Campaign News

New York Daily News - January 23, 2015, by Josie Duffy - We all want to see New York thrive, but weakening critical workplace safety laws like the Scaffold Safety Law would only put the most vulnerable workers at risk (“Cure what ails New York, gov,” Column, Jan. 21). As Fox News recently reported, deaths among Latino and immigrant construction workers are on the rise, even as they fall for other workers. The Scaffold Safety Law creates a strong incentive to keep workers safe. It says that if those who control a worksite fail to follow commonsense rules, they can be held liable for the injuries they cause. Without a strong Scaffold Safety Law, we’ll only see many more injured construction workers across New York — with Latino and immigrant workers most at risk. Josie Duffy, policy advocate Center for Popular Democracy

Recent weeks have brought a lot of press about the way charter schools are undermining public school districts and diverting tax dollars allocated for education too often to for-profit companies.  Capital & Main in California just published a week-long expose explaining how rapid expansion of charters threatens the financial stability of the Los Angeles and Oakland school districts. The Salt Lake Tribune editorialized against for-profit charters after that newspaper’s scathing investigation explained how, “A handful of private companies have banked more than $68 million from Utah taxpayers over the past three years.”  And in Ohio, after the legislature ended its spring 2016 session without considering an excellent law that would have required the notorious cyber charters to prove that the students the state is paying for are actually participating in the online program, the Columbus Dispatch editorialized: “The idea was that if student outcomes improved in charter schools, then the schools would continue… But the straightforward experiment went off the rails when some clever operators figured out how to get rich by sponsoring charter schools.  And to keep the gravy flowing, they began making major political contributions to the lawmakers who control the gravy.”

This is the context in which the Center for Popular Democracy has just released its third annual report, Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse: “Two years ago, the Center for Popular Democracy issued a report demonstrating that charter schools in 15 states—about one-third of the states with charter schools—had experienced over $100 million in reported fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement since 1994.  Last year, we released a new report that found millions of dollars of new alleged and confirmed financial fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in charter schools had come to light, bringing the new total to $203 million.  This report offers further evidence that the money we know has been misused is just the tip of the iceberg. With the new alleged and confirmed financial fraud reported here, the total fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in charter schools has reached over $216 million.”

The new report examines fraud and mismanagement across the states and explains that, “State oversight systems are currently reactive by design. While states do require that charter schools submit budgets, financial reports and independent financial audits, most do not proactively monitor for fraud, waste, mismanagement, or other financial abuses.”  The Center for Popular Democracy recommends that charter schools be required to institute internal fraud risk management assessments and that oversight agencies like state comptrollers’ offices should regularly audit charter schools.

Of course a huge problem is that charter schools are established and regulated in state law, and experience tells us that political pressures and financial contributions to state lawmakers have exacerbated the states’ failures to oversee charter schools in the public interest. It is for this reason that the Center for Popular Democracy recommends that the U.S. Department of Education should make the awarding of enormous federal grants to states for the expansion of charter schools contingent on states’ passage of laws to strengthen oversight: “Taxpayers invest billions of education dollars in charter schools, yet states offer too few protections to ensure that those taxpayer dollars are benefitting students.  Therefore, we recommend that federal funding for charter school education should flow only to states that have… taxpayer protection provisions in place for their charter schools.”

The new report once again points to failed federal regulation of the federal Charter Schools Program. “The federal government alone has contributed over $3.3 billion through several grant programs specifically designed to increase the number of charter schools in the United States.  With the recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the federal government has signaled its plan to spend another $3.3 billion over the next 10 years, which would double the federal investment in charter schools.”

And yet, according to Center for Popular Democracy’s new report, “In 2010, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a memorandum to the Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement.  The OIG stated that the purpose of the memorandum was to ‘alert you of our concern about vulnerabilities in the oversight of charter schools.’…  In September of 2012, the OIG audited the Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement’s (OII) Charter Schools Program and found that OII did not adequately monitor the federal funds.  Specifically, the audit report states that: ‘We determined that OII did not effectively oversee and monitor the SEA (State Educational Agencies) and non-SEA grants and did not have an adequate process to ensure SEAs effectively oversaw and monitored their subgrantees.  Specifically, OII did not have an adequate corrective action… process in place to ensure grantees corrected deficiencies noted in annual monitoring reports, did not have a risk-based approach for selecting non-SEA grantees for monitoring, and did not adequately review SEA and non-SEA grantees’ fiscal activities.'”

