System Failure: Louisiana's Broken Charter School Law
Executive Summary
In the ten years since Hurricane Katrina, post-storm changes to the state’s charter school law have dramatically grown the number of charter schools in...
Executive Summary
In the ten years since Hurricane Katrina, post-storm changes to the state’s charter school law have dramatically grown the number of charter schools in the state. Since 2005, charter school enrollment in the state has grown 1,188 percent. Through this growth, the Louisiana Department of Education’s Recovery School District—created to facilitate state takeover of struggling schools—has become the first charter-only school district in the country, with other states lining up to copy its model. Louisiana taxpayers have invested heavily, paying billions of dollars to charters and state takeover schools since the storm, including over $831 million in the 2014/2015 school year alone.
The rapid growth and massive investment in charter schools has been accompanied by a dramatic underinvestment in oversight, leaving Louisiana’s students, parents, teachers and taxpayers at risk of academic failures and financial fraud. The state’s failure to create an effective financial oversight system is obvious, as Louisiana charter schools have experienced millions in known losses from fraud and financial mismanagement so far, which is likely just the tip of the iceberg. According to standard forensic auditing methodologies, the deficiencies in charter oversight throughout Louisiana suggest tens of millions of dollars in undiscovered losses for the 2013-14 school year alone.
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In this report, we identify three fundamental flaws with Louisiana’s financial oversight of charter schools:
Oversight depends too heavily on self-reporting by charter schools or the reports of whistleblowers. Louisiana’s oversight agencies rely almost entirely on audits paid for by the charters themselves and whistleblowers. While important to uncover fraud, neither method systematically detects or effectively prevents fraud. The general auditing techniques used in charter school reports do not uncover fraud on their own. The audits commissioned by the charter schools use general auditing techniques designed to expose inaccuracies or inefficiencies. Without audits specifically designed to detect and uncover fraud, however, state and local agencies will rarely detect deliberate fraud without a whistleblower. Inadequate staffing prevents the thorough detection and elimination fraud. Louisiana inadequately staffs its charter-school oversight agencies. In order to carry out high-quality audits of any type, auditors need enough time. With too few qualified people on staff—and too little training for existing staff—agencies are unable to uncover clues that might lead to fuller investigations and the discovery of fraud.As the state has insufficiently resourced financial oversight, it has failed to create a structure that provides struggling schools and their students with a pathway to academic success. While underinvesting in the dissemination and implementation of successful strategies to lift academically struggling schools up, state lawmakers have continued to invest in both charter expansion and conversions of public schools to charters. Coupled with an unwillingness to help failing schools succeed, the rapid growth of charters has failed Louisiana children, families and taxpayers. Since 2005, approximately $700 million in public tax dollars have been spent on charter schools that currently have not achieved a C or better on the state’s grading system.
In this report we identify two fundamental flaws with Louisiana’s academic oversight of charter schools:
Underinvestment in systems that help struggling schools succeed. Lawmakers and regulators have invested in systems that set high standards and then close schools that fail to meet them, rather than helping them improve to meet the standards. This investment in a severe accountability system does not support schools achieve academic success. Heavy reliance on data that is vulnerable to manipulation. The state’s academic oversight system relies largely on sets of data that can be manipulated by regulators, authorizers, or the charters themselves. Without reliable data, schools, parents and the public have no way to accurately gauge academic quality at their schools.To address these serious deficiencies in Louisiana’s system, we recommend the following:
Mandate New Measures Designed to Detect and Prevent Fraud
Charter school governing boards should be required to institute an internal fraud risk management program, including an annual fraud risk assessment. Charter school governing boards should be required to commission an annual audit of internal controls over financial reporting that is integrated with the audit of financial statements charter schools currently commission. The Louisiana Legislative Auditor should conduct regular fraud audits, prioritizing charter schools with heightened levels of fraud risk. Auditing teams should include members certified in financial forensics trained to detect fraudIncrease Financial Transparency & Accountability
Oversight agencies should create a system to categorize and rank charter audits by level of fraud risk they pose to facilitate public engagement. Center for Popular Democracy & Coalition for Community Schools 3 The Louisiana Legislative Auditor should create a dedicated charter school fraud hotline for whistleblowers. Charter school governing boards should post the findings of their annual fraud risk internal assessments on their websites. Oversight agencies should determine what steps the nonprofit governing boards and executives of charter schools have taken to guard against fraud over the past 10 years and issue a report to the public detailing their findings and recommendations. Charter school governing boards should provide parents of students enrolled in charter schools free access to all materials related to their fraud risk management program.The state should impose a moratorium on new charter schools until the state oversight system is adequately reformed.
