Hi all...
Wow-- incredible-- frankly, I wasn't sure if we'd be able to do this-- but Team Tyner has pulled through!...
We've gathered 2350 signatures!...(Bill & Melinda McKnight counted these for several hours Sunday night; Fred Knapp, Ira Margulies, and David Gill confirmed yesterday too)...
There is NO way I could have done this myself-- this has truly been a team effort (we gathered signatures together from literally every corner of the newly drawn 19th Congressional District)-- thx to you all(!):
Burr Hubbell, Gloria Waslyn, Cameron Williams, Manna Jo Greene, Andi Weiss Bartczak, Irwin Sperber, Bruce Burns, Ellen Melnick, Michelle Richardson, Dan and Mitzi Terpening, Jay Wenk, Sue Holland, Liana Turner, Chris Knoeppel, Irene Miller, Carol Valentine, Gary Kenton and Laura Linder, Karen Whelan (Minervini), Marcia Slatkin and Dan Maciejak, Kerry Flood Cubas, Janet Couch, Marie Caruso, Linda Puiatti, Joanne Steele, Sheila Dvorak, Jessica Vecchione, Joan Horton, Diana Cline, Mickey Haggerty, Mae Parker-Harris, Ann Perry, Otia Lee, Bill McCabe, Judy Malstrom, Betty Olson, Linda Abbott, Barbara Upton, Eric Deyo, Ed Kenny, Matt Lessner, Nancy Swanson, Valerie Carlisle, Michele Riddell, Doug Smyth, Elaine Fernandez, Cynthia Owen Philip, Frances Sandiford, Irving Hall, Lyn Beken, Misty Miller, Bob Balcom, Doris Kelly, Rachel Collins Kelly, Martin Michaels, Pam Krimsky, Deb Szeredy, John Parete, Stew and Matt Verrilli, Jane Brien, Mike and Mindy Kennedy, Richard Krzcminski, Raina Whan, Andrew Sheppard, Duncan Christy, Susan Furey, music from Alexia Evans, Julia Nichols, Chris Davison, Paul McMahon, Mighty Xee, EC, Joey Eppard,Salted Bros (Ted Orr et. al.), Erayna Cranston, and Forrest Hackenbrock--with more help/inspiration/work from many from Occupy Poughkeepsie like Russell
Bimbo, Kyle Van Steenburgh, Brady Massey, Stephen Greiner, Jared Keasbey-- with special assistance from Fran and Fred Knapp, Ira Margulies, Vicky Perry, David Gill, many, many more to come-- on to June 26th primary; let's go!...
[looking forward to debating The Anointed One all over-- let us know if YOU can set up a local debate, folks!...(this is crucial-- I really and truly am convinced I can beat Schreibman if I'm allowed to debate him across the 19th c.d.; need your help!]
[note, too-- we got a copy of Schreibman's petition signatures-- seems there were
only about ten names or so from here in Dutchess County signed on-- good for us!]
[spoke with Mae Parker-Harris yesterday-- she wants to bring Ann Perry and Sharon, more back to Kingston for even more door-to-door next weekend!...(we did this Sun.)]
[note new info here (scroll down just a bit below)-- proposed schedule for rallies/press conferences for next ten weeks-- we CAN take this primary, folks-- but only if EACH and EVERY one of you steps up to the plate to be responsible for educating, organizing, and mobilizing YOUR community-- YOUR town, city, or village-- on the ten issues listed below; see below!...(note-- am looking for feedback/ideas!)]
Our campaign endorsers include Pete Seeger, Cornel West, Josh Fox, Jeff Cohen, Medea Benjamin, Dutchess County Democratic Elections Commissioner Fran Knapp, former Co. Leg. Bill McCabe, current Co. Leg.'s Jim Doxsey and Steve White, Woodstock Town Boardmember Jay Wenk, Rosendale Town Boardmember Manna Jo Greene, New Paltz Village Boardmember Ariana Basco (Working Families Party member), Troy Area Labor Council President Mike Keenan, PEF/DEC anti-fracking engineer Wayne Bayer, and 260+ others-- join us at www.PetitionOnline.com/Joel -- pass it along!...
Please let us know asap if you and/or someone you know might be able
to host a house party-- we need to raise a TON of cash asap to win
primary-- and go on to best Gibson in November!...
And-- send what you can now-- to Joel for Congress, 324 Browns Pond
Rd., Staatsburg, NY 12580...
[letters to editor valuable too-- thx much to Valerie Carlisle for
hers in Sat. PoJo; McKnights, Andi, more]
We're looking for folks in EACH of 100+ communities in 19th: step up,
be responsible for coordination...
Let us know if you're up to task of organizing, massing, and locking
down Dem votes for 6/26 primary!...
[Dutchess, Columbia, Greene, Rensselaer, Delaware, Otsego, Sullivan,
Ulster, Schoharie, Montgomery; Cong. district maps:
https://www.nyed.uscourts.gov/pub/docs/cv/324457/1.11.cv.5632.6729180.2.pdf]
Thanks again tons to you all for making this campaign a reality--
together we can get to the next step!..
250 brand-new lawn signs recently delivered-- let us know if you
could use a lawn sign, folks...
As Betty Olson told 100+ gathered at her home and in Rosendale
Sunday at 99% Spring trainings (with Linda Abbott and Barbara
Upton)...
WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE-- ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE: WE CAN DO THIS-- WE
MUST DO THIS!...
[pass it on]
Joel
845-444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
http://www.JoelforCongress.org (tell your friends-- PayPal link online here!)
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Joel (260+ on board; join us!)
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Ten weeks, ten issues to take back 19th c.d. from bipartisan Tweedledee/Tweedledum sell-out madness-- help us!...
[to me, the ten issues below encapsulate our winning populist, progressive campaign!]
[merely tentative schedule here for approval/fleshing out @ Team Tyner mtg. soon; looking for feedback-- changes?...additions?...subtractions?...let us know!]
[note, too-- I'm not suggesting that each event take place exactly on Monday, k?]
WEEK ONE: Mon. Apr. 23rd-- RALLY FOR SENIORS/HEALTH CARE FOR ALL-- Medicare for all; NO cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security
[PNHP.org; www.ThePetitionSite.com/takeaction/347/625/425/]
WEEK TWO: Mon. Apr. 30th-- RALLY FOR SMALL BUSINESS (bring back FDR's Glass-Steagall Act)
[www.PetitionOnline.com/FDRagain]
WEEK THREE: Mon. May 7th-- RALLY FOR JOBS/LABOR (repeal NAFTA; public works, living wage)
[AFLCIO.org]
WEEK FOUR: Mon. May 14th-- RALLY FOR GOVERNMENT OF, FOR, BY PEOPLE-- amend Constitution; corporations aren't people, CMCE, repeal NDAA (indefinite detention)
[MovetoAmend.org; FairElectionsNow.org
WEEK FIVE: Mon. May 21st-- RALLY FOR WOMEN-- stand up for reproductive justice
[PlannedParenthood.org]
WEEK SIX: Mon. May 28th-- RALLY TO BAN/CRIMINALIZE FRACKING-- solar/wind/geothermal now
[CriminalizeFracking.org; VoteSolar.org]
WEEK SEVEN: Mon. June 4th-- RALLY FOR FAMILY FARMERS-- stop Wall Street speculation
[FoodandWaterWatch.org/food/fair-farm/]
WEEK EIGHT: Mon. June 11th-- RALLY FOR PEACE (IRAN, AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ)-- stop the insanity
[FPIF.org, Peace-Action.org, VeteransforPeace.org]
WEEK NINE: Mon. June 18th-- RALLY FOR SCHOOLS/UNIVERSITIES-- fully fund our public schools; end college student debt, free college tuition
[ProjectonStudentDebt.org]
WEEK TEN: Mon. June 25th-- GOTV RALLY FOR REAL MAJORITY-- polls prove we're majority
[DutchessDemocracy.blogspot.com/2011/08/help-launch-real-majority-columbia.html]
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Don't forget folks-- say it with some authority-- WE ARE THE REAL
MAJORITY(!): [it's true; see below]
[what happens when too many in power in both parties ignore
facts/polls below?...disillusionment!]
Fact: "86% of Americans say Wall Street and its lobbyists have too
much influence in Washington in a January poll by Time magazine, and
77% of Americans say too much power is concentrated in the hands of a
few rich people and large corporations in a January poll by the Pew
Research Center.
[from "Corporate Rule Is Not Inevitable" by Sarah van Gelder (Jan. 20th):
http://www.YesMagazine.org/blogs/sarah-van-gelder/corporate-rule-is-not-inevitable
]
Fact: 81% of Americans support taxing millionaires/billionaires more:
solve federal budget woes.
[
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7333/what_americans_want_the_peoples_budget
]
Fact: 80% of Americans oppose Citizens United Supreme Court decision;
corporations aren't people.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2010/02/in-supreme-court-ruling-on-campaign-finance-the-public-dissents.html
; http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/node/75
Fact: 78% of Americans support protecting Medicare, Social Security,
and Medicaid from any cuts.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-shows-americans-oppose-entitlement-cuts-to-deal-with-debt-problem/2011/04/19/AFoiAH9D_story.html
Fact: 59% of Americans support expanding Medicare to cover us all--
to save $400 billion a year; in fact, "Americans prefer a
single-payer system of health care two-to-one over a privatized
system; single-payer is a model in which health care delivery would
remain largely private, but would be paid for by a single federal
health insurance fund (much like Medicare provides for seniors and
comparable to Canada's current system)"
[from Ralph Nader's new book-- "Getting Steamed to Overcome
Corporatism": http://www.csrl.org/gs/ ;
http://www.healthcare-now.org/another-poll-shows-majority-support-for-single-payer/
; PNHP.org]
Fact: 67% of Americans support $10/hour minimum wage to put money in
pockets of working class.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/06/americans-minimum-wage-poll_n_752921.html
Fact: 53% of Americans support full federal funding for Planned
Parenthood & reproductive justice.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/node/15708
Fact: More New Yorkers support protecting drinking water with
statewide ban on fracking than not.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/15/new-york-gas-drilling-rul_n_900011.html
Fact: 54% of Americans support full funding for the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency-- not cuts.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2011/02/16/harris-poll-epa-budget/ ]
Fact: 79% of New Yorkers support Clean Money Clean Elections-- real
campaign finance reform.
http://rochesterturning.com/2008/04/28/poll-says-3-of-4-new-yorkers-support-publicly-financed-elections/
Fact: 59% of Americans support our troops coming home from
Afghanistan/Iraq NOW without delay.
http://www.thinkprogress.org/2011/05/11/afghanistan-get-out-59-percent/
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Recall-- the Dutchess County Dem Committee just about split almost
exactly down the middle at recent convention vote, there are a TON of
committed Ulster County progressive Dem activists who have come out
of the woodwork over the past few weeks to step forward for this
campaign (many of whom I've known since the early 90's; that's how
long I've been kickin' around as a community activist in these
parts), along with progressive Dems from literally all over newly
drawn 19th Congressional District!...
And-- at end of recent Ulster County Dem Convention, Ulster County
Dem Chair Frank Cardinale informed everyone that my primary opponent
wouldn't necessarily be emulating or living up to the progressive
ideals of Maurice Hinchey...
Well-- that's fine with me-- because that's why I'm running for
Congress-- to preserve Maurice's winning, populist, progressive
legacy that has inspired so many of us for decades...
Maurice is living proof that a populist progressive with grass-roots
appeal can win elections repeatedly here in the Hudson
Valley/Catskills area to the state legislature and then Congress...
...the same thing I've proven over here on this side of the river
over the last decade-- winning five elections in a row to the
Dutchess County Legislature to represent Rhinebeck and Clinton-- even
though both of those communities have long had GOP town supervisors
there(!)...
Recall recent Tues. Poughkeepsie Journal: primary toss-up; Hinchey
not ready to endorse Schreibman:
"Hinchey is not taking sides in the Hudson Valley Democratic primary
battle between attorney Julian Schreibman of Ulster County and
Dutchess County Legislator Joel Tyner...'Whoever the (eventual)
candidate is, I intend to help them,' Hinchey said."
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20120403/NEWS01/304030016/Hinchey-Better-stronger-after-cancer
My connection to Maurice is deep and strong; I first met him in 1994
at his Washington, D.C. offices lobbying for universal healthcare
(single-payer: Medicare for all) with the late great Paul Miller,
Connie Holland, and Max Finestone; kudos to Art Richter (and his VT
daughter Deb!) for pickin' up the torch here locally; I've been there
along side Maurice in trenches fighting for single-payer for
decades...
[even Hudson Valley Area Labor Federation has long made it clear it
strongly supports single-payer:
http://www.pnhp.org/action/organizations-and-government-bodies-endorsing-hr-676-single-payer
]
Unlike The Anointed One, I have long made it 100% clear that I agree
with Maurice Hinchey on these six issues-- that we should save $400
billion a year by expanding Medicare to cover everyone, that we
should bring back FDR's Glass-Steagall Act to break up the big banks,
that our Constitution should be amended to make it clear corporations
aren't people (re: Citizens United/SuperPACs), that NAFTA, CAFTA, and
free trade agreements with Korea, Colombia, and Panama should never
have been passed, that the Fair Elections Now Act should be passed to
make real federal version of Clean Money Clean Elections campaign
reform, and End Excessive Oil Speculation Now should be passed...
But it's not just those six issues -- if you're just as upset as I am
that it's not just Republicans in Washington-- but also too many
Democrats-- that don't seem to be really speaking up against the rush
to war with Iran...aren't speaking up to criminalize
fracking...aren't speaking up against Wall Street (to break up big
banks, tax Wall Street speculation, and truly investigate those
behind destruction of our economy), aren't speaking up against
indefinite detention...aren't speaking up against bipartisan attack
on Medicare/Medicaid, aren't speaking up for a truly sizable public
works/infrastructure jobs program, aren't speaking up for Medicare
for all, aren't speaking up to amend our Constitution to make it
clear corporations aren't people, aren't speaking up Fair Elections
Now legislation (federal version of Clean Money Clean Elections
campaign finance reform), aren't speaking up for fair trade (to get
us out of job-killing NAFTA/GATT/WTO), aren't speaking up for our
troops to come home NOW from Afghanistan, aren't speaking out against
tar sands pipeline, aren't speaking up for our Constitutional
freedoms-- and aren't speaking up for Bradley Manning-- and aren't
speaking up for voting integrity to reject computerized voting
machines...(even Michael Moore reminded us all at Left Forum of this
issue)...
If you're just as upset as I am re: too much bipartisan sell-out on
all those-- help us, folks!...
Monday, April 16, 2012
Second Annual Tax Day Rally To Make Bank of America Pay Their Fair Share!...
Hi all...
Please let us know asap if you might be able to come out to join us tomorrow Tuesday (Apr. 17th) at 4 pm-- for our Second Annual Tax Day Rally to Make Bank of America Pay Their Fair Share!...
[thx to Rev. Tama Sis Kaya Bell for creating Facebook event here:
http://www.facebook.com/joel.tyner#!/events/403301039688759/ ]
Recall-- last Tax Day (Apr. 18, 2011) together with Ulster MoveOn's Linda Abbott and Barbara Upton, we mobilized 60 folks from all over the Hudson Valley to come out to our First Annual Rally to Make Bank of America Pay Their Fair Share; see: http://usuncut.org/actions/239 ; let's make Tues. bigger(!):
http://www.facebook.com/events/202668686424445/ ; Occupy folks-- let's go-- c'mon; all out Tuesday!...
[taxes are due Tues. Apr. 17th this year; for more on this see:
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/13/150549181/why-2012s-tax-day-falls-on-april-17 ]
Recall Matt Taibbi's "Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail" from last month in Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/bank-of-america-too-crooked-to-fail-20120314 ; also:
http://akamat.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/matt-taibbi-on-bank-of-america-occupy-wall-street/http://www.cpa-connecticut.com/blog/?p=5233
[BofA didn't pay any federal taxes last year; got $1 billion tax break-- after getting $45 billion bailout!]
Thanks again much to http://www.OccupyPoughkeepsie.org for inspiring us to move forward on this; many times last fall Occupy Poughkeepsie rallies and marches stopped in front of JPMorgan Chase on Main Street in Poughkeepsie; I still recall how Russell Bimbo, Kyle Van Steenburgh, and Brady Masse8y from Occupy Poughkeepsie also joined us for rallies organized by yours truly last year in front of Bank of America on Market St./Poughkeepsie-- let's ramp it up party peoples!...
[click on these two links for other recent coverage of our work on this issue:
http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2012/April/13/DCL_bank_forcl-13Apr12.html ;
http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2012/April/09/DC_bank_div-09Apr12.html ]
More inspiration-- great meeting just now here in Town of Clinton hosted by Betty Olson-- training for http://The99Spring.com -- this issue came up; this event was announced...so....COME OUT TUES.(!)...
[see: http://civic.moveon.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=128545&id ]
Hope to see y'all out there Tues.!...(and again-- pls let us know if you might be able to join us, k?)...
[pass it on]
Joel
845-444-0599
joeltyner@earthlink.net
http://www.JoelforCongress.org (tell your friends-- PayPal link online here!)
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Joel (260+ now on board online!)
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Two Reasons Why Dutchess County Should Divest from Bank of America:
[Dutchess County now still has a $50 million account with Bank of America (same with JPMC, W-Fargo)]
"Bank Excuses on Foreclosure Growing Stale" by Michael Powell (Nov. 14th)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/nyregion/patience-grows-thin-for-banks-foreclosure-excuses.html
"Eric Schneiderman Is A Big Thorn In Bank of America's Side" [Forbes Aug. 16th]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2011/08/16/eric-schneiderman-is-a-big-thorn-in-bank-of-americas-side/
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From http://www.alternet.org/authors/12015/ ...
Beyond Robo-Signing: 3 Other Ways Bank of America Is Screwing Americans
As outraged as Americans are about robo-signing (and they should be), the use of foreclosure mills doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of Bank of America's dastardly deeds.
By Lauren Kelley
March 30, 2012 |
Few institutions incite the kind of populist anger that Bank of America does, even as the Occupy movement stokes rage at Wall Street in general. And with good reason - in an industry that is known for being corrupt, immoral, and ungrateful leeches of taxpayer dollars, Bank of America stands out. The bank, it seems, is constantly making headlines for some new form of corruption or act of greed that screws consumers while padding its executives' pockets. And it gets away with it every time.
The bank was at the forefront of the dubious practice known as "robo-signing" - hiring third-party companies staffed by underqualified foreclosure "experts" to cut corners during the foreclosure process, processing thousands upon thousands of foreclosures a month and wreaking havoc on homeowners' lives.
But as outraged as Americans are about robo-signing (and they should be, especially since the big banks continued to use the practice long after they agreed to stop), the use of foreclosure mills doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of Bank of America's dastardly deeds. As Matt Taibbi writes in his devastating piece about Bank of America in this month's Rolling Stone:
[H]ere's how seriously fucked the financial markets are: Even the most vocal critics of Bank of America consider the mass, factory-style production of tens of thousands of fake legal documents per month not that big a deal. "Robo-signing is like focusing on Bernie Madoff's accountant," quips April Charney, a well-known foreclosure lawyer who has spent large chunks of the past two decades in battle with Bank of America.
