who created a culture of fear in the workplace and refused to take responsibility for the deaths of several children under her leadership, was hired was how good she was at working with disparate parties to build consensus.

Considering how she got kicked out of her last job for doing the opposite, the consensus-building claim seemed absurd.

Today we get more evidence how absurd it is.

Elia plans to take it to teachers and schools, her way or the highway on dealing with problems, and if her tenure in Hillsborough is any indication, when problems arise, she will be quick to evade responsibility and blame others.

Given how toxic and poisoned the politics around public education are these days in New York, her "My way or the highway" strategy isn't going to play well in this state.

The sand is already sifting to the bottom of the time clock on her tenure here in New York.

Looks Like Cuomo's Working The Phone Again, Lashing Out At Enemies

State Senator Marc Panepinto publicly backed Mayor Bill de Blasio in his battle with Governor Andrew Cuomo earlier this month, saying “I have a great deal of respect for the governor, but he wants to rule the Democratic Party with an iron fist.”

Today the Daily News' Glenn Blain reports the following about Panepinto:

ALBANY — A state senator from Buffalo pressed state Workers Compensation Board officials to take action favored by his multi-million-dollar law firm, the Daily News has learned.

Sen. Marc Panepinto, a Democrat, lobbied Workers Compensation officials to abandon plans to alter — and in some instances reduce — the reimbursement rates paid to doctors and other medical service providers shortly after taking office in January.

Panepinto's opposition mirrored that of his law firm, Dolce Panepinto, which, according to its website, specializes in Workers Compensation cases and recovered more than $8.5 million for injured workers in just the first few months of 2015. The senator personally earned more than $1 million from his work as a partner in the firm in 2014, according to records.

The firm trumpeted Panepinto's efforts to roll back the proposed rate changes in its most recent quarterly report, boasting that the senator was part of a coalition that "banded together to successfully defeat this regulatory barrier to quality health care for injured workers."

Workers Compensation Board spokeswoman Rachel McEneny confirmed that Panepinto "discussed a variety of issues" with board executives during a Feb. 11 telephone call but declined to provide further details. She stressed that the board was still considering the rate changes.

Panepinto's response:

A spokeswoman for the senator defended Panepinto's efforts.

"Senator Panepinto received no compensation for his efforts fighting the ill-conceived Workers Compensation Board proposal and his law firm had no financial stake in stopping this reckless policy change," the spokeswoman said.

She said the proposed regulatory fee change was “a bad plan that would have harmed millions of hardworking New Yorkers and it would have created additional costs to taxpayers.”

The spokeswoman did not respond to requests for further information about Panepinto's activities or say whether he sought approval from the Legislative Ethics Commission.

And then there's this at the end of the article:

Insiders familiar with the Workers Compensation System suggested the changes, if implemented, would not drastically alter the financial recoveries earned by Panepinto's firm, but the firm's efforts likely endeared it to unions and doctors that refer cases.

"There's always something to be gained by doing something indirectly for the hand that feeds you," said one insider.

Panepinto, who pleaded guilty in 2001 to misdemeanor election fraud charges for collecting false signatures on nominating petitions, was elected to the Senate in November with heavy backing from labor unions, including the state's powerful teachers union.

Cuomo used the Daily News to dish dirt anonymously on de Blasio last month before de Blasio returned fire on Cuomo publicly.

It's not a stretch to think that Cuomo's using the Daily News again to strike out at enemies - including Panepinto, but not limited to him.

There's also a Ken Lovett Daily News expose on Eric Schneiderman today that reports the attorney general has "raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations over the past six months — through a loophole he has said should be closed."

Schneiderman, seen as a potential candidate for governor in 2018, is another enemy of Cuomo, having criticized the governor and the legislature for not closing the LLC loophole.

Lovet does report that $1.4 million of the $5.2 million raised in the last six months by Andrew Cuomo has come through the LLC loophole too.

But overall, the Lovett piece is aimed at Schneiderman, not at Cuomo.

And frankly, the story's kinda bullshit.

Scheiderman raised a combined $267,850 from more than 40 different limited-liability companies.

Seems like a lot until you put that into context.

Hell, last week alone Cuomo got eight checks amounting to $250,000 from four different LLC's with connections to the land development guy in the village of Kiryas Joel after Cuomo vetoed legislation that might have out the kibosh on Kiryas Joel's ability to annex 500+ acres of land next to the village.

