Why I Let D.C. Cops Drag My Body out of the Capitol
"Why don't you spend more money on health care instead of ugly, fake Colonial furniture for Senate offices!" That's...
"Why don't you spend more money on health care instead of ugly, fake Colonial furniture for Senate offices!"
That's just one of the things I remember yelling on Thursday, July 10, as I sat on the floor outside the office of Lamar Alexander, Republican senator from Tennessee, in the District of Columbia's Dirksen Senate Office Building, waiting for the D.C. Capitol police, about a dozen of whom had assembled, to carry me away.
Read the full article here.
Do Black Lives Matter to the Federal Reserve?
O’Neal is one of dozens of activists and policy experts traveling to Jackson Hole this week to urge the Fed against...
O’Neal is one of dozens of activists and policy experts traveling to Jackson Hole this week to urge the Fed against raising rates. The campaign, called Fed Up, includes some two-dozen unions, community groups, and think tanks, from the AFL-CIO to the Working Families Party. In Jackson Hole, organizers will deliver a petitiondemanding that the Fed rethink its plan to raise interest rates until the recovery can reach more Americans. Fed Up also plans to hold a series of teach-ins exploring questions like “How Do We Build a Fed that Works for Us?” and “Do Black Lives Matter to the Federal Reserve?”
While there’s only so much the Fed can do when spending on public investments and social programs is well below where it should be, the absence of fiscal support makes monetary policy that much more critical to promote a broadly shared recovery. At its core, the Fed Up campaign is about answering two questions, said Ady Barkan of the Center for Popular Democracy during a press call previewing the upcoming meeting: “Whose recovery is this?” and “Whose Federal Reserve is this?”
“I don’t think that those at the Fed know how life is here in south DeKalb County when they say that the economy is recovering,” O’Neal said during the call. O’Neal makes $8.50 an hour at the daycare center she works at in Atlanta. That’s not enough, she says, to cover rent, food, and utilities for her household, let alone the medication she needs to treat asthma and high blood pressure. “Our life is a constant struggle,” she says. “We have to decide whether, you know, are we going to buy meat, or are we going to buy medicine, or are we going to pinch off the electric bill this month?”
But, she emphasized, she’s hardly alone. “It’s also my neighbor. It’s also the person down the hall, my neighbor next door, around the corner. The whole community is suffering.”
The Atlanta area has been particularly hard hit by the financial crisis and weak economic recovery. In 2009, the Pew Hispanic Center named Metro Atlanta one of a handful of “distinct epicenters” of the nationwide foreclosure crisis. According to their report, less than 300 U.S. counties had foreclosure rates of more than 1.8 percent, and 19 of those counties, including DeKalb, are in Metro Atlanta. As elsewhere, the crisis had a particularly severe impact on black communities: All of the 19 counties Pew singled out as centers of the crisis are majority-black.
Since then, the weak recovery has in some ways only worsened inequities like this. In 2011, the unemployment rate for blacks in the Atlanta area stood at 14.4 percent, or twice the rate of their white neighbors. Three years later, black unemployment had dropped to 13.7 percent, but because joblessness among whites in Atlanta had fallen much faster, blacks were now nearly three times as likely to be jobless as whites. Today, DeKalb County has a poverty rate of 19 percent, well above the average for Georgia and the nation as a whole. And most of that poverty has been concentrated on the county’s majority-black south side.
But among black communities nationwide, DeKalb has actually fared relatively well. The area was hit hard by the downturn, but it remains the second-most affluent black-majority county in the country. By contrast, in Washington, D.C., a majority-minority city, black unemployment is a staggering 15.8 percent, more than five times the rate for whites, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Nationwide, after hitting its highest levels since the 1980s, black unemployment remains about double the rate for whites. The mortgage crisis and subsequent downturn destroyed a full 47 percent of black families’ wealth, and that wealth is far from recovered.
Despite that, the Federal Reserve seems perilously close to raising interest rates, possibly as soon as next month—a change that could have a disastrous effect on the already-weak recovery.
“We shouldn’t mince words,” said Barkan. “When the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, it is doing so in order to slow the economy down in order to prevent the economy from creating more jobs.” A slowdown like that would not only make it harder for the labor market to recover, but it also has a good chance of widening the gap in unemployment between blacks and whites. Historically, the joblessness gap between black and white workers tends to grow when the economy slows down.