Robo-signing is not the disease - it's a symptom of Bank of America's entire attitude toward the law.
Indeed, the bank is screwing Americans is so many ways that robo-signing, awful as it is, is but a drop in the bucket. Below are several examples (among many) of how Bank of America is hurting consumers while continuing to dole out plenty of dough in executive bonuses and compensation.
1. Siccing collections agencies on people who are not in debt
Thanks to Bank of America, we now know that there's something more maddening and nightmarish than being hounded by debt collectors: being hounded by debt collectors when you don't owe anything.
A la their infamous illegal foreclosure problem, big banks are in the practice hiring third-party companies to handle debt collection for them. That would be all fine and well if the banks took care to pass on accurate documentation about their customers. But they don't. American Banker reports this week on a woman named Karen Stevens, who's spent the past three years fighting off a collection agency that Bank of America hired to collect $1,900 in debt - debt that Stevens has long since paid off. Stevens was only able to put an end to the fiasco by hiring a lawyer and suing the collection agency.
Stevens' case appears to be an example of what happens when banks sell batches of accounts without sufficiently scrubbing them of errors and discrepancies ( see related story). Such oversights are drawing into collections quagmires an unknown number of consumers who owe nothing, or for whom debt records are incomplete or nonexistent. For banks, it's a problem that threatens to spark a legal or regulatory backlash or to do further damage to already tarnished reputations.
Aside from getting this work (messily) off their plates, the advantage for Bank of America in doing business this way is that they don't have to deal with their clients' lawsuits when they get screwed over. Blame it on the third-party guy!
2. Sneakily ratcheting up fees on the 99%
As I wrote earlier this month , Bank of America is one of the mega banks that's quietly ratcheting up fees, especially for its lower-income customers, to compensate for new regulations that were designed to protect those very individuals.
This is an especially ballsy move for Bank of America, since it was BofA's proposed $5 monthly debit card fee that incited so much consumer outrage last fall. And yet, mere months later, the bank has announced a fee "overhaul" that will result in customers paying up to $25 per month for a basic checking account.
Maddeningly, the bank is most focused on increasing fees for low-income consumers - Americans who may have trouble maintaining a minimum account balance or who do not have multiple bank services, such as a mortgage. In addition, these customers may soon have less banking opportunities in general, as Bank of America, among other big banks, plans to shift its resources to cater more to "up markets" that make the bank more money than less-wealthy communities.
3. Exploiting the unemployed to rake in fees
When South Carolina signed a deal with Bank of America to distribute unemployment benefits via prepaid debit cards, chances are the state was not actively trying to screw its unemployed citizens. But that is exactly what happened, because Bank of America took advantage of its contract with the state to exploit unemployed South Carolinians by charging many of them hefty fees to access their benefits.
Huffington Post's Janell Ross reported late last year that citizens who live in towns without Bank of America branches - and there are many such individuals in South Carolina - are forced to either drive to another town to access their benefits (something many cannot afford to do) or pay a fee for withdrawing money from a non-BofA ATM. One woman profiled in Ross' article, Shawna Busby, had to choose between making a 100-mile round trip drive to Columbia to access her benefits or pay up. Busby estimated that she had paid $350 in fees to withdraw the benefits that she was legally owed - money she desperately needs for her family since she is, of course, unemployed.
---
Of course, these are only a few of the ways Bank of America is screwing over the citizens whose taxpayers kept the bank afloat during the financial crisis the bank helped create. And it is only small consolation that BofA claims to be suffering financially these days, because, as Taibbi notes, the bank seems to have plenty of money to go around for bonuses and compensation:
Bank of America didn't pay a dime in federal taxes last year. Or the year before. In fact, they got a $1 billion refund last year. They claimed it was because they had pretax losses of $5.4 billion in 2010. They paid out $35 billion in bonuses and compensation that year. You do the math.
As for the $26 billion settlement that Bank of America and other big banks got slapped with? It let the banks off the hook for its robo-signing misadventures, and may not even be properly enforced by the government. Even if it is, it will be "woefully inadequate to address the wider fraud that went on in creating and pooling mortgages."
On that note, I leave you with three simple words: Move. Your. Money.
Lauren Kelley is an associate editor at AlterNet and a freelance writer and editor who has contributed to Change.org, The L Magazine and Time Out New York. She lives in Brooklyn. Follow her on Twitter here.
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[recall below as well]
Still pinchin' myself-- we actually won some bipartisan support (thx to activists below) Thurs. night at the Dutchess County Legislature's Budget, Finance, and Personnel Committee meeting-- for the resolution drafted by yours truly (co-sponsored by Conservative Co. Leg. Jim Doxsey)-- calling on the Dutchess County Finance Commissioner to re-evaluate the banks and financial institutions with which Dutchess County does business-- from GOP Co. Leg.'s Alan Surman (R-Dover) and John Forman (R-Beacon)!...
[view webcast of Thurs. night BFP Committee mtg. here: http://www.totalwebcasting.com/live/dutchess/ ]
Dutchess currently still has a $50 million account with Bank of America, another $50 million account with JPMorgan Chase, and another $50 million account with Wells Fargo now, unfortunately...
Note re: Borchert/GOP argument against this-- 'tis a false one-- see list of banks below county does business with-- and-- consider how Albany County moved a $90 million account from BofA to M & T!...
[resol.-- http://www.dutchessny.gov/CountyGov/Departments/Legislature/ResolutionsPDF/2012103.pdf ;
full agenda here: http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/Legislature/CLagenda.htm ]
Kudos to Community Voices Heard's Steve Meddaugh, Edgar Gomez, and Mae Parker-Harris, together with New York Communities for Change's Harold Miller-- for leading rallies/marches of dozens of their supporters in Poughkeepsie at Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase branches locally (I was able to help lead cheering inside BofA branch before having to run off to join 4:30 pm Environmental Committee mtg.); many attendees also spoke eloquently, articulately, and passionately during the beginning of the Budget, Finance, and Personnel Committee mtg. as well-- including Russell Bimbo and Joe of http://www.OccupyPoughkeepsie.org others there in support included Maya Acevedo Casilda, James Tremblay, Jared Keasbey, Ryan Simpson, Alexander Key, and many from the Meddaugh clan-- great inspirational work!...
[important-- call Steve M. at 337-7239 to help him launch new Move Your Money Dutchess effort(!)...(aimed at getting each/every one of our county's 22 municipalities to move their money, too;
see http://www.MoveYourMoneyProject.org national effort; businesses, organizations, churches as well]
Kudos in particular to New York Communities for Change's Harold Miller for his effectiveness and success on this issue already-- across the state, Albany County, the City of Binghamton, town of Ithaca and villages of Hempstead and Freeport have voted to divest from irresponsible banking institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. [see: http://www.nycommunities.org/taxonomy/term/2 ;
http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/print-edition/2011/06/10/albany-county-legislators-want-to.html ]
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From http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2012/April/13/DCL_bank_forcl-13Apr12.html ...
Dutchess lawmakers reject proposal to transfer funds from banks with high foreclosure rates
POUGHKEEPSIE - Despite the urging of several Dutchess County residents to pull millions of county dollars from large banks that give homeowners little slack in foreclosure proceedings, the legislature's Budget and Finance Committee did not move in that direction.
A vote on a resolution urging the county finance commissioner to consider changing banks deadlocked in a tie vote of six to six, meaning the measure died.
Legislation sponsor Joel Tyner, a Democrat, urged his colleagues to support the shift to smaller more local banks.
"A very small thing that we can do today is to say it is a privilege to do business with Dutchess County. You just can't be any old bank and shaft over homeowners and kill our communities and continue to get our business," Tyner said...
Residents who spoke, told lawmakers bank foreclosures are resulting in boarded up homes that are killing neighborhoods
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From http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2012/April/09/DC_bank_div-09Apr12.html (WAMC Mon.):
Resolution would have Dutchess divest from banks that foreclose
POUGHKEEPSIE - Two Dutchess County legislators are proposing the county close its accounts with three large banks because of their foreclosure practices.
Lawmakers Joel Tyner and James Doxsey would like the county to pull its $50 million accounts from each bank - Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase - and place the money in other financial institutions.
Tyner said those three banks are not giving delinquent mortgage holders much slack in their payments.
"There are literally hundreds of different homes you can find on the county clerk's website that are in the process of being foreclosed by those three banks and those are the three most notoriously irresponsible financial institutions in the country," he said.
Tyner said Albany County recently closed a $90 million account with Bank of America for similar reasons and similar divestitures have been undertaken in Freeport, Hempstead and Ithaca.
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Already here across the state, Albany County, the town of Ithaca and villages of Hempstead and Freeport have voted to divest from irresponsible banking institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. [see: http://www.nycommunities.org/taxonomy/term/2 ;
http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/print-edition/2011/06/10/albany-county-legislators-want-to.html ]
Recall as well-- the Northern Dutchess Alliance's Blueprint for Economic Development called for local financial institutions to be held more accountable for their commitment/investment in our communities (or lack thereof).
[see: http://www.northerndutchess.org/images/NDABlueprintWeb.pdf ]
Fact: According to our County Clerk Kendall's own website (searchable database there), there are literally hundreds of homes in process of foreclosure by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, or Wells Fargo; see:
http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/CountyClerk/12976.htm .
Also see:
"Watch Us Move Our Millions" by Rebecca Leisher (in Yes magazine)
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/9-strategies-to-end-corporate-rule/watch-us-move-our-millions
"Members of the Albany County Legislature are calling for the county to pull its money from Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. The 25 legislators signed a proclamation urging John McPhillips, commissioner of management and budget, to close the county's $90 million account from Bank of America and to discontinue procurement cards with JPMorgan Chase. The legislators are concerned about the number of foreclosures in the county, and noted that both banks have a significant number of area homes on the delinquency list. The proclamation states that Bank of America has 465 delinquencies in the region and JP Morgan has 316 area homes in danger of foreclosure. The proclamation also says the banks have "demonstrated a lack of willingness to engage in good-faith efforts" to modify loans and help people keep their homes. The effort, headed by county legislators Norma Chapman, Doug Bullock and Timothy Nichols, is part of a statewide campaign by NY Communities for Change."
[from "Albany County Legislators Want to Close Bank of America, JPMorgan Accounts" June 10th
http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/print-edition/2011/06/10/albany-county-legislators-want-to.html ]
Note-- already here across the state the town of Ithaca and villages of Hempstead and Freeport have voted to divest from irresponsible banking institutions like Bank of America (in those three cases, it was JP Morgan Chase)-- see much more on this here-- http://www.nycommunities.org/taxonomy/term/2 ;
http://www.alternet.org/economy/150387/2_3rds_of_us_corporations_pay_zero_federal_taxes%3A_us_uncut_movement_builds_to_make_them_pay_up/ ; http://www.USUncut.org (Harold Miller's work!).
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[text of Tyner/Doxsey resolution that almost got out of Budget, Finance, Personnel Committee Thurs.]
WHEREAS, Dutchess County now has $50 million accounts each with Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo- banks widely reported as responsible for mortgage fraud and our economic collapse, and
WHEREAS, former Dutchess County Executive William Steinhaus sent our County Legislature a letter December 15th stating that, "Foreclosure rates in Dutchess County are at record numbers; there are a total of over 4,000 foreclosures in Dutchess over just the last three-year period," and currently in Dutchess County there are 414 home bankruptcy listings, 98 short sales, 61 foreclosures, 43 preforeclosures, and 11 sheriff sales at Foreclosures.com, and
WHEREAS, last June 25 members of the Albany County Legislature signed a proclamation calling for the county to pull its $90 million account from Bank of America and to discontinue procurement cards with JPMorgan Chase because at that time Bank of America had 465 delinquencies in the region and JP Morgan had 316 area homes in danger of foreclosure, and those banks had "demonstrated a lack of willingness to engage in good-faith efforts" to modify loans and help people keep their homes, as here in Dutchess County; several months later Albany County's $90 million account with Bank of America was closed, and
WHEREAS, the municipal boards of Hempstead, Freeport, and Ithaca have all voted for the same reason over the last year to divest from irresponsible financial institutions such as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo; even the Northern Dutchess Alliance's "Blueprint for Economic Development" strongly recommended holding local financial institutions more publicly accountable for their commitment/investment (or lack thereof) in our local communities, and
WHEREAS, last year the City of San Jose moved nearly $1 billion from Bank of America because of the bank's high record of home foreclosures; City Council members linked foreclosures to lost tax revenues and cuts to jobs and services, and urged other U.S. cities to follow San Jose's example, and last November the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a resolution to review its banking and investment practices "to ensure that public funds are invested in responsible financial institutions that support our community," and
WHEREAS, officials in Portland, Oregon, Los Angeles, and New York City are looking to follow as well, and congregations in the California interfaith coalition LA Voice vowed to divest $2 million from Wells Fargo and Bank of America, ending a 200-year relationship with the big banks; the Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East San Jose, Calif., pulled $3 million out of Bank of America and reinvested the funds into Micro Branch, a division of Self-Help Federal Credit Union designed to assist underserved communities, and therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the Dutchess County Legislature requests that the Dutchess County Commissioner of Finance divest Dutchess County funds from Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, thereby ending the current $150,000,000 worth of county funds kept in those financial institutions, and find more responsible banks to deposit those monies, and be it further
RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be sent to the Dutchess County Executive and the Dutchess County Commissioner of Finance.
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Supporting documentation:
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Executive Order No. 2, 2011
Dated: October 17, 2011
[signed by Dutchess County Executive William Steinhaus]
Pursuant to Section 3.02 (g) of the Dutchess County Charter, I hereby designate the following banks and trust companies for the deposit of moneys received by the Commissioner of Finance at the maximum amount set forth after the name of each bank or trust company:
HSBC Bank USA, N.A. Poughkeepsie, NY................$50,000,000
JP Morgan Chase Poughkeepsie, NY........................$50,000,000
Bank of America, Poughkeepsie, NY..........................$50,000,000
Wells Fargo (formerly Wachovia Bank, N.A.)
Poughkeepsie, NY.........................................................$50,000,000
Key Bank of New York, N.A., Poughkeepsie, NY.....$20,000,000
Bank of Millbrook, Millbrook, NY...................................$5,000,000
(merged with Stissing National Bank)
Manufacturers and Traders Trust Co. (M & T)..........$20,000,000
Poughkeepsie, NY
Orange County Trust Company, Fishkill, NY.............$5,000,000
Citizens Bank, Albany, NY..........................................$20,000,000
TD Bank, Poughkeepsie, NY.....................................$50,000,000
Citibank NA, Harrison, NY.........................................$50,000,000
Pursuant to Section 11 of the General Municipal Law, the Dutchess County Commissioner of Finance is authorized to invest in time deposit accounts, certificates of deposit or repurchase agreements of the above designated depositories or repurchase agreements of the Merrill Lynch Flexicash Program.
Pursuant to Section 212 of the County Law, the interest received on moneys deposited in time deposit accounts, certificates of deposit, or repurchase agreements of the above designated depositories shall be the prevailing rate paid by such designated depository, payable on such dates as agreed upon between the depository and the Dutchess County Commissioner of Finance.
This Executive Order No. 2 of 2011 supersedes Executive Order No. 1 of 2011 issued January 2, 2011.
Please let us know asap if you might be able to come out to join us tomorrow Tuesday (Apr. 17th) at 4 pm-- for our Second Annual Tax Day Rally to Make Bank of America Pay Their Fair Share!...
[thx to Rev. Tama Sis Kaya Bell for creating Facebook event here:
http://www.facebook.com/joel.tyner#!/events/403301039688759/ ]
Recall-- last Tax Day (Apr. 18, 2011) together with Ulster MoveOn's Linda Abbott and Barbara Upton, we mobilized 60 folks from all over the Hudson Valley to come out to our First Annual Rally to Make Bank of America Pay Their Fair Share; see: http://usuncut.org/actions/239 ; let's make Tues. bigger(!):
http://www.facebook.com/events/202668686424445/ ; Occupy folks-- let's go-- c'mon; all out Tuesday!...
[taxes are due Tues. Apr. 17th this year; for more on this see:
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/13/150549181/why-2012s-tax-day-falls-on-april-17 ]
Recall Matt Taibbi's "Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail" from last month in Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/bank-of-america-too-crooked-to-fail-20120314 ; also:
http://akamat.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/matt-taibbi-on-bank-of-america-occupy-wall-street/http://www.cpa-connecticut.com/blog/?p=5233
[BofA didn't pay any federal taxes last year; got $1 billion tax break-- after getting $45 billion bailout!]
Thanks again much to http://www.OccupyPoughkeepsie.org for inspiring us to move forward on this; many times last fall Occupy Poughkeepsie rallies and marches stopped in front of JPMorgan Chase on Main Street in Poughkeepsie; I still recall how Russell Bimbo, Kyle Van Steenburgh, and Brady Masse8y from Occupy Poughkeepsie also joined us for rallies organized by yours truly last year in front of Bank of America on Market St./Poughkeepsie-- let's ramp it up party peoples!...
[click on these two links for other recent coverage of our work on this issue:
http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2012/April/13/DCL_bank_forcl-13Apr12.html ;
http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2012/April/09/DC_bank_div-09Apr12.html ]
More inspiration-- great meeting just now here in Town of Clinton hosted by Betty Olson-- training for http://The99Spring.com -- this issue came up; this event was announced...so....COME OUT TUES.(!)...
[see: http://civic.moveon.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=128545&id ]
Hope to see y'all out there Tues.!...(and again-- pls let us know if you might be able to join us, k?)...
[pass it on]
Joel
845-444-0599
joeltyner@earthlink.net
http://www.JoelforCongress.org (tell your friends-- PayPal link online here!)
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Joel (260+ now on board online!)
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Two Reasons Why Dutchess County Should Divest from Bank of America:
[Dutchess County now still has a $50 million account with Bank of America (same with JPMC, W-Fargo)]
"Bank Excuses on Foreclosure Growing Stale" by Michael Powell (Nov. 14th)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/nyregion/patience-grows-thin-for-banks-foreclosure-excuses.html
"Eric Schneiderman Is A Big Thorn In Bank of America's Side" [Forbes Aug. 16th]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2011/08/16/eric-schneiderman-is-a-big-thorn-in-bank-of-americas-side/
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From http://www.alternet.org/authors/12015/ ...
Beyond Robo-Signing: 3 Other Ways Bank of America Is Screwing Americans
As outraged as Americans are about robo-signing (and they should be), the use of foreclosure mills doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of Bank of America's dastardly deeds.
By Lauren Kelley
March 30, 2012 |
Few institutions incite the kind of populist anger that Bank of America does, even as the Occupy movement stokes rage at Wall Street in general. And with good reason - in an industry that is known for being corrupt, immoral, and ungrateful leeches of taxpayer dollars, Bank of America stands out. The bank, it seems, is constantly making headlines for some new form of corruption or act of greed that screws consumers while padding its executives' pockets. And it gets away with it every time.
The bank was at the forefront of the dubious practice known as "robo-signing" - hiring third-party companies staffed by underqualified foreclosure "experts" to cut corners during the foreclosure process, processing thousands upon thousands of foreclosures a month and wreaking havoc on homeowners' lives.