Cuomo taking a quarter of a million from four LLC's with connections to the land development guy in Kiryas Joel just days after he helps Kiryas Joel with a veto - kinda puts the Scheiderman LLC donations into a bit of perspective, doesn't it?

How come Kiryas Joel/Cuomo story didn't make it into the Lovett column today?

Unless I missed it, I haven't seen the DN cover the Kiryas Joel/Cuomo $250K story at all.

The NY Post had it.

Two Daily News pieces attacking two Cuomo enemies today - Panepinto and Schneiderman - I dunno, seems odd, especially since Cuomo's used the Daily News in the recent past as a weapon of choice to lash out anonymously at enemies.

I'm no "insider" in the ways of Albany or anything and maybe I'm just being naive here, but my bullshit meter goes up when I see this sort of thing. 

Feels like Cuomo's working the phones again, using the press to plant stories and lash out at his enemies.

Cuomo Poisons Everything He Touches - Including Public Education

This LoHud editorial discussing how New York State will have the opportunity to rethink its test-obsessed education system if NCLB gets an expected overhaul points out one big impediment here in New York to doing just that:

If NCLB is finally left in the dust – just as New York’s participation in the Race to the Top program is expiring – will Albany take advantage of its newfound freedoms to rethink its testing programs? The clear answer is … maybe.

Newly arrived state Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia has said she will appoint task forces to review the Common Core standards, New York’s 3-to-8 tests that are now tied to Common Core, and how test results are used to evaluate teachers. Elia has a track record of supporting the standards-testing-evaluations approach to improving education, but seems keenly aware that many New Yorkers have little faith in our testing obsession. She’ll soon realize that a whole new group of parents are now irritated because of the recent Regents exam in algebra, which left even top students scratching their heads.

The state may have bought some time with its critics by dropping mega-corp Pearson for grade 3-8 test development. But Pearson’s replacement, Questar, will also get its marching orders from the Education Department.

Then there’s the Cuomo problem. Our governor is the driving force behind New York’s brutish teacher-evaluation system, which will increasingly rely on test scores to label teachers (even though we won’t use the same scores to evaluate students because the tests are unproven). Many classroom teachers and the parents who appreciate them will remain peeved until the system is changed. Elia will have to confront this problem pronto and figure out a way to circumvent Cuomo’s stubbornness, driven largely by his animus for teachers unions.

We hope that Congress will let states decide how to use test data for their own purposes. But it would be up to New York’s leaders to recognize what even those in Washington see: testing should not drive education policy. Many teachers will spend too much time next year trying to protect their jobs by preparing students for tests. This must not continue.

Indeed, Cuomo and his hedge fund backers are huge impediments to any positive change to public education in New York, though they certainly are both squarely behind damaging changes to it, like making test scores 50% of a teacher's evaluation.

Fred LeBrun, writing about Cuomo's unworkable SAFE Act and the ridiculous MOU that Cuomo and Senate Republicans agreed to earlier in the month that said the state would not enforce the unenforceable parts of the law, wrote this about Cuomo:

Cuomo has proved to be a politician with an uncanny knack for poisoning the well at every oasis he visits. Except those where hedge fund managers gather to squat.

That LeBrun statement certainly applies to public education, the quality of which Cuomo has made much worse since he became governor.

The system is test-obsessed, teachers are held accountable for test scores that don't count for their students, some teachers are evaluated based upon test scores in subjects they don't teach and/or of students they don't teach.

What does all this test obsession do for schools? 

As the LoHud editorial notes, it means teachers have to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to protect their jobs by preparing students for the state tests.

With the new receivership program shoved through by Cuomo in the last budget, so do schools.

All it takes is a couple of years of being deemed "persistently struggling" via the state's test score data to have NYSED swoop in and hand a school over to an "independent receiver" (i.e., charter operator.)

The public education system is fear-fueled, in large measure because Cuomo wants it that way - he wants to pay back his hedge fundie donors who started giving him suitcases full of cash before he was elected governor and have continued to do so ever since.

As with the SAFE Act, much of the "change" Cuomo has imposed was meant to become part of Cuomo's political record that he would use to run for president in the future - the governor who got gun control before anybody else after the Sandy Hook tragedy, the Dem governor who took it to the teachers unions and "busted" the public school monopoly.