Redesign the System to Support Struggling Schools
Under the current system, when regulators find that a school is not performing well, they put the school on the “Intervention Ladder”. The Intervention Ladder should be replaced with mandatory hands-on long-term strategic support from the state and stakeholders. Lawmakers should invest additional resources to ensure that regulators have enough staff with the appropriate expertise to meet the significant turnaround needs in the state.Redesign the Data Collection System
Lawmakers should mandate that underlying data comparators remain consistent from year-to-year to allow oversight officials and the public to accurately compare school performance. In cases where changes to underlying data are unavoidable, data should be presented using both old and new cut-scores for a period of three years. The state should invest in ongoing test erasure analysis. Regulators should implement a process to ensure that the school reported data used to calculate the School Performance Score (SPS) is reliable by conducting regular audits of school-reported data. The state and authorizers must make funding for regular data audits a priority. The Louisiana Legislative Audit should include a review of the LDOE’s data auditing in its regular audits of the agency. Finally, the legislature should mandate that all of the data used to calculate School Performance Scores be made available to the public, in its raw form.Given the rapid and continuing expansion of state school takeovers and the charter school industry in the state through the investment of public dollars, Louisiana must act now to reform its oversight system. Without reform, Louisianans face many more years of failing schools and millions—if not billions—of dollars more lost to charter school fraud and financial mismanagement.
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In The Battle To Raise Minimum Wages, Businesses Opposed Are Outgunned
In The Battle To Raise Minimum Wages, Businesses Opposed Are Outgunned
This is the third post in a series about ballot measures to raise the minimum wage in Colorado and three other states. The first post introduced a restaurateur in Denver who supports the increase...
This is the third post in a series about ballot measures to raise the minimum wage in Colorado and three other states. The first post introduced a restaurateur in Denver who supports the increase and the national organization that persuaded him to go public with that support, is here. The second looked at how the provision could widen inequality among servers and kitchen workers.
There are 32 mostly state and local business associations that have signed on to Keep Colorado Working, the coalition formed to fight Amendment 70, which would raise the state’s minimum wage through a constitutional amendment. Only one of them, however, has actually contributed money to fight the ballot measure: The Colorado Restaurant Association and its political action committee have spent $359,000, which makes it the single largest Colorado contributor to campaign, which has raised $1.7 million to date.
Indeed, while dozens of local food services businesses have chipped at least $105,000 to the effort, which has raised $1.7 million to date, more than $1 million has come into the coalition’s coffers from out of state, including $850,000 from a shadowy business group called the Workforce Fairness Institute. Other large national contributors include Darden, the Olive Garden’s parent corporation, and the National Restaurant Association.
But all this is far less than the $2 to $3 million that opponents had anticipated spending to try and defeat the amendment. And it is dwarfed by the $5.2 million that advocates for the vote, working under the name Colorado Families for a Fair Minimum Wage, have raised. Most of their money has come from national unions and union-backed organizations like The Fairness Project and progressive philanthropies like the Center for Popular Democracy and the Civic Participation Action Fund.
In a campaign awash with money, the efforts of Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, which has been organizing Colorado businesses to support the amendment, are fairly modest. Business for a Fair Minimum Wage founder and C.E.O. Holly Sklar won’t say how much her group is spending in Colorado, but the effort is being funded by Dr. Bronner’s, the organic soap-maker with a long history of activism. (She declines to further identify its funders, except to say that they comprise businesses and foundations.) Dr. Bronner’s has made raising the minimum wage a top company priority, even relabeling some of its soap bottles with “Fair Pay Today!” “People should be able to make ends meet on the wages they get,” says David Bronner, C.E.O. of his family’s company, which is registered as a benefit corporation. “They should not have to rely on inefficient government programs like food stamps and housing assistance. Taxpayers should not have to subsidize companies using the welfare system to keep wages low.”
Bronner says his company has given about $75,000 to Business for a Fair Minimum Wage. “We really like what they’re doing,” he says. “I think it’s really important that policy makers hear from business owners, that business owners too see value in raising the minimum wage, and it isn’t just about labor groups and worker rights.”