But as outraged as Americans are about robo-signing (and they should be, especially since the big banks continued to use the practice long after they agreed to stop), the use of foreclosure mills doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of Bank of America's dastardly deeds. As Matt Taibbi writes in his devastating piece about Bank of America in this month's Rolling Stone:
[H]ere's how seriously fucked the financial markets are: Even the most vocal critics of Bank of America consider the mass, factory-style production of tens of thousands of fake legal documents per month not that big a deal. "Robo-signing is like focusing on Bernie Madoff's accountant," quips April Charney, a well-known foreclosure lawyer who has spent large chunks of the past two decades in battle with Bank of America.
Robo-signing is not the disease - it's a symptom of Bank of America's entire attitude toward the law.
Indeed, the bank is screwing Americans is so many ways that robo-signing, awful as it is, is but a drop in the bucket. Below are several examples (among many) of how Bank of America is hurting consumers while continuing to dole out plenty of dough in executive bonuses and compensation.
1. Siccing collections agencies on people who are not in debt
Thanks to Bank of America, we now know that there's something more maddening and nightmarish than being hounded by debt collectors: being hounded by debt collectors when you don't owe anything.
A la their infamous illegal foreclosure problem, big banks are in the practice hiring third-party companies to handle debt collection for them. That would be all fine and well if the banks took care to pass on accurate documentation about their customers. But they don't. American Banker reports this week on a woman named Karen Stevens, who's spent the past three years fighting off a collection agency that Bank of America hired to collect $1,900 in debt - debt that Stevens has long since paid off. Stevens was only able to put an end to the fiasco by hiring a lawyer and suing the collection agency.
Stevens' case appears to be an example of what happens when banks sell batches of accounts without sufficiently scrubbing them of errors and discrepancies ( see related story). Such oversights are drawing into collections quagmires an unknown number of consumers who owe nothing, or for whom debt records are incomplete or nonexistent. For banks, it's a problem that threatens to spark a legal or regulatory backlash or to do further damage to already tarnished reputations.
Aside from getting this work (messily) off their plates, the advantage for Bank of America in doing business this way is that they don't have to deal with their clients' lawsuits when they get screwed over. Blame it on the third-party guy!
2. Sneakily ratcheting up fees on the 99%
As I wrote earlier this month , Bank of America is one of the mega banks that's quietly ratcheting up fees, especially for its lower-income customers, to compensate for new regulations that were designed to protect those very individuals.
This is an especially ballsy move for Bank of America, since it was BofA's proposed $5 monthly debit card fee that incited so much consumer outrage last fall. And yet, mere months later, the bank has announced a fee "overhaul" that will result in customers paying up to $25 per month for a basic checking account.
Maddeningly, the bank is most focused on increasing fees for low-income consumers - Americans who may have trouble maintaining a minimum account balance or who do not have multiple bank services, such as a mortgage. In addition, these customers may soon have less banking opportunities in general, as Bank of America, among other big banks, plans to shift its resources to cater more to "up markets" that make the bank more money than less-wealthy communities.
3. Exploiting the unemployed to rake in fees
When South Carolina signed a deal with Bank of America to distribute unemployment benefits via prepaid debit cards, chances are the state was not actively trying to screw its unemployed citizens. But that is exactly what happened, because Bank of America took advantage of its contract with the state to exploit unemployed South Carolinians by charging many of them hefty fees to access their benefits.
Huffington Post's Janell Ross reported late last year that citizens who live in towns without Bank of America branches - and there are many such individuals in South Carolina - are forced to either drive to another town to access their benefits (something many cannot afford to do) or pay a fee for withdrawing money from a non-BofA ATM. One woman profiled in Ross' article, Shawna Busby, had to choose between making a 100-mile round trip drive to Columbia to access her benefits or pay up. Busby estimated that she had paid $350 in fees to withdraw the benefits that she was legally owed - money she desperately needs for her family since she is, of course, unemployed.
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Of course, these are only a few of the ways Bank of America is screwing over the citizens whose taxpayers kept the bank afloat during the financial crisis the bank helped create. And it is only small consolation that BofA claims to be suffering financially these days, because, as Taibbi notes, the bank seems to have plenty of money to go around for bonuses and compensation:
Bank of America didn't pay a dime in federal taxes last year. Or the year before. In fact, they got a $1 billion refund last year. They claimed it was because they had pretax losses of $5.4 billion in 2010. They paid out $35 billion in bonuses and compensation that year. You do the math.
As for the $26 billion settlement that Bank of America and other big banks got slapped with? It let the banks off the hook for its robo-signing misadventures, and may not even be properly enforced by the government. Even if it is, it will be "woefully inadequate to address the wider fraud that went on in creating and pooling mortgages."
On that note, I leave you with three simple words: Move. Your. Money.
Lauren Kelley is an associate editor at AlterNet and a freelance writer and editor who has contributed to Change.org, The L Magazine and Time Out New York. She lives in Brooklyn. Follow her on Twitter here.
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[recall below as well]
Still pinchin' myself-- we actually won some bipartisan support (thx to activists below) Thurs. night at the Dutchess County Legislature's Budget, Finance, and Personnel Committee meeting-- for the resolution drafted by yours truly (co-sponsored by Conservative Co. Leg. Jim Doxsey)-- calling on the Dutchess County Finance Commissioner to re-evaluate the banks and financial institutions with which Dutchess County does business-- from GOP Co. Leg.'s Alan Surman (R-Dover) and John Forman (R-Beacon)!...
[view webcast of Thurs. night BFP Committee mtg. here: http://www.totalwebcasting.com/live/dutchess/ ]
Dutchess currently still has a $50 million account with Bank of America, another $50 million account with JPMorgan Chase, and another $50 million account with Wells Fargo now, unfortunately...
Note re: Borchert/GOP argument against this-- 'tis a false one-- see list of banks below county does business with-- and-- consider how Albany County moved a $90 million account from BofA to M & T!...
[resol.-- http://www.dutchessny.gov/CountyGov/Departments/Legislature/ResolutionsPDF/2012103.pdf ;
full agenda here: http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/Legislature/CLagenda.htm ]
Kudos to Community Voices Heard's Steve Meddaugh, Edgar Gomez, and Mae Parker-Harris, together with New York Communities for Change's Harold Miller-- for leading rallies/marches of dozens of their supporters in Poughkeepsie at Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase branches locally (I was able to help lead cheering inside BofA branch before having to run off to join 4:30 pm Environmental Committee mtg.); many attendees also spoke eloquently, articulately, and passionately during the beginning of the Budget, Finance, and Personnel Committee mtg. as well-- including Russell Bimbo and Joe of http://www.OccupyPoughkeepsie.org others there in support included Maya Acevedo Casilda, James Tremblay, Jared Keasbey, Ryan Simpson, Alexander Key, and many from the Meddaugh clan-- great inspirational work!...
[important-- call Steve M. at 337-7239 to help him launch new Move Your Money Dutchess effort(!)...(aimed at getting each/every one of our county's 22 municipalities to move their money, too;
see http://www.MoveYourMoneyProject.org national effort; businesses, organizations, churches as well]
Kudos in particular to New York Communities for Change's Harold Miller for his effectiveness and success on this issue already-- across the state, Albany County, the City of Binghamton, town of Ithaca and villages of Hempstead and Freeport have voted to divest from irresponsible banking institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. [see: http://www.nycommunities.org/taxonomy/term/2 ;
http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/print-edition/2011/06/10/albany-county-legislators-want-to.html ]
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From http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2012/April/13/DCL_bank_forcl-13Apr12.html ...
Dutchess lawmakers reject proposal to transfer funds from banks with high foreclosure rates
POUGHKEEPSIE - Despite the urging of several Dutchess County residents to pull millions of county dollars from large banks that give homeowners little slack in foreclosure proceedings, the legislature's Budget and Finance Committee did not move in that direction.
A vote on a resolution urging the county finance commissioner to consider changing banks deadlocked in a tie vote of six to six, meaning the measure died.
Legislation sponsor Joel Tyner, a Democrat, urged his colleagues to support the shift to smaller more local banks.
"A very small thing that we can do today is to say it is a privilege to do business with Dutchess County. You just can't be any old bank and shaft over homeowners and kill our communities and continue to get our business," Tyner said...
Residents who spoke, told lawmakers bank foreclosures are resulting in boarded up homes that are killing neighborhoods
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From http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2012/April/09/DC_bank_div-09Apr12.html (WAMC Mon.):
Resolution would have Dutchess divest from banks that foreclose
POUGHKEEPSIE - Two Dutchess County legislators are proposing the county close its accounts with three large banks because of their foreclosure practices.
Lawmakers Joel Tyner and James Doxsey would like the county to pull its $50 million accounts from each bank - Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase - and place the money in other financial institutions.
Tyner said those three banks are not giving delinquent mortgage holders much slack in their payments.
"There are literally hundreds of different homes you can find on the county clerk's website that are in the process of being foreclosed by those three banks and those are the three most notoriously irresponsible financial institutions in the country," he said.
Tyner said Albany County recently closed a $90 million account with Bank of America for similar reasons and similar divestitures have been undertaken in Freeport, Hempstead and Ithaca.
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Already here across the state, Albany County, the town of Ithaca and villages of Hempstead and Freeport have voted to divest from irresponsible banking institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. [see: http://www.nycommunities.org/taxonomy/term/2 ;
http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/print-edition/2011/06/10/albany-county-legislators-want-to.html ]
Recall as well-- the Northern Dutchess Alliance's Blueprint for Economic Development called for local financial institutions to be held more accountable for their commitment/investment in our communities (or lack thereof).
[see: http://www.northerndutchess.org/images/NDABlueprintWeb.pdf ]
Fact: According to our County Clerk Kendall's own website (searchable database there), there are literally hundreds of homes in process of foreclosure by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, or Wells Fargo; see:
http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/CountyClerk/12976.htm .
Also see:
"Watch Us Move Our Millions" by Rebecca Leisher (in Yes magazine)
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/9-strategies-to-end-corporate-rule/watch-us-move-our-millions
"Members of the Albany County Legislature are calling for the county to pull its money from Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. The 25 legislators signed a proclamation urging John McPhillips, commissioner of management and budget, to close the county's $90 million account from Bank of America and to discontinue procurement cards with JPMorgan Chase. The legislators are concerned about the number of foreclosures in the county, and noted that both banks have a significant number of area homes on the delinquency list. The proclamation states that Bank of America has 465 delinquencies in the region and JP Morgan has 316 area homes in danger of foreclosure. The proclamation also says the banks have "demonstrated a lack of willingness to engage in good-faith efforts" to modify loans and help people keep their homes. The effort, headed by county legislators Norma Chapman, Doug Bullock and Timothy Nichols, is part of a statewide campaign by NY Communities for Change."
[from "Albany County Legislators Want to Close Bank of America, JPMorgan Accounts" June 10th
http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/print-edition/2011/06/10/albany-county-legislators-want-to.html ]
Note-- already here across the state the town of Ithaca and villages of Hempstead and Freeport have voted to divest from irresponsible banking institutions like Bank of America (in those three cases, it was JP Morgan Chase)-- see much more on this here-- http://www.nycommunities.org/taxonomy/term/2 ;
http://www.alternet.org/economy/150387/2_3rds_of_us_corporations_pay_zero_federal_taxes%3A_us_uncut_movement_builds_to_make_them_pay_up/ ; http://www.USUncut.org (Harold Miller's work!).
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[text of Tyner/Doxsey resolution that almost got out of Budget, Finance, Personnel Committee Thurs.]
WHEREAS, Dutchess County now has $50 million accounts each with Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo- banks widely reported as responsible for mortgage fraud and our economic collapse, and
WHEREAS, former Dutchess County Executive William Steinhaus sent our County Legislature a letter December 15th stating that, "Foreclosure rates in Dutchess County are at record numbers; there are a total of over 4,000 foreclosures in Dutchess over just the last three-year period," and currently in Dutchess County there are 414 home bankruptcy listings, 98 short sales, 61 foreclosures, 43 preforeclosures, and 11 sheriff sales at Foreclosures.com, and
WHEREAS, last June 25 members of the Albany County Legislature signed a proclamation calling for the county to pull its $90 million account from Bank of America and to discontinue procurement cards with JPMorgan Chase because at that time Bank of America had 465 delinquencies in the region and JP Morgan had 316 area homes in danger of foreclosure, and those banks had "demonstrated a lack of willingness to engage in good-faith efforts" to modify loans and help people keep their homes, as here in Dutchess County; several months later Albany County's $90 million account with Bank of America was closed, and
WHEREAS, the municipal boards of Hempstead, Freeport, and Ithaca have all voted for the same reason over the last year to divest from irresponsible financial institutions such as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo; even the Northern Dutchess Alliance's "Blueprint for Economic Development" strongly recommended holding local financial institutions more publicly accountable for their commitment/investment (or lack thereof) in our local communities, and
WHEREAS, last year the City of San Jose moved nearly $1 billion from Bank of America because of the bank's high record of home foreclosures; City Council members linked foreclosures to lost tax revenues and cuts to jobs and services, and urged other U.S. cities to follow San Jose's example, and last November the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a resolution to review its banking and investment practices "to ensure that public funds are invested in responsible financial institutions that support our community," and
WHEREAS, officials in Portland, Oregon, Los Angeles, and New York City are looking to follow as well, and congregations in the California interfaith coalition LA Voice vowed to divest $2 million from Wells Fargo and Bank of America, ending a 200-year relationship with the big banks; the Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East San Jose, Calif., pulled $3 million out of Bank of America and reinvested the funds into Micro Branch, a division of Self-Help Federal Credit Union designed to assist underserved communities, and therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the Dutchess County Legislature requests that the Dutchess County Commissioner of Finance divest Dutchess County funds from Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, thereby ending the current $150,000,000 worth of county funds kept in those financial institutions, and find more responsible banks to deposit those monies, and be it further
RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be sent to the Dutchess County Executive and the Dutchess County Commissioner of Finance.
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Supporting documentation:
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Executive Order No. 2, 2011
Dated: October 17, 2011
[signed by Dutchess County Executive William Steinhaus]
Pursuant to Section 3.02 (g) of the Dutchess County Charter, I hereby designate the following banks and trust companies for the deposit of moneys received by the Commissioner of Finance at the maximum amount set forth after the name of each bank or trust company:
HSBC Bank USA, N.A. Poughkeepsie, NY................$50,000,000
JP Morgan Chase Poughkeepsie, NY........................$50,000,000
Bank of America, Poughkeepsie, NY..........................$50,000,000
Wells Fargo (formerly Wachovia Bank, N.A.)
Poughkeepsie, NY.........................................................$50,000,000
Key Bank of New York, N.A., Poughkeepsie, NY.....$20,000,000
Bank of Millbrook, Millbrook, NY...................................$5,000,000
(merged with Stissing National Bank)
Manufacturers and Traders Trust Co. (M & T)..........$20,000,000
Poughkeepsie, NY
Orange County Trust Company, Fishkill, NY.............$5,000,000
Citizens Bank, Albany, NY..........................................$20,000,000
TD Bank, Poughkeepsie, NY.....................................$50,000,000
Citibank NA, Harrison, NY.........................................$50,000,000
Pursuant to Section 11 of the General Municipal Law, the Dutchess County Commissioner of Finance is authorized to invest in time deposit accounts, certificates of deposit or repurchase agreements of the above designated depositories or repurchase agreements of the Merrill Lynch Flexicash Program.
Pursuant to Section 212 of the County Law, the interest received on moneys deposited in time deposit accounts, certificates of deposit, or repurchase agreements of the above designated depositories shall be the prevailing rate paid by such designated depository, payable on such dates as agreed upon between the depository and the Dutchess County Commissioner of Finance.
This Executive Order No. 2 of 2011 supersedes Executive Order No. 1 of 2011 issued January 2, 2011.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
stand up to save Hyde Park Elementary, FDR/Eleanor legacy-- time running out!...
Hi all...
Please let us know asap if you might be able to come out today-- Mon. (Apr. 16th) 4:30 pm to join us-- for our Rally to Save Hyde Park Elementary School!...(on Rt. 9 in Hyde Park next to Regina Coeli Church)...
And-- also come out if you can to speak up on this Tues. (Apr. 17th) at 6 pm Hyde Park School Board mtg. at Haviland Middle School on Haviland Road!...(kudos to effort-- Josh Horton, Cathy Baker, et. al.)...
[this could have been avoided; see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org ; http://www.99PercentNY.org ; bad enough that Smith Elementary & LaGrange Elementary have closed; 1/2 K now in Poughkeepsie]
[recall my Feb. Valley Views Poughkeepsie Journal op-ed-- "Demand Fairness in New York's Budget":
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20120223/OPINION04/302230037/Demand-fairness-New-York-s-budget ; even May 2010 NYTimes editorial warned us Cuomo was going to sell schools out(!):
http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2010/07/thanx-tons-to-all-of-you-who-stood-with.html ]
Recall-- recent Marist/YNN, Siena, Quinnipiac and Hart research polls all show the vast majority of New Yorkers strongly supported maintaining the FULL millionaires tax-- which used to bring in five billion dollars annually from richest 2% of New Yorkers (and now because of Cuomo deal only nets $1.9 B!):
http://www.capitaltonight.com/2011/02/groups-band-together-to-push-millionaires-tax/ ; http://www.hungeractionnys.org/Poeple%20SOS%20release%202011.pdf ;
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=940073&category=state ;
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki ...
Pass it on...
Joel
845-444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
http://www.JoelforCongress.org
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Joel (260+)
http://www.DutchessDemocracy.blogspot.com
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[this below from front page of Saturday's paper if you missed it]
Hyde Park Elementary School to shut
District begins shift; school closure may save $1.7 million
1:49 PM, Apr. 14, 2012 |
John Davis
Poughkeepsie Journal
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20120414/NEWS02/304140019/Hyde-Park-Elementary-School-shut
Board meeting
The Hyde Park Board of Education next meets at 6 p.m. April 17 at Haviland Middle School on Haviland Road. More information is available at 845-229-4005 or online at www.hpcsd.org.
Hyde Park Elementary facts
Location: Route 9 in Town of Hyde Park
Student enrollment: 225
Staff: 50
HYDE PARK - The school district will begin planning to shift students and staff with its decision to close Hyde Park Elementary School at the end of the school year.
The Hyde Park Board of Education accepted the recommendation of its School Closing Advisory Committee to shut an elementary school to save $1.7 million in programs and staff.
Superintendent Greer Fischer outlined the committee's findings at the board meeting at Netherwood Elementary School. The board will formally vote Tuesday to close the school when it adopts the 2012-13 budget.
The committee concluded that the district's elementary school students can be moved from five to four buildings and, due to declining district enrollment, still receive a sound education.
"The teaching and learning will not be compromised," Fischer said.
The committee, however, left it to the school board to decide to close either Hyde Park or Ralph R. Smith elementary schools - the two of the district's five elementary schools being considered.
This would be the third public school to be closed in two years. The Poughkeepsie City School District closed W.W. Smith Humanities Magnet School, and Arlington Central School District closed LaGrange Elementary School and then used it for district offices. Poughkeepsie is considering closing Columbus Elementary School to help meet a $2.8 million budget gap for 2012-13.