Given Cuomo's plummeting poll numbers, it's doubtful he'll get the chance to run nationally for anything, but that hasn't stopped him from continuing to do damage with his policies.

As Fred LeBrun says, he poisons everything he touches.

Everything.

Cuomo's New York State Of Crime

A commenter on the Bill Mahoney Capital NY piece about Cuomo taking $250K from the guy in charge of land development in the Village of Kiryas Joel in return for vetoing a bill that passed the New York Legislature with wide bipartisan support in both the Assembly and the Senate that would have given Orange County some say in the annexation of some land next to Kiryas Joel:

Apologies to Billy Joel but;

"I'm in a New York State of Crime..."

As I posted last night, Cuomo's campaign got the $250K in eight checks from four different LLC's all linked to the same guy who's in charge of land development in Kiryas Joel and owns quite a bit of the land Kiryas Joel wants to annex into the village.

The checks came a few days after Cuomo vetoed legislation that would have allowed the county to review the controversial land annexation plans Kiryas Joel has for hundreds of acres adjacent to the village.

 

Here's how the Times-Record covered the story before it was revealed Cuomo's campaign was paid $250K from the land development guy in Kiryas Joel:

 

Cuomo, lobbied fiercely by both supporters and opponents of Kiryas Joel's potential expansion, waited until around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday - less than two hours before his deadline - to announce his veto. He said in his message that the measure would violate the state constitution by giving counties "control over local annexation petitions that would not impact a county's boundaries," an argument Kiryas Joel's attorneys also had made.

 

Skoufis, D-Woodbury, called Cuomo's reasoning "flat-out wrong" on Thursday, pointing out that the clause in the constitution about annexations specifically says that "the consent of the governing board of a county shall be required only where a boundary of the county is affected." He noted that his bill didn't involve the county's governing board - the Legislature - and didn't require consent, since county planners would only have made recommendations.

“Sadly, Governor Cuomo's veto message appears to be nothing more than fabricated reasoning to reach a predetermined outcome," he said in a statement. "It is extremely disappointing that the governor chose to ignore the voices of thousands of residents from every municipality in Orange County.”

"Fabricated reasoning to reach a predetermined outcome" - that's a statement that applies to much of Andrew Cuomo's record as governor of New York.

 

Here's how Kiryas Joel officials reacted to news of the veto:

 

Kiryas Joel officials applauded Cuomo on Thursday, contending the bills were intended to prevent Kiryas Joel's expansion and would have hindered other annexation efforts in New York.

“We appreciate that Governor Cuomo was able to see through the angry rhetoric being advanced by Assemblyman Skoufis and looked at these bills for what they really were, a thinly veiled attempt to stop the natural growth of the peaceful, family-oriented community of Kiryas Joel,” said Ari Felberman, the village's government relations coordinator.

That's right, Governor Cuomo was able to see through the angry rhetoric being advanced by Assemblyman Skoufis and understand that if he did the right thing and veto these bills, he would, you know, have God's light shine on him - as well as some cash.

Here's how Assemblyman Skoufis responded to news of the veto:

 

Skoufis lamented that Cuomo "decided to play politics with the Hudson Valley" by blocking the bills.

"This bipartisan legislation would have provided significantly increased scrutiny of the current Kiryas Joel-initiated bids as well as all future controversial annexation proposals throughout the state," he said.

Yes, but vetoing the bills would have provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to Governor Cuomo as well as potential future votes from the citizens of Kiryas Joel (some of whom apparently vote early and often, sometimes in both Orange County and Brooklyn.)

Andrew Cuomo is definitely in a New York State of Crime these days, what with the hedge fundie donations and fundraisers in return for the pro-charter and pro-education reform agenda, the Glenwood and REBNY cash in return for the pro-real estate industry agenda, the Hollywood donations in return for the movie and TV tax credit program and now the Kiryas Joel donations in return for the veto that will help them expand and make money on the deal (since the guy who donated to Cuomo owns a lot of the land in question.