Outside of Colorado, business groups have mounted little more than token opposition. In each of Arizona, Maine, and Washington, where advocates have raised over $1 million to promote their respective ballot measures, opponents have raised $100,000 or less, according to state campaign finance records. The Arizona Restaurant Association sued to try and prevent the minimum wage from making the November ballot, but hasn’t spent any money combating it since then. (The group’s president and C.E.O., Steve Chucri, didn’t respond to requests for comment.) The state chamber of commerce has agreed to kick in $20,000.
In Maine, the state restaurant association has spent nearly $78,000 to fight the ballot amendment through its political action committee, but apart from small contributions from Darden ($7,500) and the National Restaurant Association ($2,500), the opposition has recorded no contributions from out of state.
It’s not clear — even to some of the principals — why Colorado became the battlefield of choice in the fight over minimum wage at the expense of media outlets in Arizona, Maine, and Washington. “Why they’re not putting money to fight it here is a mystery to me,” says Maine Restaurant Association president and C.E.O. Steve Hewins of the national organizations, though he allows that “Maine to a degree is off a lot of radar screens.”
The National Restaurant Association declined to respond directly to Hewins’s charge of neglect. But in an emailed statement, the organization’s spokesman, Steve Danon, wrote, “While we work in partnership, our state restaurant associations take the lead on these issues, as they know what works best for restaurateurs in their state. We’ve been vocal on opposing drastic increases to the minimum wage overall.” The Workforce Fairness Institute and Darden didn’t respond to a request for comment.
But Tyler Sandberg, who is managing the Keep Colorado Working campaign, suggests that perhaps national groups are drawn to the Colorado initiative because, as a constitutional amendment, it “is the worst-written of all of them.” But he also says he’s made a point of soliciting those contributions. “When we saw all the national money coming in on the other side, we realized we would have to fight fire with fire and seek national contributions as well.”
Sklar says her pro-wage-hike business group is focusing on Colorado because the Arizona and Washington measures also include paid sick leave, which is beyond her group’s scope, and in Maine a local small-business coalition is pressing the case.
In any event, the vast sums spent in Colorado appear to have made little difference. Polls in all four states show the wage increase winning by similar margins, with 55 percent to 60 percent of voters backing it.
By Robb Mandelbaum
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Progress Conventions Take On New Meaning In Wake Of Police-Related Shootings
Progress Conventions Take On New Meaning In Wake Of Police-Related Shootings
Hundreds of activists, community organizers and progressive elected officials from around the country are meeting in Pittsburgh this weekend.
The two conventions, aimed at social and...
Hundreds of activists, community organizers and progressive elected officials from around the country are meeting in Pittsburgh this weekend.
The two conventions, aimed at social and economic progress, will take on new perspectives in the wake of the police shooting deaths of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana.
Pittsburgh Bureau of Police officials also said Friday that officers will have a heightened awareness of safety in the wake of Thursday night's shooting in Dallas, Texas that killed five police officers and injured seven more.
The Center for Popular Democracy, a national nonprofit that fights for racial equality, worker and immigrant rights, is hosting its first People’s Convention. It’s taking place in Pittsburgh, partly because of the city’s labor roots, location and number of organizations willing to partner, organizers said.
The CPD’s Co-Executive Director Andrew Friedman said attendees are on the front lines of groups demanding higher wages, affordable housing and racial equality. The goal is to build a community of action and share best practices for inciting change.
“I think there’s a huge value in folks realizing they’re not fighting alone,” Friedman said, “and learning about other campaigns in other parts of the country, and sharing strategies that are proving effective.”
Friedman said the Convention will focus on new conversations in light of the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, two black men shot by police this week.
“I think it’s going to have a huge influence, I think folks are coming to the convention with broken hearts and in very low spirits,” Friedman said. “I think folks are in mourning and in shock frankly from these two very painful videos that have surfaced.”
Across the street from the People’s Convention, the annual Local Progress Convening, a gathering of 100 elected officials from across the country, is also taking place this weekend. The convening is another event headed by the CPD, hosted by Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and though separate from the People’s Convention, will have some coinciding events.
“In order to get any change accomplished, you need allies on the inside that are willing and able to move the levers of governmental power,” said Convening Co-Director Ady Barkan. “And you need advocates and community members and organized institutions on the outside pushing for those changes.”