Decision to close
A majority of the six school board members favored closing Hyde Park Elementary, based in part on its lower enrollment and the greater potential for renting the historic building on Route 9 in the town center. In an informal vote Thursday night, board members Sharon Matyas, Dan Duffy, Doug Hieter and Glenn Watson supported closing Hyde Park Elementary.
Board member Tim Liebrand supported closing Ralph R. Smith due to its central location in the district. Board member Steven Mittermaier did not express a preference.
The board's decision brought tears to the eyes of many Hyde Park Elementary parents attending the meeting. But some of them acknowledged the board had a difficult decision to make due to economic conditions.
Budget gap
The downturn in revenues, particularly state aid, and rising expenses created a budget gap next school year that was initially $10.5 million. The board has closed that gap by planning to cut costs across the district and spending $6 million in fund balance and reserve funds.
The final budget draft of $83.5 million reduces spending next year by 0.29 percent and raises the tax levy 2.68 percent to $52.7 million. This still meets the state 2 percent tax-levy cap when exemptions for capital spending, payments in lieu of taxes and pension contributions are factored in.
The board is opting to use $405,939 of the $605,939 of state aid recently restored by the state Legislature to offset the tax-levy increase, which was 3.53 percent. The other $200,000 will be used to offset district expenses.
The savings resulting from closing the elementary school will come primarily from reducing 16.5 staff positions. This includes a principal, six teaching positions, a librarian, a nurse, a secretary, three custodians and two cafeteria staff.
"The major part of the savings are in the administrative and managerial operation of the building," Fischer said.
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[again-- in case you missed it-- my op-ed Valley Views from Feb. 22nd Poughkeepsie Journal]
Demand fairness in New York's budget
11:10 PM, Feb. 22, 2012 |
Written by
Joel Tyner
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20120223/OPINION04/302230037/Demand-fairness-New-York-s-budget
Joel Tyner is a Dutchess County legislator for District 11, Clinton/Rhinebeck. He is also a Democratic candidate for the 20th Congressional District.
Resources
See http://www.DutchessDemocracy.blogspot.com ; http://www.JoelforCongress.org - call us at 845-444-0599 to get involved.
Also see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org
Here are 10 reasons to come out to our "A Better Choice Budget for New York" forum with New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness Executive Director Ron Deutsch, Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at Rhinebeck Town Hall at 80 East Market St. Deutsch will also be speaking the same evening at 7:30 p.m. at the Christ Episcopal Church in Poughkeepsie on 20 Carroll St.
1. The Better Choice Budget Coalition sensibly calls for a return to the full millionaires tax and closing one billion dollars' worth of corporate tax loopholes annually - coalition members include the New York State Alliance for Retired Americans, Statewide Senior Action Council of NYS, NYS Coalition for the Aging, New York State Library Association, Interfaith Alliance of NYS, Interfaith Impact of NYS, NYS Episcopal Public Policy Network, Alliance for Quality Education, Environmental Advocates of NY, Center for Independence of the Disabled of New York, NYS AFL-CIO, CSEA, NYSUT, PEF, AFSCME, New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, NYS Community Action Association, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, Community Voices Heard, Fiscal Policy Institute, and the Hunger Action Network of New York State.
[see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org ]
2. Fact: New York's millionaires tax used to bring in $4.6 billion in revenue annually; because of December's tax deal, it now only brings in $1.9 billion in revenue - creating a $2.7 billion hole in the state budget ( http://www.FiscalPolicy.org ).
3. Meanwhile, over the last two years alone $2.7 billion has been cut from state aid to schools - so Hyde Park Elementary School may close, LaGrange and Smith Elementary schools already closed, and the City of Poughkeepsie has cut back to half-day kindergarten - and Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed to add only $805 million in state aid to schools this year while proposing to cut $99 million from early childhood intervention services over the next five years.
4. Sixty-three percent of school districts increased their class size because of these budget cuts, 36 percent cut summer schools, 22 percent cut art classes, 14 percent cut music classes, and 17 percent cut honors or advanced placement courses ( http://www.AQENY.org ).
5. The richest 1 percent of New York state households increased their share of all income statewide from 10 percent in 1980 to 35 percent in 2007, and the 67 billionaires who call New York home have a combined net worth over $234.9 billion ( http://www.99PercentNY.org ).
6. Recent Marist/YNN, Siena, Quinnipiac and Hart research polls all show the vast majority of New Yorkers strongly supported maintaining the full millionaires tax.
[see: http://www.capitaltonight.com/2011/02/groups-band-together-to-push-millionaires-tax/ ; http://www.hungeractionnys.org/Poeple%20SOS%20release%202011.pdf ;
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=940073&category=state ;
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki ]
7. As the Poughkeepsie Journal reported ("Seniors pay more under EPIC rules" Feb. 4), because of $36 million cut in state funding last year for the state's Elderly Prescription Insurance Coverage (EPIC) program, "starting in January EPIC participants have had to pay between $3 and $20 for a prescription, depending on the overall cost of the medication; now New York doesn't subsidize participants until they reach the coverage gap of $2,930, also known as the 'doughnut hole' - until that time, seniors pay 25 percent of the cost of the drug."
https://www.change.org/petitions/governor-cuomo-and-the-new-york-state-legislature-fully-fund-epic-elderly-prescription-insurance-coverage-program
8. The State University of New York's funding has been cut by $1.4 billion over the last four years - over $300 million last year alone. SUNY's total operating budget has already been reduced by over 35 percent over the last five years ( http://www.SaveOurSUNY.org ).
9. As Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has recently stated, "defined contribution plans are not adequate for retirement security for public or private workers; study after study has shown that defined benefit plans cost less in the long run than 401(k) style plans and perform better" - more workers should have defined-benefit pensions - we shouldn't kill what's left of the middle class by attacking public employee pensions.
[ http://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/feb12/021312.htm ]
10. Finally, large multinational corporations that do business in New York should pay taxes; some of the worst corporate tax dodgers are Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Travelers Insurance, Verizon and Goldman Sachs. We need to level the playing field so that small businesses are not left holding the bag while big businesses are allowed to avail themselves of billions of dollars in corporate tax subsidies and loopholes - loopholes should be closed for corporate tax evaders, real estate partnership abuses should end, and New York needs to "expand the nonresident personal income tax to include income received from hedge fund management fees," as Gov. David Paterson included in his 2010 Executive Budget proposal.
[ http://www.99PercentNY.org ]
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From: Kat Fisher
Hudson Valley Organizer
Alliance for Quality Education
94 Central Avenue
Albany, NY 12206
585-269-8605
THE 2012-13 STATE BUDGET The Governor's proposed budget committed to increase school funding by $805 million this year, but diverted $250 million into competitive grants. Our focus this year has been to redirect the competitive grants to classroom aid, ensure that high-need schools are prioritized, and get the state to invest in pre-kindergarten. Voting on the final budget is expected to begin on Wednesday but it appears that:
* Nearly $200 million of the proposed competitive grant funds will be restored to classroom aid
* High need districts will be prioritized
* The Legislature rejected cuts to early intervention services for children with special needs as well as to special education for pre-school children.
* The budget agreement includes changes to pre-k that will prevent back door cuts in pre-k.
OUR ADVOCACY MATTERS If not for the large numbers of advocates traveling to Albany in January, February and March to speak up for our children there may not have been such a response from our elected officials. (AQE and allies organized these trips)
$805 MILLION DOESN'T FIX $2.7 BILLION IN SCHOOL CUTS Due to $2.7 billion in state budget cuts to schools, many children have lost college prep and Advanced Placement Courses, Career & Technical Education, arts, music, sports, tutoring, foreign languages, high school electives, after school programs, librarians, guidance counselors and more. Some schools have even cut kindergarten to half-day. State budget cuts were two to three times as large per pupil in poor districts as in wealthy districts. Even with this year's $805 million restoration many school districts are still going to have to make painful cuts.
WHAT NOW? The State Budget will be voted on this week. It is critically important that all of us who are dedicated to improving our public schools and protecting our children's future continue to raise our voices. In order to do this we need to:
* Stay involved and get others involved by:
o Signing up for regular updates http://www.aqeny.org/
o Speaking out at community meetings.
o Holding press conferences in your community.
o Submitting opinion editorials and letters to the editor to local papers.
* Speak truth to power:
o Because of the grassroots advocacy efforts of parents, students, teachers, administrators and school board members, high need districts have been prioritized and classroom funding has been prioritized over competitive grants.
o This state budget is inadequate to address the growing education crisis in New York State. Tell the stories of the types of cuts that your schools are still considering
Budget update: Votes to begin on Wednesday and expected to be final this week
1- $805 million restoration to public schools
2- Nearly $200 million of the competitive grants will be redirected to the classroom
3- High needs districts are prioritized
4- The Legislature rejected cuts to early intervention services for children with special needs as well as to special education for pre-school children.
5- The budget agreement includes changes to pre-k that will prevent back door cuts in pre-k
Advocacy works. There is power in numbers. But unfortunately, because the total $805 million restoration will not fill the $2.7 billion hole and our children will lose more.
Schools are still facing layoffs, school closing, essential program losses, increasing class sizes and massive reorganizations.
Without the efforts of AQE and its allies, the modified Millionaires' Tax that was passed in December would not have been won. Without this increase in state revenue, any increase in education money could have never been funded.
AQE organized students, parents, educators and community members from across the state to speak up for our schools and our children's future. As a result of these efforts we expect, nearly $200m of the competitive grant money will redirected to classrooms, high needs districts will prioritized.
We worked with both sides of aisle in our legislature, both Republicans and Democrats, to fight for quality public schools so that every child has an opportunity to learn. We'd like to thank the Legislature for restoring $805 million to education, moving a majority of the competitive grant funding into the classroom where it belongs and for rejecting cuts to early intervention services for children with special needs and to special education pre-school children- cuts that would have resulted in more cuts to K-12 education since the school district would have had to pay for those cuts- and for making changes to preventing back door cuts to pre-k.
But unfortunately, this year's budget isn't going to prevent more cuts to our schools. The $805 million restoration will not fill the $2.7 billion hole, created by two consecutive years of state budget cuts and our children will lose more. Prior cuts have cost our children teachers and quality programs such as college prep and Advanced Placement Courses, Career & Technical Education, arts, music, sports, tutoring, foreign languages, high school electives, after school programs, librarians, guidance counselors and more. Some schools have even cut kindergarten to half-day.
Under Governor Cuomo's leadership our state moving in the wrong direction, in regards to education. Our schools are getting worse, not better.
Now we'll hear from our speakers about how state budget has and is impacting our schoolsŠ.
The budget fixes the Maintenance of Effort issue (districts had to maintain the same number of students served in the year before, to not lose any funding) which penalized many districts for fluctuations in enrollment and provided a disincentive for expanding pre-k services.
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Check out these facts from Ron Deutsch of http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org :
New York is #1 in the U.S.A. in income inequality.
Over the last 30 years, the income of the top 1% of New Yorkers has gone up 500%, while the income of the bottom 50% has gone down 13%
New York has lost over 500,000 jobs during the Great Recession.
One in three New Yorkers are poor or near-poor.
Food stamp use has increased by 1.2 million; 500,000 less have health insurance (and the minimum wage hasn't been lifted in a decade).
90% of federal TANF monies flowing into NYS have been diverted over the last 2 years from purpose(!).
Meanwhile, salaries for business and finance professionals are up by more than 17%, and 3800 New York taxpayers now make over $10 million per year.
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[recall below sent out to this list as well recently]
Thanks much to my Co. Leg. colleagues Barbara Jeter-Jackson, Alison MacAvery, Francena Amparo, and Jim Doxsey...
To their credit, Barbara, Alison, Francena and Jim have all agreed to co-sponsor my resolution below for March Co. Leg. mtg. for Better Choice Budget for NYS!...(see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org )...
[sadly-- and predictably-- GOP Co. Leg. supermajority shot it down across party lines earlier this month]
[recall: Cablevision, some Occ.-Pok. and HPE folks came out our Valentine's Day rally in February:
http://www.dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2012/01/valentines-day-rally-have-heart-nys-at.html ]
Kudos as well to Conservative Co. Leg. Jim Doxsey for his work for years now to stop New York State from giving literally $16 billion annually to Wall Street in tax breaks re: stock transfer tax rebate...
[see: http://doxseydistrict1.com/?p=639 ; http://doxseydistrict1.com/?m=201103 ;
http://mhvperspective.com/?Return=T;lquery=Author+regexp+'James+R.+Doxsey'+order+by+ID+desc ;
http://doxseydistrict1.com/?cat=bwmbbkppup&paged=3 ]
[join 150+ signed to my http://www.petitiononline.com/stocktax effort if you agree with Jim/me on this!]
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Fact; Last year state spending on health care was cut by $2.8 billion, and the State University of New York has been cut by $1.4 billion over the last four years; SUNY's total operating budget has already been reduced by over 35% over the last five years, tuition is scheduled to rise by $300 a year every year for the next five years; our state's Department of Environmental Conservation was funded at $1.5 billion in 2009-2010; Governor Cuomo has proposed less than $1.1 billion in funding for the DEC for 2012-2013; there were 4050 DEC staff in 1989; less than 3000 DEC staff are proposed in Governor Cuomo's budget for next year.
[see: http://eany.org/images/Reports/budgetbrief12-13.pdf ;
http://www.SaveOurSUNY.org ; http://www.nysenate.gov/files/Jackie%20Haynes.pdf ;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/08/student-loan-debt-bankruptcy_n_1263348.html ;
http://online.wsj.com/article/APf6aaf05fc11c46e7a78621d594e11cb1.html ;
http://www.projectonstudentdebt.org http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/education/12college.html ]
From AQE too ( http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=658278308#!/events/306129579428162/ ):
$2.7 billion of state aid has been cut from NY schools in the last two years. Essential programming has been lost. Services to special education have been reduced. 11,000 teaching JOBS have been eliminated last year alone. Community schools are closing. Standard building maintenance has been postponed. Our students and teachers cannot take another year of cuts:
http://www.aqeny.org/ny/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Jan-10-2012-First-things-First-NJ-Final-12.13.pdf
And-- check out http://www.SaveOurSUNY.org -- one-third of state SUNY funding cut over last 3 years!
["college tuition has gone up 432% since 1982, 2x the rate of medical care and 4x the rate of inflation"]
Fact: Cuomo has proposed to rip $99 million out of state funding for early childhood intervention services over the next five years (and cuts tobacco prevention funding by $10 million over the next two years).
[reaction noted in recent Albany Times-Union piece on this: "Early intervention providers were stunned by the cuts to the program. 'I'm extremely disappointed,' said Leslie Grubler, of the United New York Early Intervention Providers."-- from "Details of Cuomo's Budget Proposal":
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Details-of-Cuomo-s-budget-proposal-2593571.php ]
Also-- according to the Environmental Advocates of New York:
[see http://eany.org/images/Reports/budgetbrief12-13.pdf ]
Fact: Our state's Department of Environmental Conservation was funded to the tune of $1.5 billion in 2009-2010; Cuomo has proposed less than $1.1 billion in funding for the DEC for 2012-2013.
Fact: There were 4050 DEC staff in 1989; less than 3000 DEC staff are proposed in Cuomo's budget for next year.
[recall recent EANY report-- 90% DEC SPDES permits rubber-stamped due to understaffing @ DEC:
http://www.eany.org/pdf/PermissiontoPollute_04282008.pdf ]
Fact: Cuomo has proposed a $1.2 million cut to the DEC's Air and Water Quality Management program, a $4.2 million cut to the DEC's Solid and Hazardous Waste Management program, seven less staff for the NYS Dept. of Agriculture and Markets, two less staff for NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, and $190,000 less for municipal recycling (among other cuts; see EANY.org pdf report).
Fact: As it is now already, over the last four years, DEC and Ag and Markets have each lost over 20% of their staffing.
Don't forget what happens here in Dutchess County when state budget not fully funding human needs-- just over last two years Dutchess GOP have eliminated county funding for our county's Human Rights Commission, Office of Consumer Affairs, Youth Bureau's Project Return program for troubled teens, a full five-day week at our county Office for the Aging Senior Friendship Centers (instead of the current four-day week); appoint a County Historian. Also, our county DSS' Day Care Unit needs to be fully funded-- as your annual report's 2011 Departmental Annual Summary informs us all that, "Effective July 1, 2011 the income guidelines for the Day Care Unit were changed to those whose income is below 125 percent of the poverty level-- from those whose income is below 200 percent of the poverty level"... [recall-- http://www.petitiononline.com/cobudget ]
[also-- for reminder of last year's cuts-- see http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/apr2011/nybu-a12.shtml !]
Don't forget the fact is that the richest one percent of NYS households increased their share of all income statewide from 10 percent in 1980 to 35 percent in 2007-- there's no reason the state should be shortfunding monies for seniors' prescriptions, our schools-- or anything, for that matter...
[Dec. 13, 2010 report from FiscalPolicy.org; for more info re: corporate tax loopholes see: http://www.abetterchoiceforny.org/Tax_onesheet-1_5_12.pdf ]
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Not Enough to Meet Social Needs
James Parrott is the deputy director and chief economist of the Fiscal Policy Institute.
UPDATED DECEMBER 8, 2011, 7:16 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/12/08/cuomos-tax-deal-who-benefits-the-most/huge-budget-holes-remain
The Albany agreement on taxes and jobs is an important step in the right direction. It involves a progressive change in the state's personal income tax structure that generates a net of $1.5 billion to help reduce next year's budget deficit. It will provide a modest but much-needed job stimulus.
Too many highly profitable Fortune 500 companies use loopholes and favors to avoid paying state income taxes.
Economically, both the income tax increases and decreases mainly occur among upper-middle and upper income households in New York City and its suburbs. The modest tax bracket reduction for those under $150,000 will be spread across the state, as will the benefit of averting $1.5 billion in budget cuts.
The troubling thing is that a $2 billion budget gap remains. Funding for schools, public higher education, mass transit, child care and homeless assistance already have been slashed at a time when needs have multiplied in the wake of the Great Recession. New York has lost 500,000 job opportunities and $31 billion in annual earnings that go with those lost opportunities
The two-thirds increase in food stamp recipiency - 1.2 million more New Yorkers - since the recession began shows that needs have skyrocketed, yet $20 billion in services and state support has been reduced over the past three years. A half million new jobs would go a long way, restoring self-esteem in the process. More budget cuts will only make it worse.
The second step on the road back needs to be corporate tax reform. As a new report this week showed, scores of highly profitable Fortune 500 companies use loopholes and favors to avoid paying state income taxes. It's no wonder many big corporations are sitting on mountains of cash. Business income taxes have fallen sharply relative to the size of New York's economy - if the share were back to where it was 25 years ago, state revenues would be $3 billion higher.
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A Millionaire at $220,000 a Year?
Bridget Crawford is a professor of law at Pace Law School.
UPDATED DECEMBER 9, 2011, 11:54 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/12/08/cuomos-tax-deal-who-benefits-the-most/a-millionaire-at-220000-a-year
Governor Cuomo's new tax plan is well-intended but flawed in execution. It embraces the notion that those who have more should pay more, but implements that policy with blunt tax rates that treat too many people as "millionaires."
Wealthy New Yorkers probably won't pick up and move, but they may think twice about bringing their business here.