Cuomo Takes $250,000 In Bribes In Return For Veto

I know, I know - seems like a hyperbolic headline, but read on:

A group of entities located in or tied to Kiryas Joel deposited $250,000 in Gov. Andrew Cuomo's campaign account on Monday and Tuesday, less than a week after the governor vetoed two bills spawned by the Kiryas Joel annexation controversy that leaders of that community strenuously opposed, according to the financial disclosure report Cuomo's campaign filed this week.

Cuomo's haul included eight $25,000 checks from four limited liability corporations that listed the same address in Brooklyn and that appear to be connected to Mayer Hirsch, a Kiryas Joel resident and former village trustee who oversees the land development arm of Kiryas Joel's main congregation. Three of the entities that made contributions listed Hirsch's home address in Kiryas Joel when they were incorporated in 2012 and 2013.

The remaining $50,000 came in a single check from a limited liability corporation that listed the home address in Kiryas Joel of Hirsch's son, Jacob.

The disclosure of the donations has further infuriated activists who supported the bills that Cuomo vetoed, one of which would have enabled Orange County planners to recommend approval or rejection of two pending proposals to annex 507 acres or 164 acres into Kiryas Joel from the Town of Monroe. Emily Convers, chairwoman of the United Monroe citizens group, called the sudden infusion of campaign cash an obvious payment for services rendered by the governor.


"For anyone to doubt for a second who Cuomo is working for and what motivated him to veto, look no further than this blatant purchase of an elected leader," Convers said on Friday. "When those opposed to an environmental oversight bill are screaming 'anti-Semitism' and paying off the governor, it's hard not to make that assumption. It's despicable." 

... 

Reached on his cell phone Friday afternoon, Mayer Hirsch said he would have to look into the contributions and couldn't discuss them until Monday. Vaad Hakiryah, the landholding entity he oversees, owns almost a third of the 285 undeveloped acres included in the larger annexation request.

Can't get more blatant quid pro quo than this - Cuomo vetoes legislation that Kiryas Joel residents want vetoed because it might curtail the village's expansion, then the fellow who oversees land development for the village sends Cuomo $250,000 via eight checks from four different LLC's.

If you're like me, you don't know much about Kiryas Joel - you can read more about the village here.

Let's just say that land acquisition is a big thing for the Village of Kiryas Joel and Cuomo did them a big favor when he killed legislation that might have kept the village from expanding.

Bill Mahoney from Capital NY reported on this first and you can read his story here.

There often aren't many comments on Capital NY stories, but this one got a bunch:

This can't possibly be true. If it were Cuomo would be a real crook......... he would have accepted a bribe..... it would not be ethical......... it would actually be criminal!!! How is that even possible??

...

Why isn't there an investigation into this? It's not coincidence that the Governor received money after his veto on what is probably the wrong reason or a reason the Governor thought wouldn't be noticed. It's illegal to buy votes.

...

 KJ should not get the annexation and Gov. Cuomo should be arrested if this is infact true.

...

A village with 93% Medicaid and welfare dependency able to buy and annex land from neighboring towns and our honorable Gov. gets 250K + for veto signature?

...

Corruption at its finest!

I'd say this is unbelievable except, having watched Cuomo closely for the last five years, I know it's absolutely not.

He took $250K in bribes from the Kiryas Joel land development guy in return for the veto that helps the Village of Kiryas Joel expand.

Preet, where are you?

Cuomo's Hedge Fund Manager Pal Donates $1 Million To Pro-Charter/Anti-Union Lobby Group

Nick Reisman at State of Politics blog:

Hedge fund managers Paul Singer and Daniel Loeb helped replenish the coffers of a pro-charter school independent expenditure committee, contributing $1 million each to the group, according to its recent Board of Elections filing.

The PAC, known as New Yorkers For A Balanced Albany, had virtually maxed out its funds after the 2014 election.

Loeb just held a fundraiser for Cuomo at his Hamptons estate - one that was protested by a few hundred labor and public schools activists.

A few billionaires like Loeb and Singer quite literally own the political system in this state.

Democracy in New York?

Nahh.

Plutocracy wherein the Wall Street bankers, real estate industry and hedge fund managers call all the shots.

What A Real Solution To "Failing Schools" Would Look Like

A commenter named Dutch left this at the Capitol Confidential piece about NYSED announcing 144 schools going into "receivership":

All urban school districts. All in poverty stricken communities. None of the problems are with the schools per se but with the communities which they serve. Solutions must be sought outside of the school districts. Intensive economic redevelopment in the neighborhoods. Massive infusion of community/social services to help struggling families. Mergers between city and suburban school districts. “Receivership” is nonsense. Changes within the schools won’t ameliorate the problems because schools can’t change the underlying social dysfunction.