But Fed officials remain stubbornly committed to a rate hike, even as instability grips the stock market this week. In a speech on Monday, following another day of market volatility, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart sought to allay suspicionthat the Fed’s plans to raise rates this year had changed. In June, 15 out of 17 senior Fed officials indicated that they’d like to see a rate hike this year, echoing a similar statement from March. As Lockhart put it in another speech on August 10, “The economy has made great gains and is approaching an acceptable normal.” Nowhere in his speech did Lockhart mention the poverty and racial inequality gripping communities just a few miles from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank he chairs.
For O’Neal, places like south DeKalb are very far from an acceptable normal. “When the Fed says that the economy is recovering and they want to raise the interest rates,” she said, “I look around and I don’t see recovery in my community.”
Unfortunately, plenty of Fed leaders don’t seem to think an unequal recovery is their responsibility to address. In testimony before Congress last month, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said that while black unemployment remains very high, “there really isn’t anything directly the Federal Reserve can do to affect the structure of unemployment across groups.”
But Barkan begs to differ. “We think that’s really a mistake,” he said. “A strong economy—more job growth and more wage growth—has a disproportionately positive effect on African Americans because of the racial disparities that exist in our labor market.” Keeping interest rates low is far from the only solution to racial inequality in the job market (and not even the only thing the Fed can do by itself), but it’s a good start.
Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, another Fed Up signatory, agrees.Because low-wage workers and workers of color tend to feel changes in unemployment much more dramatically, he said, keeping unemployment low should be the Fed’s first priority. “A policy that lets the unemployment rate get as low as it can possibly go without sparking inflation is one that’s going to have disproportionate benefits to workers of color,” he added.
Unfortunately, Barkan said, Fed officials have a long history of overlooking issues like racial gaps in unemployment and wealth. A big part of the problem is the central bank’s leadership, which is heavily skewed toward the banking sector. By law, 72 out of 108 directors of the Fed’s 12 regional banks must represent workers. But currently, just two officially do, compared with 91 who come directly from banks and financial institutions. “Of course when you have leadership like that you get policies that don’t advance the needs of American working families,” Barkan said.
Which is exactly why Fed Up plans to confront the central bank’s leadership today in Jackson Hole. In doing so, the coalition will help connect monetary policy and policymakers to the people and communities it most impacts.
And demanding that interest rates stay low is just a first step. During the conference, Fed Up will also present a report from PolicyLink on what a more equitable recovery would look like. The report explores how genuinely full employment—which has long been a core policy mandate for the Federal Reserve—would reshape our economy. The report defines full employment as no more than 4 percent unemployment for all groups and a labor-force participation rate no lower than 75 percent for men and 60 percent for women. (Currently, labor-force participation remains stuck at 69 percent for men and 56.7 percent for women, the lowest levels in decades.)
As Barkan and Bivens emphasized, a change like that would have a particularly dramatic impact on communities of color. In Atlanta, black unemployment would drop 10 percent while average household income would increase by 11 percent for black families. A full 175,000 people would be lifted out of poverty and the local economy would grow by $24 billion. Nationwide, the change would be just as dramatic. Genuine full employment would cut black unemployment by two-thirds and lift more than nine million people out of poverty.
It’s this kind of recovery that the Fed needs to begin thinking seriously about, said Barkan. The first step, he added, is to rethink how monetary policy is formulated and who gets a seat at the table.
Correction: In a previous version of this article, Dawn O'Neal's name was mispelled as O'Neil.
Source: The American Prospect
Face to Face With the Fed, Workers Ask for More Help
New York Times - November 14, 2014, by Binyamin Appelbaum - Jean Andre traveled from Queens to the...
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.
Source
Advocates Demand More Money for Opioid Crisis
Today, advocates for expanded funding to address opioid misuse will take to the Capitol to push Congress for $45...
Today, advocates for expanded funding to address opioid misuse will take to the Capitol to push Congress for $45 billion for treatment and overdose prevention. While President Donald Trump declared the opioid epidemic a federal public health emergency last month, his administration hasn’t asked for additional money to help states address the crisis, and Congress hasn’t made any moves or come up with its own emergency authorization, either.