What is good about the Cuomo tax plan is that it gives a modest tax break to families that earn less than $200,000 a year. Before 2009, a single New Yorker earning $30,000 per year would be subject to taxation on her last dollar earned at the highest rate of 6.85 percent. That same New Yorker will now pay tax on her last dollar earned at a rate of 6.45 percent. That means more money in the pockets of those who need it to meet basic living expenses.
What is bad about the Cuomo tax plan is that it does not differentiate in a meaningful way between a person who makes $220,000 per year and a person who makes $2 million per year. To Cuomo, these people are all rich -- or at least rich enough to lump together.
A commitment to truly progressive taxation would require lawmakers to get past political rhetoric and acknowledge that the rich are different. Not only are they different from you and me, but they are different from each other. The Fiscal Policy Institute got it right with its proposal to impose tax at carefully stepped rates that range from 4 percent to almost 10 percent, with 12 different brackets. To be sure, 12 brackets are not as finely graded as 24 brackets, and 24 brackets are not as finely graded as 48, but the Cuomo plan lumps together too many taxpayers.
New York's tax rates are among the highest in the nation. Will wealthy New Yorkers pick up and move somewhere else? Probably not. But they may think twice about bringing their business here. The banking and financial services industries are already losing out to states like Delaware and Alaska in the competition for trust business. By making trusts subject to taxation at these high rates, New York is likely to lose even more trust business.
That means loss of jobs for the people who work at banks, the workers with 9 to 5 jobs, families to feed and student loans to repay. In the short term, these folks may be taxed at slightly lower rates under the Cuomo plan, but in the long term, they may not have jobs at all.
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From: Ronald Deutsch
Subject: New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness responds to Executive Budget
Date: Jan 17, 2012 3:26 PM
Budget on Revenues: Smoke Em if You Can Afford Em Ron Deutsch, Executive Director of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness responds to Lack of Corporate Loopholes Closers in Executive Budget Proposal
"The Governor's 'Smoke Em if You Got Em' revenue generating agenda leaves much to be desired. Raising taxes on cigars and loose tobacco fall far short of a substantive loophole closing agenda especially when our current corporate tax law has more holes than swiss cheese."
"Last week, organizations from across New York called upon the Governor to follow three simple principles when it comes to closing corporate loopholes; enforcement, transparency and fairness. New York could and should collect hundreds of million in uncollected tax revenue simply by enforcing current tax law, especially when it comes to unreported gains from Real Estate Partnerships.
"Before we cut one program for needy New Yorkers we should make sure that wealthy real estate moguls are actually paying their taxes. We must also ensure that big multi-national corporations that do business in NYS pay something in corporate taxes. Too many are avoiding paying any taxes to NYS. We need to level the playing field so that small businesses are not left 'holding the bag' while big businesses are allowed to avail themselves of billions of dollars in corporate tax subsidies and loopholes."
Ronald Deutsch Executive Director
New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness
212 Great Oaks Blvd
Albany, NY 12203
(518) 452-2130 - office
(518) 469-6769 - cell
(518) 869-8649 - fax
rdeutschnyff@gmail.com or
mkd67@aol.com
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Coalition Wants Corporate Tax Loopholes Closed
WAMC/Dave Lucas (2012-01-10)
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wamc/news.newsmain/article/1/0/1892051/WAMC.New.York.News/Coalition.Wants.Corporate.Tax.Loopholes.Closed
ALBANY, NY (WAMC) - A large coalition of community, labor, student, faith and Occupy organizations gathered at the New York State Capitol on Monday to announce their campaign to bring fairness and transparency to New York's corporate tax system. WAMC's Dave Lucas was there and files this report.
Unified under the "99 per cent New York" banner, the coalition, which includes Citizen Action of New York, the New York State Public Employees Federation, Occupy Albany and others, is calling on Governor Cuomo and the Legislature to close corporate tax loopholes, raising over $1 billion dollars for this year's state budget. They say additional revenue will help New York to create jobs, create a fairer environment for small business, and prevent more devastating budget cuts to services and our safety net and allow for restorations of reduced funding. Occupy Albany's Colin Donnaruma said "The fact that all too often powerful corporations are able to wield political influence to create tax loopholes to avoid paying their fair-share is a paradigmatic example of the broader economic and political inequalities that have motivated the Occupy movement."
The groups produced a list of companies they allege are New York's worst corporate tax dodgers, including Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Travelers Insurance, Verizon, and Goldman Sachs. PEF President Ken Brynien notes the list highlights the gross inequities in our tax system that hinder small businesses, job creation, and our economy. Angelica Clarke, organizer with New York Students Rising and Save Our SUNY, says students demand Governor Cuomo and the legislature initiate a tuition freeze.
The coalition's plan to reform New York's corporate tax structure is based on three main principles: enforcement, fairness, and transparency. The Governor's office did not immediately return calls for comment.
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From http://www.abetterchoiceforny.org/Tax_onesheet-1_5_12.pdf ...
[the Better Choice Budget coalition]
New York should raise needed revenue and restore fairness to the tax code by reforming our state corporate tax structure and closing a variety of corporate tax loopholes to make sure small business and big business play by the same rules, and that higher profits are taxed at reasonably higher rates.
Last year's effort to make the PIT more progressive and more fair should continue in 2012 by reforming corporate taxes to close loopholes, end costly and ineffective tax subsidies, and fix shortcomings that unnecessarily reduce tax collections and limit resources needed to maintain and invest in the infrastructure, services and educated workforce that foster long-term economic growth.
Reform Principles: Enforcement, fairness and transparency
Targets: Corporate tax evaders, real estate partnership abuses, hedge funds income treatment
Methods: Tough Audits, reasonable minimum tax for big business, eliminate hedge fund subsidies, mandatory tax reporting for public companies A simple, targeted corporate tax reform effort would provide over $1 billion in revenue for this year's state budget, and provide a start for the Tax Reform and Fairness Commission to continue reforms.
Enforcement: Require Real Estate Partnerships To Pay The Taxes They Owe
New York must undertake a new intensive review of the tax returns of investors in real estate partnerships to ensure compliance with tax laws. In an examination of just one year's tax returns (2005), IRS staff estimated that real estate investors underpaid $5 billion in taxes to the federal government and $385 million to New York State.
Underreporting or misreporting of capital gains from real estate investments is the main cause of tax underpayments. Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston, who reported the 2005 IRS data when he wrote for the New York Times, recently wrote that the annual underpayment of New York State taxes in connection with real estate partnerships ranged from $200 to $700 million annually. Johnston also pointed out that New York City alone could be losing out on $40 million annually.
New York could recover as much as $1 billion from prior-year audits, with annual revenues thereafter well over $100 million. The state of Pennsylvania recently recaptured over $700 million by making sure that the investors in Real Estate Partnerships paid the proper taxes on their overall gains.
Fairness: Reform New York's Corporate Alternate Minimum Tax (AMT)
Several significant loopholes that favor multi-state corporations were added to New York's Corporate AMT beginning in 1994 and the AMT rate was cut from 3.5% to 2.5% in 1999 and then to 1.5% in 2005 for non-manufacturers and most recently .75% for manufacturers (manufacturers rate was recently changed in the tax reform package of December 2011).
A Blueprint for Corporate Tax Fairness: Closing Corporate Tax Loopholes & Reforming the Corporate Income Tax
These changes should be repealed or the AMT should be replaced with a variation of the Alternative Minimum Assessment (AMA) adopted by New Jersey in 2002. To ensure that such an assessment would not hurt small business, it should only be applied to businesses with annual gross profits of $5 million or more.
We need to level the playing field between large and small businesses by making sure that large multinational corporations pay a minimum corporate income tax in NYS. NYS should increase the Corporate AMT to where it was a decade ago (3.5%) which would generate hundreds of millions in additional revenue.
Tax Nonresident Hedge Fund Management Fees
In his 2010 Executive Budget proposal, Governor Paterson proposed to "expand the nonresident personal income tax to include income received from hedge fund management fees."
As the governor's proposal explained, "Currently, only a small portion of such income is taxed as compensation, with the remainder deemed tax-free capital gains. This proposal would result inequal treatment of this income for residents and nonresidents." This proposal would generate $50 million in additional revenue.
Eliminate the Carried Interest Exemption Under New York City's Unincorporated Business Tax
The State Legislature should eliminate the carried interest exemption loophole in the New York City Unincorporated Business Tax, to put the taxation of private equity and hedge funds on the same footing as that of thousands of smaller businesses. Right now, the City Unincorporated Business Tax taxes fees received by managing partners in private equity and hedge funds but actually exempts profits from taxation.
"Carried interest" is the technical industry term for the profit share received by managing partners (usually 20 percent of pooled investment profits) in hedge funds - anyone else would call it corporate profits.
The New York City Independent Budget Office estimated that eliminating the carried interest exemption for the Unincorporated Business Tax would yield $200 million a year for New York City. This reform was recently supported by Mayor Bloomberg. Transparency Crackdown on Schemes that Create "Nowhere Income"
Multi-state corporations pay no taxes on profits attributable to sales made in states in which they do not have a physical presence. To address this situation, 28 of the 45 states with corporate income taxes, including California, Texas and Utah have enacted "throw-back" or "throw-out" rules to limit this drain on state revenues.
In contrast, New York actually went backwards on this issue in 2005, instituting a wasteful "Single Sales Factor" method for apportioning multi-state corporate profits that actually increase "nowhere income" and opportunities to evade taxes.
It's time to institute reforms that have worked for other states. Require Public Disclosure of Corporate Tax Payments for Publicly-Traded Companies Revenue neutral, but disclosure and transparency measures are a good addition to any corporate tax reform package.
We urge the state to adopt corporate tax disclosure for publicly traded firms subject to taxation under 9-A and 32 and any successor taxes. These and other corporate tax reforms are supported by a broad range of community, labor, student, faith and Occupy groups from across New York - for more information visit 99PercentNY.org.
Please let us know asap if you might be able to come out today-- Mon. (Apr. 16th) 4:30 pm to join us-- for our Rally to Save Hyde Park Elementary School!...(on Rt. 9 in Hyde Park next to Regina Coeli Church)...
And-- also come out if you can to speak up on this Tues. (Apr. 17th) at 6 pm Hyde Park School Board mtg. at Haviland Middle School on Haviland Road!...(kudos to effort-- Josh Horton, Cathy Baker, et. al.)...
[this could have been avoided; see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org ; http://www.99PercentNY.org ; bad enough that Smith Elementary & LaGrange Elementary have closed; 1/2 K now in Poughkeepsie]
[recall my Feb. Valley Views Poughkeepsie Journal op-ed-- "Demand Fairness in New York's Budget":
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20120223/OPINION04/302230037/Demand-fairness-New-York-s-budget ; even May 2010 NYTimes editorial warned us Cuomo was going to sell schools out(!):
http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2010/07/thanx-tons-to-all-of-you-who-stood-with.html ]
Recall-- recent Marist/YNN, Siena, Quinnipiac and Hart research polls all show the vast majority of New Yorkers strongly supported maintaining the FULL millionaires tax-- which used to bring in five billion dollars annually from richest 2% of New Yorkers (and now because of Cuomo deal only nets $1.9 B!):
http://www.capitaltonight.com/2011/02/groups-band-together-to-push-millionaires-tax/ ; http://www.hungeractionnys.org/Poeple%20SOS%20release%202011.pdf ;
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=940073&category=state ;
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki ...
Pass it on...
Joel
845-444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
http://www.JoelforCongress.org
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Joel (260+)
http://www.DutchessDemocracy.blogspot.com
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[this below from front page of Saturday's paper if you missed it]
Hyde Park Elementary School to shut
District begins shift; school closure may save $1.7 million
1:49 PM, Apr. 14, 2012 |
John Davis
Poughkeepsie Journal
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20120414/NEWS02/304140019/Hyde-Park-Elementary-School-shut
Board meeting
The Hyde Park Board of Education next meets at 6 p.m. April 17 at Haviland Middle School on Haviland Road. More information is available at 845-229-4005 or online at www.hpcsd.org.
Hyde Park Elementary facts
Location: Route 9 in Town of Hyde Park
Student enrollment: 225
Staff: 50
HYDE PARK - The school district will begin planning to shift students and staff with its decision to close Hyde Park Elementary School at the end of the school year.
The Hyde Park Board of Education accepted the recommendation of its School Closing Advisory Committee to shut an elementary school to save $1.7 million in programs and staff.
Superintendent Greer Fischer outlined the committee's findings at the board meeting at Netherwood Elementary School. The board will formally vote Tuesday to close the school when it adopts the 2012-13 budget.
The committee concluded that the district's elementary school students can be moved from five to four buildings and, due to declining district enrollment, still receive a sound education.
"The teaching and learning will not be compromised," Fischer said.
The committee, however, left it to the school board to decide to close either Hyde Park or Ralph R. Smith elementary schools - the two of the district's five elementary schools being considered.
This would be the third public school to be closed in two years. The Poughkeepsie City School District closed W.W. Smith Humanities Magnet School, and Arlington Central School District closed LaGrange Elementary School and then used it for district offices. Poughkeepsie is considering closing Columbus Elementary School to help meet a $2.8 million budget gap for 2012-13.
Decision to close
A majority of the six school board members favored closing Hyde Park Elementary, based in part on its lower enrollment and the greater potential for renting the historic building on Route 9 in the town center. In an informal vote Thursday night, board members Sharon Matyas, Dan Duffy, Doug Hieter and Glenn Watson supported closing Hyde Park Elementary.
Board member Tim Liebrand supported closing Ralph R. Smith due to its central location in the district. Board member Steven Mittermaier did not express a preference.
The board's decision brought tears to the eyes of many Hyde Park Elementary parents attending the meeting. But some of them acknowledged the board had a difficult decision to make due to economic conditions.
Budget gap
The downturn in revenues, particularly state aid, and rising expenses created a budget gap next school year that was initially $10.5 million. The board has closed that gap by planning to cut costs across the district and spending $6 million in fund balance and reserve funds.
The final budget draft of $83.5 million reduces spending next year by 0.29 percent and raises the tax levy 2.68 percent to $52.7 million. This still meets the state 2 percent tax-levy cap when exemptions for capital spending, payments in lieu of taxes and pension contributions are factored in.
The board is opting to use $405,939 of the $605,939 of state aid recently restored by the state Legislature to offset the tax-levy increase, which was 3.53 percent. The other $200,000 will be used to offset district expenses.
The savings resulting from closing the elementary school will come primarily from reducing 16.5 staff positions. This includes a principal, six teaching positions, a librarian, a nurse, a secretary, three custodians and two cafeteria staff.
"The major part of the savings are in the administrative and managerial operation of the building," Fischer said.
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[again-- in case you missed it-- my op-ed Valley Views from Feb. 22nd Poughkeepsie Journal]
Demand fairness in New York's budget
11:10 PM, Feb. 22, 2012 |
Written by
Joel Tyner
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20120223/OPINION04/302230037/Demand-fairness-New-York-s-budget
Joel Tyner is a Dutchess County legislator for District 11, Clinton/Rhinebeck. He is also a Democratic candidate for the 20th Congressional District.
Resources
See http://www.DutchessDemocracy.blogspot.com ; http://www.JoelforCongress.org - call us at 845-444-0599 to get involved.
Also see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org
Here are 10 reasons to come out to our "A Better Choice Budget for New York" forum with New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness Executive Director Ron Deutsch, Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at Rhinebeck Town Hall at 80 East Market St. Deutsch will also be speaking the same evening at 7:30 p.m. at the Christ Episcopal Church in Poughkeepsie on 20 Carroll St.
1. The Better Choice Budget Coalition sensibly calls for a return to the full millionaires tax and closing one billion dollars' worth of corporate tax loopholes annually - coalition members include the New York State Alliance for Retired Americans, Statewide Senior Action Council of NYS, NYS Coalition for the Aging, New York State Library Association, Interfaith Alliance of NYS, Interfaith Impact of NYS, NYS Episcopal Public Policy Network, Alliance for Quality Education, Environmental Advocates of NY, Center for Independence of the Disabled of New York, NYS AFL-CIO, CSEA, NYSUT, PEF, AFSCME, New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, NYS Community Action Association, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, Community Voices Heard, Fiscal Policy Institute, and the Hunger Action Network of New York State.
[see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org ]
2. Fact: New York's millionaires tax used to bring in $4.6 billion in revenue annually; because of December's tax deal, it now only brings in $1.9 billion in revenue - creating a $2.7 billion hole in the state budget ( http://www.FiscalPolicy.org ).
3. Meanwhile, over the last two years alone $2.7 billion has been cut from state aid to schools - so Hyde Park Elementary School may close, LaGrange and Smith Elementary schools already closed, and the City of Poughkeepsie has cut back to half-day kindergarten - and Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed to add only $805 million in state aid to schools this year while proposing to cut $99 million from early childhood intervention services over the next five years.
4. Sixty-three percent of school districts increased their class size because of these budget cuts, 36 percent cut summer schools, 22 percent cut art classes, 14 percent cut music classes, and 17 percent cut honors or advanced placement courses ( http://www.AQENY.org ).
5. The richest 1 percent of New York state households increased their share of all income statewide from 10 percent in 1980 to 35 percent in 2007, and the 67 billionaires who call New York home have a combined net worth over $234.9 billion ( http://www.99PercentNY.org ).
6. Recent Marist/YNN, Siena, Quinnipiac and Hart research polls all show the vast majority of New Yorkers strongly supported maintaining the full millionaires tax.
[see: http://www.capitaltonight.com/2011/02/groups-band-together-to-push-millionaires-tax/ ; http://www.hungeractionnys.org/Poeple%20SOS%20release%202011.pdf ;
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=940073&category=state ;
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki ]
7. As the Poughkeepsie Journal reported ("Seniors pay more under EPIC rules" Feb. 4), because of $36 million cut in state funding last year for the state's Elderly Prescription Insurance Coverage (EPIC) program, "starting in January EPIC participants have had to pay between $3 and $20 for a prescription, depending on the overall cost of the medication; now New York doesn't subsidize participants until they reach the coverage gap of $2,930, also known as the 'doughnut hole' - until that time, seniors pay 25 percent of the cost of the drug."
https://www.change.org/petitions/governor-cuomo-and-the-new-york-state-legislature-fully-fund-epic-elderly-prescription-insurance-coverage-program
8. The State University of New York's funding has been cut by $1.4 billion over the last four years - over $300 million last year alone. SUNY's total operating budget has already been reduced by over 35 percent over the last five years ( http://www.SaveOurSUNY.org ).
9. As Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has recently stated, "defined contribution plans are not adequate for retirement security for public or private workers; study after study has shown that defined benefit plans cost less in the long run than 401(k) style plans and perform better" - more workers should have defined-benefit pensions - we shouldn't kill what's left of the middle class by attacking public employee pensions.
[ http://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/feb12/021312.htm ]
10. Finally, large multinational corporations that do business in New York should pay taxes; some of the worst corporate tax dodgers are Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Travelers Insurance, Verizon and Goldman Sachs. We need to level the playing field so that small businesses are not left holding the bag while big businesses are allowed to avail themselves of billions of dollars in corporate tax subsidies and loopholes - loopholes should be closed for corporate tax evaders, real estate partnership abuses should end, and New York needs to "expand the nonresident personal income tax to include income received from hedge fund management fees," as Gov. David Paterson included in his 2010 Executive Budget proposal.