Barkan said representatives from each gathering will speak at one another’s conventions.
Friedman said gun violence and opportunities for the African American community will now have a larger focus on the conference’s agenda. He said attendees include activists who focus on ending police violence in Minneapolis – the site of one of the recent shootings.
One of the conference’s events is a march through Pittsburgh protesting inequality in immigration policies, environmental care and workers’ wages.
Organizers said another stop at the courthouse has been added to the march to honor Black Lives Matter and discuss the week’s news.
By VIRGINIA ALVINO
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How to Help Puerto Rico, Even When the President Won't
Donald Trump's idea of humanitarian aid to Puerto Rico is throwing paper towel rolls to a crowd. His callous and grandstanding attitude following Hurricane Maria's devastation is breathtaking,...
Donald Trump's idea of humanitarian aid to Puerto Rico is throwing paper towel rolls to a crowd. His callous and grandstanding attitude following Hurricane Maria's devastation is breathtaking, even for a man who uses a golden toilet. His cheap imitation of a T-shirt cannon was enough to make America collectively throw the phones we watched it on into the sea. If you're looking for less expensive ways to channel your rage, consider donating time, money or supplies to organizations and individuals on the ground in Puerto Rico.
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Peralta pushing to pass Carlos’ Law
“Citing a 2013 report by the Center for Popular Democracy, Peralta said that between 2003 and 2011, three out of four victims in fatal construction accidents in the United State were immigrants or...
“Citing a 2013 report by the Center for Popular Democracy, Peralta said that between 2003 and 2011, three out of four victims in fatal construction accidents in the United State were immigrants or U.S.-born citizens of Latino heritage.“Among the cases investigated by [the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration] in New York state that number is 60 percent,” Peralta said. “In New York City it’s 74 percent. And in Queens it’s 88 percent.
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Face to Face With the Fed, Workers Ask for More Help
New York Times - November 14, 2014, by Binyamin Appelbaum - Jean Andre traveled from...
New York Times - November 14, 2014, by Binyamin Appelbaum - Jean Andre traveled from Queens to the Federal Reserve Board’s stately headquarters here on Friday to tell the people who make monetary policy that he needs their help. He cannot find regular work on film and photo shoots. The jobs he does find pay less.
The Fed’s chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, agreed to meet with about 30 workers and activists, including Mr. Andre, in a gesture of concern for the plight of Americans searching for work and struggling to make a living.
For one hour on Friday, the workers sat in the Fed’s ornate conference room and told their stories to Ms. Yellen and other Fed officials, including three other members of the Fed’s board of governors — Stanley Fischer, the vice chairman; Lael Brainard; and Jerome H. Powell — who listened and asked questions.
“The Federal Reserve is too important of an institution to be insulated from the voices and perspectives of working families,” said Ady Barkan, a lawyer with the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group based in Brooklyn that orchestrated the meeting. “We think that the Fed needs to listen more and be more responsive, and we’re very grateful for this first opportunity.”
The meeting was closed to the media. The workers described what they said, and the Fed declined to comment, citing a policy of silence about private meetings.
Mr. Barkan’s group is campaigning for the Fed to continue its stimulus campaign, citing the high level of unemployment, particularly in minority communities, and the slow pace of wage growth as evidence the economy still needs help. The group argued the Fed could help to drive up wages by keeping interest rates low.
Mr. Andre, 48, said two jobs were canceled this week. And instead of $400 a day for a print shoot, he said he now made $250 or $300.
“They tell me if I don’t take the job there’s lots of other people willing to work,” he said. “So what can I do? I have a family. I have to take it.”
Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, said monetary policy would be “the single most important determinant of wage growth,” and that he was glad to see workers recognize the Fed’s importance.
A conservative group, American Principles in Action, criticized the meeting as “highly political” and inappropriate. It said it would seek a similar meeting to share its view that the Fed’s stimulus campaign is damaging the economy.
The labor and community groups at the meeting wore green T-shirts that said “What Recovery?” on the front, with a chart illustrating meager wage gains on the back. They are also pressing Ms. Yellen to change the way the Fed chooses the presidents of its regional banks.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said Thursday that its president, Richard W. Fisher, would step down March 19. Charles I. Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, plans to retire at the beginning of March.
The Philadelphia Fed said shortly before the meeting on Friday that it had created an email address for inquiries about its presidential search process. It described the account, which will be maintained by the company conducting the search, Korn Ferry, as part of its commitment to conduct a “broad search.”