Read the full article here.
Turning Wisconsin schools into police states won't help kids learn
Turning Wisconsin schools into police states won't help kids learn
According to a new report put together by LIT and the Center for Popular Democracy, “Despite white students’...
According to a new report put together by LIT and the Center for Popular Democracy, “Despite white students’ overwhelmingly similar behavior patterns, and despite black students accounting for only 55% of the student population in Milwaukee in the 2013–2014 school year, data shows that black students accounted for 84.6% of the referrals to law enforcement.
Read the full article here.
What working moms really need for Mother's Day this year
When Mother's Day became a national holiday in the U.S. more than a century ago, women were a relative rarity in the...
When Mother's Day became a national holiday in the U.S. more than a century ago, women were a relative rarity in the workforce. Today's mom, by contrast, is largely a working mom.
In half of American households, women are either the primary breadwinner or contribute more than 40 percent of the income. For most families, the added income from women going to work is the only thing that's kept family income steady, as individual worker wages have stagnated for the better part of four decades.
Read full article here.
Report slams Louisiana charter school oversight
The Times-Picayune - 05-08-2015 - Louisiana understaffs its ...
The Times-Picayune - 05-08-2015 - Louisiana understaffs its charter schools oversight offices and, instead of proactively investigating these schools, relies on charters' own reports and whistleblowers to uncover problems, according to a report released Tuesday (May 12) by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Coalition for Community Schools. That allows theft, cheating and mismanagement to happen, such as the $26,000 stolen from Lake Area New Tech High and the years of special education violations alleged at Lagniappe Academies.
The report also casts a skeptical eye on the veracity of the data that Louisiana uses to calculate the performance scores that keep charters open and determine their renewal terms. And it faults the state for closing struggling charters instead of intervening to improve them.
The Center for Popular Democracy's partners include the American Federation of Teachers, which has an uneasy relationship with charters, and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, which studies charter school oversight. Kyle Serrette, the center's director of educational justice campaigns, said its parent members had children in charter and conventional public schools.
That said, one of the report's recommendations is to "impose a moratorium on new charter schools until the state oversight system is adequately reformed."
The Louisiana-based Coalition for Community Schools opposes charter schools outright and filed a civil rights complaint against the state Education Department in 2014. That complaint also included a demand to freeze chartering in New Orleans.
The two groups' report said Louisiana charters could suffer from "tens of millions of fraud in the 2013-14 school year alone," based on the methodology of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. In that time, employees of three New Orleans charter schools stole about $110,000, and two charter operators were accused of meddling with retirement payments.
Oversight agencies play almost no role in helping charter schools improve academic outcomes."
"The state has invested heavily in increasing the number of charter schools while failing to create a solid regulatory framework that truly protects students, families and taxpayers," the authors write. Furthermore, "oversight agencies play almost no role in helping charter schools improve academic outcomes. ... The state has no system in place to provide a path to high-quality academics for all struggling charter schools."
Charter schools are publicly funded but run by independent non-profit boards. They control their own curriculum and hiring but must meet academic and operational standards to stay open. The state Education Department oversees most of Louisiana's 130-plus charters; local school systems oversee the rest.
Read the report
However, as of December, the Education Department's charter audit team consisted of only three people, according to a critical December report from the Louisiana legislative auditor's office. Education Superintendent John White defended his team at the time, saying they reviewed charter schools' audits, among other activities.
Tuesday's paper says that isn't enough. Not only do charters hire their own accountants to conduct annual audits, but the audits are not designed to prevent or detect fraud. Indeed, reports typically contain a disclaimer saying they are not expressing an opinion on fraud controls. The legislative auditor's office might dig deeper but rarely does so, the report states.
"The only audits Louisiana charter schools routinely undergo are the ones they pay for themselves," the authors write.
The report faults the Education Department for not spending enough time on-site at charters. Charters receive regular visits and reviews from state inspectors, and Louisiana Recovery School District officials said their own findings of wrongdoing at Lagniappe Academies in New Orleans showed that their oversight procedures worked.
The authors of Tuesday's report disagreed. The state's 2013-14 review of Lagniappe Academies gave full points for special education, the two organizations said, and it was only later that state inspectors uncovered extensive reports of violations during that time period.