Dutch is absolutely right, of course, but the receivership program isn't meant to fix any problems - it's meant to exacerbate them.

The ultimate goal of corporate education reform is the privatization of public education.

In order to get to that goal, education reformers look to destabilize the system as much as possible, create as much churn and burn as possible, in order to spread problems as far and wide as possible.

That's why they shoved through radical changes to the state's standards and state's testing regime before they rolled out any curriculum to go with those changes, that's why they shoved through a radical change to the teacher evaluation system at the same time they brought radical changes to the standards and the testing.

The goal was to create chaos, to take schools that had not been "failing" and suddenly declare them "failing" when the new rigorous test scores, rigged for high failure rates, came through on their promise.

The goal of the receivership is the same - spread chaos, privatize what they can, destroy everything else.

You can bet these receiver schools, once they're controlled by an independent entity, will get to cherrypick their students, just as the charter schools do now, so that the "receivership" program can be deemed a "success" and public schools can be branded "failing."

It's all rigged for a pre-determined outcome and that outcome has nothing to do with the public good and everything to do with private gain and power.

What "Master" Teacher Would Go Work In A "Struggling School"?

NYSED released a list of 144 schools around the state that have been placed into receivership, with 61 here in NYC:

The New York State Education Department announced on Thursday that 144 underperforming schools, nearly half of which are in New York City, will enter receivership, a new designation that puts pressure on the de Blasio administration to show improvement at the city’s most troubled schools, and to do so quickly.

The program was one of several education reforms hammered out during budget negotiations this spring. Under the deal, schools are placed into two categories, “struggling schools,” those in the bottom 5 percent of schools in the state for three years, based on measures like test scores and graduation rates, and “persistently struggling schools,” which have been in that bracket since 2006.

For the first years of receivership, the superintendent — or, in the case of New York City, Carmen Fariña, the schools chancellor — will be the receiver. As receivers, they will have the authority to make changes, like lengthening the school day or year and requiring teachers to reapply for their jobs.

Struggling schools will have two years to make “demonstrable” improvement in areas like graduation rates and attendance; persistently struggling schools will have one year to do so. If they do not, an outside receiver, like a nonprofit group, will be chosen by the district superintendent or chancellor to oversee the schools. That receiver must be approved by the state, which has set aside an additional $75 million for the schools.

The list of those schools is here.

There are an awful lot of Queens high schools on that list.

Also a lot of schools in Buffalo.

Here is initial thrust of the program while these schools remain in local receivership:

Under the receivership law, a school receiver is granted new authority to, among other things, develop a school intervention plan; convert schools to community schools providing wrap-around services; expand the school day or school year; and remove staff and/or require staff to reapply for their jobs in collaboration with a staffing committee.

But the ultimate goal is "independent receivership," i.e., an outside entity brought in by NYSED to take over these schools from the local district and convert them to charter schools.

That will happen for schools deemed "persistently struggling" after one year where they are deemed by the state of not improving.

Schools deemed "struggling" have two years before "independent receivership."

And just who are these independent receivers?

Independent receivers, who can be an individual, a not-for-profit organization, or another school district, have sole responsibility to manage and operate the school and have all of the enhanced authority of a school receiver.  Independent receivers are appointed for up to three school years and serve under contract with the Commissioner.
 
As with Persistently Struggling Schools, the independent receiver appointed by the district must be approved by the Commissioner, and the Commissioner will make the appointment if an acceptable receiver is not selected by the district.

NYSUT was busy praising new NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia last week, but her first big step this week is aimed at firing teachers and privatizing schools as allowed by Cuomo's "Schools Death Penalty Budget of 2015."

Harris Lirtzman left an astute comment on the efficacy of this reform program:

Every single one of these schools is in NYC, Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, Syracuse, Albany or Islip/Bellevue in Long Island. Jeez, that's really a surprise.

We all know that the only example where "receivership" supposedly does anything for struggling schools is the short-term and very limited improvement in the Lawrence, MA school district. As with every other element of the reformista program--which claims to prize "data," "accountability," "evidence" and "research" above all else--none of that really matters when the reformistas just want to do something.