[ http://www.99PercentNY.org ]
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From: Kat Fisher
Hudson Valley Organizer
Alliance for Quality Education
94 Central Avenue
Albany, NY 12206
585-269-8605
THE 2012-13 STATE BUDGET The Governor's proposed budget committed to increase school funding by $805 million this year, but diverted $250 million into competitive grants. Our focus this year has been to redirect the competitive grants to classroom aid, ensure that high-need schools are prioritized, and get the state to invest in pre-kindergarten. Voting on the final budget is expected to begin on Wednesday but it appears that:
* Nearly $200 million of the proposed competitive grant funds will be restored to classroom aid
* High need districts will be prioritized
* The Legislature rejected cuts to early intervention services for children with special needs as well as to special education for pre-school children.
* The budget agreement includes changes to pre-k that will prevent back door cuts in pre-k.
OUR ADVOCACY MATTERS If not for the large numbers of advocates traveling to Albany in January, February and March to speak up for our children there may not have been such a response from our elected officials. (AQE and allies organized these trips)
$805 MILLION DOESN'T FIX $2.7 BILLION IN SCHOOL CUTS Due to $2.7 billion in state budget cuts to schools, many children have lost college prep and Advanced Placement Courses, Career & Technical Education, arts, music, sports, tutoring, foreign languages, high school electives, after school programs, librarians, guidance counselors and more. Some schools have even cut kindergarten to half-day. State budget cuts were two to three times as large per pupil in poor districts as in wealthy districts. Even with this year's $805 million restoration many school districts are still going to have to make painful cuts.
WHAT NOW? The State Budget will be voted on this week. It is critically important that all of us who are dedicated to improving our public schools and protecting our children's future continue to raise our voices. In order to do this we need to:
* Stay involved and get others involved by:
o Signing up for regular updates http://www.aqeny.org/
o Speaking out at community meetings.
o Holding press conferences in your community.
o Submitting opinion editorials and letters to the editor to local papers.
* Speak truth to power:
o Because of the grassroots advocacy efforts of parents, students, teachers, administrators and school board members, high need districts have been prioritized and classroom funding has been prioritized over competitive grants.
o This state budget is inadequate to address the growing education crisis in New York State. Tell the stories of the types of cuts that your schools are still considering
Budget update: Votes to begin on Wednesday and expected to be final this week
1- $805 million restoration to public schools
2- Nearly $200 million of the competitive grants will be redirected to the classroom
3- High needs districts are prioritized
4- The Legislature rejected cuts to early intervention services for children with special needs as well as to special education for pre-school children.
5- The budget agreement includes changes to pre-k that will prevent back door cuts in pre-k
Advocacy works. There is power in numbers. But unfortunately, because the total $805 million restoration will not fill the $2.7 billion hole and our children will lose more.
Schools are still facing layoffs, school closing, essential program losses, increasing class sizes and massive reorganizations.
Without the efforts of AQE and its allies, the modified Millionaires' Tax that was passed in December would not have been won. Without this increase in state revenue, any increase in education money could have never been funded.
AQE organized students, parents, educators and community members from across the state to speak up for our schools and our children's future. As a result of these efforts we expect, nearly $200m of the competitive grant money will redirected to classrooms, high needs districts will prioritized.
We worked with both sides of aisle in our legislature, both Republicans and Democrats, to fight for quality public schools so that every child has an opportunity to learn. We'd like to thank the Legislature for restoring $805 million to education, moving a majority of the competitive grant funding into the classroom where it belongs and for rejecting cuts to early intervention services for children with special needs and to special education pre-school children- cuts that would have resulted in more cuts to K-12 education since the school district would have had to pay for those cuts- and for making changes to preventing back door cuts to pre-k.
But unfortunately, this year's budget isn't going to prevent more cuts to our schools. The $805 million restoration will not fill the $2.7 billion hole, created by two consecutive years of state budget cuts and our children will lose more. Prior cuts have cost our children teachers and quality programs such as college prep and Advanced Placement Courses, Career & Technical Education, arts, music, sports, tutoring, foreign languages, high school electives, after school programs, librarians, guidance counselors and more. Some schools have even cut kindergarten to half-day.
Under Governor Cuomo's leadership our state moving in the wrong direction, in regards to education. Our schools are getting worse, not better.
Now we'll hear from our speakers about how state budget has and is impacting our schoolsŠ.
The budget fixes the Maintenance of Effort issue (districts had to maintain the same number of students served in the year before, to not lose any funding) which penalized many districts for fluctuations in enrollment and provided a disincentive for expanding pre-k services.
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Check out these facts from Ron Deutsch of http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org :
New York is #1 in the U.S.A. in income inequality.
Over the last 30 years, the income of the top 1% of New Yorkers has gone up 500%, while the income of the bottom 50% has gone down 13%
New York has lost over 500,000 jobs during the Great Recession.
One in three New Yorkers are poor or near-poor.
Food stamp use has increased by 1.2 million; 500,000 less have health insurance (and the minimum wage hasn't been lifted in a decade).
90% of federal TANF monies flowing into NYS have been diverted over the last 2 years from purpose(!).
Meanwhile, salaries for business and finance professionals are up by more than 17%, and 3800 New York taxpayers now make over $10 million per year.
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[recall below sent out to this list as well recently]
Thanks much to my Co. Leg. colleagues Barbara Jeter-Jackson, Alison MacAvery, Francena Amparo, and Jim Doxsey...
To their credit, Barbara, Alison, Francena and Jim have all agreed to co-sponsor my resolution below for March Co. Leg. mtg. for Better Choice Budget for NYS!...(see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org )...
[sadly-- and predictably-- GOP Co. Leg. supermajority shot it down across party lines earlier this month]
[recall: Cablevision, some Occ.-Pok. and HPE folks came out our Valentine's Day rally in February:
http://www.dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2012/01/valentines-day-rally-have-heart-nys-at.html ]
Kudos as well to Conservative Co. Leg. Jim Doxsey for his work for years now to stop New York State from giving literally $16 billion annually to Wall Street in tax breaks re: stock transfer tax rebate...
[see: http://doxseydistrict1.com/?p=639 ; http://doxseydistrict1.com/?m=201103 ;
http://mhvperspective.com/?Return=T;lquery=Author+regexp+'James+R.+Doxsey'+order+by+ID+desc ;
http://doxseydistrict1.com/?cat=bwmbbkppup&paged=3 ]
[join 150+ signed to my http://www.petitiononline.com/stocktax effort if you agree with Jim/me on this!]
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Fact; Last year state spending on health care was cut by $2.8 billion, and the State University of New York has been cut by $1.4 billion over the last four years; SUNY's total operating budget has already been reduced by over 35% over the last five years, tuition is scheduled to rise by $300 a year every year for the next five years; our state's Department of Environmental Conservation was funded at $1.5 billion in 2009-2010; Governor Cuomo has proposed less than $1.1 billion in funding for the DEC for 2012-2013; there were 4050 DEC staff in 1989; less than 3000 DEC staff are proposed in Governor Cuomo's budget for next year.
[see: http://eany.org/images/Reports/budgetbrief12-13.pdf ;
http://www.SaveOurSUNY.org ; http://www.nysenate.gov/files/Jackie%20Haynes.pdf ;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/08/student-loan-debt-bankruptcy_n_1263348.html ;
http://online.wsj.com/article/APf6aaf05fc11c46e7a78621d594e11cb1.html ;
http://www.projectonstudentdebt.org http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/education/12college.html ]
From AQE too ( http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=658278308#!/events/306129579428162/ ):
$2.7 billion of state aid has been cut from NY schools in the last two years. Essential programming has been lost. Services to special education have been reduced. 11,000 teaching JOBS have been eliminated last year alone. Community schools are closing. Standard building maintenance has been postponed. Our students and teachers cannot take another year of cuts:
http://www.aqeny.org/ny/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Jan-10-2012-First-things-First-NJ-Final-12.13.pdf
And-- check out http://www.SaveOurSUNY.org -- one-third of state SUNY funding cut over last 3 years!
["college tuition has gone up 432% since 1982, 2x the rate of medical care and 4x the rate of inflation"]
Fact: Cuomo has proposed to rip $99 million out of state funding for early childhood intervention services over the next five years (and cuts tobacco prevention funding by $10 million over the next two years).
[reaction noted in recent Albany Times-Union piece on this: "Early intervention providers were stunned by the cuts to the program. 'I'm extremely disappointed,' said Leslie Grubler, of the United New York Early Intervention Providers."-- from "Details of Cuomo's Budget Proposal":
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Details-of-Cuomo-s-budget-proposal-2593571.php ]
Also-- according to the Environmental Advocates of New York:
[see http://eany.org/images/Reports/budgetbrief12-13.pdf ]
Fact: Our state's Department of Environmental Conservation was funded to the tune of $1.5 billion in 2009-2010; Cuomo has proposed less than $1.1 billion in funding for the DEC for 2012-2013.
Fact: There were 4050 DEC staff in 1989; less than 3000 DEC staff are proposed in Cuomo's budget for next year.
[recall recent EANY report-- 90% DEC SPDES permits rubber-stamped due to understaffing @ DEC:
http://www.eany.org/pdf/PermissiontoPollute_04282008.pdf ]
Fact: Cuomo has proposed a $1.2 million cut to the DEC's Air and Water Quality Management program, a $4.2 million cut to the DEC's Solid and Hazardous Waste Management program, seven less staff for the NYS Dept. of Agriculture and Markets, two less staff for NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, and $190,000 less for municipal recycling (among other cuts; see EANY.org pdf report).
Fact: As it is now already, over the last four years, DEC and Ag and Markets have each lost over 20% of their staffing.
Don't forget what happens here in Dutchess County when state budget not fully funding human needs-- just over last two years Dutchess GOP have eliminated county funding for our county's Human Rights Commission, Office of Consumer Affairs, Youth Bureau's Project Return program for troubled teens, a full five-day week at our county Office for the Aging Senior Friendship Centers (instead of the current four-day week); appoint a County Historian. Also, our county DSS' Day Care Unit needs to be fully funded-- as your annual report's 2011 Departmental Annual Summary informs us all that, "Effective July 1, 2011 the income guidelines for the Day Care Unit were changed to those whose income is below 125 percent of the poverty level-- from those whose income is below 200 percent of the poverty level"... [recall-- http://www.petitiononline.com/cobudget ]
[also-- for reminder of last year's cuts-- see http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/apr2011/nybu-a12.shtml !]
Don't forget the fact is that the richest one percent of NYS households increased their share of all income statewide from 10 percent in 1980 to 35 percent in 2007-- there's no reason the state should be shortfunding monies for seniors' prescriptions, our schools-- or anything, for that matter...
[Dec. 13, 2010 report from FiscalPolicy.org; for more info re: corporate tax loopholes see: http://www.abetterchoiceforny.org/Tax_onesheet-1_5_12.pdf ]
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Not Enough to Meet Social Needs
James Parrott is the deputy director and chief economist of the Fiscal Policy Institute.
UPDATED DECEMBER 8, 2011, 7:16 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/12/08/cuomos-tax-deal-who-benefits-the-most/huge-budget-holes-remain
The Albany agreement on taxes and jobs is an important step in the right direction. It involves a progressive change in the state's personal income tax structure that generates a net of $1.5 billion to help reduce next year's budget deficit. It will provide a modest but much-needed job stimulus.
Too many highly profitable Fortune 500 companies use loopholes and favors to avoid paying state income taxes.
Economically, both the income tax increases and decreases mainly occur among upper-middle and upper income households in New York City and its suburbs. The modest tax bracket reduction for those under $150,000 will be spread across the state, as will the benefit of averting $1.5 billion in budget cuts.
The troubling thing is that a $2 billion budget gap remains. Funding for schools, public higher education, mass transit, child care and homeless assistance already have been slashed at a time when needs have multiplied in the wake of the Great Recession. New York has lost 500,000 job opportunities and $31 billion in annual earnings that go with those lost opportunities
The two-thirds increase in food stamp recipiency - 1.2 million more New Yorkers - since the recession began shows that needs have skyrocketed, yet $20 billion in services and state support has been reduced over the past three years. A half million new jobs would go a long way, restoring self-esteem in the process. More budget cuts will only make it worse.
The second step on the road back needs to be corporate tax reform. As a new report this week showed, scores of highly profitable Fortune 500 companies use loopholes and favors to avoid paying state income taxes. It's no wonder many big corporations are sitting on mountains of cash. Business income taxes have fallen sharply relative to the size of New York's economy - if the share were back to where it was 25 years ago, state revenues would be $3 billion higher.
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A Millionaire at $220,000 a Year?
Bridget Crawford is a professor of law at Pace Law School.
UPDATED DECEMBER 9, 2011, 11:54 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/12/08/cuomos-tax-deal-who-benefits-the-most/a-millionaire-at-220000-a-year
Governor Cuomo's new tax plan is well-intended but flawed in execution. It embraces the notion that those who have more should pay more, but implements that policy with blunt tax rates that treat too many people as "millionaires."
Wealthy New Yorkers probably won't pick up and move, but they may think twice about bringing their business here.
What is good about the Cuomo tax plan is that it gives a modest tax break to families that earn less than $200,000 a year. Before 2009, a single New Yorker earning $30,000 per year would be subject to taxation on her last dollar earned at the highest rate of 6.85 percent. That same New Yorker will now pay tax on her last dollar earned at a rate of 6.45 percent. That means more money in the pockets of those who need it to meet basic living expenses.
What is bad about the Cuomo tax plan is that it does not differentiate in a meaningful way between a person who makes $220,000 per year and a person who makes $2 million per year. To Cuomo, these people are all rich -- or at least rich enough to lump together.
A commitment to truly progressive taxation would require lawmakers to get past political rhetoric and acknowledge that the rich are different. Not only are they different from you and me, but they are different from each other. The Fiscal Policy Institute got it right with its proposal to impose tax at carefully stepped rates that range from 4 percent to almost 10 percent, with 12 different brackets. To be sure, 12 brackets are not as finely graded as 24 brackets, and 24 brackets are not as finely graded as 48, but the Cuomo plan lumps together too many taxpayers.
New York's tax rates are among the highest in the nation. Will wealthy New Yorkers pick up and move somewhere else? Probably not. But they may think twice about bringing their business here. The banking and financial services industries are already losing out to states like Delaware and Alaska in the competition for trust business. By making trusts subject to taxation at these high rates, New York is likely to lose even more trust business.
That means loss of jobs for the people who work at banks, the workers with 9 to 5 jobs, families to feed and student loans to repay. In the short term, these folks may be taxed at slightly lower rates under the Cuomo plan, but in the long term, they may not have jobs at all.
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From: Ronald Deutsch
Subject: New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness responds to Executive Budget
Date: Jan 17, 2012 3:26 PM
Budget on Revenues: Smoke Em if You Can Afford Em Ron Deutsch, Executive Director of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness responds to Lack of Corporate Loopholes Closers in Executive Budget Proposal
"The Governor's 'Smoke Em if You Got Em' revenue generating agenda leaves much to be desired. Raising taxes on cigars and loose tobacco fall far short of a substantive loophole closing agenda especially when our current corporate tax law has more holes than swiss cheese."
"Last week, organizations from across New York called upon the Governor to follow three simple principles when it comes to closing corporate loopholes; enforcement, transparency and fairness. New York could and should collect hundreds of million in uncollected tax revenue simply by enforcing current tax law, especially when it comes to unreported gains from Real Estate Partnerships.
"Before we cut one program for needy New Yorkers we should make sure that wealthy real estate moguls are actually paying their taxes. We must also ensure that big multi-national corporations that do business in NYS pay something in corporate taxes. Too many are avoiding paying any taxes to NYS. We need to level the playing field so that small businesses are not left 'holding the bag' while big businesses are allowed to avail themselves of billions of dollars in corporate tax subsidies and loopholes."
Ronald Deutsch Executive Director
New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness
212 Great Oaks Blvd
Albany, NY 12203
(518) 452-2130 - office
(518) 469-6769 - cell
(518) 869-8649 - fax
rdeutschnyff@gmail.com or
mkd67@aol.com
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Coalition Wants Corporate Tax Loopholes Closed
WAMC/Dave Lucas (2012-01-10)
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wamc/news.newsmain/article/1/0/1892051/WAMC.New.York.News/Coalition.Wants.Corporate.Tax.Loopholes.Closed
ALBANY, NY (WAMC) - A large coalition of community, labor, student, faith and Occupy organizations gathered at the New York State Capitol on Monday to announce their campaign to bring fairness and transparency to New York's corporate tax system. WAMC's Dave Lucas was there and files this report.
Unified under the "99 per cent New York" banner, the coalition, which includes Citizen Action of New York, the New York State Public Employees Federation, Occupy Albany and others, is calling on Governor Cuomo and the Legislature to close corporate tax loopholes, raising over $1 billion dollars for this year's state budget. They say additional revenue will help New York to create jobs, create a fairer environment for small business, and prevent more devastating budget cuts to services and our safety net and allow for restorations of reduced funding. Occupy Albany's Colin Donnaruma said "The fact that all too often powerful corporations are able to wield political influence to create tax loopholes to avoid paying their fair-share is a paradigmatic example of the broader economic and political inequalities that have motivated the Occupy movement."
The groups produced a list of companies they allege are New York's worst corporate tax dodgers, including Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Travelers Insurance, Verizon, and Goldman Sachs. PEF President Ken Brynien notes the list highlights the gross inequities in our tax system that hinder small businesses, job creation, and our economy. Angelica Clarke, organizer with New York Students Rising and Save Our SUNY, says students demand Governor Cuomo and the legislature initiate a tuition freeze.
The coalition's plan to reform New York's corporate tax structure is based on three main principles: enforcement, fairness, and transparency. The Governor's office did not immediately return calls for comment.
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From http://www.abetterchoiceforny.org/Tax_onesheet-1_5_12.pdf ...
[the Better Choice Budget coalition]
New York should raise needed revenue and restore fairness to the tax code by reforming our state corporate tax structure and closing a variety of corporate tax loopholes to make sure small business and big business play by the same rules, and that higher profits are taxed at reasonably higher rates.
Last year's effort to make the PIT more progressive and more fair should continue in 2012 by reforming corporate taxes to close loopholes, end costly and ineffective tax subsidies, and fix shortcomings that unnecessarily reduce tax collections and limit resources needed to maintain and invest in the infrastructure, services and educated workforce that foster long-term economic growth.
Reform Principles: Enforcement, fairness and transparency
Targets: Corporate tax evaders, real estate partnership abuses, hedge funds income treatment
Methods: Tough Audits, reasonable minimum tax for big business, eliminate hedge fund subsidies, mandatory tax reporting for public companies A simple, targeted corporate tax reform effort would provide over $1 billion in revenue for this year's state budget, and provide a start for the Tax Reform and Fairness Commission to continue reforms.
Enforcement: Require Real Estate Partnerships To Pay The Taxes They Owe
New York must undertake a new intensive review of the tax returns of investors in real estate partnerships to ensure compliance with tax laws. In an examination of just one year's tax returns (2005), IRS staff estimated that real estate investors underpaid $5 billion in taxes to the federal government and $385 million to New York State.