"The situation at Lagniappe shows exactly the problems with the state's oversight structure for charter schools," the report says. "The state relies on a largely self-reporting oversight structure that is easily manipulated by the schools themselves."
The authors doubt the accuracy of the test scores that are used to measure charters' academic performance, writing that the data "is vulnerable to manipulation."
Finally, the authors disagree with the state's readiness to close charters, including Lagniappe.
"Clearly there are times when problems are significant enough that a school must be closed. Yet, the current intervention (process) is designed to make school closure a normal and common part of the state's accountability system," the authors write. "The system needs to be updated to produce more stability for Louisiana children." In six years, more than 1,700 New Orleans students have seen their charter schools close, according to the report.
Louisiana's laws are "designed to set a high standard but not to help," Serrette said.
The state does at times intervene instead of closing schools, although this is not mentioned in the report. The Recovery School District has chosen successful charter operators to take over failing schools, for example, and White directed Lycée Français to find a new chief executive and assigned it a consultant team. Lycée has gone on to make a B grade, and its charter contract has been extended.
The report's recommendations include:
Require fraud audits every three years, to be conducted by the state legislative auditor's office
Train charter staff and boards on preventing fraud
Hire more staff for the legislative auditor's office and charter school oversight teams
Require "mandatory, hands-on, long-term, strategic support" for charters in trouble
Go beyond test scores when calculating school letter grades
Create local committees, including neighbors and parents, to design schools that serve the needs of a community
Coordinate social services at and around schools
Release raw testing data to the public.
Some of these issues are not unique to charters. Louisiana's conventional public schools also face pressure to keep test scores high: If they don't, they may be taken over by the state. There have been numerous examples of corruption and fraud in school boards and systems. Serrette said it was likely Louisiana's regular school systems needed stronger oversight as well.
Source: Nola.com
How progressives can fight against Trump's agenda
How progressives can fight against Trump's agenda
As the new year begins, any honest progressive knows the political outlook is bleak. But if we're going to limit the...
As the new year begins, any honest progressive knows the political outlook is bleak. But if we're going to limit the damage that President-elect Donald Trump inflicts on the country, then despair is not an option. The real question, as Democracy Alliance President Gara LaMarche recently said, "is how you fight intelligently and strategically when every house is burning down."
Indeed, with Trump and Republicans in Congress aggressively pushing a right-wing agenda, progressives will need to invest their resources and attention where they can do the most good — both now and over the next four years. With that in mind, here are three steps to take to resist and rebuild as the Trump administration gets underway.
First, while strong national leadership is certainly important, progressives must recognize that the most significant resistance to Trump won't take place in Washington. It's going to happen in the streets led by grass-roots activists, and in communities, city halls and statehouses nationwide.
There is real potential for cities and states to act as a bulwark against Trump's agenda. On immigration, for example, a coalition of mayors from across the country — including New York and Los Angeles but also cities throughout the Rust Belt and the South — are already coordinating to fight Trump's deportation plans. Local Progress, a national network of city and county officials, is working to protect civil rights and advance economic and social justice. And while the Trump administration may ravage the environment, cities and states can also continue the fight against global warming; in particular, California has the potential to become a global leader on the issue, and Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has defiantly pledged to move forward with plans to slash carbon emissions in the state regardless of Trump's policies.
Cities and states also give progressives an opportunity to play offense by advancing policies that truly improve people's lives, while providing a concrete and actionable blueprint for the rest of the country. Take the Fight for $15. Last year, 25 states, cities and counties approved minimum-wage increases that will result in raises for millions of workers nationwide. And despite Trump's hostility to workers, there are campaigns to increase the minimum wage planned in at least 13 states and other localities over the next two years, representing a real chance to build on that progress.
Second, as New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman writes, "We need a broad commitment from activists and donors to take back state governments." Even if Democrats do well in the midterm elections, they are unlikely to regain control of Congress until after the next round of redistricting, in 2020. Yet there will be 87 state legislative chambers and 36 gubernatorial seats up for grabs in 2018. Progressives would be wise to adopt a laserlike focus on winning these races.