Beyond that, where are all the magical teachers going to come from to staff these schools when their current rosters get dumped into the ATR in New York City and straight fired everywhere else? Will the State give the "receivers" special wands and hocus-pocus powers to make magical teachers appear from thin air? What "master" teacher anywhere would transfer to any of these schools when the State accountability system will turn a "master" teacher into a "developing" teacher in one year?

Indeed, what "master" teacher would go teach in one of these schools and end up "developing" or "ineffective" the next year under the state's punitive, test-centric teacher evaluation system?

It's, to continue with one of Andrew Cuomo's favorite analaogies for what should happen to "bad schools," the "death penalty" for a teacher's career, since two years of consecutive "ineffective" ratings can get you fired and three years of them will get you fired.

Cuomo's "Death Penalty Program" for struggling and persistently struggling schools is going to bring a lot of destabilization in the next couple of years before most of these schools are ultimately turned over to independent receivers and privatized.

And of course that was always the goal of Cuomo's reform plans - to "bust" the public school "monopoly," to destabilize public education and to privatize public schools.

NYSED Threatens To Close School That's Already Being Phased Out (UPDATED)

Classic NYSED:

SED puts Bronx's PS 64 on its list of "persistently struggling" schools. But DOE says the school is already being phased out. #coordination

— Eliza Shapiro (@elizashapiro) July 16, 2015

Ben Chapman nails it with this response:

not the kinda thing that inspires confidence in the state's plans for troubled NYC schools https://t.co/AVk1LbiIqz

— Ben Chapman (@NYDNBenChapman) July 16, 2015

Indeed it doesn't.

And yet, NYSED has been given an awful lot of power for a state entity that doesn't seem to know which way is up:

The state Education Department has just put out its list of failing, or what they call struggling and persistently struggling schools under a new program, thanks to legislation passed with the budget in the spring.

The program creates carrots and sticks and sets out the possibility that the poorest performers could in a year’s time end up under outside receivership, that is, they could be taken over by an independent entity, such as a college or even a charter school operator.

There are 144 struggling schools statewide including 20 that are ”persistently struggling.”

...

The stick includes some potentially harsh measures, although it’s unclear how they will play out. In persistently struggling schools, for example, a superintendent acting as the local or in district receiver could conceivably fire teachers and administrators regardless of tenure. The superintendent also can change curriculum and institute a longer school day and school year.

As for the carrot, a superintendent can increase pay for teachers and administrators. The law includes a $75 million pot of money to be divided up over the next two years to help with the improvement programs.

Most of these schools will get sticks, of course, that goes without saying.

The goal of education reform is to slowly but surely privatize the school system, fire the unionized teachers, and replace schools with non-union charters.

That's what Cuomo devised here with the budget legislation that allows for state receivership of so-called "failing" schools, but as is usual with the incompetents at NYSED, they screw stuff up and threaten to close a school that's already closing.

Nice work, MaryEllen.

Just a couple of days under your tenure at NYSED and you've already picked up from the previous incompetent in Albany.

UPDATE - 5:25 PM: Looks like the stick use is starting:

D.O.E. confirms they will NOT be able to re-hire staffs at all 62 struggling schools designated by state.

— Eliza Shapiro (@elizashapiro) July 16, 2015

SECOND UPDATE - JULY 17: 10:55 AM :

From the Capital NY Morning Education Email:

The announcement—some version of which was expected after a deal in the state budget to create a receivership program—means that the de Blasio administration has an extra layer of pressure to turn around the city's struggling schools quickly. Of the 55 schools identified by the state as ‘struggling,’ 44 are Renewal Schools, part of de Blasio's initiative to improve low-performing schools. All the ‘persistently struggling schools’ are Renewal Schools, except for one, P.S. 64 in the Bronx, which is already being phased out and will close by next year.” A spokesperson for the D.O.E. said Thursday that the department has the option of re-hiring staff at all 62 schools, but is still in talks about how that would work. Capital’s Eliza Shapiro [PRO]: http://capi.tl/1gE8sSm

Lots of uncertainty with this receivership plan - which is of course the point.

As I've written over and over, reformers want to destroy public education for fun and profit and the easiest way to get to that goal is to destabilize as much as possible.