“I expect the same thing from Dallas,” said Connie Paredes, 42, who traveled to the meeting as a representative of the Texas Organizing Project, speaking at a rally outside the Fed before the group went inside. “We expect to be included in the process.”
Organizers from Dallas and Philadelphia said they would press for similar meetings with the presidents and board of the local Fed banks.
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Activists to Protest at Regional Feds Ahead of Jobs Data
Wall Street Journal - March 3, 2015, by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa - A network of liberal activists is planning a series of small demonstrations outside of several Federal Reserve...
Wall Street Journal - March 3, 2015, by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa - A network of liberal activists is planning a series of small demonstrations outside of several Federal Reserve district banks Thursday, intending to highlight elevated unemployment among minority communities and urging officials not to raise interest rates any time soon.
Fed officials have indicated they plan to lift their benchmark short-term interest rate from near zero, where it has been since late 2008, sometime this year if the economy continues to strengthen as expected.
The activists say the nation’s 5.7% jobless rate understates the underlying weakness of the labor market, pointing to high long-term and black unemployment as symptoms of an economy that is still ailing. The unemployment rate for blacks was 10.3% in January.
“The Federal Reserve has the power–and responsibility–to foster stronger economic conditions that create opportunity for all communities,” the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank backing the demonstrations, said in a statement.
The activists are planning actions outside the regional Fed banks of New York, San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Charlotte, N.C. (home to a branch of the Richmond Fed) and Dallas.
The Labor Department releases its February employment report on Friday.
Becky Moeller, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, said she and other community leaders have been frustrated by what they see as an opaque process for selecting the next Dallas Fed president. The current chief, Richard Fisher, is set to step down March 19.
Ms. Moeller said instead of getting a meeting with members of the Dallas Fed’s board of directors, which is in charge of the search, she and her delegation met with the bank’s general counsel in a session she described as not very helpful.
“This has been a comedy of pass the buck,” she said. “We don’t have a candidate—we’re just trying to talk processes.”
The Dallas Fed said it had recently met with the following groups regarding the search for a new bank president: Texas AFL-CIO, Texas Organizing Project, Jobs With Justice, Fort Worth Building Trades and Ironworkers, Workers Defense Project, Communication Workers of America, Dallas Central Labor Council, Harris County Central Labor Council and American Federation of Teachers.
“We had a productive conversation with representatives from these groups,” said James Hoard, a spokesman for the Dallas Fed. “We were interested in hearing their views on the selection of a new Dallas Fed president, and hope we were able to provide useful information to them, as well.”
The Center for Popular Democracy and the Fed Up Coalition, the umbrella groups coordinating the protests, expressed dismay at the lack of transparency in the selection of Patrick Harker as the new Philadelphia Fed President.
“Despite repeated requests from community, consumer, labor and academic organizations and public officials within the region, the Philadelphia Fed refused to create any mechanisms for engagement with the public,” said Kendra Brooks of Action United in Philadelphia.
“Instead, the process was entirely opaque: nobody outside of the Federal Reserve knew who the candidates were or what the criteria were for selection. This process did a disservice to the Federal Reserve System and the people of the Philadelphia region.”
The Philadelphia Fed said in response: “Several of our staff members did meet with members from Action United to hear their concerns. The Philadelphia Fed also provided them the opportunity to provide names of potential candidates to our executive search firm.”
The same group of activists showed up at the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium last summer and held a meeting with Janet Yellen at the Fed in November.
Last week, Ms. Yellen met with a group of conservative activists who argued the Fed’s low-rate policies were hurting rather than boosting employment.
The Great Recession has brought increased political scrutiny on the Fed, with prominent Republican and Democratic politicians calling for various changes in the central bank’s governance.
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Today we CAN do something to honor Heather Heyer. We can stand up against the hate that killed her.
Today we CAN do something to honor Heather Heyer. We can stand up against the hate that killed her.
We can honor Heather in the same way she stood up for justice and equality. We can rise up against the hate that took her life and that targets even more of our fellow Americans. There are events...
We can honor Heather in the same way she stood up for justice and equality. We can rise up against the hate that took her life and that targets even more of our fellow Americans. There are events taking place all across the country today against the hate and violence on display in Charlottesville this weekend. Find one and be there. If you can’t, please help spread the word so others may do so.