A strong performance at the state level in 2018 would do more than improve progressives' ability to combat Trump's policies. It would also help create a stronger pipeline of leaders who could eventually run for higher office, following in the steps of incoming House members Jamie B. Raskin, D-Md., and Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. Crucially, it would also give progressive Democrats more influence over congressional redistricting in 2020, boosting the party's prospects at the national level. For that reason, it's noteworthy that President Obama is planning to get involved in state legislative elections and redistricting after he leaves office, though grass-roots efforts will remain paramount.
And third, it will be critical for progressive leaders in Washington to amplify local progress to drive a national message. In the absence of a single party leader — especially one whose success depends on compromising with congressional Republicans — there is more room for strong, populist progressive voices to emerge in opposition to Trump.
Already, Sens. Bernie Sanders, Vt., Elizabeth Warren, Mass., Sherrod Brown, Ohio, and Jeff Merkley, Ore., are stepping up, and they will be joined in the House by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, whose members will play a key role in recruiting and running progressive candidates, connecting with grass-roots movements and driving local issues into the national sphere. Working alongside activist groups, progressive Democrats can present a clear alternative vision for the nation.
To that end, the race for Democratic National Committee chair presents a significant opportunity to shift the party's direction. Regardless of who prevails, progressives would be wise to insist on a return to the 50-state strategy that former chairman Howard Dean championed and that all of the current candidates say they support. Ultimately, the party's fortunes will depend on recruiting a new generation of progressive leaders, especially women and people of color, who can harness the power of social movements and drive it into electoral politics — everywhere in the country, at every level of government.
By: Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Source
I confronted Jeff Flake over Brett Kavanaugh. Survivors like me won't stand for injustice.
I confronted Jeff Flake over Brett Kavanaugh. Survivors like me won't stand for injustice.
I began my week in tears, as I stood in front of Sen. Jeff Flake’s office to tell my story of sexual assault for the...
I began my week in tears, as I stood in front of Sen. Jeff Flake’s office to tell my story of sexual assault for the first time. I ended my week in rage after learning that Flake, R-Ariz., would vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Read the article and watch the video here.
Outside Clout in Final Report?
Times Union - August 10, 2014, by Casey Seiler - Between its draft and final versions, a report by...
Times Union - August 10, 2014, by Casey Seiler - Between its draft and final versions, a report by SUNY's Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government on New York's controversial Scaffold Law incorporated changes that tended to increase its estimates of the law's cost and impact.
Some of the changes echoed suggestions made to researchers by the leader of an anti-Scaffold Law organization that paid $82,000 to fund the report — sponsorship that has led critics to attack the study as advocacy in the guise of research. Its authors, however, insist the changes reflect nothing more than their own good-faith efforts to clarify the analysis.
The Scaffold Law, which places "absolute liability" on employers for gravity-related workplace injuries, is supported by labor unions but opposed by business groups that claim it needlessly drives up construction costs. Opponents would like to see New York follow other states by adopting a "comparative negligence" standard that would make workers proportionately responsible when their actions contribute to an accident.
The Rockefeller Institute report was funded by the Lawsuit Reform Alliance, a leading opponent of the law, through its research arm, the New York Civil Justice Institute. The study, made public in February, drew initial controversy for a statistical analysis that concluded construction injuries in Illinois dropped after the state repealed its version of the Scaffold Law in 1995. That finding was highlighted by the law's opponents, and harshly criticized by labor groups such as the Center for Popular Democracy.
The director of the Albany-based Rockefeller Institute, Thomas Gais, subsequently backed away from that chapter, citing what he described as flaws in the Illinois analysis — conducted by a Cornell University researcher — and the fact that the report was released to its funders before a final round of vetting had taken place.
After that dispute came to light in April, advocates on both sides filed Freedom of Information Law requests to find out if pressure had been placed on the institute, either during its research or after the report's release.
Documents produced by the Rockefeller Institute in response to the Center for Popular Democracy's FOIL included email correspondence between researchers and Tom Stebbins, the leader of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance. The exchanges, described last month by the Times Union, included a July 2013 email containing two pages of Stebbins' suggested edits offered in response to a draft version of the report. While many of his suggested changes were merely typographical, others went to the substance of the report.
The institute initially refused to release the draft report, but produced it last week on the advice of SUNY's FOIL officer. Side-by-side comparisons of the two reports show that in several instances changes were made that addressed issues raised by Stebbins.