In other words, the U.S. Department of Education has been giving billions of dollars to states to promote the expansion of charter schools and to other charter school sponsors without any kind of adequate tracking of how the money is being used.  This allegation is  certainly consistent with the findings of a new report released in Ohio last week by Innovation Ohio and the Ohio Education Association. Ohio has been a big recipient of federal Charter Schools Program Grants over the years, receiving CSP grants of $99.6 million since the 2006-2007 school year. Belly Up: A Review of Federal Charter Schools Program Grants explains that in Ohio, “At least 108 of the 292 charter schools that have received federal CSP (Charter Schools Program) funding (37 percent) have either closed or never opened, totaling nearly $30 million.” “Of those that failed, at least 26 Ohio charter schools that received nearly $4 million in federal CSP funding apparently never even opened and there are no available records to indicate that these public funds were returned.”

By janresseger

Source

Be a Hero is an offshoot of the Center for Popular Democracy’s CPD Action group (Barkan previously worked for the center) and will concentrate on boosting Democratic candidates focused on protecting health care and entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, as well as ousting Republican incumbents who voted for the GOP tax plan or have voiced support for cutting entitlements.

Read the full article here.

Crain's New York Business - January 17, 2014, by Andrew Hawkins - Acting on one of his main campaign promises just three weeks into his administration, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a bill to significantly expand the city's paid sick leave law to apply to businesses with as few as five employees.

Flanked by his new partner atop city government, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, as well as a majority of the city's new elected leaders, the mayor effectively declared a "do-over" on paid sick days. They will re-introduce the original bill, which lacks many of the current law's concessions that had been included by former Council Speaker Christine Quinn at the behest of the business community.

"Paid sick leave legislation works for everyone," Mr. de Blasio said, standing outside an Ecuadorian restaurant in Bushwick, in response to a reporter's question about concerns from small businesses. "It improves productivity, it improves the retention of workers, and it creates a better environment for customers."

The new bill would apply to every business in the city with five or more employees. There will be no phase-in period (the current law to take effect April 1 would only apply to businesses with 20 or more employees, and drop to a 15-employee threshold after one year), nor will it have "economic trigger" language that would delay the legislation if the economy slumps; Ms. Quinn had insisted on such a provision in the law that passed last year.

An exemption for the manufacturing sector will be removed, and grandparents, aunts and uncles will be added to the definition of family members allowed to take days off to care for ill children. The Department of Consumer Affairs will still be the enforcing agency, even though it currently lacks the capacity of a regulatory body, not to mention a commissioner appointed by Mr. de Blasio.

"This is basically the original legislation that for three years had a supermajority [in the council]," Mr. de Blasio said, referring to a veto-proof majority.

Ms. Mark-Viverito, fresh off her win of the speaker's race, said there would be committee hearings, but seemed to imply that there had been enough debate already.

"There was no deal struck," she said bluntly. "This is a conversation that has been going on for many years."

There was some grumbling from Republicans in the City Council. Council Minority Leader Vincent Ignizio said the bill was "well-intentioned," but questioned the timing of the announcement.

"Ultimately we're putting an additional imposition on small business," he said. "And it's just going to force small businesses to reduce their workforce."

Mr. de Blasio said that with the passage of the new bill, paid sick leave benefits will be extended to an additional 355,000 workers in the city, mostly in the retail and food-service industries.

Business groups that for years fought the bill seemed resigned in their reactions that a new progressive era had descended on city government. The Manhattan and Brooklyn chambers of commerce both released statements applauding the mayor and City Council for addressing the needs of workers in New York.

"We do continue to be concerned with the costs of doing business in New York City and the burdens placed on the backs of the small business owners," said Nancy Ploeger, president of the Manhattan chamber.

Michael Weber, co-chair of the Hospitality Practice Group at Littler Mendelson, the nation's largest labor and employment law firm, echoed that sentiment.

"It makes it even more difficult for small businesses to be profitable and to be competitive," he said of the bill.

But James Copeland, director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy, said the measure would still ban employees from taking private legal action against their employers.

"In other words, you're going to require that there be an administrative action, not to get private lawyers suing businesses on this stuff," he said. "That's actually better than some other cities that have this type of legislation."

Mr. de Blasio argued that other cities with similar laws experienced no negative ramifications. "What we've seen in Seattle, San Francisco, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, more recently Philadelphia—all over the country you see this consistent movement where states and localities are moving in this direction because it's been proven to work," he said.

But in San Francisco, which has a universal paid sick leave law, studies suggest the impact has strained some businesses. According to a study conducted in 2011 by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, almost one third of businesses affected by the ordinance had some difficulty administering the changes and roughly 14% saw a marked decrease in their profitability after implementation.

Still, Mr. de Blasio boasted that New York's law would be "the strongest in the nation," and said that this and other policies signaled a new direction for City Hall.

"This City Hall is going to be on the side of working families," he said.

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