Underreporting or misreporting of capital gains from real estate investments is the main cause of tax underpayments. Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston, who reported the 2005 IRS data when he wrote for the New York Times, recently wrote that the annual underpayment of New York State taxes in connection with real estate partnerships ranged from $200 to $700 million annually. Johnston also pointed out that New York City alone could be losing out on $40 million annually.
New York could recover as much as $1 billion from prior-year audits, with annual revenues thereafter well over $100 million. The state of Pennsylvania recently recaptured over $700 million by making sure that the investors in Real Estate Partnerships paid the proper taxes on their overall gains.
Fairness: Reform New York's Corporate Alternate Minimum Tax (AMT)
Several significant loopholes that favor multi-state corporations were added to New York's Corporate AMT beginning in 1994 and the AMT rate was cut from 3.5% to 2.5% in 1999 and then to 1.5% in 2005 for non-manufacturers and most recently .75% for manufacturers (manufacturers rate was recently changed in the tax reform package of December 2011).
A Blueprint for Corporate Tax Fairness: Closing Corporate Tax Loopholes & Reforming the Corporate Income Tax
These changes should be repealed or the AMT should be replaced with a variation of the Alternative Minimum Assessment (AMA) adopted by New Jersey in 2002. To ensure that such an assessment would not hurt small business, it should only be applied to businesses with annual gross profits of $5 million or more.
We need to level the playing field between large and small businesses by making sure that large multinational corporations pay a minimum corporate income tax in NYS. NYS should increase the Corporate AMT to where it was a decade ago (3.5%) which would generate hundreds of millions in additional revenue.
Tax Nonresident Hedge Fund Management Fees
In his 2010 Executive Budget proposal, Governor Paterson proposed to "expand the nonresident personal income tax to include income received from hedge fund management fees."
As the governor's proposal explained, "Currently, only a small portion of such income is taxed as compensation, with the remainder deemed tax-free capital gains. This proposal would result inequal treatment of this income for residents and nonresidents." This proposal would generate $50 million in additional revenue.
Eliminate the Carried Interest Exemption Under New York City's Unincorporated Business Tax
The State Legislature should eliminate the carried interest exemption loophole in the New York City Unincorporated Business Tax, to put the taxation of private equity and hedge funds on the same footing as that of thousands of smaller businesses. Right now, the City Unincorporated Business Tax taxes fees received by managing partners in private equity and hedge funds but actually exempts profits from taxation.
"Carried interest" is the technical industry term for the profit share received by managing partners (usually 20 percent of pooled investment profits) in hedge funds - anyone else would call it corporate profits.
The New York City Independent Budget Office estimated that eliminating the carried interest exemption for the Unincorporated Business Tax would yield $200 million a year for New York City. This reform was recently supported by Mayor Bloomberg. Transparency Crackdown on Schemes that Create "Nowhere Income"
Multi-state corporations pay no taxes on profits attributable to sales made in states in which they do not have a physical presence. To address this situation, 28 of the 45 states with corporate income taxes, including California, Texas and Utah have enacted "throw-back" or "throw-out" rules to limit this drain on state revenues.
In contrast, New York actually went backwards on this issue in 2005, instituting a wasteful "Single Sales Factor" method for apportioning multi-state corporate profits that actually increase "nowhere income" and opportunities to evade taxes.
It's time to institute reforms that have worked for other states. Require Public Disclosure of Corporate Tax Payments for Publicly-Traded Companies Revenue neutral, but disclosure and transparency measures are a good addition to any corporate tax reform package.
We urge the state to adopt corporate tax disclosure for publicly traded firms subject to taxation under 9-A and 32 and any successor taxes. These and other corporate tax reforms are supported by a broad range of community, labor, student, faith and Occupy groups from across New York - for more information visit 99PercentNY.org.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Seniors First press conference-- save Golden Hill, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, EPIC-- join us!...
[let us know asap if you can join us for Seniors First press conference tomorrow (Weds. Apr. 11th) 12:30 pm in front of Ulster County Golden Hill Health Care Center at 99 Golden Hill Drive (off Rt. 32)!...we're not just going to be talking about how county nursing homes like Ulster's shouldn't be privatized; we're also going to be talking about how ridiculous it is that so many in both GOP and Dem power structure in both Washington and Albany have repeatedly thrown senior citizens under the bus!...see below-- and again-- call us at 845-444-0599 if you can come out!...Joel]
[county nursing homes are near and dear to me; I went nine days without food in September 1998 to protest Dutchess GOP privatizing/closing the Millbrook Infirmary]
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[thirteen reasons here to join us for this tomorrow-- if you need more convincing!]
1. "Obama Puts Social Security, Medicare Cuts on the Table" [Reuters 7/11/11]
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/07/obama-puts-social-security-medicare-cuts-on-the-table/
2. Chris Gibson voted to destroy Medicare through voucherization last year:
http://dutchessdemocracy. blogspot.com/2011/08/truth-re-gibson-anti-senior-anti.html.
3. Chris Gibson has also received $46,000 from his insurance industry crony buddies over just the last few years alone, according to Maplight.org:
http://maplight.org/us-congress/legislator/1461-chris-gibson.
4. 81% of Americans support taxing millionaires/billionaires more to solve federal budget problems (Mar. 2011 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll).
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7333/what_americans_want_the_peoples_budget
5. 78% of Americans support protecting Medicare from cuts; 69% of Americans support protecting Medicaid from any cuts (April 2011 ABC News Washington Post poll).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-shows-americans-oppose-entitlement-cuts-to-deal-with-debt-problem/2011/04/19/AFoiAH9D_story.html
6. Under Cuomo just last year, $36 million was cut from Elderly Prescription Insurance Coverage program:
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-petition-to-fully-fund-new-york-states-elderly-prescription-insurance-coverage-program.
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7. "The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently reported that 91% of entitlements go to the elderly or disabled, or to members of working households needing supplemental assistance. Only 9% of entitlement dollars go to non-working but employable individuals, and most of that is for medical care, unemployment, and survivor benefits. Beyond the fact that we're 'entitled' to Social Security and Medicare because we pay for them, these two government-run programs have been largely self-sustaining while supporting the needs of millions of Americans. Medicare is much less costly than private health care. Social Security, which functions with a surplus, would not be in danger of a long-term shortfall if the richest 10% (those making over the $106,800 cutoff) paid their full share."
[from "Five Preposterous, Persistent Conservative Myths" by Paul Buchheit:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/02-0]
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8. Finally-- most importantly-- this below from SaveGoldenHill.com...
Save Golden Hill-Introduction
The issue of the 280-bed Golden Hill Health Care Center is one that should concern every member of the community. This goes beyond tax dollars. It is about providing local, quality care for those Ulster County residents who can no longer care for themselves.
The following are facts that we feel are important for the public to understand regarding this issue. For more detailed information, please visit the other pages and links at this site.
Subsidy:
Golden Hill Health Care Center is the only county department that is set up as an Enterprise Fund. As such, Golden Hill operates under a budget that is entirely independent of the county budget. All expenses including employee salaries and benefits are included in this budget. The only funding Golden Hill receives from the county is in the form of a subsidy if expenses exceed the revenues received from Medicaid, Medicare and private pay. The County Executive, and his staff had projected a county subsidy to Golden Hill of $4.2 million dollars for 2011, but the actual subsidy stands at just $1.2 Million. Over the past 20 years, the subsidy has varied, and in some years (as recently as 2009), there was no subsidy needed at all. $1.2 Million accounts for just 1/3 of a percent of the total county budget of $352 million.
Renovate or Rebuild:
You have probably heard that studies done a number of years ago on the sewer and water systems beneath the building revealed that they are failing, and need to be replaced. However, these studies are outdated and are disputed by some within the legislature and at Golden Hill. Despite the questionable validity of these studies, they have long been debating the decision to either renovate the existing structure or build a new facility. Should they choose to renovate or build new, the cost would be 70 – 90% reimbursed, including interest, by the state, leaving the county to bear only a fraction of the burden. In addition, a new facility could be designed to be more energy efficient and provide a wider range of services that may increase revenue, thereby eliminating the need for any county subsidy.
Privatization:
Some may wonder – why not sell the nursing home to a private corporation? In fact, one local politician was recently quoted as saying “I believe that government shouldn’t be in any business that can be run and probably better managed in the private sector.” Government’s role is to do in society that which is not done by the private sector. The private sector does not want to care for complex residents who have no means to pay. Private nursing homes are in the business of making money. They go into the hospitals and cherry-pick residents based on their profitability. Residents requiring complex care or who do not have the ability to pay for private care, may not be accepted in the private home, and may be forced to go out of the county or even out-of-state for nursing home care.
Employees:
People wonder why we talk about employees losing their jobs if the nursing home is sold. Private nursing homes have lower staff-to-patient ratios, meaning, they employ fewer people. The current county employees (many of whom have worked at GHHCC for 20 years or more) would be laid off and then would have to compete with all other applicants to apply for a job with the new nursing home. Only a fraction of those employees would be hired, and likely at a much lower rate of pay. This would result in a higher unemployment rate, lower sales tax revenues and more than likely, higher home foreclosure rates.
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9. Fact: Albany County still has their county-owned/run nursing home.
"Due to annual budget concerns, this marks the third straight year that Albany County Nursing Home supporters have been forced to rally before the County Legislature to save the facility from closing. Both in 2010 and 2011, the County Executive’s budget eliminated nursing home funding, only to have county lawmakers restore it in the end. The battle continues for 2012."
http://albanycountynursinghomecares.org/news_stories/CountyStories/tapcaphearing.html
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10. "Nursing Home Privatization: What is the Human Cost in Long Term Care?"
Authors: Steve Lopez
Publication Date: May 1, 1998
http://keystoneresearch.org/publications/research/nursing-home-privatization-what-human-cost
In response to increasing financial pressure and cuts in reimbursement, Pennsylvania county governments are considering privatizing countyowned nursing homes. The idea of saving money by turning county nursing homes over to private operators appeals to county leaders seeking to relieve budget pressures. But what happens to the quality of care when counties turn their nursing homes over to private firms?
This report investigates the effects of privatization or attempted privatization on the quality of care at several county and former county nursing homes in western Pennsylvania: Allegheny County’s John J. Kane Regional Centers, where privatization was proposed but not implemented; Comfort Home, which remained public but whose operation was taken over by a for-profit management company; and Chelsea Manor, which was sold outright to a nonprofit entity created by the county for the purpose of buying the facility. The report compares these homes with one another and with Green Gables, a private nursing home that is characterized by low wages, high employee turnover, and poor quality of care.1
The study draws the following conclusions:
• Although staffing levels declined whether or not privatization was ultimately carried out, the most significant staffing cuts occurred where privatization was taken furthest. After the privatization of Chelsea Manor (the home sold to a newly created private non-profit organization), staffing levels appeared to be nearly identical to those at the low-quality private home—a home where understaffing led state investigators to suspend admissions temporarily in 1997.
•Workers’ wages and employee turnover, two factors affecting care continuity, were most negatively affected at the home where privatization proceeded furthest. At the Kanes and Comfort home (where collective bargaining continued), workers’wages, benefits, and employee turnover remained stable. At Chelsea Manor, wages fell to levels almost identical to those at Green Gables (where staff turnover was rampant). Turnover at Chelsea Manor appeared to be increasing towards that at Green Gables.
• At both homes where some form of privatization was implemented, workers complained about shortages of medical and patient care supplies. Both of these homes seemed to have a more serious problem in this area than the Kanes, but at neither home was the problem as serious as at Green Gables.
• The quality of care at all three of the county and former county homes deteriorated, regardless of whether privatization was actually carried out or only proposed. Once again the worst declines in quality occurred where privatization was taken furthest. After privatization, Chelsea Manor began to develop a pattern of unexplained resident injuries, some of which were not properly investigated or reported. Chelsea Manor’s problems were similar in nature, though not in extent, to quality problems at Green Gables, where several hundred such incidents occurred in a recent 18-month period.
• Even the best homes in the study, the Kanes and Comfort Home, are now unable to meet all the physical, emotional, and social needs of their residents, even though they exceed federal and state standards for staffing ratios. All of the nursing homes described in this report, in varying degrees of urgency, need more nurses’aides.
• As do the Kanes, county nursing homes across Pennsylvania have much lower turnover among nurses’ aides than is typical for private homes. Combined with the case studies, this strongly suggests that nursing home privatization may, in many cases, worsen the quality of care.
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11. "Buyer for Ulster County's Golden Hill Health Care Center needed by September"
Published: Wednesday, April 04, 2012
by PATRICIA DOXSEY
Freeman staff
pdoxsey@freemanonline.com; twitter.com/pattiatfreeman
http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2012/04/04/news/doc4f7d01af47c46274990815.txt?viewmode=2
KINGSTON, N.Y. — Members of the Golden Hill Local Development Corp. board of directors say they have to select a buyer for the Ulster County-owned nursing home by the end of September in order to have the sale completed by the end of 2013.
“If we can’t select a buyer by then, we’re behind schedule,” said Marshall Beckman, vice chairman of the board.
Beckman said it will take between 20 and 24 months for the buyer to get state approval to purchase the nursing home license.
“What we don’t want to do is go into 2014 with a continued deficit,” he said.
Ulster County Executive Michael Hein predicted an $8 million gap in the county’s 2012 budget because of Golden Hill, and he has predicted that deficit will continue to grow if county ownership of the 280-bed nursing home continues.
On Wednesday, board members got a first look at the resumes of the four firms vying to help the board select the eventual buyer for Golden Hill.
The firms, from as far away as Chicago, responded to a request for qualifications sent by Deputy County Executive Ed Crannell on behalf of the board.
Responding to the request were Loeb & Troper of New York City, Marcus & Millichap of Chicago, the Center for Governmental Research, of Rochester and Next Wave of Albany.
Board members expect to establish protocols for selecting a consultant at their next meeting. In the meantime, board member Michael Bernholz expects to work with Crannell to determine whether there are any other consultants that should be considered for the task.
Board members expect the consultant to help the board evaluate prospective buyers and pick the one that fits best with the county’s future wants for the nursing home.
In December, legislators, pushed by Hein to agree to sell the nursing home, created the Golden Hill Local Development Corp., transferred to it the ownership of the nursing home and authorized the corporation to bond for up to $10 million.
The corporation will, in turn, pay to the county $8 million to operate the nursing home in 2012.
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12. From http://www.shawangunkjournal.com/2011/12/08/news/1112085.html...
Golden Hill supporters protest outside the county office building.
Ulster County Dispatch
Pawning Gold: County Legislature Votes to Sell Golden Hill
By Paula Sirc
KINGSTON – Seventeen Ulster County lawmakers voted on Monday night to transfer ownership of the county-run nursing facility to a local development corporation, with the goal of selling it to a private owner by 2013.
The Legislature also voted, 19-13, to adopt the 2012 county budget, a slightly modified version of the one presented by County Executive Michael Hein in early October. Hein's proposed budget was dependent on the sale of the nursing home.
Seven Democrats joined ten Republicans to approve the resolution authorizing the "required steps" to transfer Golden Hill, while 14 members voted against privatization of the 280-bed facility. Legislator Hector Rodriguez, D-New Paltz, abstained from the vote because of a potential conflict of interest with his employer and Legislator Jack Hayes, R-Gardiner, was absent.
The development corporation, which comprises members of the county executive's administration, county legislators and an independently-selected member, will bond, or borrow, $9.3 million against the future sale of the facility, and pay the county $8 million, which will be used to balance the 2012 county budget.
Arguing to keep Golden Hill in county hands, Legislator Carl Belfiglio, R-Esopus, urged the legislative body to "take a step back," saying the idea was foisted upon an unsuspecting legislature by the county executive. "This was shoved into the budget," he said, "and gives too much power to the county executive."
Legislator Susan Zimet, D-New Paltz, said the legislature has been "railroaded."
"Is it appropriate to take the selling of an asset, tie it up in a budget, bond for a deficit hole, at a cost of $1.3 million to the taxpayers and say this is good sound fiscal policy," she asked. "Doing something like this so fast is not a good way to do public service."
County Comptroller Elliott Auerbach and his attorney, Ken Bond, agreed. "This is not an eleventh hour Hail Mary pass," Auerbach said. "I believe it is in Ulster County's best interest to ask some questions."
Prior to Monday's meeting, Legislator Robert Parete, D-Stone Ridge, sent his colleagues his list of questions regarding the LDC, urging them to "proceed with caution until county leaders explain the full ramifications of the LDC."
Parete's questions demonstrate the level of legislative exclusion in the process of creating the LDC. Among the ten questions: what is the appraised value of the property, will the responses to the Golden Hill Request for Proposals will be made public, how many years it will take to transfer full ownership, how much will the corporation finance during the transfer, will the anticipated and unanticipated revenue generated by GH go toward paying down the LDC bond, will the LDC follow all state and local procurement and competitive bidding laws and will the future owner maintain the facility as a 280-bed skilled nursing center.
Legislative Golden Hill supporters had drawn up a last minute amendment that would balance the 2012 budget, not by transfer of the nursing home, but through the sale of other county properties that are "no longer required for public use."
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http://www.woodstockx.com/2011/12/08/legislature-approves-executive-plan-to-sell-health-care-facility-passes-budget-for-2012/
13. Legislature approves executive plan to sell Health Care facility, passes budget for 2012
by Hugh Reynolds on Dec 8, 2011 • 5:00 pm 2 Comments
County executive Michael Hein
Weathering charges of duplicity and secrecy against the Hein administration, and warnings they were acting prematurely and in ignorance, a bare majority of county legislators approved the sale of the Golden Hill Health Facility to a county-run limited development corporation (LDC) on Monday, December 5.
The approving 17 votes (14 against) were almost evenly divided between majority Republicans and Democrats. Jack Hayes of Gardiner was in Florida on vacation. Hector Rodriguez excused himself because of potential conflicts of interest. Rodriguez works for Kingston developer Steve Aaron who has expressed interest in partnering with developers of the 27-acre site. Then, by a 19-14 margin, it approved County Executive Michael Hein’s $363 million budget.
The debate, which stretched through afternoon meetings of legislative committees, conferences among lawyers and then well into the night at the special budget meeting of the legislature, was at times rancorous. Some legislators, like Jim Maloney of Ulster and Carl Belfiglio of Esopus, expressed bewilderment after learning that while a special legislative task force headed by Walter Frey of Saugerties was investigating options on Golden Hill last year, the county executive had secretly engaged an Albany law firm to work out the details of a limited development corporation to sell the facility.
“It has been a long process, most of it done in secret,” Maloney said.
But Hein has said it was the legislature’s inability or refusal to make a decision — and his need for up to $8 million to plug a 2012 budget gap — that forced his hand. Hein argues that his is the “compassionate solution” to the Golden Hill controversy in that it will keep the facility running for the next two years and then under private ownership. Hein said the county could not continue to fund operating deficits at the 40-year old nursing home that next year he predicts will top $5 million. The facility, which some consultants consider outdated, may also need more than $40 million in repairs.
Delay rejected
Legislators and speakers on behalf of Golden Hill argued that a for-profit operation would not provide the level of care patients in the 280-bed facility have been given for almost two generations.