The contract between the institute and the LRA required the researchers to communicate regularly with their funders as the report progressed. In an interview last week, Stebbins said his suggestions were nothing more than an effort "to get the complete picture" of the costs of Scaffold Law.
The second section of the report, prepared by lead researcher Michael Hattery, attempted to assess the public sector costs and impacts imposed by Scaffold Law, including the annual average price of Scaffold Law-related injury awards for public projects. In the draft, researchers found that sum by taking total spending on state and local capital projects (not including public authorities) and applying the average percentage that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority reported spending for labor law injury award costs. (Because the MTA uses what's essentially an in-house insurance entity, it offered the researchers rich data on insurance costs, claim awards and construction value.)
In the draft version of the report, the formula estimates the cost of gravity-related claims costs by using half of the MTA's fraction (0.3 percent of total construction value) to estimate awards in urban areas and a quarter of the MTA average (0.15 percent) for non-urban awards. Using those multipliers, the average cost added up to $28.3 million for 2007-2011.
"Why do you use half of the MTA average .3%," Stebbins asked the researchers in his notes on the draft. He added that it seemed "very inconsistent" with the industry's estimate that Scaffold Law adds at least 4 percent to the cost of any public construction project.
"How can we reconcile?" he wrote.
Stebbins also pointed the authors to data available from the New York City School Construction Authority, which has in recent years buckled under escalating insurance costs for its projects.
The $28.3 million figure, he wrote, "does not include additional insurance costs, which is likely the driver of the 4% estimate. Any thoughts on getting to that number? ... Perhaps we could have an MTA estimate for payouts and an SCA estimate for insurance. That may help reconcile the two figures."
The final report uses calculations that doubled the potential claims costs.
A corrected version of the draft's calculation ($30.2 million) is offered as a "lower bound" for average annual injury awards, but the report provides a new "upper bound" of $60.5 million obtained by employing the full MTA average (0.6 percent) for urban projects and half of that fraction (0.3 percent) for non-urban work.
In a response to the Times Union's emailed questions last week, Hattery said that the injury award cost figure was always intended as "a very rough estimate" due to a lack of specific data.
"After reflection — after the first draft — we chose to use a range rather than a single point estimate," he said. "This is often done so that users and readers of the report do not overvalue the 'precision' of a single number when it is based on a significant set of assumptions."
The same chapter of the draft includes a two-page case study on the construction of the Lake Champlain Bridge, in which those interviewed — including the chief engineers on the New York and Vermont sides of the project, Vermont's attorney general, and the contractor's project engineer and risk control manager — said Scaffold Law had only marginal impact on the structure's price tag.
In his edits, Stebbins recommended scrapping the case study: "As discussed, suggest we remove this section unless we can get someone to talk."
"I felt that no one they interviewed knew what Scaffold Law was and how it affected the cost of construction," Stebbins said last week. " ... We were not able to get people who understood what the costs were."
The final report jettisoned the Champlain Bridge analysis.
Hattery said the case study was dropped because it failed to provide a contrast between insurance costs in the two states. Because New York was the principle partner in the bridge project, he said, "there was no contrast to compare in the execution of the project ... nor were there any fall-from-height claims to review and describe, to our knowledge."
In its place, a new case study was added that examined Scaffold Law's impacts on the School Construction Authority, and described the $1.1 million settlement of an accident claim that ended up costing half of the construction value of the project where the injury occurred.
Hattery said the SCA analysis was included because of the researchers' desire to offer "at least one specific Scaffold case in a higher-density urban environment. ... The case was completed later, in part, because it required a longer time frame for access to personnel, data, etc."
Stebbins said it would have been irresponsible for researchers to not have addressed the SCA in the analysis.
The final report was the centerpiece of February's annual Scaffold Law reform lobby day at the Capitol. The Lawsuit Reform Alliance touted its release with a news statement: "With the study in hand," it concluded, "Scaffold Law reform advocates look for positive traction in the legislature this year."
Instead, the session ended with no action taken on Scaffold Law.
Josie Duffy of the Center for Popular Democracy called on the Rockefeller Institute to release all the drafts of the disputed report.
"The public deserves a full accounting of SUNY's role in helping business groups attack worker safety laws," she said.
Source.
2 months ago
2 months ago