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State Leaders Reach Deal to Raise Minimum Wage
The New York Times - March 18, 2013, by Thomas Kaplan - Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and legislative leaders reached a tentative agreement on Monday to increase the state’s minimum wage to $9 over...
The New York Times - March 18, 2013, by Thomas Kaplan - Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and legislative leaders reached a tentative agreement on Monday to increase the state’s minimum wage to $9 over the next three years.
Increasing the wage had been a top priority of Democrats in Albany, including the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, and one of the leaders of the Senate, Jeffrey D. Klein, who heads an independent faction of Democrats. Along with Mr. Cuomo, they had argued that the current minimum wage in New York, $7.25, was too low to support workers, and that the wage had not kept pace with the rising cost of living.
Mr. Silver, of Manhattan, said that if the Legislature raised the minimum wage to $9, “I think we’ve done a tremendous service.” He spoke to reporters after he and other legislative leaders met with Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, early Monday evening.
The deal would raise the minimum wage to $8 per hour next year. The wage would rise again to $8.75 in 2015 and $9 by the start of 2016.
The agreement was described by people who had been briefed on the negotiations, but who spoke on the condition of anonymity because a deal on the overall budget had not yet been reached. Increasing the wage to $9 would match the level to which President Obama has proposed raising the federal minimum wage.
If the wage increase is approved by the Legislature, as expected, New York would join 18 other states with minimum wages above the federal minimum as of the start of this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The $9 wage would be one of the highest in the country, although lawmakers in many other states are also contemplating increasing their minimum wage this year. New York’s current minimum wage took effect in 2009 when the federal minimum became $7.25.
Michael Kink, the executive director of the Strong Economy for All Coalition, a group backed by labor unions that has advocated a minimum-wage increase, said he was pleased with the emerging deal. But Mr. Kink said it was disappointing that the wage increase would not be indexed to inflation, as liberal groups and labor unions had sought so that the wage would automatically increase in the future.
“If this stays on track to get to $9, then workers all over the state are going to get a real raise, and that’s a good thing,” Mr. Kink said.
Republicans were concerned that raising the wage could hurt the state’s fragile economy, but have agreed to the increase in exchange for tax breaks; the Senate Republican leader, Dean G. Skelos, told reporters that the plan would also include at least $700 million in new tax cuts for businesses and families.
Some business groups remain concerned about the proposed minimum-wage increase. Mike Durant, the New York State director for the National Federation of Independent Business, said the wage increase would still have a detrimental effect on small businesses, especially upstate.
“In an economy that’s stagnant, that’s an enormous amount of significant pressure on small businesses that’s going to threaten their viability,” Mr. Durant said. He said the fact that the increase would be phased in, and would be accompanied by tax breaks, was a plus, but not enough.
“Does it help? Sure,” he said. “Does it mitigate the damage completely? Absolutely not.”
The developing agreement on the minimum wage and the tax cuts came as Mr. Cuomo and legislative leaders continued to negotiate over the fine points of an overall state spending plan, which must be approved by April 1. Mr. Cuomo proposed a $143 billion spending plan in January.
Legislative leaders said they were hopeful that an overall deal on the budget could be reached by Tuesday; they are trying to finish the budget early this year so lawmakers can head home for Passover and Easter.
“We’re very close to having a deal,” Mr. Skelos, of Long Island, told reporters after the meeting with Mr. Cuomo.
Among the other items under negotiation: whether to extend a new tax bracket on the state’s highest earners that was created in December 2011 and is scheduled to expire at the end of 2014, and whether to decriminalize the visible possession of small amounts of marijuana in an effort to reduce the number of low-level marijuana arrests in New York City. The marijuana decriminalization proposal, which Republicans in the Senate resisted last year, remained a sticking point on Monday night.
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Nancy Pelosi, N.Y. pols rip GOP tax plan at Queens teach-in
"When we look at this bill, it’s really a thinly veiled $1.5 trillion attempt to take away people’s health care, to stop funding schools, to sell off our nation’s infrastructure. That’s really...
"When we look at this bill, it’s really a thinly veiled $1.5 trillion attempt to take away people’s health care, to stop funding schools, to sell off our nation’s infrastructure. That’s really what’s happening,” Charles Khan, with the Community and Labor Coalition and the Center for Popular Democracy, told the crowd at the All Saints Episcopal Church.
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4 days ago
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