But the majority, with Hein’s prompting, decided the legislature had been given sufficient time to make a decision and that the time for debate was over. Ten legislators who voted on the Hein proposal will not be back next year.
A last-ditch effort by county comptroller Elliott Auerbach failed to change a vote which many had predicted was pre-ordained. Auerbach brought in Kenneth Bond, his special legal consultant and an authority on LDCs, to argue that the legislature was acting without sufficient information and that it should delay its decision into next year.
Ken Ronk of Wallkill was among the many who rejected that notion. “We would be forcing this decision on the next legislature, kicking the can down the road,” he said. Ronk will be the Republican majority leader of that legislature.
Susan Zimet of New Paltz and Don Gregorius of Woodstock were among those who agreed with Bond that the county could designate any asset — including Golden Hill — to raise the $8 million Hein says he needs to balance his budget. Both argued that the legislature itself should form and control an LDC to pursue the sale of surplus properties. It was a measure of the progress of this years-long controversy from avoidance to decision that nobody advanced the notion of the county continuing ownership and operation of Golden Hill. The debate was almost entirely over the best way to construct an LDC — an entity that can manage property and borrow money without voter approval.
Two seldom-shows over the past three months — retiring legislator Frank Felicello of Marlborough and the defeated Frey — appeared and split their votes. Felicello argued vehemently for Golden Hill. Frey said nothing during the regular legislature meeting but chaired a special informational meeting of his Health and Human Services Committee prior to the regular meeting. Committee vice chairman Rob Parete of Accord ran that meeting, with Frey saying little.
Frey’s special legislative committee shut down in July without making any recommendations among the nine options it considered. Hein presented his plan in October.
The budget vote, with Rodriguez rejoining his colleagues, was an anti-climatic affirmative vote, at 19-14. Hein’s $363 million budget was approved with only minor changes.
The process now moves to the naming of a seven-member LDC board of directors. Three members will be chosen by the legislature and three by the executive from a pool of candidates recruited by the executive. None can be public office holders. Those six will elect a seventh from Hein’s pool.
The LDC will have the authority to market and sell the 27-acre Golden Hill site. It does not include other county nearby properties like the abandoned jail, the bus terminal or the mental health building.++
[county nursing homes are near and dear to me; I went nine days without food in September 1998 to protest Dutchess GOP privatizing/closing the Millbrook Infirmary]
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[thirteen reasons here to join us for this tomorrow-- if you need more convincing!]
1. "Obama Puts Social Security, Medicare Cuts on the Table" [Reuters 7/11/11]
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/07/obama-puts-social-security-medicare-cuts-on-the-table/
2. Chris Gibson voted to destroy Medicare through voucherization last year:
http://dutchessdemocracy. blogspot.com/2011/08/truth-re-gibson-anti-senior-anti.html.
3. Chris Gibson has also received $46,000 from his insurance industry crony buddies over just the last few years alone, according to Maplight.org:
http://maplight.org/us-congress/legislator/1461-chris-gibson.
4. 81% of Americans support taxing millionaires/billionaires more to solve federal budget problems (Mar. 2011 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll).
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7333/what_americans_want_the_peoples_budget
5. 78% of Americans support protecting Medicare from cuts; 69% of Americans support protecting Medicaid from any cuts (April 2011 ABC News Washington Post poll).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-shows-americans-oppose-entitlement-cuts-to-deal-with-debt-problem/2011/04/19/AFoiAH9D_story.html
6. Under Cuomo just last year, $36 million was cut from Elderly Prescription Insurance Coverage program:
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-petition-to-fully-fund-new-york-states-elderly-prescription-insurance-coverage-program.
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7. "The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently reported that 91% of entitlements go to the elderly or disabled, or to members of working households needing supplemental assistance. Only 9% of entitlement dollars go to non-working but employable individuals, and most of that is for medical care, unemployment, and survivor benefits. Beyond the fact that we're 'entitled' to Social Security and Medicare because we pay for them, these two government-run programs have been largely self-sustaining while supporting the needs of millions of Americans. Medicare is much less costly than private health care. Social Security, which functions with a surplus, would not be in danger of a long-term shortfall if the richest 10% (those making over the $106,800 cutoff) paid their full share."
[from "Five Preposterous, Persistent Conservative Myths" by Paul Buchheit:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/02-0]
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8. Finally-- most importantly-- this below from SaveGoldenHill.com...
Save Golden Hill-Introduction
The issue of the 280-bed Golden Hill Health Care Center is one that should concern every member of the community. This goes beyond tax dollars. It is about providing local, quality care for those Ulster County residents who can no longer care for themselves.
The following are facts that we feel are important for the public to understand regarding this issue. For more detailed information, please visit the other pages and links at this site.
Subsidy:
Golden Hill Health Care Center is the only county department that is set up as an Enterprise Fund. As such, Golden Hill operates under a budget that is entirely independent of the county budget. All expenses including employee salaries and benefits are included in this budget. The only funding Golden Hill receives from the county is in the form of a subsidy if expenses exceed the revenues received from Medicaid, Medicare and private pay. The County Executive, and his staff had projected a county subsidy to Golden Hill of $4.2 million dollars for 2011, but the actual subsidy stands at just $1.2 Million. Over the past 20 years, the subsidy has varied, and in some years (as recently as 2009), there was no subsidy needed at all. $1.2 Million accounts for just 1/3 of a percent of the total county budget of $352 million.
Renovate or Rebuild:
You have probably heard that studies done a number of years ago on the sewer and water systems beneath the building revealed that they are failing, and need to be replaced. However, these studies are outdated and are disputed by some within the legislature and at Golden Hill. Despite the questionable validity of these studies, they have long been debating the decision to either renovate the existing structure or build a new facility. Should they choose to renovate or build new, the cost would be 70 – 90% reimbursed, including interest, by the state, leaving the county to bear only a fraction of the burden. In addition, a new facility could be designed to be more energy efficient and provide a wider range of services that may increase revenue, thereby eliminating the need for any county subsidy.
Privatization:
Some may wonder – why not sell the nursing home to a private corporation? In fact, one local politician was recently quoted as saying “I believe that government shouldn’t be in any business that can be run and probably better managed in the private sector.” Government’s role is to do in society that which is not done by the private sector. The private sector does not want to care for complex residents who have no means to pay. Private nursing homes are in the business of making money. They go into the hospitals and cherry-pick residents based on their profitability. Residents requiring complex care or who do not have the ability to pay for private care, may not be accepted in the private home, and may be forced to go out of the county or even out-of-state for nursing home care.
Employees:
People wonder why we talk about employees losing their jobs if the nursing home is sold. Private nursing homes have lower staff-to-patient ratios, meaning, they employ fewer people. The current county employees (many of whom have worked at GHHCC for 20 years or more) would be laid off and then would have to compete with all other applicants to apply for a job with the new nursing home. Only a fraction of those employees would be hired, and likely at a much lower rate of pay. This would result in a higher unemployment rate, lower sales tax revenues and more than likely, higher home foreclosure rates.
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9. Fact: Albany County still has their county-owned/run nursing home.
"Due to annual budget concerns, this marks the third straight year that Albany County Nursing Home supporters have been forced to rally before the County Legislature to save the facility from closing. Both in 2010 and 2011, the County Executive’s budget eliminated nursing home funding, only to have county lawmakers restore it in the end. The battle continues for 2012."
http://albanycountynursinghomecares.org/news_stories/CountyStories/tapcaphearing.html
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10. "Nursing Home Privatization: What is the Human Cost in Long Term Care?"
Authors: Steve Lopez
Publication Date: May 1, 1998
http://keystoneresearch.org/publications/research/nursing-home-privatization-what-human-cost
In response to increasing financial pressure and cuts in reimbursement, Pennsylvania county governments are considering privatizing countyowned nursing homes. The idea of saving money by turning county nursing homes over to private operators appeals to county leaders seeking to relieve budget pressures. But what happens to the quality of care when counties turn their nursing homes over to private firms?
This report investigates the effects of privatization or attempted privatization on the quality of care at several county and former county nursing homes in western Pennsylvania: Allegheny County’s John J. Kane Regional Centers, where privatization was proposed but not implemented; Comfort Home, which remained public but whose operation was taken over by a for-profit management company; and Chelsea Manor, which was sold outright to a nonprofit entity created by the county for the purpose of buying the facility. The report compares these homes with one another and with Green Gables, a private nursing home that is characterized by low wages, high employee turnover, and poor quality of care.1
The study draws the following conclusions:
• Although staffing levels declined whether or not privatization was ultimately carried out, the most significant staffing cuts occurred where privatization was taken furthest. After the privatization of Chelsea Manor (the home sold to a newly created private non-profit organization), staffing levels appeared to be nearly identical to those at the low-quality private home—a home where understaffing led state investigators to suspend admissions temporarily in 1997.
•Workers’ wages and employee turnover, two factors affecting care continuity, were most negatively affected at the home where privatization proceeded furthest. At the Kanes and Comfort home (where collective bargaining continued), workers’wages, benefits, and employee turnover remained stable. At Chelsea Manor, wages fell to levels almost identical to those at Green Gables (where staff turnover was rampant). Turnover at Chelsea Manor appeared to be increasing towards that at Green Gables.
• At both homes where some form of privatization was implemented, workers complained about shortages of medical and patient care supplies. Both of these homes seemed to have a more serious problem in this area than the Kanes, but at neither home was the problem as serious as at Green Gables.
• The quality of care at all three of the county and former county homes deteriorated, regardless of whether privatization was actually carried out or only proposed. Once again the worst declines in quality occurred where privatization was taken furthest. After privatization, Chelsea Manor began to develop a pattern of unexplained resident injuries, some of which were not properly investigated or reported. Chelsea Manor’s problems were similar in nature, though not in extent, to quality problems at Green Gables, where several hundred such incidents occurred in a recent 18-month period.
• Even the best homes in the study, the Kanes and Comfort Home, are now unable to meet all the physical, emotional, and social needs of their residents, even though they exceed federal and state standards for staffing ratios. All of the nursing homes described in this report, in varying degrees of urgency, need more nurses’aides.
• As do the Kanes, county nursing homes across Pennsylvania have much lower turnover among nurses’ aides than is typical for private homes. Combined with the case studies, this strongly suggests that nursing home privatization may, in many cases, worsen the quality of care.
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11. "Buyer for Ulster County's Golden Hill Health Care Center needed by September"
Published: Wednesday, April 04, 2012
by PATRICIA DOXSEY
Freeman staff
pdoxsey@freemanonline.com; twitter.com/pattiatfreeman
http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2012/04/04/news/doc4f7d01af47c46274990815.txt?viewmode=2
KINGSTON, N.Y. — Members of the Golden Hill Local Development Corp. board of directors say they have to select a buyer for the Ulster County-owned nursing home by the end of September in order to have the sale completed by the end of 2013.
“If we can’t select a buyer by then, we’re behind schedule,” said Marshall Beckman, vice chairman of the board.
Beckman said it will take between 20 and 24 months for the buyer to get state approval to purchase the nursing home license.
“What we don’t want to do is go into 2014 with a continued deficit,” he said.
Ulster County Executive Michael Hein predicted an $8 million gap in the county’s 2012 budget because of Golden Hill, and he has predicted that deficit will continue to grow if county ownership of the 280-bed nursing home continues.
On Wednesday, board members got a first look at the resumes of the four firms vying to help the board select the eventual buyer for Golden Hill.
The firms, from as far away as Chicago, responded to a request for qualifications sent by Deputy County Executive Ed Crannell on behalf of the board.
Responding to the request were Loeb & Troper of New York City, Marcus & Millichap of Chicago, the Center for Governmental Research, of Rochester and Next Wave of Albany.
Board members expect to establish protocols for selecting a consultant at their next meeting. In the meantime, board member Michael Bernholz expects to work with Crannell to determine whether there are any other consultants that should be considered for the task.
Board members expect the consultant to help the board evaluate prospective buyers and pick the one that fits best with the county’s future wants for the nursing home.
In December, legislators, pushed by Hein to agree to sell the nursing home, created the Golden Hill Local Development Corp., transferred to it the ownership of the nursing home and authorized the corporation to bond for up to $10 million.
The corporation will, in turn, pay to the county $8 million to operate the nursing home in 2012.
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12. From http://www.shawangunkjournal.com/2011/12/08/news/1112085.html...
Golden Hill supporters protest outside the county office building.
Ulster County Dispatch
Pawning Gold: County Legislature Votes to Sell Golden Hill
By Paula Sirc
KINGSTON – Seventeen Ulster County lawmakers voted on Monday night to transfer ownership of the county-run nursing facility to a local development corporation, with the goal of selling it to a private owner by 2013.
The Legislature also voted, 19-13, to adopt the 2012 county budget, a slightly modified version of the one presented by County Executive Michael Hein in early October. Hein's proposed budget was dependent on the sale of the nursing home.
Seven Democrats joined ten Republicans to approve the resolution authorizing the "required steps" to transfer Golden Hill, while 14 members voted against privatization of the 280-bed facility. Legislator Hector Rodriguez, D-New Paltz, abstained from the vote because of a potential conflict of interest with his employer and Legislator Jack Hayes, R-Gardiner, was absent.
The development corporation, which comprises members of the county executive's administration, county legislators and an independently-selected member, will bond, or borrow, $9.3 million against the future sale of the facility, and pay the county $8 million, which will be used to balance the 2012 county budget.
Arguing to keep Golden Hill in county hands, Legislator Carl Belfiglio, R-Esopus, urged the legislative body to "take a step back," saying the idea was foisted upon an unsuspecting legislature by the county executive. "This was shoved into the budget," he said, "and gives too much power to the county executive."
Legislator Susan Zimet, D-New Paltz, said the legislature has been "railroaded."
"Is it appropriate to take the selling of an asset, tie it up in a budget, bond for a deficit hole, at a cost of $1.3 million to the taxpayers and say this is good sound fiscal policy," she asked. "Doing something like this so fast is not a good way to do public service."
County Comptroller Elliott Auerbach and his attorney, Ken Bond, agreed. "This is not an eleventh hour Hail Mary pass," Auerbach said. "I believe it is in Ulster County's best interest to ask some questions."
Prior to Monday's meeting, Legislator Robert Parete, D-Stone Ridge, sent his colleagues his list of questions regarding the LDC, urging them to "proceed with caution until county leaders explain the full ramifications of the LDC."
Parete's questions demonstrate the level of legislative exclusion in the process of creating the LDC. Among the ten questions: what is the appraised value of the property, will the responses to the Golden Hill Request for Proposals will be made public, how many years it will take to transfer full ownership, how much will the corporation finance during the transfer, will the anticipated and unanticipated revenue generated by GH go toward paying down the LDC bond, will the LDC follow all state and local procurement and competitive bidding laws and will the future owner maintain the facility as a 280-bed skilled nursing center.
Legislative Golden Hill supporters had drawn up a last minute amendment that would balance the 2012 budget, not by transfer of the nursing home, but through the sale of other county properties that are "no longer required for public use."
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http://www.woodstockx.com/2011/12/08/legislature-approves-executive-plan-to-sell-health-care-facility-passes-budget-for-2012/
13. Legislature approves executive plan to sell Health Care facility, passes budget for 2012
by Hugh Reynolds on Dec 8, 2011 • 5:00 pm 2 Comments
County executive Michael Hein
Weathering charges of duplicity and secrecy against the Hein administration, and warnings they were acting prematurely and in ignorance, a bare majority of county legislators approved the sale of the Golden Hill Health Facility to a county-run limited development corporation (LDC) on Monday, December 5.
The approving 17 votes (14 against) were almost evenly divided between majority Republicans and Democrats. Jack Hayes of Gardiner was in Florida on vacation. Hector Rodriguez excused himself because of potential conflicts of interest. Rodriguez works for Kingston developer Steve Aaron who has expressed interest in partnering with developers of the 27-acre site. Then, by a 19-14 margin, it approved County Executive Michael Hein’s $363 million budget.
The debate, which stretched through afternoon meetings of legislative committees, conferences among lawyers and then well into the night at the special budget meeting of the legislature, was at times rancorous. Some legislators, like Jim Maloney of Ulster and Carl Belfiglio of Esopus, expressed bewilderment after learning that while a special legislative task force headed by Walter Frey of Saugerties was investigating options on Golden Hill last year, the county executive had secretly engaged an Albany law firm to work out the details of a limited development corporation to sell the facility.
“It has been a long process, most of it done in secret,” Maloney said.
But Hein has said it was the legislature’s inability or refusal to make a decision — and his need for up to $8 million to plug a 2012 budget gap — that forced his hand. Hein argues that his is the “compassionate solution” to the Golden Hill controversy in that it will keep the facility running for the next two years and then under private ownership. Hein said the county could not continue to fund operating deficits at the 40-year old nursing home that next year he predicts will top $5 million. The facility, which some consultants consider outdated, may also need more than $40 million in repairs.
Delay rejected
Legislators and speakers on behalf of Golden Hill argued that a for-profit operation would not provide the level of care patients in the 280-bed facility have been given for almost two generations.
But the majority, with Hein’s prompting, decided the legislature had been given sufficient time to make a decision and that the time for debate was over. Ten legislators who voted on the Hein proposal will not be back next year.
A last-ditch effort by county comptroller Elliott Auerbach failed to change a vote which many had predicted was pre-ordained. Auerbach brought in Kenneth Bond, his special legal consultant and an authority on LDCs, to argue that the legislature was acting without sufficient information and that it should delay its decision into next year.
Ken Ronk of Wallkill was among the many who rejected that notion. “We would be forcing this decision on the next legislature, kicking the can down the road,” he said. Ronk will be the Republican majority leader of that legislature.
Susan Zimet of New Paltz and Don Gregorius of Woodstock were among those who agreed with Bond that the county could designate any asset — including Golden Hill — to raise the $8 million Hein says he needs to balance his budget. Both argued that the legislature itself should form and control an LDC to pursue the sale of surplus properties. It was a measure of the progress of this years-long controversy from avoidance to decision that nobody advanced the notion of the county continuing ownership and operation of Golden Hill. The debate was almost entirely over the best way to construct an LDC — an entity that can manage property and borrow money without voter approval.
Two seldom-shows over the past three months — retiring legislator Frank Felicello of Marlborough and the defeated Frey — appeared and split their votes. Felicello argued vehemently for Golden Hill. Frey said nothing during the regular legislature meeting but chaired a special informational meeting of his Health and Human Services Committee prior to the regular meeting. Committee vice chairman Rob Parete of Accord ran that meeting, with Frey saying little.
Frey’s special legislative committee shut down in July without making any recommendations among the nine options it considered. Hein presented his plan in October.
The budget vote, with Rodriguez rejoining his colleagues, was an anti-climatic affirmative vote, at 19-14. Hein’s $363 million budget was approved with only minor changes.
The process now moves to the naming of a seven-member LDC board of directors. Three members will be chosen by the legislature and three by the executive from a pool of candidates recruited by the executive. None can be public office holders. Those six will elect a seventh from Hein’s pool.
The LDC will have the authority to market and sell the 27-acre Golden Hill site. It does not include other county nearby properties like the abandoned jail, the bus terminal or the mental health building.++
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